The Larimar

Serafíne

Hello to the failing moon, crescent and waning now below the horizon, drifting somewhere over the Indian ocean, forgotten by absolutely everyone in the outdoor bar at the Larimar Lounge on a Monday night. There is a band on stage and maybe that's why Táltos is here. Not because he's a fan or has even heard their name (they do not have one. So the singer has avowed three times throughout the set) but because he felt her from a block away. Four of them on stage, two guys - the drummer hidden behind the set and the guitarist, who is good, who is fucking great, but has a certain starched stiffness that tells you that on some level he is Very Fucking Serious about this music thing - and two girls, the bassist, who sports pin-curls and a pin-up style make-up and a rockabilly vibe, and the singer: who is Serafíne.

And rather as her name implies, on the stage, she absolutely burns.

The set - outdoors, despite the autumn chill in the air, despite the fact that it is a fucking Monday night, lasts a solid hour and a half. They play originals and covers from the whole spectrum of music history. With, admittedly, a rather heavy focus on punk and post-punk. The last song is a revved up New Pornographers' cover that Sera sings like a torch song surrounded by a wall of goddamned noise, to which she contributes, quite occasionally, when she decides to set down her bottle of vodka and actually play her fucking guitar.

When the set is over, Sera surrenders her guitar and microphone to her bandmates, allows Dan to physically unplug the guitar from its amp and then lift it off her body. Her arms are open wide and she's grinning and they don't have fucking roadies, they are already starting to break down their gear, but Sera does not and will not help. She has better things to do, like jump down easily from the edge of the stage onto the concrete patio that serves as a dance floor and wander through the rather sparse Monday night crowd carrying her vodka bottle by the neck, searching, quite unerringly, for a goddamned shaman. To whom she lifts the vodka first in toast and then in offering.

The world absolutely spins around her. She loves the way it moves.

Taltos

Táltos is the kind of man (thinning away [vanishing, pared to skin and bones, a lean lankster rabbit of a man]) who is so full of energy that he'll draw people in with that energy. They don't have to like him. They don't always. But they're fascinated by the quick movements of his fingers -- the expressive flick of his eye-lids, the expansive shaking of his eyebrows, the generous curl of his mouth, the occasional stroke of his mustache (un-curled today, but still quite nicely combed and shamelessly big, big, BIG, like he is), even the glint of copper on his wrists, the sinuous rill of light on his rings. Which is to say, he's not nursing a drink in a corner alone, but rather when Serafine finds him is leaning against a pillar in the wall, something dividing this space from that space, and he's surrounded by a little crowd of people who he didn't know before now, but can laugh with as if he's part of all their in-jokes. It's not comfortable, it's just living, and he tells them, I know that singer, and answers questions about the singer with whatever strikes his fancy, and then she lifts vodka in a toast and he grins bright canine-tooth like a wink at her, and lifts an empty shot glass, lifts (in the sense of steals) another empty shot glass, and says to Serafine, "You sing like the wings of the holy seraphim burn, honey." Genial. "But it's your gifts that make you divine."

Serafíne

"I sing like I'm drunk and having a good time," Sera counters, her mouth a quick and certain slash of a grin. Some of the people in that crowd around him she knows and others she doesn't and some she has seen and others she never will, becomes something strangers just drift through the world and you only feel the the rippling movement of the passage against your skin.

"So if that's what it's like for the fucking Seraphim," he has a shot glass and steals another. Sera has been drinking from the mouth of the bottle all night but is not averse to pouring shots. Likes the way those feel, too, the hard curve of the glass between her thumb and forefinger, the give-it-all-away of a bottoms-up toast. So: he has the glasses and she has the vodka and she pours them both shots. Then takes his arm and does not seem to care which one: malice or no-malice even if the malice when she feels it makes her skin crawl and maybe even her eyes burn with unshed tears.

" - sign me the fuck up for the heavenly host."

Taltos

He laughs. He laughs not full-in-his-throat but full-in-his-chest: it dissolves into coughing, because it hadn't decided whether to become even louder or to while away into a satyric snicker. He laughs, 'cause he's amused. The hell other reason do you need? But he laughs also because it's good to laugh (to Lust [to Lust- it's always wanting]), the glasses are lined up carefully on a slick of banister, something that has that gummy age-old feel you get at places like the Larimer Lounge, something that remembers being new-lacquered, and as he laughs says Táltos the shaman, "The fucking Seraphim are singing about the creation of the world, and that's a damned good time. You'd get bored but it's nice to know that some things won't."

And once she has poured, he holds the glass up and searches for a toast, settles on- "To things second to last."

And drinks.

And of course Táltos is warm, warm as things in spring beginning to kindle.

Tell me -

Serafíne

"No." said Sera, sniffling and not-quite-crying for reasons both abundant and not-quite-clear as his mouth finds her temple and her pulse beneath, fierce and firm. And also: smiling, thoroughly enough that he can feel the tension of it beneath her skin, which is beneath his mouth. An edge to that smile and a flash of brilliant light across the surface of her gaze. "It was the fucking airplane outside the window."

--

Her make-up is a little smeared but sometimes that is how she wears it anyway. So today and now, well that is how she wears it anyway, grabbing her hat and holding on to it because there's no natural wind but jet engines create their own and she doesn't know what he's thinking as he looks at her with her hair swirling out behind her and her skirt - fuller than many she wears - also dancing around her thighs but she leans into the wind and catches that glance and gives him a smile that is a little bit distant and warmer than you might ever begin to believe, unless you saw it. And if you saw it, the underlying heat might just make you

melt.

--

"Jesus fucking Christ - " Sera is marveling in her way which is not a [i]Pretty Woman[/i] way and is not a [i]Disney Princess[/i] way and is not even a return to cookie mountain sort of way but has an edge; a clear edge that is not quite a blade but is still gleaming because the marvel in her tone supercedes the irony in the curve of her mouth. Maybe it's just admiration: the way he makes her feel, like all of his wealth is natural, essential, necessary, his fucking due. Like silver spoons were made just to fit into his goddamned mouth, and for no other reason. Her hand in his as they wander through the front cabin to the back cabin with its armchairs and its couches and its wet bar and its windows and its view of the tarmac and - and - and

"You do this all the time, don't you? All the fucking time."

He does. She just knows it. Of course he does. And oh, how it makes her smile.

--

In the cabin Sera wants a drink wants two drinks thinks that they should open a bottle of champagne. Doesn't Hawksley think that they should have champagne? This is way fucking better than coach, Sera remarks, probably more than once and with a quiet snort of amusement. It is also way fucking better than first class and that has a glint of awareness, too. It is, she tells him, nearly as good as a band-van and a fortnight and truck-stop showers and coconut cream pie and a waitress named - actually named Flo - but she's teasing him and he's fairly certain that she didn't eat much of the pie since she's put on a bit of the weight she lost while fasting but: not that much. Not enough really.

She doesn't care what the champagne is. Does not fucking care if it is Cristal or Korbel she just wants bubbles and she might not even demand it until after he has poured them each a Scotch, which she will also drink. Because Sera will drink two of anything you put in front of her and then slash you a grin and ask for more.Sera has tossed her fedora on one of the fixed tables and kicked off her goddamned heels (which gave her a bit of trouble on the metal steps leading up to the jet) and set aside her champagne and is kissing him with a sudden and drowning thoroughness that feels like being pulled underwater and then emerging, gasping for air before punging deeper and deeper and deeper and welcoming the burning hunger for air in your lungs when someone nips back to politely interrupt and suggest that they take their seats and fasten their seatbelts they are cleared for take-off there's a window of opportunity is there anything else they need?

--

Which, no. Not Sera. Nothing else she needs other than privacy. Which makes her feel a strange and sudden twinge for the so-proper Mr. Collins as she surrenders to procedure and surrenders Hawksley for the moment and takes her seat. While they are buckling in Sera is telling Hawksley about the champagne glasses that Dee's aunt owned which now Dee owns which are not flutes at all but old-fashioned wide-mouthed shallow-bowled glasses which make it feel like you should be attending a garden party, the sort where you might wear white lace gloves and a crown of flowers in your hair.

She tells him this story in such a bright patter that he might well miss at first the fact that as the plane begins to taxi she's also taking off her clothes. Specifically: her underthings. Leaning forward and reaching back beneath her t-shirt to unhook her bra, then shimmying out of it, sliding first her left arm and then her right back beneath the tee to slip out of the straps. When she's free of it she hands it off to Hawksley with the prim, poised note of a society wife asking her husband to hold her purse while she tries on this mink and Sera does, in fact, ask him to

hold this for me.

The plane is wheeling around. The crackle of static as the captain comes on the intercom to tell them their order for the runway, their ETA, their path over the mountains. In case of a water landing - oh that's rich. Sera's stomach lurches a bit as the jet engines gun and the plane swings to a brief, moving stop. That's when she unlatches her seatbelt and arches up in her seat, just enough to shimmy her bikini briefs over her hips and down her thighs.

She retakes her seat and re-latches her seatbelt and again, there is something deliberate and prim about the way she does this. Some contained pleasure in the curve of her mouth as she flips up the hem of her skirt and stretches out first her left leg and then her right, carefully and precisely unbuttoning her garters, front and back, sliding her briefs down past then, then tugging her stockings back up her thighs and refastening the garters with the same precision. Until she can kick off her panties, too. Reach down and scoop them up and toss them to him, see? All

hold this for me,

as they lurch back into motion and the engines start to rev and the plane starts to rise.

Sera is watching him then, while the plane starts to climb. His profile, against the windows and so intently see. Not because she wants to see his reaction to her little show, but because she wants to see the way he looks against the sky as

they

take

flight.

Hawksley

Jesus Christ.

Hawksley's mouth curls at the corner, a dry smirk as Sera is surveying the cabin: the couch, the big screen, the wet bar, the armchairs, all the leather and polished chrome. There is a bowl of fruit on a small table, strawberries like Dee's lipstick and round green grapes, small as marbles. Hawksley lets her hand slip from his and walks to it, plucking a berry from the bowl as she's asking him if he does this all the time. He does, doesn't he?

He turns to look at her over his shoulder, lips around the strawberry, teeth sinking in. He smiles as his lips close together after the bite, but again: it's more of a smirk. He doesn't answer.

--

Of course champagne. Of course champagne and calling someone back to open it for them, pour it for them, in flutes not plastic cups. Hawksley sprawls on the couch while the plane is being prepped, arm slung over the back, knees apart, back slouched like a bastard. He watches her toss her fedora and her heels aside, they'll knock about during takeoff. The champagne is set down and there is then a Sera on his lap.

And Sera's lower back under his hand. And her mouth on his mouth, tasting strawberries and champagne on his tongue and there's an elegance and luxury to not just these flavors or this environment but him, but she has seen him most clearly and she knows there are reasons.

Hawksley is a sky god, and all sky gods are kings.

--

There are traceries of her lipstick on his mouth, reddening it slightly when Collins comes to the door. Collins who knocks, and Collins who sees Hawksley holding champagne with one hand and pressing Sera closer to him with the other, and Collins who takes and secures their glasses, corks the champagne, takes care of the fruit only so it can come back out again when they are floating in the air.

Hawksley has no grin for him, just a Jesus Christ! when they're interrupted, an annoyed snap at the consor, who takes it in stride. Who always takes it in stride. He lets her go while she's telling him about champagne glasses, old-timey ones.

"You would look lovely with a flower crown, if a bit on-the-nose for the hipster set," he says, hiding no admiration and pulling no punches, because he so rarely does either of those things.

He does not miss her undressing while she tells her story. He listens but he watches, their armchairs facing each other, which will make Hawksley feel a bit as though he is being grabbed by the shoulderblades and lifted into the sky, an uncomfortable, surrendering feeilng that he is nonetheless choosing to throw himself into. He leans on the arm of his chair and stares at her while she folds her arms back like wings themselves, the tiny sounds of the bra being unhooked hidden by the engines. He reaches out one arm slowly, takes the bra she hands off between two fingers, rubs those fingers idly on the fabric and the lace, a mindless stroke of his fingers, though his eyes never leave her.

The panties next. The delicate way she smooths her skirt over her legs and sits primly upon its hem on the leather, and the thoughtless way she undoes her garters just to get those panties off and then keeps them on, which stays the words that were about to leave Hawksley's open lips. Instead he takes a deep drink of air, as they are being pulled forward, faster and faster.

It's in his thoughts but not on his lips: Jesus Christ, Sera.

Hawksley does not try to catch her underwear. They land on his lap, draped over his knee, and he glances down at them with a soft huff of laughter before looking back over to her, pressing the tip of his tongue to one of his incisors. His breathing has elevated. There has been no suggestion that it is safe to remove their seatbelts. And he very much wants to, for a moment, open his belt and grab the ceiling and let himself topple to her, grab the back of her chair and the back of her head and kiss her til it bites, but

in that moment he wants a thousand things, and he -- being born to such privilege -- just chooses one.

--

The plane lifts. He is not looking at the sky, she might notice, but he would make a different argument. Hawksley never says a word until they're held cradled in midair, suspended by their own rapid propulsion and miracles that somehow the masses allow themselves to believe in. There is a soft chime, not the familiar ding of any less wonderous aircraft, and he unclasps his seatbelt.

He stands, letting her bra dangle and then drop from his hand, letting her underwear fall from where it hung on his jeans. He looks at her for a long moment, then

walks away.

To the wetbar, where he grabs the champagne, uncorks it again with his teeth, and pours their emptied glasses anew. Downs his in two swallows, refills it, and then carries it back

to the couch, where he sets the champagne flutes on the little table,

sits down,

sprawls,

and finds her with his eyes again, wherever she may be. He doesn't tell her come here. Surely he doesn't need to.

Serafíne

Sera has never been on a private jet. Or, if she has, it was too long ago in wholly different circumstances, filtered through the vague drift of a half-remembered, half-known childhood and whatever lies between then-and-now. Doesn't know what the discrete little noise signifies until Hawksley unlatches his belt and - hey, they're flying. She has been watching him watching her and as he rises she remains seated moment or two or three, watching him still, and watching her panties slip from his thigh to his knee to the floor.

A small, rather private little smirk curves her mouth. She laughs, unlatches her own belt, and rises to drift in an eccentric orbit around the cabin, bending over by the porthole windows to watch the city of Denver curve away far below. The Rockies look like a map in relief shot through with glittering reflections of water, the winding blacktop roads, curving sinuously through the mountains, cutting straight through the valleys. Her toes curl in the carpet. The interior thrums with the muted noise from the engines and they are still rising.

Hearing that pop, Sera glances back over her shoulder and finds Hawksley standing at the bar, the cork between his teeth, champagne flutes unearthed from where Collins - Collins at whom Hawksley cursed and snapped when the consor interrupted the pair of them to ready the cabin for takeoff; Collins at whom Sera flashed a mild, apologetic smile for his reception, that was nevertheless nothing close to self conscious - hid them away, cradled in some clever cabinet and closure.Her eyes are dark. The little window behind her is so bright with the smear of the sun against the insulating layers of glass that it casts her features even more in shadow. And that posture, bent over to peer out of the window - the white t-shirt and the arch of her lower back, the curve of her ass draped by the loose lines of the black cotton skirt, the dark line of the garters peeking down the backs of her thighs, the neat little buttons holding up her fishnets - christ, she makes the most inviting sort of picture. Fuck it, so does he.See the way she watches him over her shoulder, her eyes dark, her mouth ever-so-slightly parted. Catching her lower lip with her incisors, her eyes on his mouth, the cork between his teeth, the easy elegance and unstinting arrogance of his posture as he drops the cork, pours them both a flute of champagne, tosses his own back and pours himself another, which makes her so damnedhungryfor him. For his mouth and his arrogance and his hands, the beating of his heart, in time with and against her own. Her eyes drop from his to his shadow on the carpet and she's smiling then, a delicious coil of anticipation all whirl-i-gig up her spine. These are the moments when everything feels new, all over again, and old as time or sin or any other lie humans tell themselves: the creeping flush of her arousal beneath her skin, and the punctuate feel of it deep in the core of her body.

Sera's private little smile just widens he finds the couch and his eyes find hers, tug them up from her quiet little focus on the floor somehow, call it fucking magic, and there he is, all elegant bastard sprawl, just waiting for her.

She comes to him. Of course she comes to him - where the fuck else would she go? - pushes herself away from curving wall of the fuselage and saunters across the intervening distance. Stops at the table and picks up her champagne flute and tosses it back as easily as he. Drinks it the fuck down - such a gluttonous girl, see? Her champagne goes all-at-once and she wants another but she wants him more.

Her mouth and her spine and her head are full of bright, dry bubbles and the plane is moving now in a long, elegant, arcing sort of bank, which they can both feel as a rising curve invested in the angle and motion of the plane, but which does nothing to displace them. Sera sets her now-empty flute aside and holds his gaze as she just climbs over him, straddling his lap, her fishnet-clad knees knees flanking his thighs, her posture all upright so that she can look down on him.

She reaches to cup the back of his head with her right hand and maybe he's reaching to pull her closer with both arms or maybe he's just sprawling still, arms wide open, letting her take whatever she wants from him. Well: this is what she wants, right now. She reaches for his right hand with her left, settles his palm over her t-shirt, over her left breast. Her own hand is cool over his - the dry, pressurized air of the plane - and she pushes until the soft curve of her small breast is distorted by the pressure of his hand. He can feel her heartbeat through her skin, strong and sure and rapid. He can feel every breath she takes, and they are coming faster and faster still. He can feel her nipple tighten from a neat little bud to a hard little button, beneath the cotton, beneath the rough pressure of his palm.

Oh,she is smiling. Tipping her head lower and lower, forehead against the crown of his skull, her hair a loose blondish curtain around them. Dropping her mouth not to his mouth but to his ear, scraping and then closing her teeth over the cartilage, then kissing him, pressing her tongue to his skin, all yielding-soft, to sooth away any sting of injury."Believe it or not," she tells him, "I've never done this before." Her nose in his hair, the playful curve of her cheek against his temple. "But I can't wait."Of course not.

She never can.

Hawksley

Let's make no mistake about it: Hawksley Rothschild -- whether you call him by his name or by that appellation of his birth, David Davie Livingston -- is a man born to such wealth, such privilege, that his approach to life is not one of sheer gratitude at all the glorious sensations the human body is capable of experiencing or the sincerity of passions that the mind and soul can be uplifted and destroyed by or even the awe-inspiring regularity and occasional madness of nature. These things, both pleasure and pain, chaos and clarity, awe and derision, are. His. Due. He sees no reason that he does not deserve these things, that he should not walk among these wonders as their equal or even their superior. What else, he might say, was he or anyone else born for if not to receive these gifts?

Perhaps he is right. He certainly seems to be doing just fine psychologically as a result of this outlook. He does not question when good things happen to him because of course good things happen to him, and he does not despair when bad things happen to him because really, bad things rather rarely happen to him.

So there you have him, in his chartered private jet, feeling like chartering a jet and not owning one is actually a bit sub-par and even slightly embarrassing and maybe he should be a bit nicer to his father so his father will buy one and then he can just take that out occasionally. This is what he's thinking, abstractly, as he pours and downs champagne, dropping the cork from his mouth into the little steel sink in the wet bar.

Much more immediately, he is thinking that they have been in the air all of thirty seconds and Sera is wearing nothing at all under her t-shirt and skirt and he is thinking of her skin and her body and the last time he felt her breast in his mouth and he is thinking about fucking her. These thoughts naturally outclass and outpace any others. But we mention them all because this applies to Sera, too: a good thing that is happening to him. He does not question it, or doubt it. He does not tread warily. He is reckless and arrogant not because he sees Sera and sex with Sera as something he is owed or something he is due, but because it is something that is happening. The way he feels about her is something that is happening to him.

And he is not being careful.

He does not think he has to be.

He is immortal.

He is a god.

--

What is she?

--

Hawksley watches her drink and tips his head back, the alcohol comforting and soothing his mind, deadening parts of him so other pieces can awake. His hands are at her knees when she presses them into the cushion; they run up her thighs to her hips as she straddles him, his eyes flicking down at the rucked-up fabric as he lets out a sigh. "I want you," he mutters, quietly and unnecessarily, while her fingers search into his hair.

Sera puts his hand on her breast. Hawksley huffs a laugh and takes his hand back, sliding it under her shirt. She can guide him from there if she likes; she doesn't need to. He touches her anyway like that, feels her, unhesitating and eager, like he's been waiting for this all day,

or perhaps the last few weeks. His thumb passes over her nipple when she kisses his ear like that, bites and licks him, making him shudder. Without even meaning to he pulls her against him more firmly, lifting his hips from the couch to grind into her while she's talking.

And he laughs. Like a bastard or just a rich boy he laughs, his hands hidden under all that clothing she's wearing, which is obviously far too much. "Done what?" he mutters, which is exactly the same as We'll see. He never assumes. Or maybe he just likes pretending not to know.

Serafíne

I want you he tells her and this makes her laugh; her laughter is low and it is rich and it is dark and it is sweet. Warm against his ear.

"I know," she says back to him, her voice caught in the curve of her throat, thown back into the curve of his ear, vibrant and immediate and intimate. She bites him again, then lifts her mouth from his skin, tossing back her head as he grinds his hips until into her and she catches her breath and she makes this noise and she tells him, "I know."

He takes his hand back: wants her skin not the impression of her skin beneath cotton. Well, he knows where he's going and she doesn't guide him again, just reaches back for him with her left hand too, bracing her weight against his shoulder as she responds to the movement of his body against hers.

Done what?

"Had sex while flying," and the silly is subsumed as she tucks her head down to him, forehead to forehead. "in anything, let alone a private fucking jet, Christ. With a sky god in the sky."

Hawksley

Hawksley grins at her, at the implied silly. He's a little drunk. He grins, he mutters

"I'm always flying when I have sex,"

which is truer than he even means it to be. The words stumble over her own, though, and he closes his eyes a moment, reels, opens them again, still cupping her breast and squeezing her skin in his palm as though to reassure himself she's real.

"I'm not a god," he whispers, like this -- being called one, not admitting it's false -- hurts him somehow. But he doesn't want to hurt. He pulls her down to kiss her mouth --

Jesus, he loves her mouth, every smile and laugh like a knife opening up the sky.

"Take off your shirt," he says, his lips barely parting from hers.

Serafíne

"You're always Hawksley," see, she remembers that. When did he say that to her? It doesn't matter, the worlds crawled under the sky like the words and here she is, bending over him, close close close close, breathing and warm and flushed and half-laughing but also muttering that kind of agreement.

Then he's pulling her down and she is kissing him again, eyes closed, hungry for him, her mouth driving, seeking, her hands splayed in his hair and lifting his face back up to hers.

"I like it on," she mutters back, pulling away from his mouth just enough that he can feel the flash of her teeth over his lips, her breath like a tattoo. "Take it off me yourself."

Then she's pulling his head back, right? Following his mouth with her own but not quick, keeping him just out of reach before she laughs and moves, all spine-curling, releases him and reaches for the hem of the t-shirt, arms criss-crossed, peeling it off her body and throwing it -

- throwing it fucking somewhere. With all the many other pieces of her garments littering the cabin. Shoes and hat, panties and bra. T-shirt.

She's leaning back, watching him as she undresses, and reaches behind her waist next. Reaching for the zipper of her skirt.

Hawksley

Something makes it hard for him to stop smiling, even after that bump, that strange little hurdle that had some hidden scar tissue tightening up, tensing for a moment before he could relax again. Before she kissed him again, or moved just so on him again.

"Well, if you like it on --" he is saying, and then forgetting to say, because he fully intends to at least shove it up so he can get his mouth on her, but Sera must have been kidding or Sera is being kind because she folds and unfurls her arms, drops the fabric somewhere else, and she's all bare skin and tattoos.

Hungrily then, with a groan, Hawksley spreads his hands on her back and puts his mouth on her breast, engulfing her without teasing, without flirtation of his tongue to her breast or her nipple, just... devouring her. Someone up front, Collins perhaps, hears a gasp over the sound of the engines, and he simply keeps working on the tablet he brought with him to catch up on some financials.

In the back, his employer is grabbing Sera's skirt, grabbing the zipper she's pulling down, growing impatient and all but yanking it down her hips like that's going to help them at all. To slide it off she'll have to leave his lap and he doesn't want that. So he gives up. He yanks his head back, eyes fevered, lips parted. He removes his shirt far more quickly and with fewer complaints than Miss Sera, pulling her towards his chest. He wants to feel her skin on his skin.

Serafíne

The gasp that poor Mr. Collins hears is undoubtedly Sera's own: the moment that Hawksley's mouth engulfs her breast. Her spine arches in offering or invitation or it is perhaps a sheer autonomic response. His mouth on her breast and some electrical charge up the column of her spine that pulls her shoulders back and has her crying out and gasping for another breath, and then another,

and it is no wonder that Hawksley gets impatient with Sera's undressing because as soon as he takes her in his mouth her fingers go a little bit nerveless and the tab of the zipper just sits there and then his hands are there and - fuck it - the skirt's wedged further down on her hips now.

It's staying the fuck on.

Her breath is reddened from his mouth and her eyes are bright and her mouth is not bruised, not yet, but her lipstick is smeared over her mouth and his own. Christ the way he looks, all those fucking muscles she cannot begin to name.

He pulls her down onto his chest and she goes except her hands are between them so it is skin to skin interrupted by skin, because she's laughing, eager, unbuckling his belt as she smiles down at him, meets his fevered eyes with her own, soaks him in, all breathless.

Hawksley

At this point, Hawksley can't remember the last time he was with her. It was weeks. And one could say they made up for waiting then or had enough of each other to last but it never lasts. It doesn't really last forever, and he forgets how she tastes even though sometimes a memory from years ago will stir unbidden and sudden to the surface, erupting and overpowering all his other thoughts with things he thought he had lost.

Not the way Sera has lost them, though.

Hawksley just turns her over. Her hands are on his belt and he knows that if he just gets out of her way she'll pull his jeans down or off and pull him inside of her but all the same: he rolls her to the side, her back hitting the leather of the couch, his arms under her, holding her to him. The ends of his hair brush over her clavicles when he kisses her other breast -- mustn't neglect either of them, that would be ungentlemanly -- a groan rising, vibrating up from his throat.

"Tell me you have a condom this time," he says, the first words like a curse and a prayer, even though -- to be perfectly fair -- she did have condoms that time they were just in that clutch and that clutch was on the bar and they weren't in the bar anymore. And to be even more fair, there were condoms in his nightstand drawer in that palatial bed of his back at his wizarding castle of a house but he wasn't thinking about that or anything at all and she wasn't asking for anything but for him to fuck her again.

His mouth is on hers. And her breast and her neck, kissing behind her jaw, kissing her pulse, panting against her skin. "Tell me you don't care again," he says, quieter, rougher, before his teeth set in her neck.

Go to Vegas with me.

Hawksley

It's been some time since Sera called Hawksley and told him come. They've barely seen each other since that night at his house, in fact -- just the night she needed him, and needed Sid, and needed Pan to not be eviscerated and needed to not be too scared to visit him and needed sleep and so many other things. He left the morning after all that, when it seemed like she was... what would you call it? Stable? 'Okay'?

There have been a few texts since then. Just-checking-in texts. Not every day. Every two or three, sometimes more if she seems like she wants to chat a bit. He's Hawksley. Someone he barely knows being in the hospital, even because of some kind of horrific attack, doesn't seem to ruffle his feathers much. He asks once or twice how her friend is, but mostly he asks after how she's doing. But a couple of times, his texts have just said:

take care of yourself

because really, he does think she'll forget if not reminded.

--

This one is some time later, and he hasn't heard much news unless Sera has filled him in, but he texts her:

Go to Vegas with me.

Serafíne

Sometimes Sera is chatty in response to those check-in texts. Sometimes she just texts back a smiley face. Or a vampire smiley face that Dee showed her one time, which she likes. Sera believes in magic, yes, but probably does not believe in vampires. Anyway, the vampire smiley face is adorable, but also spiked. It has fangs. You can see how sharp it is when it smiles.

He learns: that Shoshannah and then Pan's son Rafael have crowded into the extra bedrooms of the sprawling house for the duration. Which must put Dee and Rick a bit on edge and change the feel of the place with Shoshannah like an angry wound and Rafael all fortune, all roll-of-the-dice. He learns: that Shoshannah has a strange, obsessive desire to clean things 'til they sparkle and rearrange things until they suit her that Sera finds alternatingly strange or endearing, or ridiculously irritating depending on her own emotional lability and whatever portion of the house Shoshannah has targeted for deep cleaning on any given day.He learns: that Sera goes to the hospital with some regularity, that Pan looks horrible, or that he's better? or that he's fucking delirious or that Dee brought home pain chocolate today and it was fucking delicious, that Sid bought Sera a vintage fedora on Friday and that it looks adorable on her because she snaps a selfie and sends it to him and the shine in her eyes is probably from the lights in the place, from the flash in her iPhone. He learns that Sera absolutely thinks that she's taking care of herself and that she thinks he's the greatest.dont worry I am [sunglasses smiley]. you're the best.ps - say hi to Collins for me. He does not learn: that some of those trips to the hospital end at the front doors when she cannot make herself go in for all the world, and that at least one and perhaps the most important of those visits, ends for Sera in a dissolving panic attack that has her shaken and shaking for hours, after, feckless and terrified.

She does tell him when Pan's sprung from the hospital on Tuesday or Wednesday and that he still looks awful and that god hes so stubborn and some time after that she tells him i am so fuckin stoned :D.

--

Some time later, he texts her:

Go to Vegas with me.

And she responds, two minutes and fifty-three seconds later:

Come pick me up.

--

Sera needs an hour or two to get ready, no more than that. She hasn't got a job to worry about and surely by now Pancho has tracked down Katiana and had more of his insides returned from his outside and the truth is even with her home and life returned to her she probably needs to get out of here. Give her friends time to settle. Find her own ways of letting go.

On the appointed date at the requisite time, Sera is sitting on porch steps, see. Waiting. She does not have an armload of matched Louis Vuitton luggage, no. She has a vintage 1950s hardsided suitcase and a large round latched hatbox and a rectangular cosmetics case, American Tourister circa 1978. Of course she does.

When he pulls up, though, instead of grabbing her luggage and running to the car she pops up from her perch and waves and jogs down the steps and opens the passenger's door and leans down and then in her hand braced on the passenger's seat for balance as goes to kiss him hello then pulls back and quirks a half-smile at him and jerks her head back toward the house.

"Hey you. Park the car and come inside for a minute. Okay?"

Hawksley

Hawksley believes in vampires. But that is because Hawksley also believes in mummies, zombies, cat-headed gods, a bird-headed god whose writing of all history (previous and ongoing) is what allows other gods and reality itself to exist, and he believes in fairies and piskies and mermaids and sea monsters and he believes in aliens and he absolutely believes in angels and demons and if you call each by their right name and hold them in the right circle, they will come and they will obey and he believes all this and also believes that his belief is what causes them to exist,

so it's a surprise he does not think he himself is Thoth Three-Times Great, the Timeless, the ibis who scribes the universe into being.

But there's a vampire smiley on his phone when Sera texts him and he thinks that's very silly, because it's a smiley, which only needs as much believe as a vampire in order to exist but causes far less distress and for that reason is permitted to go on with that existence, however pixelated it may be.

--

Over the days, she tells him that Pan is out of the hospital and Pan has a son which she may have already told him and Shoshannah is there, which is weird because he's still trying to wrap his head around that Weird Kid from Charity Event Number Eight Thousand Twenty-Four in his adolescence growing up to become a Dreamspeaker and coming to Denver just like he did, just like Sid did, and he wonders about things like Destiny and so forth but not very much because:

Hawksley.

But this comes in texts like:

wtf Pan has a kid? followed by Wait, did you already tell me that?

and

Tell her [her being Shoshannah being spoken of with her cleaning] to back off, it's not her house. which tells Sera plainly enough that if Shoshannah came into Hawksley's house or car or hotel room and started scrubbing he might kick her ass. Or Collins might. Probably Collins. Collins deals with Hawksley; one imagines he could handle Shoshannah. Hawksley wouldn't, in fact, want to bother.

And other texts like

That looks awesome regarding the fedora'd selfie.

He frowns when he reads that she's totally taking care of herself and he's the best and say hi to Collins, staring at his phone thinking while he fucking reclines next to a fucking pool in a pair of shorts and lets the sun soak him through and through and through.

Sure.

To all of it.

--

And later, later, go to Vegas with me. And without missing a beat she just tells him to pick her up and of course they're going to fly instead of drive, because Hawksley likes to drive but he likes to fly more and Vegas is like twelve hours away, fuck it, rent me an Audi or something.

On my way.

--

And that is that, because Hawksley is filthy-fucking-rich and because he tells Collins or others what he wants and when he wants it and they make it happen for him because they are paid to make it happen for him.

Such as setting down the phone and yelling

"COLLINS!"

and then, shortly thereafter, the car is ready and the car is pulling up to Sera's curb and it's not some sleek 2-seater and Hawksley isn't driving it. It's a Mercedes ML6 AMG, which is a lot of capital letters that mean a ridiculously expensive SUV, light-sucking black and gleaming chrome inside and out, driven by the trim, tidy Collins in a dark suit that is more comfortable than it looks. It slides to an idle along the sidewalk and Hawksley gets out, wearing one of those tailored white v-necks and a pair of beat-up jeans that may very well have come that way but also might have been bought new, paid well for, kept for years and years and years because sometimes even jeans can be an Investment Piece.

He's wearing aviators, mirrored, and he didn't tell her anything to pack or how long they'd be gone for but maybe he should have remembered. Maybe Collins gave her a brief phone call -- a real, talking-with-voices phone call, old-fashioned thing that he is -- advising her that they were expecting a stay of at least two nights, that there would be an occasion for formalwear, and that, if she liked, she would have the opportunity to dance. It's a subtle suggestion on what to pack, an offering if you will. Given what Hawksley has said of his past, chances are that Collins is not talking about grinding in a nightclub.

The sight of her luggage makes Hawksley grin. And the sight of her. She comes toward him, but not carrying her luggage, and he wouldn't expect her to. Luggage-carrying is what Collins is for, and that is exactly what Collins is going to do, though not yet. Hawksley all but catches her when she jogs up to him, arms folding around her waist like petals closing at nightfall: that effortless, that natural.

He kisses her. Hello, yes, and I had no idea I missed you all this time until I saw you again and I'm really glad you're going with me and mmph as well. There's more to say, so of course his kiss takes longer. She draws back, his arms loosen but don't leave, and she tells him to come inside. "Sure," he says, his curiosity warm and glowing under the ashes but still banked for now.

Arms sliding away again, he falls into step at her side and walks up the steps towards the house with her. Behind them, Collins is getting out of the car, walking very slowly and patiently after them to retrieve Sera's luggage and convey it to the back of the SUV. Hawksley takes his sunglasses off at the porch, looking at Sera. His hand is in her hand. How did that happen? How it always happens.

It squeezes. "What's up?"

Serafíne

Sera bloody well kicks up a heel when he all-but-catches her and likely violates the fourth wall of Interacting-with-Collinses when she gives him a spry little wave as Hawksley and Collins pull up in that light-sucking-black Mercedes. Which is, in turn, sufficiently different from the Porsche (creature that she is, she has become used to Hawksley's anthracite brown Porsche) 911 she was expecting that she shakes her head and almost whistles low and thinks about how filthy fucking rich he is in this immediate but rather bemused manner. Glances over her shoulder after that kiss that says so many different things, in succession and all at once, ends, just watching the Mercedes gleam in the dappled light of her tree-lined street as somehow they're holding hands and she's leading him up the walk and up the stairs onto the front porch.

Where there is one more piece of luggage: a stripped black and white garment bag tired 'round with a bright lime grosgrain ribbon. Thanks to Collins, mind. Without his hat-tip the closest Sera would have gotten to formalwear in her own rather thoughtless packing would be a skin-tight and possibly transparent cocktail dress or three, the sort that make the members of the League of Mary at the Church of the Good Pastor think she's a call girl rather than a streetwalker, but could create precisely the opposite impression in someone with more rarefied tastes.

--

Hawksley takes off his aviators once they are in the shadows of the front porch. We are all rooting for him to fold them into vee of his tailored t-shirt, because that is exactly where they should be as Sera squeezes his hand back and beams at him and says, "You'll see," and draws him by their joined hands back into the house, through the familiar hallway to the kitchen overlooking the garden.

Sera is wearing a circle skirt, slightly longer than her usual cutoffs or tiny leather skirts, though not by much, and thigh-high fishnets with garters and a small white t-shirt that is not tailored and shows a silhouette of Siouxsie Sioux, over, yes, a black push-up bra and a pair of ridiculous heels that would make most women mince because those things were not made for human feet. Sera walks in them like she owns the world.

The houseguests have gone, scattered back to wherever they came from, and it is still daytime so the house is fairly quiet but what Hawksley sees first in the kitchen is the blaze of light as Dan finishes lighting the last of the candles for what is: a brief reenactment of the party Sera held for him at a diner in a truckstop off some highway in the middle of nowhere. Utah, maybe. Or some other fucking place so close to being Utah it makes no great difference.

There's a blueberry pie and a rather towering slice of layer cake (although this one is red velvet, not merely chocolate) and the same scattering of candles because someone saved the candles, the exact candles from the exact day and the ones that were in the original blueberry pie have blueberry-stained bottoms. And there's Sera, spinning around with a very pleased smile and still holding his hand and telling him to blow them out, and Rick isn't there because Rick had to work but there's a cute if sort of mousy looking young woman in her mid-twenties sitting at the end of the table that Sera introduces as Gina Reyes ("Dan's producing her EP? She's really great.") and Gina gives Hawksley an adorkable sort of wave and a kind of don't-look-at-me-so-much smirk even if he's not really looking at her at all.

And then Dee is stomping down the steps behind them because she's in a rush not because she's feeling stompy and she's dressed in her roller derby duds and carrying her bag with her padding and helmet because she has practice in a bit but she squeezes in behind them and gives Hawksley a laughing kiss on the cheek and - if he asks - acknowledges that she made the pie and the cake is from her bakery and she knows they probably have a plane to catch so he can get by with just a bite but if he likes it she'll make another when he comes back and anyway it won't go to waste.

They're having people over tonight.

They always do.

--

Twenty-five is an awful lot of candles grouped all together like that, some of them listing because the surface of a blueberry pie is much less suited to birthday candles than birthday cake and they just gleam in the afternoon shadows and the light is shining in Sera's eyes as she stands close to him and lifts her chin and murmurs, quiet, right?

"I never said thank you for coming to get me that night. Thank you."

Hawksley

Collins sees Sera's wave. He inclines his head, unreadable in his unflappable politeness, his retreating silence. Perhaps Sera, of all people, could look into his eyes and divine the man's soul, and someone like Sera might wonder at that soul, but surely she doesn't have to look that deep. Hawksley talks of him as though Collins Has Always Been, which implies that in Hawksley's life, Collins... has always been.

Hawksley yells at him and swears and demands and Collins follows him hither and yon, and Collins judges not and Collins reminds him of the earth and its mundane artifacts of what is worthwhile about sleepers and Collins gets him to and from Vegas and Collins makes him egg-white omelettes and feeds him fresh veggies and lean fish and some of this is to maintain that unrealistically perfect physique and some of this is because Hawksley can't be trusted to take care of his own heart. In any sense.

All of these things provide an ample enough glimpse into the sort of man Collins might be, enough to see the possible and guess at the most probable.

--

In the back of his mind, Hawksley hears the masses roar and cheer for his v-neck and so, a bit pretending-not-to-understand, he holds them loosely between his fingers for a few seconds before allowing the people's voices to sway him. They tuck and fold and clip in the v

and the crowd goes wild.

As well they should. He is a golden god.

"You should wear the fedora with this," he says, tugging on the t-shirt she's wearing but indicating the entire outfit. "It would look good." And it would. At least on Sera. And with Sera's style.

--

They go inside. She leads him to the kitchen, and Hawksley smiles because he can recognize candlelight from a mile. They go in and he is smiling, smiling, saying: "I knew it," which he absolutely did, she can hear the sincerity and the lack-of-bluster in his tone. "You didn't need to do this," he says, and yes: primarily to Sera, but the room, because he knows for damn sure that Sera didn't bake anything and god help him if she did and Dan is the one lighting candles and,

"Hey,"

Gina gets, with an upward nod on the side and

"Dee!" when she bounds in, stompstompstomp and he uses the hand-that-Sera-is-not-holding to wrap it around her, hugging her close, kissing her cheek and then kissing her mouth, saying thank you for the pie and cake, because he could probably guess it was the woman who smells like cinnamon and vanilla and flour sometimes on his own because he is quick on the uptake in a way that some people only dream of. He figures things out rapidly, puts two and two and three together and when one of those 2s turns into a ferret it doesn't even phase him.

They probably have a plane to catch, but that's okay, she'll make him more and it won't go to waste and Hawksley is good at figuring things out but he is not good at hiding anything so they can all see the gears turning in his head, the decision-making process and then the resignation that even if he tried to dissemble, even if he tried to avoid telling the direct truth, he's talking to Dee and Sera and he would fail. He would fail to lie and there's more reasons for that than just things like Sera Can See Through Souls.

"We can take some with us," he says to her, smiling that warm smile that all the same comes nowhere near to being apologetic, because Hawksley has never and fucking will never apologize for being born filthy fucking rich (and doesn't know why anyone would). "I chartered a jet." A shrug with one shoulder that dislodges his arm gently from around Dee. "So we can take some." As though repeating it makes it less... what? Ostentatious? Or, more likely:

because he's really happy he can take some. And he expects other people to be happy for him, too.

He drives a Porsche. No one's seen it but yes, Dee, he actually has a Jaguar as well. His fucking manservant drives a top-trim Mercedes that still smells like the factory. And when he wants to go to Vegas on the spur of the moment, he charters a goddamn jet. He lives in the Cherry Hills Village equivalent of Hogwarts Castle. Yes, Sera: Hawksley is absolutely filthy with his wealth.

--

And, still holding Sera's hands, laced together finger beside finger beside finger, he leans over and blows out the candles in one enormous drag and exhale of air, nearly wheezing as he reaches for the last one. Maybe he makes a wish. But it's not really his birthday anymore, so it won't count. Still, they are candles. And he has made wishes on candles when it wasn't his birthday and they came true, but that's just magic.

Dee is heading out and Dan is cutting slices of pie and Gina is quiet and Hawksley is drawing Sera close and sliding his arms to either side of her and lowering his head to rest their faces cheek to cheek, beard-bristle against her jawline, his nose to her temple, his hands folding around her midsection.

"'It is not so much our friends' help that helps us,'" he murmurs, reciting as he sometimes does, "'as the confident knowledge that they will help us.'"

His lips press a kiss to her temple, where the wings of wispy hair cross behind her ear, though they are so short-shorn there that they might not wisp in any sense. "Epicurus."

Serafíne

There's so much folded into the moment. Dee is caught off-guard by the second kiss, mouth-not-cheek, but smiles into Hawksley's mouth and oh, there she is blushing again. More subtly this time, this lovely little flush that blossoms up her neck and into the apples of her cheeks, which the afternoon shadows and the pleasant glow of twenty-five candles mostly camouflages. Once again she smells like vanilla and brown sugar and yeast and honey and today, blueberry pie. Also the sweat and the promise of it; in the pads packed into her gym-bag full of her derby gear.

He's welcome, Dee says, happily, beaming, pleased enough that the revelation that he chartered a private jet takes her aback, takes her breath away, but really only just. See though she is: open-mouthed, blinking as she tries to process the world in which young, handsome, athletic men say thank-you for the blueberry pie I will take it on my chartered jet with me to a derby girl named Dahlia, nicknamed, Dee.

And she cannot really process it so she just laughs instead and says, "Oh, wow." and lifts her eyebrows and glances at Sera and then Dan with a look that says, did you hear what I just heard? am I currently under the influence of one of those drugs we all like and finishes up with an " - oh, yeah. Well, that's awesome then. I'll like, dig out the tupperware."

And even though she was kind of in a rush somehow Dee is going to stick around to stand on the porch and wave goodbye because someone seeing a friend climb into a taxi or a car service to head off to catch a flight to Vegas does not seem noteworthy but watching that same friend head off down the same street in the same sort of conveyance to take a private chartered jet -

- feels as slidingly, deliciously, warmly surreal as everything else about Hawksley, and Hawksley and his fucking Porsche, and Hawksley and Sera, the natural way they fold together. And then Dee will take note of Collins and do yet another double-take and Dan will flash her a knowing sort of grin and Dee will say tell me that's a car service and Dan will say I don't think it's a car service and later that night Gina Reyes will write a new song with an expansive, rising, soaring melody better than anything she has written to date, and she'll sit in the garden and strum it quietly while Dan and Jer lay next to each other on the cabana bed and count out the visible spectrum of the stars and strangers finish the remains of Hawksley's second blueberry birthday pie.

-

And Sera - who, like that cheering crowd, approves of Hawksley's aviators tucked in his v-neck - is asking Dan where her fedora is? And, after he has lit the candles and after Hawksley has blown out the candles and after he has packed up a couple of slices of blueberry pie as well as that big slice of layered red velvet cake into some beaten-up tupperware for the flight on the jet Hawksley chartered Dan will inform Sera that her fedora is on the coat tree in the foyer and will perhaps retrieve it from its perch and plant it on the crown of her head with a kiss on the forehead goodbye before he retreats with Gina upstairs to the music room to walk through their plans for the studio time they have booked so they can Make It Count.

Everything is pleasant, glowing chaos as Hawksley bends to blow out the candles, but all eyes come back 'round to him as he leans over and fills his lungs and blows and blows until there's nothing left in his athlete's lungs. Dee and Dan and even Gina clap and Sera doesn't clap because they are still holding hands but she squeezes her own hand around his, happily.

Then people are scattering. Dee has to track down her skates and Gina will give Dan a hand with the pie and Hawksley draws Sera close and she steps into him, as easily and as naturally as you please, half-closes her eyes, rubs the taut line of her jaw against his beard, her temple against his nose, feels the warmth of his arms folding around her waist, feels herself rising, right? her arms wide open, flung out like wings, and that heat, the sun soaking her through to the marrow is such a deep and visceral pleasure that she shivers in his arms.

Her mouth finds his ear. She's smiling, then. He can feel the expression curve her cheek. And she opens her mouth to say something back but somehow what he recites to her feels so strangely and immediately poignant to her both as he says it, and as she runs it back in her mind, that she breathes out. All at once, sharp and sweet.

Then in again. "Oh," Kisses him on the lobe and - rising to her tiptoes, her body moving against his - the helix of his ear, then murmurs, her voice humming and low, "Hawksley. You always know what to say."

And she leans into him, just breathing, just

savoring

the moment. The solidity of his frame against hers. The warmth of his body and his arms and his resonance. The heat of his mouth against her temple, the way she can see the movement of his jaw in her periphery, feel the scratchy assertion of his scruff against her cheek. The pleasant bustle of her friends, who are also

his friends,

all around them.

Hawksley

Laden with Tupperware full of blueberry pie and red velvet cake, having offered his birthday wish to the gods of flame, Hawksley walks out with Sera again. She has that red fedora on her long, chaotic hair, and his arm is still around her waist and he can still feel her voice vibrating against his ear, then the impression of her lips. All he gave back to her, to her words, was a smile and a kiss, brief but not chaste, not innocent at all, before he

well, let's be honest. Swept her away to take a fucking private car to a fucking jet because -- by all appearances -- he just felt like going to Vegas.

All of her luggage is loaded up in the SUV, and Collins is waiting to open the door and his hand is there to help Sera climb in if she requires it or simply likes it, and the door is shut behind them. Inside everything is black leather and black poplar trim and technology and luxury and a car that comes close to costing six figures and so on and so on. Hawksley sets the Tupperware... somewhere, or gave it to Collins for safekeeping, and it is either a measure of his trust in Collins or sheer youthful arrogance of his own immortality, but he doesn't buckle himself in. He leans back, his hand playing with hers as soon as they're inside because of course it is, of course his hand found her hand as soon as it could.

He looks out the window as they pull away from her house, Dee's house, then looks back to her.

"It's a dance thing," he says, jumping right in, though she didn't ask. "Some convention or competition, and they're having it in Vegas. I've been invited because they're doing some kind of performance dedicated in honor of my mother, or some award they're giving her, I don't know, I didn't really read the whole thing. So I'm going on her behalf."

Serafíne

Sera does take Collins' hand as she climbs into that monstrously expensive SUV, not precisely because she requires it and not necessarily because she enjoys the gesture, though she may enjoy the gesture, somewhere in there, down beneath her skin. Sera takes Collins' hand because it is in her nature to take whatever someone offers her.

And she smiles at him and murmurs her thanks and ducks into the back seat and slides over as Hawksley climbs in after her and had he buckled his seat belt, well - she would have remembered that that is a thing that you do in cars. But he did not and neither does she.

Sera sits close to him, their hands clasped between them. Dee comes out on the front porch to boggle over Collins handing Sera in to the back seat of the SUV and share her amazement over the Fact of Hawksley or perhaps the Facts of Hawksley as they are becoming clear to her with Dan and they share a look and Sera leans over Hawksley to wave goodbye but perhaps the windows are too tinted for Dee to see her.

Then they are in motion; she watches the familiar street roll by in unfamiliar context and unfamiliar ways and then he's speaking. Her dark eyes fast on his face. Something shiftingly thoughtful to the frame of her mouth, something quietly, strangely tender in the focus of her gaze.

"She taught you to dance." It's not a question, but it is quietly offered and there is a sort of question embedded in the statement. Her eyes drop from his profile just once, down to their clasped hands. The sight of his fingers wrapped with her own makes her smile to herself before she glances up again. "What's her name?"

Serafíne

Perception + Awareness-as-Empathy

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Hawksley

She taught you to dance.

Hawksley gives a nod, deep and singular and almost grave. Of course she did. She looks at their hands, and his gaze follows hers, his chest lifting on an inhale, then sighing and deflating on an exhale. "Sylvia Livingston, née Carraway." His thumb moves over her hand, his eyes hypnotized by the motion as well as the sensation of her skin against his own. As always. As ever.

He lifts his eyes and finds her looking at him, even into him, and she can see a bit of ache in that gaze, or really: not a bit of ache. Quite a measure of it, but he isn't hiding anything. He never really does. Not intentionally. Talking about his mother brings that over him, that sort of calm sadness. It isn't even simply resignation to a sad thing but an acceptance of it. Nothing to be done about it.

"There's going to be a metric fuck-ton of dancing," he says, instead of delving into it. "Some demonstrations, which are mostly performative, some competitions, but the social dancing as well. A banquet. Some of the up and comers will probably be clubbing. Really top-of-the-game types, in this really tiny niche."

Serafíne

The ache she sees in his starkly pale eyes finds its way into her skin; into her body; into her chest. She breathes it in and feels it lodge beneath her sternum. The physical assertion of it in her body has her eyes shining with the reflected gleam of afternoon sunlight slanting bright off the windshields of the traffic around them, though damped by the tint in the windows of the Mercedes. The right corner of her mouth curls up, bracing, and she tucks her head down to kiss him on her shoulder. Mouth closing over the seam framing the yoke of his v-neck, her breath warm through the cotton. The brim of the fedora catches on the spine of the seat and is tipped back on the crown of her head, but never entirely dislodged.

Sera lingers there; first her mouth and then the bridge of her nose against his deltoid, her eyes mostly closed. Lashed at least, her attention given to the remarkably subtle glow of his white t-shirt in the trim leather seats.

The brief, needling, suggestive assertion of her teeth follow.

"You're lucky, you know. That Mr. Collins called me and told me that there would be the opportunity to dance," a fair mimic of his gravity, and his precision, though she cannot quite match the timbre of the servant's voice. The simmering curl of her smile against his skin, " - or I would've packed for Vegas and not had anything to wear.

Then she lifts her head, leaning closer for a quick kiss against the edge of his jaw as she squeezes her hand around his.

"How good are you, anyway? Were you ever one of those up-and-comers?"

Hawksley

When Sera got into the SUV with him, she went first. He got in and sat on the other side of the bench, the grown-up seats, and then Sera was scooting into the middle, leaning against him, and that made him smile. It makes him smile when she leans over and kisses him where and how she does, laughing on an exhale. "You're ridiculous," he says fondly, lifting his free hand to cup over her scalp, smoothing back her hair and thus utterly dislodging the hat, tumbling down her back to the seat beside her. There's no diminutiveness in that ridiculousness he ascribes to her, either.

She uses her teeth. Hawksley breathes in, self-steadying.

He's lucky. Collins called and told her how to pack. He just grins. "You didn't ask," he says, truthfully and horribly, he's horrible and incorrigible and he would have loved to see her just as she is, who fucking cares, go to some black-tie affair with him in jean cutoffs and her insane tattoos and sheer everything. Hawksley would not have batted an eyelash. She kisses his jaw; he turns his head at the last moment and catches her mouth. Briefly enough.

Hawksley shakes his head. "I never danced professionally. I did a few competitions when I was younger, but that was before prep school. I've only ever been a hobbyist. Maybe I could have been -- one of those up and comers -- but I never wanted to."

He's quiet a moment, as they glide along towards the northeast, heading towards DIA or some airfield near to it. "How good were you at fencing?"

Serafíne

She's ridiculous, he says fondly, and she probably agrees, of course she's ridiculous, and she savors the weight and warmth of his hand, the twist of his fingers through her hair, is not quite laughing by the time her mouth finds his jaw and his mouth finds hers for that brief kiss. And she can feel that responsive ache in her body already unknotting, see. Dissolving itself in the solvent of something warm and fine that she cannot quite name, but can feel at the root of her tongue, and the back of her throat and lifting, lifting, lifting between her scapulae.

You didn't ask, he tells her and,

"No I didn't," Sera agrees, with a swimming little grin of her own. Which does not quite match his expression so much as challenges it. Look, see, the lingering, deliberate arch in her otherwise straight brows. The brisk flash of her teeth in a silent though not entirely inaudible laugh. "I like surprises.

"I know fuck-all about dancing, though. The proper kind. I mean if you want someone who knows how to take peyote and get naked and whirl around like one of those fucking - one of those guys who pray while twirling around, you know the ones I mean? - at Burning Man, I'm you're huckleberry.

"But for the real thing you should wear steel-toed dancing shoes. 'Cos I won't know which way to go. Or a waltz from a fox trot from a cha cha cha."

Except she does know the names, and does not seem the sort to spend her weekday evenings glued to the television watching Dancing With the Stars unless hallucinogens are involved, so she knows at least: the names. From someone, pre-adolesence, yes. But somewhere.

When he asks about fencing, Sera makes a noise in the back of her throat and breathes out a breath that is too forceful to be a sigh. Drops her gaze both from him and from city passing beyond the car window.

"I don't really fucking know," There's a strange twist to her mouth, and a certain reflective distance in the unfocused depth of her gaze. Then she turns her head back to him, catching her lower lip between her teeth and tracing her dark eyes up familiar avian profile. Remembers how predatory he looks sometimes, with his pupils blown and his irises bright around them, the shadow of a solar eclipse. " - you know? I remember lessons. We had a fencing master at school. I skipped the fuck out on cotillion but not on that.

"But after I got kicked out, I don't know. I don't really - remember everything. But like my body remembers it, it's like a fucking tattoo. Muscle memory? It's just there, man.

"Though I don't think I was every really good. I remember I'd just throw everything into the attack, right? Which always leaves you fucking open."

Another one of those half-forceful breaths, another quiet huh before she tells him,

"Sabre. I liked sabre best."

Hawksley

Being honest, Hawksley is distant right now. Not intentionally, and not due to some strange vendetta. He is distant in the way that people whose minds are stuck in a room on the other side of the country are distant, as though he is scrying without magic, as though he is lost in Time without having ever learned even the basics of that sphere. He is also inviting Sera into a segment of his life that he has not hidden but has kept separate.

It's weird. It feels weird. He's feeling awkward about it, too. And: that ache. That sadness. That sense of loss.

--

But all the same, he turns into her, lowering his head and nuzzling her as he talks, with the unabashed open affection of someone used to being surrounded by people like Collins. There's no privacy screen between the two of them and his manservant; Hawksley kisses her temple and trails his lips down her cheek while she's talking, kisses her mouth in between words, a subtle slow tasting sort of kiss. He breathes her scent in and stays close, physically, even if his mind is split into far-flung places.

"You won't have to worry about proper dancing," he says with a small smile. "I'll lead. And in proper dancing it's essentially my duty to make my female partner look elegant and ethereal. It's not as hard as it looks to dance, anyway. I won't let you stomp on my feet." A beat. "You mean Sufis. The whirling dervishes. That's Sufism."

He leans back into the airy, perforated leather, lifting their hands and examining hers and how it tangles with his and the varying shades of their skins. She doesn't know, she says, about fencing. Muscle memory, her body remembers, a tattoo on her mind that she doesn't remember getting. Hawksley looks at her, and yes it is dim enough despite the sunlight outside that his pupils are wide but not blown out like they have been, like they were at the river or in his bedroom or in her bedroom when she woke up and they dilated widely, fixing on her, on any movement at all.

She doesn't remember everything. She would throw everything in, leave herself open.

"Sounds like you," he murmurs, watching her now, no longer distant. "You don't remember?"

Serafíne

And in that space Sera does not quite know what to say. There's no way around the strangeness; the queer vulnerability of inviting someone into a new wing of your life that was only glimpsed through the windows while roaming in the garden, with the light of the setting sun gleaming off the windows.

That ache in him; that sense of loss. It has its own rhythm and its own beating heart. She catches the strangest glimpses of it in his face, impressionistic rush of the highway around them, when she lifts her chin to take in his profile. Half-smiling, as his mouth finds her temple. The heat of his breath on her cheek has her biting her lip, lifting her face into the movement of his mouth, responding to him with the same thoughtless, half-animal affection.

She's biting her lip when he finds her mouth and kisses her; then she's lifting her mouth to his and opening to him, staying close in between so her voice is a vibrating hum between them. Felt as much as heard. He assures her that she needn't worry, and that he won't let her stomp his feet and she laughs a soundless laugh, mostly a flare of her nostrils and the quick, curving arch of something near-a-smirk. Bumps her forehead against his temple and slides her nose along his cheekbone.

--

"You know how I am," this is her first answer, and it is not precisely an attempt at obfuscation. But: he's watching her now and she has her eyes on his hands and her hands and how they're intertwined and he's invited her into this strange new wing of his life where people throw events and honor his mother and he attends on her behalf, holding somehow inside him a loss both deep and old.

"That night at the river, I think you flew down and took me away in a golden chariot from something - " And she's smiling and it is a smile informed by the quiet space between them and the memory of that night and a certain quickening strangeness as expresses itself in a quick and tight little shrug of her shoulders.

"But yeah, there are some things I don't remember. My folks sent me to rehab? After that it's kind of fuzzy for a while."

Sera nods, more to herself than to him, and it is a kind of agreement with herself, and she breathes in more sharply than she had intended and brings their clasped hands up to her mouth so that she can press a firm kiss in between his knuckles.

"Maybe I should've told you before now. You told me so much, that night in the garden. Remember? I was sure we were gonna fuck, but you - " Scrapes her teeth, then, over his knuckles, smiling this sudden, sublime little smile at the memory.

Hawksley

He knows how she is. Hawksley doesn't argue with that, though an argument could be made that he hardly knows her at all, they've scarcely met, what is she talking about, what does he really know about her at all --

he doesn't argue. He knows how she is.

And he watches Sera kissing their conjoined hands like that entanglement is precious, which they both know it is, and have not discussed or shied from because he knows how she is and he believes she has the same measure of him. His head tips a bit at what she says beyond that, brows stitching, but near the end his mouth quirks instead:

"Ate you out like I was born to do it," he says with a little nod of agreement. Yup. It's true. He smiles. But it fades, and he watches her, and up ahead of them, Collins steals a glance at them in the rearview. He knows.

"I don't tell you everything," Hawksley says, more quietly, lifting his finger from her knuckles to touch her jaw. God, he wonders at her. How she feels. How she looks. How she does things like kiss his shoulders all the damn time and bite his knuckles. His eyebrows lift a bit: "And it sounds like you can't tell me everything because you don't remember it."

Teasing. Sort of. Or just accepting.

Serafíne

That little nod of agreement, so damn matter-of-fact, so yup-it's-true has laughing, open-mouthed in profile. Laughter lights up her faces, makes her mouth move the way it was meant to move, quicksilver. She is not looking at him, not directly, but steals a glance back and her eyes are full of a sudden heat, like the flickerflash of lightning from some storm just over the horizon.

She wants to tell him, I want you to do that again.

Maybe on your fucking chartered private jet.

But she holds that in; or tells him that only with the sudden flash of want or something darker in her eyes before that moment shifts again. Falls away, becomes substrate, a quiet current of awareness humming beneath her skin. Oh, she likes that too. The way he touches her; perhaps the way he wonders at her, certainly the way he sometimes worships her, so entirely, so thoroughly, with his mouth or with his hands or with his eyes.

The way he moves, near her, around her, in her.

Her gaze drops from his profile, and her eyes close. He's touching her, fingertip to her jaw and she's curving her face into that touch. She wants more, of course she does, she always wants more. Hardly notices the glance that Collins gives to them in the rearview mirror. No, fuck that - does not notice Collins at all. Has forgotten that Mr. Collins, whom she thanked so prettily for her southern potatoes at breakfast, at whose deep and gravid presence she waggled her fingers, hello! is in the front seat, not two feet away, listening to all of this, every last word.

"You tell me more than you know." With a quickened exhale, and she knows exactly then that she's going to tell him, quietly and plainly. And soon. "Hawksley, every time you touch me."

Her eyes open. Sera's smiling to herself. She seems - pretty sober, though she probably smoked a joint while she was packing and may have had a drink or two already. And that smile is private and sweet and savoring.

"I love the way you touch me. I missed you. Couldn't think of anything while Pan was in ICU, but I fucking missed you. Thank you for inviting me along."

Hawksley

For that moment, they are both grinning and shining, sunlight and quicksilver, varying elements of alchemy with all their properties. She looks at him after that laughter is fading to grins and grins are fading to another kiss on her -- face, maybe, somewhere. Or her hand, elegant bastard that he is, turning her hand forward over his and pressing mouth to knuckles. His eyes glint at her, and she looks at him, and

her eyes are dark limned with light, a coming summer thunderstorm, and his head tips slightly in question,

but not really. He knows. So he lowers his face again, far more gravely, and kisses her hand again, lets his lower lip open over her second knuckle, holds her there for a moment while he thinks of her. And all he knows of her, and is learning.

--

Their hands lower again, and for a little while it seems almost casual, as though they share their wealth and status in society and histories and do this every so often, just because: fly to Vegas or New York or Monaco or Paris because they just need to get away for a little while. And the truth of the matter is, some long-gone and mostly-forgotten girl that Serafine is not now and might have never really been does know what that life might be like. Fencing lessons and cotillion. Wealth and privilege. People knowing her family name, the way she may have forgotten that Hawksley recognized her family name and at least a couple of the rumors around that name. She knows, or knew once, what that -- what this -- was like.

But for a second right here, everything is right, and it feels as natural as anything else between them. Their hands are tangled loosely, and he is leaning back for the ride, relaxed and thinking, amorphously, about parting her legs and by god, how that's going to look when she's just laid out on one of those creamy leather couches. Not specifically, mind: he's not fantasizing. Not quite yet. But in the back of his mind, a primitive and carnal part of him is entertaining those flickers of lust, those sense-memories of smell and taste and the smoothness of an inner thigh.

Hawksley licks his lips, and looks at her, hearing a shift in her voice that captures all of his attention, including -- always, especially -- the part of him that seems like it could spot a mouse in the dark from a hundred feet in the air, dive, and feed.

Her tone makes him curious. The way she looks at him makes him curious. The way she says she missed him touching her even when she couldn't think. The mention of Pan -- who he has met once and has no particular opinion of one way or the other beyond that he is Sera's Friend So Maybe He Matters -- makes his forehead furrow, his eyebrows tugging together a bit at the memory. It's a sympathetic look, because Hawksley is more than a little self-involved and incredibly selfish and more self-interested than even Sera quite knows, but he's not deep-down-to-the-core an asshole. He has empathy. He knows how to care about things. More importantly, he knows how to care about people, and that it sucks when people you care about are off doing dumb things like maybe-almost-dying in the goddamn ICU.

"I'm only bringing you because I think it will thoroughly piss my father off when he hears I brought someone covered in tattoos, with her head half shaved, to an event like this." He's teasing. He says it archly, lightly, dismissive of her gratitude, but he's teasing. Ninety-eight-point-five percent teasing. It will, in fact, make his father blow his stack. That will, in fact, delight Hawksley to not end.

One gets the impression that Hawksley's attitude towards his father takes precisely seven letters that begin with F and end with U.

More seriously, a moment later, almost gently: "I wouldn't want anyone else to go with me, Sera. And I didn't want to go alone." That's an admission, at least for Hawksley: he's the sort that wouldn't care about going to any event alone, much less some party where he could be tuxedo-clad, dancing with anyone he liked, drinking himself to the point of Collins dragging him back to his room, really making a wreck of his family name, really pissing off that father of his. But he confesses this now: he didn't want to be there, at this event, alone. Collins doesn't count.

Specifically, he didn't want to go to this event without Sera.

--

His brows are still stitched together, tidy as a seamstress's knot. He tells her more every time he touches her. He tells her things that matter. Sure. These are true. There are things he cannot tell her with a touch.

"I'm divorced," he says.

There's one.

Serafíne

He's teasing. He is ninety-eight point five percent teasing and two point five percent something else and absolutely delighted at the idea of his father blowing his stack when he shows up with a half naked girl whose head is half shaved and who may or may not have ingested some sort of mind-altering substance that will turn all the elegant couples at the demonstrations and presentations and choreographed displays into spinning dervishes and peacocks and toy soldiers and dancing teapots, haloed by crystalline tracers of light while the ceiling opens up and she feels the stars in her veins and she's breathing in light and breathing out shadow.

Or vice-versa. Sometimes that happens the other way around.

But see: he says that, she laughs and flashes him a private little smirk that fades into a grin and then slips into something else, not quite nameable, though there's more than a hint of hushed conspiracy to it.

And then into something else entirely, as the moment changes; she can sense the change before it comes, just before it comes. Her eyes are on his; the afternoon light is behind him, and it feels so strange to hear him admit anything no matter the depth of the grief and loss she has seen in him because he is so bright, so sun-soaked, and so singular and so brash and so soaring. Some part of her wants to look away.

But she doesn't look away.

Of course she doesn't look away.

His tone gentles and her expression slips to something liminal, not withheld but banked a bit and somehow, strangely brighter for it. And she holds his gaze for a long, quiet moment, and then her dark eyes drop to his mouth, and she is in motion, drawing her right leg up beneath her body, shifting on the leather seat and rising on one knee so that she can reach him: to close her teeth over the curve of his jaw, her nose in the scruff of his beard. Then she rises, plants a gentle kiss on the apex of his cheekbone, and finally bends to capture his mouth, and the kiss is slow and thorough and deep. When she breaks away, she flashes him a quiet smile.

"Hawksley," Sera says his name with a precision, indulging each syllable. Those strange, hard consonants, she holds them on her tongue. "It will be my deep and abiding honor to be both at your side, and on your arm, and in your bed." Then the quiet smile spreads into something else, yes, quicksilver, essential and alchemical and conspiratorial, "Pissing your father the fuck off. I brought my squiggle dress, and a fucking crown, and,"

Here she's resuming her seat, reaching again to join hands: her right, his left. Sliding her fingers between his knuckles, feeling the warm strength in his hand.

"I'll flash the peace sign at all and sundry." By way of illustration, she lifts her left hand and does just that: flashes him a sharkscissors peace sign, accompanied by an arched brow and an irreverent, fuck-the-world-for-trying grin. "Especially whenever anyone looks at us sideways, or upside down, or points a fucking camera at us. "

--

The irreverent grin slips from her mouth and her expression turns easily and thoughtlessly into something else. She tips her head aslant, resting her temple and the soft fringe of her shaven skull on his shoulder, her dark eyes loosely focused on the blur of traffic outside the dark-tinted windows. That is how she has settled against him, all quiet, when he tells her that he's divorced.

Oh, she looks up. Quick as a bird though not his sort of bird. Sometimes there is such hunger in her eyes but she never seems like a raptor and in that moment she is more like a starling - bright and fine and sharp and alert and look how she perches on him, resting her chin on his shoulder instead of her cheek, her eyes on his profile, on that knot between his brows.

That surprised her. There's no disguising that surprise or the note of inquiry in her eyes. She cannot imagine him divorced. Divorced means also: married. And she cannot imagine him married.

Or rather: could not, until now. Strange, the way she starts to fit the idea of it over his skin; when he has always had that inside him. She wants to kiss him, quietly and steadily until her lungs are empty and aching. She wants, as she so often does, to let go of singularity, to slide into his skin.

"Did you love her?"

Hawksley

Squiggle dress makes Hawksley's curiosity perk, but he doesn't ask: he'll be surprised later.

Besides, they are talking now of something unrelated to her fashion sense or how absolutely wicked she'll look on his arm or his father or even his mother or her past. He just confesses to her one of those things she can't read in his skin, couldn't possibly just know, and she is surprised.

Why wouldn't she be? Look at him. He does not seem to be The Marrying Kind by any stretch, much less the divorced-before-25 kind. Just Hawksley, trotting the globe and learning to cast spells like Harry Potter and joining a Hogwarts house before he buys a house like Hogwarts and there's Collins, Collins you could see being married and even divorced but Hawksley is just... it doesn't... what.... how.

Did-he-love-her.

There's a twitch there, his eyebrows together, a pained little smile like oh Sera why would you ask that Sera do you want to really hear the answer to that Sera what are you thinking Sera or something along those lines, but he nods.

"Yeah," he says quietly, a paltry shadow of the truth. "I just wasn't very good at it."

Loving, that is.

Serafíne

Perception + Awareness-as-EmpathyRoll: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 7 ) [WP] VALID

Hawksley

[WHAT THE HELL.Ahem. Okay:

Hawksley is wary of talking too much about his ex-wife or feelings thereof to Sera, partly because it just seems awkward to him to discuss something like that in any detail with someone you're currently sort of... in something with. And he's not sure what that something is but he's certainly not thinking of her (Sera) as someone who he just likes fucking who likes fucking him back, tra-la-la. That area is fuzzy; he's aware that he's got some Feelings for Sera that are actually serious, but he hasn't named them or explored them; he's just vaguely aware of them and knows both that he doesn't want to exhume them entirely... nor ignore them and just ramble on for a while about his ex-wife.

But yeah, he loved her. Like deeply. Like intensely. Like soul-ravagingly. And he's not kidding: he knows he was not so great at the Loving Committment thing and he was not a good husband. He doesn't know some other things that might be relevant, but he's aware of his own failings and he does feel remorse for them... though maybe not out-and-out shame. Which, all told, means he deals with it in a pretty healthy manner, at least for the most part. It sucks. It's basically his fault it ended. He can't go back and undo it. He has reached the point where he doesn't wish he could; there's not some heavy lingering cloud of regret and sorrow over his head.

All the same, some of that admiration and intense feeling he had for her still lingers in him. Hawksley probably isn't even completely aware of that, but right now, Sera certainly is. Just as she is aware of the fact that hey-I-was-married-now-I'm-not is only scratching the surface of things Hawksley has in mind that she does not know about him, could not guess at, and that he is considering telling her at some point, whether now or later, because of his feelings for her,

which he does not quite have a handle on, other than that they are intense enough to make him want to remain at least somewhat aloof (or try to). He thinks he's doing a perfectly fine job of remaining mostly aloof as well, too, which just goes to show you how elegantly Hawksley can fool himself.]

Serafíne

What she sees in him - whatever she sees in him - makes her catch her breath, sharp and quiet, and then takes it away again. Fills her up with this wordless ache, this nameless brightness that makes him skew in her vision and then just slide, somehow, into sharper, more clarified focus. Her eyes are so open, so quick and tender on his profile, and there's something shining in her eyes and beating in her chest that feels strange and caged and unknowing and unknown. Which feels, oddly, like a locked door and the key unacknowledged in her hand.

Sera knows all about locked doors, and half-forgotten keys.

All that bright and new and sharp in her and kindles and quicken beneath her skin and she can hardly begin to know everything she sees and perhaps even refuses in some ways to acknowledge it except in her beating heart except with her I'm sorry.

Which he can see maybe in her profile or feel against his shoulder even before she murmurs it, but she does murmur it, with a subtle twist of her mouth that is hard to fathom and old, and older than Sera ever is or could be.

"I'm sorry." And oh, she is sorry. Perhaps for asking a question she couldn't help but ask him; perhaps for that pained knot between his brows. Certainly for the heartbreak, and there must have been heartbreak, when something that so deep, so whole, so entire ends.

Maybe for more than that. Certainly for more than that. Sera doesn't know. She never looks at herself the way she looks at other people. She couldn't stand it. She might break apart.

And there is only so much she can say with those two words so her chin slips from his shoulder and her mouth finds him and she kisses him, of course she kisses him, the solid line of his clavicle, which is wrapped in and framed by solid bands of muscle she cannot begin to name. The kiss is gentle but open-mouthed, warm and lingering and it is a promise and it is an answer to a promise and it is no sort of promise at all.

--

"I've never been married. Or divorced. And I expect I would be terrible at both. Like walls-of-Jericho level bad, you know?" Smiles quick at the thought of either but there's a warning in there too, isn't there? Which doesn't stop her. Which never stops her. Sera cannot help herself.

Her head has slipped down from his shoulder and is resting on his chest now, right ear and the fringe above it over his heart. She is: not looking at him, but across his body, unfocused eyes affixed to the leather trim on the goddamned door. "And I never finished school. Of any sort. Anywhere. And when I said, there are things I don't remember, I didn't mean a bender. Or seventeen. I meant, soap-opera style. I woke up one day and didn't know my name.

"Or where I was.

"Or how I got there. Isn't that absurd?"

Hawksley

That I'm sorry gets a sidelong look from him. He examines her features for a moment, watching her eyes. After that long moment he squeezes her hand. "Don't be," he says, either because he doesn't want her to be sorry for asking or because he does not want her to be sorry that it all happened the way it happened or because knowing that these things happened does not tell her exactly how, or how long it took, or what all was done, or lost, or broken. Maybe he thinks he feels no sorrow for it, and that might even be true.

She kisses him on his clavicle but Hawksley is not having it. He pushes his hand into her hair beneath her ear and behind her jaw, lifting her face to his, kissing her mouth instead, holding her in place for those few spare breathless seconds that she lets him. Gentle but open-mouthed, warmth becoming searing, creating promises that linger like the impressions of dreams you know you had but can't remember. Promises, then, that are not promises at all. No.

His mouth leaves hers and his lips close as his eyes open, his hand still cupped arm on her skin, feeling the brush of soft but prickly hairs where she is shorn against his palm. Slowly even that drifts away, slides away, and you can tell he's always had People around, always had Staff, because neither of them are paying any mind to Collins and Collins seems to not be paying any mind to them at all but Collins is likely more aware of his surroundings than the two of them put together.

What she says at first makes him smile, amusement spreading into a grin. He thinks of mentioning Rahab's red cord but decides against it. He doesn't sense the warning, if there is one, so there's no telling if it would stop him or not. But he's welcoming her on his shoulder and then his chest, closing his eyes to listen to her voice while she listens -- she must be listening -- to the deep and vibrant rhythm of his heart, thudding behind his breastbone just a step out of sync with his breathing.

He was terrible at marriage and no one can tell he's divorced, but he't not sure if that means he's terrible at divorce as well or doing a bang-up job. Neither of them finished school but at least he got through prep and he hasn't quite told her that the Other schooling, not prep or Oxford or what-have-you, well: he didn't precisely, technically, officially finish that either. Not that she would care. Not that it would matter to Sera whether he completed a full seven-year Hermetic apprenticeship any more than Hawksley gives a damn what degrees Serafine

or Chastity

do or do not hold.

Eyes closed and lips closed and heart beating he listens to her say that what she meant earlier was not bender, not drugs or blackouts or just getting reeeaaally drunk, but the full measure of the word amnesia. He opens his eyes slowly, the scent from her hair rising from the back of her head to his nostrils like a cool, wistful incense. He looks at the back of Collins's head, then he looks down at the back of Sera's head.

Isn't that absurd?

His brow furrows, unseen. His hand settles on the back of her head, scritching fingertips over her scalp. "That's not the word I'd choose," he says quietly.

"Apologies, sir," Collins says, his voice mild but level. "Five minutes."

Hawksley doesn't thank him. He doesn't even look up or acknowledge that the consor has spoken. He just strokes Sera's hair, not really thinking about it, just doing it like that's why she put her head on his chest in the first place. "Is that why you took another name?"

Serafíne

She is listening to the rhythmic beating of his heart. Of course she is; beneath the hard shield of his sternum, behind the cage of his ribs, that irrepressible fist of a muscle: Sera listens. She can still feel both the scorching promise of that kiss - which gives her another reason to be breathless - on her mouth and the warm strength of his hand cupping her face.

She smiled for him, Sera, after that kiss. Looked like she was ready to bend her head for another and another and another. Looked like, really, she was ready to pull herself up and straddle him and push his shoulders back and have her way with him, or something, in the fucking backseat. Instead she just drew in a breath, watching him with soft, damp eyes and an open mouth, tongue darting out to probe the curve of her lower lip. To taste him. And then:

dropped her chin to his shoulder, and then her head to his chest and now is then and then is now. It all rings together.

There's a subtle movement of her head when Collins informs him that they are five minutes from the airport: an alert little turn that does not break contact and it may be that this is the first time she has remembered the consor's presence in some time.

--

She curls her head back into the weight of his hand in her hair. It is so very clear that the thoughtless affection soothes her, that she craves it, that she requires it the way green growing things require sunlight, but there is a liminal tension in her shoulders and cervical spine nonetheless, gathering there, narrowingly, held inside mostly because does not or cannot let it out.

Does she remember telling him that name? She must because there is no surprise in her voice, just a rough exhale that sounds like a laugh and is shaped like a laugh and is formed like a laugh, but has no laughter in it.

"Yeah, well - " Sera swallows and does not shiver because she wills herself not to shiver but it requires effort, conscious thought, a choice. " - that other fucking name didn't really suit me,"

Here she lifts her chin to find his eyes again, and gives him this tight little smile.

" - did it? But yeah. That's why," and the tight smiles looses but does not shed its tensile coils. "And this one was the first name I remembered. I mean I still had my passport so I knew. But this one was the first one that felt right."

Hawksley

Hawksley is quiet for a while. He strokes her hair and she listens to his heart, which is ever so strong, ever so vibrant. There is soaring in that beating rhythm, a sense of wings thundering in the air, pushing it down to keep himself aloft. There is also heat, the endless churning of the life-stirring sun. Between them there is that heat and that rising intensity, just as between them there is rapture, just as between them there is a savage carnality. Where they meet, they coexist in harmony that seems so natural they may have always lived like this and never noticed til a month ago, two months ago, when they turned around and faced each other for the first time.

Touching her lightly as he is and feeling her heavy on his chest, Hawksley cannot help but be aware of the tension in her spine and shoulders, a stiffness that feels like resistance, like she's digging in her heels and trying not to be dragged, or clinging with her fingers and trying not to fall, no no no no no no no no no,

shaking her head like a child refusing bed,

or a woman who knows that what is on the other side of that locked door is far too dark to release, so it is better, far better, to forget that she even has the key. We can make ourselves believe anything. That men can fly and women can forget, that the world is nothing but matter and energy and that the world has rules and that those rules can be bent, broken, and changed. That bodies are mere suggestions, that sounds are actually waves, that color is an illusion, that color corresponds to chakra,

a million things you can make yourself believe for long enough that they become true. Have to become true.

He has thoughts about her other name and its suitability, lack thereof, whether suitability matters, what a True Name is composed of, what it means when you hold onto a name even when it doesn't suit, when you tell it to someone like a secret, like a second shadow, but those are thoughts he keeps to himself today; he doesn't need to push those thoughts on Serafine. She lifts her head to give him that smile and his own is a small, thin thing, but his eyes spark slightly to offer it back to her.

This was the first name that felt right.

His finger crooks under her chin, draws her up another half-inch so he can kiss her again, softly this time, stirred by her mere presence and the feel of her body and the smell of her hair and the firm-soft yield of her mouth to his own. It's intoxicating. She's intoxicating, an intoxicant, a fucking psychoactive, a human hallucinogen.

Drawing back, he watches her eyes, his chest moving evenly with his breath. "Have you gotten anything back from it? Memories, I mean. Not things like a passport telling you who you were,"

not are,

"or people telling you things about yourself. Memories that came from within you. Did you get anything back?"

Serafíne

Sera catches her lower lip between her teeth as he crooks his finger beneath her chin. It is not a shy expression and not a sly expression it is merely quietly anticipatory. Her eyes drop from his own to his mouth, and she inhales in the split-second before his mouth finds her own, a crisp breath drawn through her nose. In those moments, the tightly drawn tension in her shoulders and her spine is subverted, transmuted and transformed into something else. The fine cage of a deliberate restraint.

She lifts herself into his mouth, turning into him, reaching across him to brace herself against his body for leverage. The curve of her knuckles against his lower abdomen, beneath the hem of his t-shirt, just above the beltline where his obliques rise in that transverse cut, solid beneath her hand. Rising and falling with every breath he takes. She has no idea, Sera, the work that that body requires. Has no idea the name of the goddamned muscle beneath her knuckles. Takes it all for granted: the way his body moves against her own, the way he feels and the way she feels him.

Collins said five minutes and beyond the windows of the SUV the airfield is coming into view. Sera doesn't notice. She's kissing him and her grip on him shifts; her hand opens, spreads, her fingers curl across his flank and her thumb moves in a meditative sweep over his skin and even a kiss that soft has her heart beating hungry again in her chest. The he draws back and she inhales again, inhales, then exhales all at once.

Finds his eyes on her own and looks back at him with such a direct, raw immediacy. "Yeah - " then glances down, her dark eyes dropping down to his mouth once more, and then down the line of his body, taking in the welcome, steady rhythm of his chest, the perfect cut of his goddamned tailored V-neck. The movement of her thumb shadowed against the cotton.

" - I remember most of my childhood. The way you remember childhood. You know, perspective all skewed. Sometimes it's like watching a stranger's television through a closed window in the dark. The shadow of the curtains against the scene, the intimation of it without the immediacy, the emotional connection?

"Sometimes it comes back," her grip on his stomach tightens enough to test the tensile strength of those loadbearing flanking his core. And her mouth closes, and she breathes in sharply, right? all-at-once through the nose. "with such

" - blistering -

"immediacy that I feel like my skin's burning, I'm on fire. I've never been so close -

"Sometimes it seeps into my spine and I wake up and I don't just know something, I feel it again. Sometimes I don't know the past from the future because they both come to me in dreams. Sometimes - sometimes it is as real and immediate as your hand on my breast, my mouth on Dee's skin. That moment, you know? Just some fucking morning, sunlight through the slats in those fucking blinds or - what the fuck, the way my mother smelled when she came into my bedroom to kiss me goodnight before they left for a party."

Sera is smiling through all of this; looking down and aware too of his eyes on her eyes. The shadow of her lashes dark against the curve of her cheek. Her eyes are lined in black, shadowed in fucking black too and there's this twisting, distant charm to the expressive curl of her brows and she is not just thinking of herself but also: of him, and how much of a stranger he is; and his mother; and his father; and his ex-wife, which feels like such a strange appendage for a Hawksley to have and also why, sometimes, she feels as if there's never been a time when she did not know him.

Then she looks up again, the opposite trajectory - his chest, his mouth, his avian eyes. Gives him this quick, bracing little smile. "But there are some things that aren't really worth remembering. And some things I just

"can't

"turn around and face. Not yet."

Maybe not ever. How the fuck does she know?

Hawksley

They are always touching. Always leaning up against each other even when she was fasting, holding hands, embracing,

often kissing. Hawksley sighs faintly when their mouths part and her hand is still just under his shirt, on his body, and he does not want her to move it except she does move it. Opens it, wraps her palm and fingers around him, and they

are kissing again then, a mere breath in between, and it's enough this time to make him forget where they are or where they are going. Even slow. Even soft. Maybe especially slow and soft, the way that some of the most profound highs and states of mad exaltation happen when the drug does not hit you like a truck but comes in sideways, slipping behind your mind to cover your eyes with its hands, which seem so delicate,

are so heavy.

They breathe in the same pattern after that. In, in deep, and then a rush outward. For Hawksley it's centering, though not grounding. He can and does ground himself sometimes, but not regularly. And not the same way that most people mean it. His heart is beating faster under her fingertips. Of course it is. She makes his heart pound.

the way you remember childhood makes the corner of his mouth quirk. He knows what she means, even before she expounds on it. But sometimes it comes back different, there and entire and perhaps a little terrifying. He can imagine, after all that time not knowing, that even the thought of sunlight through slats or her mother's hands might be unsettling.

can't.

His head tips to the side, one of those birdlike gestures that seems more predatory than curious. But it is curiosity that spurs it to existence. "I'm going to say something," he says after a moment, "and it's going to sound like I'm disagreeing with you or telling you that you're wrong, but we've already had a rather lengthy discussion about wanting something and willing it and something feeling normal or natural or just being something you challenge yourself to do to see if you can, et cetera."

Hawksley takes a breath: "And I am just saying this thing, all right? But... I think that you don't know if something is worth remembering if you don't remember it. And: if you think you can't face some things, you're selling yourself short and... maybe being a bit dishonest about the fact that you just really don't want to."

His hand lifts, moves to her hair, tucks it back as they're moving into a drive, into a lot, towards a jet waiting and ready for them, but his eyes stay on hers.

"Which is okay. But I don't think there's much that you can't do, Sera," and his voice is very quiet, even as the world outside grows noisier. The car is too well insulated to let much in, though. "I don't think there is much out there that could really break you."

Serafíne

"You're allowed to disagree with me," Sera returns, insinuates really, and quietly, with a quick twist of her mouth that fades to something rather more contemplative that sits strangely on her mouth. Her thumb has stopped its slow sweep, long to squeeze his side, to feel the solid resistance of muscle beneath her hand. Then the motion resumes, though slower this time, more noodling, the motion less predictable, like a leaf caught in an errant swirl of wind.

This hint of nostalgia to her expression that does not ever dissolve into the amoral looseness of sentimentality. There is a brightness to her eyes as he continues - a brightness and a dampness that she could perhaps swallow back into the skin of her body if she looked away from him, but she does not look away.

Just listens like that, looking up at him, her expression changing by minute, subtle degrees. A quickening of her breath and pulse, a wry twist to her mouth when he tells her that she's maybe being a bit dishonest when she substitutes can't for won't. The wry twist stills into a compressed, internal not-quite-smirk. And she inhales then, quick and sharp and steadying, and through it all her shining eyes

never

leave his.

Not until he reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear; then she curves her head into his touch, drops her gaze from him to the airfield visible through the tinted windows. So she's looking away from him when he tells her that he doesn't think there's much that she can't do and her cheek curves with a quickened smile, which is both wide, enduring, unending somehow, and compressed all around its center. Like she's trying to containt something she cannot quite name, shining all through her.

This is when one or two incipient tears fall from her dark, dark-rimmed eyes to her cheeks. She reaches up to dash them away because she's not crying she's just full of things.

"You might be right." Quiet, and something about the way she says them suggests that this has been a conversation she has been not-quite-having with herself for at least a little while now.

Then, with a lift of her chin at the airfield through the windows, " - and I think we're here."

Hawksley

"-- I know I'm allowed, I'm just saying it's not my brain --" he interjects, in the middle of his own speech, half-smiling at her argument-not-quite before he continues, more seriously.

The car has pulled to a stop somewhere in there. Collins is exiting the vehicle as Sera is trying not to weep or letting herself weep but wiping the tears anyway, and the door opens and shuts again, letting in a burst of noise for a moment. The tall, thin man in dark clothes crosses the field to talk to someone wearing ear protection and a very bright vest, but neither of the awakened mages inside the vehicle are looking. Not right then.

"Of course I'm right," he also interjects, in part because on some level he believes it and in part because that's just what Hermetics do and he knows this and a weird uncanny knot in his chest sometimes wants to act like he's anything like them when he knows he doesn't always fit the bill.

Hawksley lowers his head and rolls his brow against hers for a moment, smiling. "Was it the sound of jet engines that tipped you off?" he teases, gently, because he cannot imagine being anything but gentle with her right now. Even the way he kisses her temple, fierce and firm, is an odd form of gentleness. He thinks she'll understand. He knows she will.

Collins is at the back with a pair of men who have a cart and is watching them as they open the back of the SUV and start grabbing garment bags, makeup cases, what-have-you. Hawksley doesn't move, but waits for Collins to come to the back door, rapping on the tinted window with a knuckle, wrist turned inward. He opens it a moment later.

"They say you can board now, sir," and he turns his eyes to Sera, gives her a nod as well, includes her in the address: "miss."

He steps out of the way as Hawksley leaves the SUV. But it's Hawksley this time who turns when his feet are on the pavement and offers his hand to Sera as she comes down out of the car. It's not windy in Denver today, but it's windy on the airfield by default. It pulls her hair back and up a bit; he looks at her and thinks of gravity turning itself off by virtue of her mere presence, as though in deference. He smiles a little to himself as the SUV is closed off, they keys handed to a sharp little valet who will take it to a private garage. Collins walks a respectful distance behind Hawksley and Sera, of course, just as he will sit in the front seats of the jet near the cockpit while they occupy the cabin in the back with its couches and wetbar.

Hawksley took her hand as she left the car, of course. Hawksley held onto that hand when they began walking, and when they climb up the stairs to the jet, and while they walk through the little aisle between the sumptuous cream-colored leather seats to the cabin.

Of course he did. Why would he let go?