Serafíne: Vegas

Serafíne

There's this moment where he's turning her over, laying her out on the creamy leather of that couch where she is in not-quite-free-fall and he is too-far-away but his arms are around her ribs and his hands are on her spine, between or on her shoulder blades, splayed open, warm and rough. Where her head is snapped back, her neck elongated, and she can hear and feel him shifting upward from his sprawl, climbing onto the couch to follow her down to it but they are still in motion. The curved ceiling of the jet's interior, then, brilliant with too-bright light cutting in through the oval windows. The warm vibration of the engines, transliterated through the solid frame, a distinct, subdural hum.

Sera may have smoked a joint with Dan in the garden before leaving but that was long ago and a few flutes of champagne are enough to spike her all sweet and lively, but not enough to unbend her mind. Which is to say: she is, for a Sera, quite nearly sober. Drunk only, maybe, on him. But she can still slow time down to a crawl. Savor each precise, delicious second before it is obliterated by the next. And the next and the next.

She is on her back then, and the creamy leather of the couch is like butter beneath her skin where it touches, and he's both holding her upward and crawling over her, nearly covering her, a bright and welcome shadow -

soaring.

He never neglects her: his mouth is on her right breast, the dark scrawl of her serpentine tattoo framing the soft mound, cut through but the cut of her ribs beneath her skin as she arches her body into his mouth. Which is its own sort of demand. One of her hands is braced on the leather, another point of leverage for her body as she spreads her thighs and arches and welcomes him, whatever part of him she can welcome and perhaps now no more than the hard cut of his tapering waist between them. The other though, is free to slip through and ruffle his hair, push her thumb back and forth through the short strands with the strangest welling of tenderness somewhere soft in her throat.

Sera makes another noise as he comes up for air. Lifts her chin to look down at him as he crawls up over her, head lilting back to follow his progress, her right hand curving from the crown of his skull to cradle the back, fierce and firm and gentle, holding him to her as his mouth finds hers, then slides away to her jaw, her ear, her neck. Her mouth is against him too: the scrape of her teeth through the rough bristle of his beard, the melting warmth of her breath over his ear.

Silly, "I have so many condoms Hawksley - " she returns, "boxes and fucking boxes." laughter in her voice as she presses her nose into his ear, nuzzling, seeking, bright.

Then his teeth, firm in neck, and his voice, darker and rougher against her skin. Her breath deserts her all in a rush and the laughter leaves her, but not the light it brought. Her grip on his skull tightens, blunt nails little pin-prick points rough in his hair. God they're flying, aren't they?

From her, a moment's animate suspension. Then her mouth moves against his ear again,

" - and I don't fucking care." Her voice nearly gutteral but see it is a key and it is fitted to a lock and it opens this sighing little door inside her, reckless thing. Because it is also the truth, he can feel that in every inch of her body pressed against him. In the warm scrawl of her mouth against his ear. Even in the flutter of her eyelashes in his periphery. She does not fucking care."I want you." Her mouth finds his temple, then. "I want you inside me. Fuck, Hawksley. I want you to pour that goddamned champagne over my breasts and lick it off. I want your mouth everywhere. I want you to eat me out, and then fuck me while I'm still coming. I want you in my mouth. I want your cock so deep inside me that I don't know where you end and I begin.

"I want to dissolve in you.

"I don't care. I don't care. I don't care."

Hawksley

He wasn't going to do this. He was going to actually talk to her about that night in his car and his house and discuss things like actually getting her to tell him what kind of birth control she's on and how she protects herself with multiple partners and he was going to tell her, too, the measures he takes and maybe have a chat about why he felt comfortable making an exception with her, because this is how adults behave, not like rutting animals. The truth is that as young as he is and as sometimes stupid as he is, Hawksley is in fact quite keen-minded. He reads a great deal. He thinks things through. He has more self control than he lets show.

Boxes and boxes, she laughs, nuzzling him while they are, quite simply put, all over each other on that couch. He's reaching down, finishing what she started at his belt and the fastenings to his jeans beneath it. The buckle taps against her inner thigh. His mouth is leaving her breast, leaving it wet and cooled almost instantly by the air rushing in to fill the void where his mouth was. Her hands are in his hair when he bites her neck. They are still there when he looks at her, the color darkened somehow, his chest and shoulders moving with each breath.

Sera tells him what she wants. And Hawksley

groans, descending to her again, sealing the last words on her mouth, swallowing the sounds she's making. If he intends to pour anything over her and lick it off, he doesn't do that now. As for everything else -- well. It will have to wait. He can't, anymore.

There's the pull and rustle of fabric being moved out of the goddamn way, the clink of his belt buckle against itself as he is pushing down his jeans, the boxer-briefs beneath them, every last thing that stands between him and her. All his intentions are burned away: to talk, to be sensible, to be sane, to be naked, to lay her out and lick her, all because he can't wait any longer. And doesn't, now, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her up, pulling her back, pulling her over him.

"Ride me,"

is the best he can do, this man who sometimes comes into her garden reciting poetry,

"I want you to fucking ride me."

Serafíne

And Sera, she had no such plans. No intentions to have an adult conversation, clothed and sober, to tell him what sort of birth control she uses, and how she protects herself - and, by extension now, him - with other partners. Had not dreamed of it, except really in passing maybe, while drifting off to sleep in that palatial bed of his in that elegant old pile of a house being furnished and renovated to suit him-and-his-station. And it isn't that she's shy; she told a priest - perhaps unbidden - what sort of birth control she prefers. It's just that she did not think of it. Or did not want to think of it: not what she does with others, but what precisely she is doing with him.

And, perhaps, why.

But here, here and now, her laughter dissolves into a tattoo of words and those words dissolve into his mouth as he kisses her. Absorbs the last of her declarations that she does not fucking care (because she does not

fucking

care) with his breath, in his mouth, on his tongue.

Ride me.

He tells her that and she does not really remember him lifting her does not remember much between the belt buckle against her inner thigh the movement of his hand as he undid the fastenings of his jeans and somehow he's gotten all those goddamned clothes off, right? and maybe she thinks he broke the laws of physics or maybe there aren't any laws of physics except the ones he dictates or maybe it hardly matters because he's naked and he's beneath her. Somewhere in there she shimmied her way out of the little black circle skirt and it wasn't hard it's a little black circle skirt and mostly unzipped and she's arching her body up into him anyway so it is past her hips where he so helpfully jammed the thing and sliding down her thighs so she slips and then kicks it off as he lifts her over him and she's down to her stockings and her garters and her little black garter belt and these are left on ever so intentionally.

Sera pants out a breath as he repeats himself, as he tells her exactly what he wants and reaches down between them to grasp him, to stroke him once and then twice and then three times and then guide him into her. There's a moment when she fucks him shallowly, an inch or two, no more, her head tipped back, her eyes open and fixed on his. Then she just bears down on him, takes him all at once. Holds him so firmly, so solidly, so deeply inside her that a radiant shiver just zips up her spine and it feels so much like being opened up, that she wonders how she can bear it and live.

And then she starts to move. Hips curving with every stroke, holding him so tight every time she grinds down onto him. Making these noises, see, practically whimpering with each and every stroke.

Fucking him, just fucking riding him, quite as he asked.

Hawksley

This is what he wanted. What he's been wanting since -- since he met her, sure, but more specifically -- that night in her garden. Cruel twist of irony to have her go on a goddamn fast shortly after that, but he was not exactly clawing his face during that. After all, he wasn't on a fast. And after their talk in his car at the chantry he understood how she was using her desire, how the self-denial was really working in terms of her magic,

so he stirred it. So he touched her, and stayed close to her, and blew soft breaths over her like fanning embers. Not to dissuade her -- far be it from him. To make it that much more powerful. To give her that much more to work with, when she twined her will around Jim's and affected their minor miracles. Because that's what matters to Hawksley, in the end. It's not sex or pleasure or gratification or friendship or romance or joy or Being A Good Person.

In the end, it all comes back to the will. To the power.

Still: he wants this. With his jeans pushed down his thighs and her skirt rucked up over his wrists, holding her steady -- steadily enough, given the circumstances -- as she touches him. His head falls back on the couch, a heavy and hard breath forced from his lungs. Hawksley's hands tense on her hips, fingertips pressing into her skin, and he begins to swear venomously as she takes him, shallowly, jesusfuckingchrist, venomously and incoherently, strings of filth dredged up from the primordial muck of his mind.

And once more, one great bursting FUCK when she takes him completely, and then he's folding himself up to her, wrapping his arms around her, fucking holding her there on him like he thinks she's going to tease him again, which he has every reason to believe.

Hawksley wants to beg her not to move. He mutters her name into her breast, a groan tattering the end of it, but he was going to say the whole thing, because it's Seraf-- before he can't find syllables any longer, anything but an open-throated moan when she starts rolling those hips, clenching on him, -- quite frankly -- blowing his goddamn mind. For a few strokes he can't do anything but survive it, his brow on her sternum and his mouth open over her solar plexus, moaning freely every time she slides down on him again, a half-step out of sync from those intoxicating little whimpers.

But then, when he regains some ability to control himself, when he remembers his name, he starts to flex himself into her. One arm locks around her waist, the other hand going to her left breast, his mouth descending on her right. It muffles his groans a bit as he suckles her, matching her pace, her steady and merciless rhythm, with his own.

Serafíne

Sera's eyes are closed and her breath withheld during those first few shallow strokes, her brows drawn together, her body tense from the effort required to hold herself back - not back, but fixed somehow, in place, together until she can fall apart in and on and around him. It is not the torrent of curses spewing from the oozing muck at the base of his brainstem that has her eyes flashing open, pupils first dilated, then rapidly contracting to near pinpricks against the glare of the windows banked behind him. It is the movement of his body as she takes him completely and he folds himself into her.

Which makes her oh-so-happy she would laugh if she could but she can't laugh so she just reaches for him and folds herself over him and wraps her arms around his shoulders, sometimes pressing firmly down as she uses him for leverage but mostly tipping her head closer to the crown of his head so that they are close. Close and closer.

From a distance, in silhouette, she would look like a woman at prayer. In some ways, she is.

The afternoon sun flaring over bright high altitude clouds - dazzling - limns him in such brilliance she can hardly breath. Sometimes she doesn't breathe, forgets to breathe, forgets that her lungs were meant to hold anything as mundane as oxygen. Every time she forgets her breathing becomes that much more ragged, that much more arrhythmic. And there's not much of him that she can reach, bent to her breasts as he is, so her arm simply contract around his neck and her hands twist and twine in his hand, cupping and cradling his head against her breast as she works herself to orgasm on him.

As each stroke sets off new and delicious little almost-starbursts jangling and startling and bright along her neural pathways, making her curl forehead and rest her fucking brow on the crown of his head because she doesn't know how much of this is left in her.

And it creeps up on her even though she can feel it building-building-building inside her but still: it takes her unexpectedly and entirely and at first there is a sort of stunned silence inside her body, this outward drag, and then absolutely everything comes rushing back into her, like reverse osmosis, filling her up and tearing her to pieces and she can feel his heart beating and his lungs expanding and his nerves sparking along their routes like constellations shifting in the sky and it all feels so sheering bright and she's crying out and crying and still somehow moving on and over and with him for two-three-four writhing strokes and then she can't anymore, she can't

move

anymore. She comes down on him and she's coming and it is opening her up, and tearing the fibrous muscle of her heart apart.

All she can do then is hold on to him.

Hawksley

She's never done this before. Not that she can remember, at least; as she said, one day she woke up and her own name wasn't there, much less any memory of her life. But Hawksley remembers his own life. All his studies and first kisses and first fumbling touches, and in those memories there are scents of the soccer pitch and the boathouse, the library, the sound of lapping water or someone coughing in another aisle, a page turning, someone gasping. The way a floor feels vibrating under his footsteps, how heavy he seemed compared to whomever he danced with. He remembers everything, even dissertations on Enochian vowel forms and he doesn't truck with Enochian to begin with, and yes, Sera, he has done this before. Here's what matters, though: it was not with her.

The flight from Denver to Vegas is actually not that long. Briefer still without waiting at the airport for two hours, then an interminable time for boarding, checks, side stops, layovers. They could spend that entire time fucking. Going down what she said earlier like a checklist, making each other utterly filthy, wearing each other into a stupor. They might not get to that. And that would be all right.

Hawksley can't stand what she's doing to him right now. He might not survive it if she kept going. And what she's doing to him: using him, using that cock of his to make herself come, which drives him out of his mind with wanting. Somewhere amidst his groans are encouragements, half-uttered words telling her to keep going, telling her that's it, swearing, telling her yes, oh -- fuck yes. At one point he leans back, his arm loosening around her, his lips red from sucking at her breast, pushing her skirt up, lifting it up so he can see where she takes him,

which is almost too much. His eyes are sharp and keen, his breathing tight and jagged, and instead of falling apart he holds that swath of fabric up and thrusts faster into her, harder then, as that taut quiet falls between them, punctuated only by the sound of harshly taken and released breaths.

That's it, he mutters again, as her belly tightens up, as her spine elongates, as that silence is shattered by the noises she's making, the outcries, the whimpering little gasps, as she's clenching around him, which makes him grab the cushion of the leather beneath him, teeth bared, tipping his head back to bear it until

she is done with him, worked herself out on him, until she has wound her hips to elicit the last shudders of pleasure, wrung out the last twists of her orgasm. Until, well and truly, she has stopped writhing on him and he can start breathing again, a little, holding her to him and whispering, gasping, muttering,

as his hips give one solid, slow flex into her,

Okay?

Some sign, then. A yes or a laugh or a shiver or an answer, something, that lets him know okay. He exhales raggedly, shoulders rounding down for a moment, and within a few more of those strokes he is at pace again, panting against her shoulder, holding her hips to keep her against him, moaning when some way he moves into her, some way her body reacts to his, makes his viscera light up. It does not take very long at all, after that, before he is hitting that elusive but inevitable peak, grinding into her, holding himself still, right there, living in that moment as long as he can,

which is never long enough.

Afterwards, it is all he can do to regain his breathing. Hawksley has collapsed in a sprawl on the leather, his head back and his arms spread like wings over the rear of the couch, a faint sheen of sweat on his chest and arms, hairline and flank. The cool, dry interior of the jet is wicking that moisture and heat off of them both rapidly, lifting it from their skins. He feels as though his mind is a solar system in itself, all the pieces of his consciousness spinning in elegant orbit around a molten, searing center. For a while, at least, he is content to let himself be so cosmic, so blasted asunder, but

slowly, things coalesce again. His eyes open again, find her carefully lit by the sun outside, the clouds, the interior lights of the cabin. His breathing is still rapid but is steadying out, his chest still rising and falling with the pattern of his need for air. His throat moves as he swallows, and he realizes he is perhaps slightly drunk, which is perhaps why it takes him such a long time to say:

"God. We are idiots, aren't we?"

Serafíne

In truth, Sera cannot remember the last time she flew. The last time she tangled with customs and security and immigration and squawling children and beligerant drunks and maybe she was the drunk. It hardly matters: there are holes in her memories of childhood, patchy inconsistencies, infarcts and lacunae that grow wider and more surreal as she grows older and reality starts to break; and then there are the absolute black holes the ones that leave her breathless and undone and shaking when something escapes their essential gravity. But silly I've never done this before - it felt right. Felt true. Felt real as anything ever does.

And for Sera, that feeling is really all she ever has.

Hawksley receives a half-dozen answers to the wordless question embedded in that slow, firm thrust of his hips into hers as she is coming down from her orgasm. A half-dozen answers and they are all: yes, okay, okay. or even, yes, more. The first is a ziplining sort of inhale, which feels like coming-to-consciousness and maybe she is. Everything feels new after: bright and clean like the world is remaking itself from the stuff-of-creation just for her. In her honor, and by her rule, and at her will. And fuck, maybe it is.

He's still there and everything's so lovely that she shivers and gasps out an encouraging little laugh and responds to his slow-building thrusts with an elegant forward roll of her hips, and his hands are on her hips again, holding her firmly down on him, and Sera, she's reaching for him,

and can hardly let him go.

He sinks against her, finds purchase in and against her body as he thrusts, panting against her shoulder. In those moments, Sera just gathers him against her. Reaches for him when he comes to her and wraps her arms around him, drops her head her head to his, her brow-bone rolling against the crown of his skull with every movement of their joined bodies. Left hand cradling his neck and basilar skull, the fingers splayed wide and protective through his hair, her right hand lower on his spine, where she can feel every contraction of the great broad muscles flanking his back as he fucks her.

And she's kissing him. Raining kisses on his temple, his ear, his cheek, his jaw, his hair, whatever part of him she finds beneath her mouth, breathing hard into his ear and talking back to him with more than those nameless and wordless little whimpers. Telling him to come for her come in her come with her -

I want to feel you come

- each muttered phrase punctuated by a sharp little gasp at the apex of each of his thrusts.

She is still holding him like that when his peak inevitably comes. If anything, her grasp on him tightens and she grinds back down onto him, just holding him there and holding him there and holding him there as long and as firmly and as wholly as she can. Which is indeed:

never

long enough.

He collapses backwards in what seems like his native rich-boy sprawl against the leather, breathing hard. Sera lets him go, her arms falling away from him, unraveling to their furthest point until just her fingers are laced behind his neck and then not even that. Her head lolls back and she allows the external world to return to her. The curving roof of the jet is closer than you'd think and the pattern of light and shadow on the interior so starkly bright that she has to close her eyes against the afterburn of sunlight across her vision.

Those fucking porthole windows should be bigger, she thinks, as she opens her eyes and her gaze drops to him, so that she could see him arms open like that, framed against the sky and only the sky.

She does not want to move, Sera. Stays there on him, straddling his lap in the drifting aftermath until dry, chilly air in the cabin makes her shiver not from want or need or desire or pleasure but because she's fucking cold so she crawls off him and onto the couch and tucks herself against him, beneath one of his outflung arms, her head against his chest, legs tucked up beneath her.

Still there when he opens his eyes again and finds her tucked neatly against him. Her eyes are open though he can't see that, not for the moment. Maybe he can feel it in some subtle shift of her orbital muscles as she studies the muscled curve of his torso. Her breathing is steady, not quite matched to his own.

When he finally speaks, it pulls her half-upright: this lift of her head, the quiet flicker of her dark eyes rising to meet his, quite open and remarkably stark for a Sera.

Sober, even.

"We are," she affirms quietly, and she wants to kiss him, wants to sooth herself by finding his skin with her mouth, wants to find a way to fold herself back into him until, she does not have to and indeed perhaps cannot think, anymore. But she doesn't. She just breathes out a long, quiet breath.

Because Sera is a remarkably reckless creature,

but only with herself.

"I'm not on the pill, never could keep track of it, really - " Sera continues, after a long, winding coil of silence. Her voice is quiet. "I get those fucking shots instead?" A quick, spare little twisting smile. "And I did bring condoms. Boxes and boxes. Or maybe just one.

"I mean I always - "

A sharp breath out. Can't really say that now, can she?

Hawksley

Hawksley is panting for a while

And Hawksley's breath is slowing after a time, coming easier. And then she moves off of him and he gives a hard exhale, sudden and effortful, looking at her, following her as she leaves him. He's a bit of a mess, and his jeans are shoved down just past his knees and his shoes are still on, but he makes no move to cover himself or undress himself further.

He just looks at her, and one of those arms on the back of the couch folds around her, lazily and thoughtlessly. He closes his eyes again as she agrees with him, his hand moving idly on her arm.

Somewhere in there, she tells him that she's not on the pill and there's a miniscule flicker of tension in him in that half-second before she tells him that she gets those shots, that she did bring at least one box of condoms, and he eases. He opens his eyes and rolls his head on the back of the couch, half-smiles into her eyes.

Always --

But no. He shakes his head a little, and says the first thing that comes to mind:

"My last test was six months ago and I'm healthy. And I 'always' too." Meaning, of course, just what she did: always except for, y'know, these three or four or half-dozen times they've gone at each other like starved creatures. His thumb strokes her bicep.

"We will next time," Hawksley says, with certainty it is hard not to trust in by virtue of the sound. "With your boxes and boxes or maybe just one."

Serafíne

It is the middle of the afternoon and they are both a fucking mess, and both half-dressed and the cabin is fucking littered with Sera's clothes and his goddamned shoes are still on his fucking feet. Her skirt is tucked beneath her ass and there are marks of his mouth and his teeth in her skin; a little half-moon bite of her own just visible on the apex of his deltoid as he shifts his arm to encircle her. Her hand settles on his stomach, tracing the solid muscles of his core with a sort of attendant thoughtlessness, a match for the caress of his thumb over her biceps. Except also: Jesus Christ Sera did not realize that people had this many muscles in their bodies. Her cheek curved with a brief and mostly swallowed breath of laughter when he takes her boxes and boxes and turns it into: maybe just the one.Like magic.Such solidity in his voice: that resonant certainty, complete enough that it has her looking back up at him, her eyes dark and unshadowed still. Quick is the term, as in cut to the: so damned alive, a kindled flame. Always that spark in her, even in the aftermath - especially perhaps in the aftermath, when her limbs feel liquid, molten, delicious, unbound. And fuck it they're flying. She could shift onto her knees and lean against him and arch her spine and look out those goddamned windows and see the Rockey mountains miniaturized beneath them. The glint of alpine lakes, the drifting clouds. The hard, black snakes of asphalt tucked between the peaks.Her hand goes still on his stomach and her eyes drop to the gleam of her short nails, which are dark, against his always-golden skin. (They are painted a deep, shiny bluey purple called Vant to Bite my Neck, though both the thumb and index finger are chipped. Maybe she'll get a manicure at the hotel. Maybe she'll ask him to paint her toes. Maybe they'll just dance.)"That's exactly what we should do."Sera agrees, blond head nodding, sweatdamp curls sliding around her shoulders. She does agree, too. Look at the little quirk of a half-smile that darts across her face as she watches her hand ride the subtle flex and release of his abs. Each fucking breath he takes. He's a little bit drunk. She is maybe-too and also was also a little bit high. But all things considered she is: probably more sober than he in just this moment."And we will. It's just that, I don't want to."

Serafíne

Like magic.

Such solidity in his voice: that resonant certainty, complete enough that it has her looking back up at him, her eyes dark and unshadowed still. Quick is the term, as in cut to the: so damned alive, a kindled flame. Always that spark in her, even in the aftermath - especially perhaps in the aftermath, when her limbs feel liquid, molten, delicious, unbound. And fuck it they're flying. She could shift onto her knees and lean against him and arch her spine and look out those goddamned windows and see the Rockey mountains miniaturized beneath them. The glint of alpine lakes, the drifting clouds. The hard, black snakes of asphalt tucked between the peaks.Her hand goes still on his stomach and her eyes drop to the gleam of her short nails, which are dark, against his always-golden skin. (They are painted a deep, shiny bluey purple called Vant to Bite my Neck, though both the thumb and index finger are chipped. Maybe she'll get a manicure at the hotel. Maybe she'll ask him to paint her toes. Maybe they'll just dance.)

"That's exactly what we should do."

Sera agrees, blond head nodding, sweatdamp curls sliding around her shoulders. She does agree, too. Look at the little quirk of a half-smile that darts across her face as she watches her hand ride the subtle flex and release of his abs. Each fucking breath he takes. He's a little bit drunk. She is maybe-too and also was also a little bit high. But all things considered she is: probably more sober than he in just this moment.

"And we will. It's just that, I don't want to."

Hawksley

She's seen the way he eats... at home, at least, or when traveling, when Collins is in control. All those lean proteins, all those raw or only-slightly-cooked fruits and vegetables, all those whole grains. And then she's seen him drink -- copiously, at times, such as three quick glasses of champagne right down his throat. And eat cake or ice cream. Never all that much, though. He even threw away that amazing Stranahan's whiskey brickle right in front of her like an utter madman. All of that is to say: yes, people have this many muscles, and Hawksley is a toned enough specimen to be suitable for use in an anatomy class. He is not like this by accident. He also is not like this without knowing exactly the effect it has on quite a few people.

So he smirks a bit, sidelong, as Sera's hand is stroking over his stomach, a low heat in his eyes that is part amusement and part -- not arousal, not so soon, but -- lingering, lazy satiation.

Then a quirk. A tip of his head, a look that is slow only because (as has been noted) he's kind of drunk.

"Why's that?"

Serafíne

"I don't - " know she is on the verge of saying; which is a sort-of lie and sort-of true in the way all such things are. But listen, she arrests the disavowal of knowledge precisely, though not sharply, and flashes him a rather wry look. Not sidelong the way his smirk is sidelong, but aslant see. The way ordinary humans have to look at the sun. From a glancing angle cut towards its brilliant edge and never any closer.

She would like to have that champagne bottle in her hand right now; the heavy-bottomed weight of the glass, cool on her bare knee, her twined fingers wrapped around the slender neck. The tattered foil someone ripped through to unwind the cage about the cork. If there is any way to make this flight any more fucking decadent than it already is, it would be this: drinking Veuve-Cliquot straight from the bottle.

But the champagne is across the cabin and Sera does not want to move. Not right now. For now she is lost (yes, Sera, people have this many muscles in their bodies) in the texture of his skin. Give her a minute or five -

"It's fucking ridiculous." Sera avers, not precisely looking at him, apparently fascinated by the way a subtle movement of her head against his shoulder changes the cut of shadow and sunlight over his torso. "I mean, if I guy says this to me, like seriously, I shut him the fuck down and make Dan change his name to Unknown Asshole in my goddamned phone."

There is a brief, forward curl of her spare shoulders, then, which only makes the cut of her clavicles and the stark, bladed movement of her scapulae all the more prominent.

"So if you feel the need to do that, let me know. I'll give Collins Dan's number and Dan can walk him through," the remarkably not-at-all-difficult process of changing someone's number in your phone. Somewhere in the middle of that Sera glances back up at him. Just a subtle turn of her head. Her eyes are in shadow that leeches away their color and leaves them mostly-dark. Mostly dark and lined and rimmed in smeared dark shadow and liner, but her pupils are round, reactive, contracting against the brilliance of the light behind his head.

"It just feels right, the way it happened. Like there's not supposed to be anything between us, like -

"I just wanna feel you, you know? When you're inside me. When you're close, and when you're not." Sera huffs out a quiet breath and her eyes slip from his. There's a reflective curve to her cheek, a quiet tension in the long line of her neck, and a tinge of something to her voice. "I know enough magic to know that you're okay. I mean, sometimes I can feel your heart beating from across the fucking room, when I'm not even trying.

"And I just wanna feel you."

It's just that simple and just that foolish and briefly,

incandescently,

just that clear.

"But fuck," the curve of her cheek sharpens, framed by the close-cut, dark fringe of her hair. She is: still looking away from him and smiling, bemused and a little bit dreamy. "I want you to wear a tuxedo this weekend, too. And up behind me while I am doing some girly-ass thing at the vanity and ask me to tie it for you. And watch me while I do it, just your chin high but you eyes on my face, and my hands at your neck, all deft.

"Except I sure as hell don't know how to tie a bow tie."

Hawksley

She's got to stop saying she doesn't know, she can't -- at least around Hawksley, who is only growing more prone to arguing with her the more time he spends with her. His eyebrows even lift when she starts to say it, not to chastise but as though he's surprised. And why shouldn't he be? It's no small thing she's suggesting, or saying she wants, and given the fact that monogamy isn't even on the table, it's no small risk. Even three glasses in, even when -- we may as well be honest, if a bit crude -- his cock is still wet from her, Hawksley is thinking of that risk and so what she says is very odd indeed.

Of course it surprises him to hear her say that she doesn't know why she wants this. There has to be a damn good reason.

But Sera cuts herself short from that last damning word and looks at him all funny, her lashes and her angle used to create a makeshift camera obscura. And calls it ridiculous. Dan has to change people in her phone for her, which does not surprise Hawksley at all. He smiles, with surprising warmth, because he almost tells her that actually, Collins probably knows how to do that and -- wonder of wonders -- Hawksley knows how to do that for himself, too. Frankly, he's just pleased to discover that in this small way, Sera is actually utilizing Her Collins more than Hawksley is utilizing the original.

That pleasure doesn't last long. There are others: the simple and heady pleasures of being post-coital, of touching her shoulder and being touched by her hands and being just a bit drunk and flying and sitting on leather. But this is a serious conversation, just as serious as confessions about names and histories, ex-wives and lost memories.

It's okay, right? She has enough magic to know he's healthy, she could probably tell him if he wasn't, she's careful when she's with others, she would not come to him and ruin him, and it's about trust and it's about closeness, intimacy, feeling right, feeling him,

so,

it aches a little, that smile of his, as he watches her and as she dreams about Hawksley-in-tuxedo.

"I can teach you," he says of bowties, and there you are: he doesn't have Collins do this for him. He does it himself, another wonder. And he inhales deeply, slowly, exhaling through his nostrils just as deeply and just as slowly. Audibly, too, and unashamedly.

Hawksley's eyes close slowly, then open again, even slower.

"It's addicting, Sera," he says quietly. "And it's --"

he truncates, and sighs, shaking his head against the back of the couch, rolling it on his neck to rest their brows together. "Too much," he whispers, finishes, finally,

only hoping she'll understand.

Serafíne

"That's always my problem," brow to brow, eye to eye, nose alongside nose, she breathes out a mostly-soundless something that is not quite a laugh. Not precisely an exclamation. Something else. Something else altogether. " - too much isn't really in my vocabulary."

Close enough that light is lost and the intersectional details of his features dissolve into the pinpoint brushstrokes of an impressionist master through the scrim of her lashes. Cheek to cheek too because Sera,

is smiling against his mouth, this supple expression that curves her mouth like a crescent. The briefest flash of her white teeth as her mouth opens and she catches the edge of her lower lip between them. Lifting her nose and brow against his in supple, animal invitation. " - but it's in yours."

Her crescent smile curves lopsided, sweet and wry and generous and vulnerable. As vulnerable as he has ever seen her.

"And that's good enough for me."

Sera is remarkably still for a moment. And then she drops her forehead against his, and kisses him. The claim is so gentle and so subtle that at first he may be forgiven for thinking he imagines it, mistaking the heat of her breath for the soft press of her lips. Then her head is tilting aslant and her eyes are closing and she just:

takes his mouth,

as if it always belonged to her. God, even then it is exquisitely slow, as as if she had slowed down time all around them, or somehow the world had sped itself up, because jesus christ she takes her time. Breaks off, three or four times, and dives in again, deeper, and deeper, and deeper still. Then receding, just as slow, inexorable and drowning as the tide. Five small kisses against his mouth, his jaw, his scruff (this one, with a scrape of her teeth), his eye, and finally, her chin rising rising rising, his brow.

Then Sera smiles. Tells him to, "Hold that thought." Kisses him again because he is fucking there and that makes her happy and uncurls from the leather couch. Skirt swishing over her thighs and garters, her hair a long tangle of blonde curls down her bare spine. She is: making a beeline for the bar and that half-empty bottle of champagne, which she picks up by the neck and carries with her as she crouches down beside her armchair, snapping open her skull-studded clutch, before darting back across the cabin to him.

Still standing, Sera offers him champagne-from-the-bottle and then drinks, a flute of champagne like a shot before crawling back onto the couch beside him. Something crinkling a bit in her left hand.

"I don't know how much longer this flight is," she's telling him as she crawls up beside him again. "And I kinda wanna spend the rest of it just making out with you. But just in case - "

A wry grin, as she hands him a little square package. One jauntily plum-colored condom, secure inside.

Already leaning in for another kiss.

Hawksley

Hawksley always wants her a little bit. Not occupying every thought, not maddening, but always at least a little bit. He watches her closely, thoughtfully, until his eyes close at her kiss. His hand comes around, arm enfolding her, fingers moving into her hair to hold her there when she kisses him. He even lifts his head from the couch a bit, but that kiss never grows any rougher or harder than it begins. He lets his tired eyes fall closed again, losing time with her.

"What thought?" is what he echoes, when she tells him to hold it. He's not thinking at all now. He's breathing in when she kisses him, hands following her until she's out of reach and they fall listlessly to the couch or his thighs.

He really can't help but smile. Probably because of the champagne in his system and the endorphins rushing around his brain at the moment, he follows her very easily from moment to moment, unconcerned and unbothered by changes. Eventually Collins or someone will have to poke back here and tell them to prepare for landing, but for now, Hawksley is quite simply putty in Sera's hands. She could tell him to go to sleep and all he would do is pull her over, wrap her up in his arms, and drop off a cliff into slumber. She could bring him that bowl of fruit from earlier and he would eat his fill quite happily, all those big red strawberries and plump green grapes.

So of course, when she comes back to him with champagne in one hand and a purple condom in the other, he just smiles up at her, daffily.

"It's gonna make my dick look like I've got a priapism," he says, laughing. He doesn't take the champagne. He takes her wrists and is hauling her down, because she would be okay with making out and he would be okay with anything but right now he wants to hug her so he hugs her onto his body, onto his lap, smiling when she kisses him because it doesn't matter to him that their volcabularies mismatch in places.

It does matter to him that making love to her again and again like that, nothing between them, nothing at all, would eventually drive him a little mad. They are already so close. It matters, and he retreats from it where she does not. Maybe it's for the best.

Neither of them are particularly well-equipped to know that one way or the other, however.

They do end up making use of that just in case, in the end. They work her skirt off her hips together. He kicks away his jeans. They end up on the goddamn floor, her calves rubbing against his ass through her stockings, every stroke making him swear, making him thrust into her harder. He could try and feel disappointed or dismayed at the difference that purple latex makes but he really can't, not when there's sweat making her hands slip on his back and her hip fits into his palm like they were sculpted together like that from marble. It's not quite the same but he'd be lying if he said it wasn't good. If he said it wasn't enough to send his mind reeling in the aftermath,

wherein he rolls to his back, holding her on him still, panting underneath her, feeling so dizzy he's sure he's caught in freefall, the plane is crashing, they're plummeting, but

they're just turning, the plane tilting slightly as it goes around some clouds. Hawksley laughs low in his throat, running his hands along her sides, kissing her jaw, her neck, her shoulder. "If you want," he mutters, his voice rough, "we can take a shower before we land." His hand squeezes her ass, not for any reason, just because he found it and there she is, and she feels very nice.

Serafíne

"I think it'll look quite nice like that," with a mock formality that impinges on the precise-and-prim that Sera cannot ever really pull off because there's always a crawling suggestiveness to her mouth, an appreciative gleam in her eyes that she cannot quite bank. Wouldn't want to, wouldn't begin to know how to hide.

" - but if you object to the purple," she continues as he pulls her into his lap, and she's laughing as well, laughing with him and by him and for him, vibratory, humming and warm against his mouth. Inhaling him between kisses, not-quite-squirming on his lap though she may be soon. "I have green and pink too.

"And," open-mouthed against his jaw, eyes closed. The champagne bottle left behind on the table with the flutes or maybe the floor against the sculpted leather couch. " - banana-flavored, too. We'll deck you out."

And their vocabularies do not quite match: she says she does not know the meaning of too much and perhaps has proved that to him before and will prove it to him again and is not-quite-intent on proving it to him right now except in the way she ever-so-occasionally leans out of his arms, lolling backwards, reaching for the champagne bottle which she will keep drinking until it is gone, entirely gone, and she tastes dry and sweet all at once and has matched and exceeded him for tipsiness though she's not drunk, not precisely. Not from the first bottle, just giddy-with-it and she is giddy-with-him the whole time they are on that couch or careening about the cabin before ending up on the floor, his hands on her hips and hers on his spine, feeling the molten movement of his musculature as he thrusts into her, her head thrown back, her hair tangled with the compact loops of the berber carpet, her body arching firm and hungry to meet his.

And she does not swear but seems delighted when he does; laughing or smiling or biting his fucking ear each time he utters a new one until she's so close that there are stars in and behind her eyes, little bursts of promissory fusion, nucleic power, elemental and bright. Then it is just a matter of riding the wave, and this time she does so open-eyed and half unseeing, holding him close or perhaps vice-versa, at that point how the fuck does she know?

"You." It's the first coherent word she threads together in the aftermath. He's rolled them over and she doesn't remember precisely how she got on top but she's there, she's there and she likes it and she's breathing hard and his mouth is on her jaw and then her throat and he's squeezing her ass and the bridge of her nose is against his cheekbone, her brow against his temple, her arms around his neck and his hand on her ass makes her her want to move against him again in spite or because of the dreamy, liquid languor in her limbs and so she does or, rather, starts to because it makes her whimper and maybe too much is sometimes in her vocabulary after all.

Or she just knows that they're flying, and they have to come down soon.

Everything does.

But You is what she says to him, the very first thing, and in response to his offer of a fucking shower and then she closes her teeth against his jaw and remembers how to laugh. "Next thing you're going to tell me is there's a swimming pool in the back, too.

"Aren't you."

Nuzzling him, her voice low and affectionate as he mutters rough against her skin.

"Jesus Christ, Hawksley. Yes, let's take a fucking shower. On a fucking airplane." Sera is drifting a bit, in and out and does not want to move. She allows a second or three to peel past, just feeling him inside and around her, the warmth of his breath and the strength of his body and the deliciously untethered drift of her half drunk mind with the bright punch of endorphins knocking right through. They have to get up, though.

"Come on. I've made such a mess of you. And you clean up so well."

They have to get up.

They have to get up, so she inhales as if steeling herself for some great loss and then does: climbs off of him and rolls to her feet. Takes a moment to find them again, dizzy and unsteady from the champagne and what-he's-done-to-her. Fine her feet she does, though, then shimmies out of her thigh-highs and garter belt while he rolls off and tosses the condom, pausing now and then to watch the skim of clouds below them visible through the open windows.

Maybe she reaches for his hand; or maybe he reaches for hers, the point is that they are padding naked through the cabin to the bathroom, crowding into the oval, glass encased shower in the middle of the tiled bathroom and Sera laughs out, shocked and delighted by the whole fucking thing, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him like he invented all of this, like he brought it into being by will along and perhaps even just for her, as the water starts to fall.

Somehow when they're fucking they fit together so perfectly you would never guess that he is so much taller, but he is and she has to reach for him and she does. And she doesn't want to get her hair wet because it takes forever to dry but that's hard to manage with warm clean water running rivulets down their bodies and the fact that when she's done washing his back she just wants to wrap her arms around his torso and press her cheek against his shoulderblade and let the water run endlessly warm over the both of them and kiss his spine but -

oh. Is that Collins knocking at the door to the cabin which smells like sex and is littered with all-their-discarded clothes that they'll be landing soon?

If Sera could feel anything other than his skin right now, she might feel a twinge of empathy for poor-Mister-Collins.

Hawksley

They end up going with purple anyway. It's the one that's out. It's the one Sera -- rather expertly -- rolls onto him, making him shudder and lift his hips towards her. That's the one that goes in the trash later. Purple. Of all things. And she tastes champagne and tastes of champagne instead of bananas or berries when he kisses her. She gets herself near-drunk from that bottle, at least minus the three glasses he put away, so he's not calling Collins back there to make her wake up or anything.

They're just lolling on the floor, and he is waiting for his head to come back together and she is saying You, You. A swimming pool? He scoffs: "Don't be absurd," the words slightly slurring off of his tongue. She's biting his jaw. "You bite me in the weirdest places," he also mutters, thinking of her teeth on his clavicles, his shoulders, now his jawline. He says it fondly, though, one hand lifting heavily to rub fingertips into her scalp.

How, he wonders. How does she have any energy at all right now? He wants to sleep for ten minutes. Or for half an hour. Or forever. But he's the one that suggested the shower and now she knows there is one, doesn't she? It makes him happy to delight her so with his wealth, however shallow that might seem. She's enjoying herself, and the truth is that he thinks at least someone should be enjoying themselves entirely and wholly and uncomplicatedly on this trip, which

is why he called her. Among other reasons.

So he kisses her. She tells him she's made a mess of him, which makes an uncannily strong pulse of lust go through him like a hammer falling. He exhales and slowly, slowly pushes up on his arms, bracing himself as she departs from him, exhaling a soft burst of air when she does. Condom-in-trash and garters off then. He watches her peeling them off, the way she moves like a shaman dancing -- which is an odd thought to have, but not one he chides himself for. That's what most Cultists are, in a way. Different shamans.

There is a bathroom, and it is small. The space that serves as a shower stall only fits the both of them in it because they have no problem holding their bodies barely an inch apart, tucking in their arms to turn. It's very hard not to get her hair wet in here, but Hawksley tells her when he notices her avoiding it that they can just do this all over again at the hotel, they'll get her a dryer or take her to the hairdresser, something. Don't worry about it. And then he wraps her up in his arms and leans his back against the tile and quite frankly just... glomps her up while he tips his head back and closes his eyes and drowses in the hot water.

While they are in there, Collins comes back. He looks around the room, gives a shake of his head, and then quickly, efficiently tidies up.

Upon leaving the shower, they discover their clothing has been left where it fell. The bottle and glasses are gone, secured, discarded. The bowl of fruit is out again. Hawksley is wearing a towel around his waist when he goes to the couch and flicks on the television and, should Sera decide to cuddle with him, eats fruit with her. Til he falls asleep for a solid fifteen minutes, at least, sleeping until there is yet another knock on the door -- this time informing them of their impending landing. Hawksley damn near looks like he's just going to ignore it, and then --

with a great heavy sigh, he gets up and gets dressed. He gets into his seat and he buckles up and eats strawberries while they land. He has one half-eaten as the wheels are touching down, looking over at Sera. "We should get steaks."

Serafíne

The rest of the flight slides by in a damp and lazy blur. Sera's long hair gets wet after all, and when he pulls her in close (how could they get any closer in that tight little space? somehow. call it magic) she wraps her arms around him and rests her temple against his sternum while the water sluices down, warm and bracing and fine. Hurtling in a small tube-with-wings which is an ordinary sort of miracle, the sort in which men believe on a daily basis. She: listens to his heart beat. Listens to the percussion of his lungs as her hands fit to the avian sweep of his lats and she follows the arc of them, up and out and perhaps some part of her mind imagines how they will move,

when he has wings.

So, a smile against his chest, curving enough that it may enter the loose, amorphous stuff of his drowsing dreams, the strange borders at the edges of sleep where the consciousness lets go and somehow one merely is. She is not precisely drowsing so much as drifting with such - yes - a simple and whole and uncomplicated appreciation of just this moment and the ones before and the ones to come that she feels it all sinking and soaring around her, pulling her like a thread back into the ether, the slipstream, the dreaming space where you lose your body and gain all the others. Smiles then and holds him more tightly and burrows into his chest and doesn't think of anything, not anything at all.

How strange and delightful when they wander back out but poor Mr. Collins. Setting the cabin to rights but leaving their clothes where they fell. A garter here and a t-shirt there. Hawksley's shoes scattered near the couch and Sera's spiky heels god-knows-where. She does mourn the loss of the champagne bottle surely there was another swimming mouthful or three, warm now and flat now but she's drunk enough that that hardly matters. That what matters is pulling the moment out like taffy to a sort of infinity. That what matters is maintaining the equilibrium of that high.

Sera ignores the television and climbs onto the couch with him to cuddle. One towel around her body and another wrapped around her hair and once again she does not sleep but instead, tucks herself against him while he does and watches the shifting light across the borders of the cabin and rides the rise and fall of his chest. Sleep.

The towel wrapped around her head like a turban comes loose and her hair starts to uncoil in wet, heavy, tangled snakes.

Getting dress is like a scavenger hunt for Sera and the ratio of her garments to his scattered about is near enough to a million to one. All those bits and pieces. The lingerie and stockings and garters. The skirt, flung somewhere after they worked it over her hips. T-shirt and bra and garter belt. Those absurd, spiky heels that make her not-quite-as-tall as he but much, much closer, rolled god knows where. If there was time she'd help him dress, maybe. Make a game of it with her hands and a promise of it with her eyes and a dance of it with her body and as it is she does make a dance of it with her body, slipping on her panties, hooking the little eyehooks of her bra, sliding her thumb beneath the straps as she adjusts where it sits on her ribs and over her breasts. Pulling her long, wet hair over one shoulder, then the other, then shimmying into the garter belt and rolling the stockings up her legs. Making sure he's watching her, sometimes, and watching him too, the lateral, ladder-climbing movement as he pulls his t-shirt back over his head smiling with unselfconscious pleasure when she remembers the way he moves that body, beneath her, over her, beside her.

She thinks about borders and vales and sweat and skin, the taut flexion of his abdomen as she braced herself over him and unrolled that absurdly purple condom over him - yes, rather expertly, her eyes fixed on the work of her hands as she stroked him, and worked him, and he couldn't help but thrust his hips upward and she liked that, wanted to make him do it again, wanted to drive him mad, wanted other things too and also just: wanted, openly, without boundaries and without thought.

This is a different sort of pleasure and a hurried sort of pleasure and a mildly absurd sort of pleasure and there's not much time but yes, oh yes. Sera is a sort of shaman and right now, getting hurriedly dressed in the goddamned private jet where they've fucked each other senseless, twice, in the span of an hour or two, every move she makes is part and parcel of a neverending prayer, a constant invocation, a strange, undying sort of spell.

The plane lands. Hawksley eats strawberries and Sera eats grapes and he is suggesting steaks as if he had invented the concept of searing meat from the flank of a cow. She flashes him a grin that says, okay, baby, steaks, the bright and bleary shine of her eyes over the crawl of her mouth as she murmurs something wry about keeping his strength up.

Then maybe someplace where they set the drinks on fire. And after that a vodka bar with a glassed in freezer vault and shot glasses of steaming ice where they give you heavy fur coats and Russian-style fur hats to wear while you drink gourmet vodkas from the edge of a sabre and eat caviar on toast points from slotted silver spoons and feel like James Bond; or at least a James Bond villain.

Sera's face is scrubbed clean and her hair is wet and tangled and the damp seeps into her Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt rendering it that much more transparent and the blasting desert heat hits them both as they climb off the plane and she has those spike-heeled shoes that make the metal staircase a bit more treacherous so her hand finds his, and tightens around his, quite naturally as they descend to the tarmac while strangers scurry around them, under Collins' expert direction, unloading the luggage and tucking it into whatever conveyance has been procured.

Her make-up is mostly gone. The mascara and the think ring of dark eyeliner and black shadow. The smear of her lipstick was long since kissed away and more of it started to melt from the sweat and what was left: down the drain of the shower. And her hair is a mass of wet tangles snaking over her shoulders, soaking through the thin fabric of her white tee, thick and dark. There's no swimming pool on the plane - don't be daft, Sera - but maybe there's one in the room. Levered out from the edge of the building with an infinity edge over the mass of the neon-lit city edged by the rock-and-dust desert simmering with radiant heat that will dissipate to a sharp, biting edge in the darkest hours of the night. She might well be as pleased with a motel called MOTEL and a big old waterbed or maybe magic fingers, twenty-five cents for five minutes of a strange, loud, mechanical, vibrating bed. Though it hardly seems possible that Hawksley and his Collins would ever find themselves in such a place, absent a dark and stormy night and an emergency landing of their private jet and -

- either way, they part ways at his suite for a while. Maybe he naps or maybe he works out or maybe has to go meet-and-greet a few early arrivals to the contest. Sera needs a good shampoo and blow-out and hey there's a blow-dry bar downstairs.

Later they eat. Steaks in a steakhouse that is all tufted leather and gleaming mahogany, polished brass and reindeer ferns and antlers and grandfather clocks. Meat so perfectly rare and exquisitely marbled that it melts in the mouth. Martinis beforehand and a bold red with the meal and something else after, more burn than sweet though there is a bit of both, drunk from old fashioned silver cordial glasses that dance with tarnished, sliding light. Dinner is a sartorial high point. Sera debuts the squiggle dress, which does not even pretend to modesty and pairs it with long bare legs and all her fucking tattoos and freshly blown out, gleaming blond curls and the soft dark buzz of her sidecut and high-heeled peep-toed platform booties that she slips out of at the beginning of their dinner so she can play footsie with him from appetizer to after-dinner-drinks. Chats about anything and everything, makes up stories about their fellow diners for his amusement, flashes her nails, which she had done along with her hair, still short-as-fuck but painted black-with-white skeletons. Look, when she puts her fingers together: a full skeleton.

After dinner she wants to go out, wants to party, wants to dance, wants him close. Or maybe there's a cocktail hour, a meet and greet, an exhibition for them to attend. Some dancers' version of opening ceremonies, yes? Which she attends, tipsy and maybe-something-else, gleaming, exquisite, on-his-arm and at-his-side. There is almost never a point when she is not touching him. Holding his hand or the crook of his arm, leaning bodily against him, resting her chin on his shoulder or her cheek against his chest. People can't help but stare. At her, at him, at the fucking spectacle of the pair of them together, the way they deform the universe, the way reality bows out around them,

the way she bites him, sometimes, yes Hawksley, in the strangest places.

Hawksley

Landing is a smooth operation. They emerge from the jet much as they entered it. There is a car waiting, sleek and black but not as large as the SUV that Collins drives. Hawksley is wearing those aviators again as he helps Serafine walk with him in her spikey heels towards it while other people, perhaps lesser people, take their luggage. They have wet hair that helps, a little, in the blasting heat of the desert. The interior of the car is cold, though, and Hawksley draws her close to his side without a word, without a shiver.

They drive into the city. And it's bright and ghastly even in daylight, it's surreal how it creates itself in a place where it should not exist. They check into their hotel, or rather: Collins does, handing Hawksley the keys to the 2-bedroom suite he procured for their stay. Two bedrooms, two beds, as though Sera will need her own for the duration, which is exactly what it was purchased for, even though chances are she won't use it much.

The room itself does not have a pool, but the tub is a jacuzzi on a dais that could fit about six people in it if you wanted. Televisions rise out of sideboards and there is champagne waiting in the front room and there is a welcome basket in Sera's room that contains vouchers for the restaurant the casino the salon the spa and there are chocolates and there is wine for her as well and Hawksley smiles to see it. He kisses her cheek and murmurs that he has some things to take care of, and she is on her own for a while.

Across the suite in the other bedroom, he takes his own shower. He tells Collins to make them reservations, to set him up at the barber, to make sure their booth at wherever they go is private, to put in a breakfast order for X o'clock, late in the day. Collins is going to take care of the registration early in the morning tomorrow, of course. Hawksley and Sera will sleep in, laze about, be privileged assholes. A barber comes to the room and gives Hawksley a hot shave; Sera walks by fresh from the salon and Hawksley, his throat half-covered in foam still, gives her a smirk before he closes his eyes again.

That night he is in slacks and a crisp, smooth shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar sharp and a button or two undone. His watch is sleek and modern, his shoes are as glossy and deep as ink, and when they are in their booth he tips his head back and exhales a breath beneath the thrum of the music in the place, holding the sole of her bare foot against his groin where she let it creep, not even trying to pretend that he is not hard, that he has entirely lost the thread of conversation.

He really should not tell her that there's a cocktail reception. She wants to go and he can't say no to her, so there they are. And my god, she gets looks. People here are elegant and young and beautiful and their coaches are older and their managers are older but the dancers themselves are in their twenties, maybe their thirties, there are a couple of them who are putting off college for a couple of years. But they're conservative. Hawksley stands out, but Sera is like a lightning bolt that goes from earth to the clouds instead of the other way around. They come in drunk, with her skeleton fingernails and near-nudity and she's giddy and seems quite mad and she is

visceral,

and enthralling.

It does not go on forever, that reception. They do end up going dancing, they go out into Las Vegas and they see some of the younger crowd of dancers and they drink some more, they grind together,

he sneaks her into a bathroom stall and puts his hand up her dress and kisses her to keep her quiet even when she comes, holds her up when her legs start to give way. He gets stared at, washing his hands at the sink in the women's restroom, and someone certainly wants to call security but no one wants to be the buzzkill, either, so he dries his hands and whistles and meets Sera again out by the bar, drinking something electric blue,

giving him something she brought or bought, a little pink pill stamped with a butterfly.

They are in another club, dancing to a different sort of vibe, floating on a different flavor of eternity, and he can't stop running his hands up and down her sides, marveling at the way she feels and the way her squiggles feel and the way she smells and he licks her neck because of the way she tastes, bites her earlobe because of the way she sounds when she whimpers.

It is a very long night, even when time has rushed them onward and dropped them back in the suite. Back into the second bedroom, the one that is ostensibly Sera's bedroom, where they are all mouths and hands and bared skin, where he is groaning her name like a prayer and tightening his hand in her hair, where she is arching her back and making these sounds like songs, he's certain he's heard before and he knows they're going to get stuck in his head for days.

Hawksley falls asleep with his head tucked against her waist, his arm thrown over her hips, until she grows chilled enough in the air conditioning that to tug the covers up means covering his head, til he is convinced by nudging and suffocation to work his way back up the bed, rolling onto his back, promptly getting a Sera using him as a pillow.

They sleep forever.

Or til noon. That's when their breakfast arrives, and when Collins arrives, using the extra key to quietly set it up on the table in the main room. And at that breakfast, over his incredibly healthy preparation for the day, Hawksley sits in a robe provided by the hotel and tells Sera that they have already been registered, Collins took care of it. That means they have badges for various demonstrations and parts of competitions, which they can attend or skip as she likes; he doesn't sound like he has any preference and if she looks deeper: he genuinely doesn't.

He is not indifferent but ambivalent: his desire to just hang out in Las Vegas with a friend is equal to if not greater than his interest in watching dancers doing their thing. There's a luncheon they have already missed with a few minor awards being presented, but this afternoon there is the major competition, followed after a respite by a grand social dance, followed thereafter by the dinner and awards ceremony, which is the only thing he absolutely has to go to.

Hawksley seems rather ambivalent about that, too, if a bit more complexly. But still relaxed, reclining at their little white-clothed table with its brunch foods and coffee and crystalline glasses and fresh fruit and handcrafted artisan syrups in wee ceramic pitchers that are warm to the touch even halfway through the meal.

It is stunning, to see someone so used to such privilege,

who has so little interest in leveraging it. He wants her to decide.

Serafíne

mnemosyne @ 12:59PM

Sera: Perception + Awareness-as-empathyRoll: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 ) VALIDI should note that on some level she is specifically on some watching him to see how open he is to talking to her about it, too.

Hawksley

[As for Hawksley, fuck you Sera. Well! She may recall that the ceremony is going to involve something about honoring his mom, and as she DEFINITELY knows, Hawksley has a lot of mommy issues that he is not given to discussing, but just has Sad/Self-Loathingy Moments about from time to time. He wants to go, and he also would rather not go, and it's going to be awkward and uncomfortable and remind him of things he doesn't like thinking about but it's also nice that they're doing nice things for his mother but ugh rich people patting themselves on the back but dancing :] but ugh and EMOTIONS. Also resignation, cuz he's going to go regardless, it's just touching on some unpleasant things for him to think about it. WHO KNOWS IT COULD BE FUN so I guess he's also optimistic.

So srsly ambivalent. :D]

Serafíne

The first thing she does on waking is sneak off to brush her teeth and the second thing she does is crawl back in bed with him and the third thing she does is wait for him to wake or pad off through the suite in his wake and kiss him mad and senseless and then they are sitting down to an elegant breakfast like privileged assholes sometime in the bright sun of a passing afternoon. Sera does not have nearly the hangover she should have, considering the way she drank yesterday, all day and all night and plus those pills she found and fed him and herself somewhere in the midst of the long, long night.

Morning. Hawksley sports one of the plush white robes monogrammed with the casino's crest and coat-of-arms and looks very lord of the manor with the bright afternoon light streaming in behind him through the lightly tinted windows and bright sheers. Sera, seated opposite him, has eschewed the robes in favor of drowning her senses in his scent. There she is at the breakfast table, wearing nothing more than his collared shirt from the night before which she scooped up from the floor or the foot of the bed on waking. The cotton is suffused with his scent in particular and - more generally - the long and winding pleasures of last evening, and Sera quite likes both scents so that is what she wears to breakfast. The buttons are unbuttoned nearly to her naval and the deep and now-rather-wrinkled-from-a-night-spent-on-the-floor V between plaquets shadows and frames the teardrop curve of her small breasts rather fetchingly. Makes almost as much of them as her favorite push-up bra, though perhaps only by implication. Her hair is a mess and her eyes are dark and still bruised with sleep and she sits there with her bare legs rather primly crossed, enjoying the hell out of the morning after.

While Collins consults with Hawklsey and informs him of the arrangements and schedules and expectations, Sera entertains herself with her iPhone. Head tucked down, an inviting curve to her mouth that sometimes slips into the territory of a smirk, tangled hair against her cheek.

Sera eats whatever is placed before her and whatever was ordered last night. French toast made from brioche and layered with butter and still-warm maple syrup from those handmade ceramic pitchers, more than sausages, hashbrowned potatoes from a silver salver if they are on offering in contrast to Hawksley's ridiculously healthy start to the day. Sera: takes the guava and honeydew from the fruit salad, and half but only half the blueberries and when she eats the blueberries she pops into her mouth with a grin like she's eating popcorn. She has just one request for Collins, when the consor is finished reviewing the registration and schedule for the day with Hawksley in a quiet murmur in the corner:

a Virgin Mary.

Please Mr. Collins and thank you Mr. Collins and a quick, smiling wink that flashes the white of her teeth.

Sera keeps flicking through the iPhone, even after. Keeps it tucked on the table between the milk for her tea (Darjeeling, thank you) or the cream for her coffee and the linen napkin and the ornately-handled silver flatware. Entertains herself, and him, with pictures she snapped of the pair of them last night. Here, for example, is Hawklsey, head tipped back against the oiled leather booth in the steakhouse so high-end Sera still does not know its name. The flicker of a candle flame between them and he's not looking at the camera and it is all out of focus and just looks out of frame and out of context but they both can tell, in a fractional instant, that his hands are not on his lap because he's reaching for his napkin, and she still remembers the warmth of his hand on her ankle and the hard length of his erection beneath the sole of her foot and remembers - with great and abiding pleasure - the way he lost the thread of their conversation and Sera, fucking Sera, just kept chatting merrily away, even as her own eyes grew hooded, a mildly predatory mirror of his own.

Oh there are other snapshots. Here's a half-focused Persian carpet and there a smear of casino. The edge of his jaw as he is turning away from her to push a path through a crowd... somewhere. The electric eruption of a lightshow overhead, aerialists on trapezes descending over the crowd. Tiles from a bathroom floor, the sharp edge of her grin and shining eyes, her forehead against his chest, his chin tucked against her ear, her arm holding up the phone for a selfie, the crowd bubbling around and behind them, so out of focus they could be dots of paint in a pointillist landscape. They both look drunk and high and happy.

This is the picture Sera shows Collins, when he swoops in to pour her more tea or clear off a plate of half-eaten French toast. It is also the only one she keeps, though as she flicks through them she flash a few of the others in Hawksley's direction before reassigning them to digital oblivion. Even Sera knows what the trash-can icon means.

He reviews the schedule for the day and there is ambivalence and there is a different sort of ambivalence and though she is still skimming through text messages and photos when Hawksley starts setting out their options Sera looks back at him and looks up at him and does so in that way she has simetimes: which is quick and fixed and perhaps a little more searching than you'd every really imagine.

Hawksley has a schedule in hand and likely there's one for Sera too but: she ignores hers when he tells her that she should decide. Stands up and circles the breakfast table and settles an affectionate hand on his shoulder which slides around his spine to the other shoulder as she leans warm against him and bends down and points,

"Let's skip these,"

at the events scheduled for that afternoon. "I brought a bikini and intend to use it. We'll get a cabana at Garden of the Gods and you can swim and I can fucking watch you swim and we'll order drinks and wander through the Galleria on the way there, or back and you can help me pick out Dee's birthday present. I heard someone say last night that they had swim-up blackjack there, if you wanna gamble.

Her mouth drops to the crown of his head.

"I hope they have fucking mermaids, too," she grins.

"We'll come back for this," index finger on the major competition, her mouth sliding from the crown of his head down so she can rest her cheek against his hair. " - but if I'm taking for fucking ever to get ready you can go early if you want and I'll slip in during intermission. And we'll go to the dance, because I want to dance with you," because, more to the point, she wants to see him when he's dancing, really dancing. "then the dinner. Together."

Somewhere in the middle of that, her arms have slipped around his shoulders. She's holding him from behind, tucked forward against him, mouth against his temple.

"You know, since they're going to be honoring your mother, I'd love to hear about her from you. But I know - I mean, I can feel - that there's more to it, and that tonight might not be easy for you. And if you don't wanna talk, I'm not gonna push.

"So, open invitation, without obligation. Kay?"

Hawksley

Of course his eyes are on her, sharp and clear and keen, as she stands wearing his shirt, circling the table and sliding her touch onto him again. Of course he catches her hand over his chest and holds it there for a moment, then slides his palm up her arm while she is running hers over to his opposite shoulderr in an embrace. His hand cups her upper arm. Her hair falls over him in a curtain, smelling like ther and them and for a moment he is ignoring what she points at. He knows, anyway.

"What if I want to lay out in the sun and watch you swim?" he mock-grouses, his tone so bland it's hard to take it even remotely seriously. He doesn't seem interested in gambling, which is a surprise, since he doesn't appear to be the most risk-averse person in the world. Look at who he hangs out with. She's a risk in every way.

Sera kisses his head. He pushes his hand into her hair, cradling her crown with his arm arched back like that, both of them looking at the schedule of events today. Dancing. Dinner. His fingertips scritch idly at her scalp,

going still when she mentions hearing more about his mother. Not freezing, because even at his quietest Hawksley is too warm to freeze in place completely, to be stock-still, to be motionless and static. Nothing about him is static, even if many things about him are stable. More stable than Sera, at least.

His eyes close slow, open slow, as she says she can sense that it won't be easy. Hawksley draws his head from her lips, draws his hand from her hair, but not to pull away from her. He turns in his seat towards her, hand to her hand, drawing her back around him to his front where he can, with that grace that seems so natural and yet so startling, pull her onto his lap. His arms slide around her lower waist. He puts his face, unabashedly and yet unamorously, against her breast, closing his eyes and breathing in the smell of her filtered through his own smell and the smell of nightclubs and other people's smoke and alcohol and all that sweat. It's not the greatest smell in the world but it brings back memories.

After a few moments, Hawksley's head tips back and his eyes find her eyes.

"My mother lives in a residential facility in Connecticut," he tells her. Not assisted living; unless she had him very late in life indeed, his mother is probably only in her 50s. It wouldn't be alzheimer's. It probably wouldn't even be dementia. "I won't rattle off her various diagnoses. I don't like to think about it, and I like to talk about it even less."

There's a current of tension there, almost anger, but it's not directed at Sera. Not for asking, or wondering, or sensing; as the first time he knelt in her garden and some word or deed stirred his memories, that rage seems directed inward.

Hawksley gives her a squeeze. "We'll talk another time about all that," which may be a deflection and may be a promise or a little of both. It's certainly a bit of procrastination. "Today let's just have a nice hot day in the desert before autumn and winter really come to the mountains. And we'll dance and scandalize people and I'll seem like the disrespectful asshole I'm supposed to be, bringing a girl like you to their droll little awards ceremony."

Serafíne

There she is, curling into his lap with a thoughtless ease, smelling – yes – distinctively of this night last. Whiskey and vodka and sex and cigarettes, remnant threads of strangers’ perfume; and hers, which nothing more than sandalwood oil last night, slippery and earthy and sweet; and sweat, the humid press of bodies. Dissipated from a night and a morning spent on the floor. He drops his head to her breast; her hands find their way into his hair. She cups the back of his skull, rubs her thumb aimlessly over his temporal bone. Holds him there for those few moments he remains still, breathing in the remnants of last night, her head turned aslant, looking past the crown of his head, through the open curtains, out at the other towers of the hotel, the bright hot noon-tide sun washing over the strip.

She’s like that when he straightens, too. Dark eyes darting from the brilliant smear of sun across the windows to his eyes as he speaks. Something searching about her attention, the dart-and-sweep of her eyes from his eyes to his mouth and back again, watchful and not quite wary, but aware. The truth is, just the term residential facility and the words her diagnoses give Sera a bit of a chill. Make her go a bit more still. They do not steal her breath but she does stop breathing, when he says those things. When he tells her that he doesn’t like to think about it, and likes talking about it even less. When that same current of tension or anger that she remembers so-very-well from that night in the garden spikes in him. Her breath stops, her lungs ache and her heart beats so acutely in her chest she could almost be a Hermetic then, and find a new name for every squeezing spasm of that fucking muscle, and the way it stops, the way it seizes sometimes. The way it surges, too.

She breathes again. Her mouth is still and her lips are parted and her eyes are somehow oblique but still steady on him, damp and dark with this wordless, integral, aching,

physical compassion, whole and entire. She would embrace him but they are already embracing, his arms loose around her lower waist, her own around his shoulders, her fingers in his hand.

He says, they’ll talk about it another time. Sera is not phased by whatever that is: deflection or promise or merely procrastination or both or neither or all three or twelve or seventy-five things at once. She gives him this little half-smile, and bumps her head forward against his own. “Okay,” she tells him, and means it, entirely. Okay.

She bites him in the strangest places, and does so now, as he offers his prescription for the day. See: leaning forward and lifting her chin to press her mouth to his temple, then smiles her razor smile as he declares his intention to scandalize people with a girl like her. The ghost of her teeth against his skin, the warm beat of her breath. Then the bite, against his temple, scraping up to his hairline as she buries her nose in his hair and finishes the bite with a soothing, thoughtful kiss. She thinks about what a miracle he is and what a mystery and she cannot help but think about his mother: in a residential facility, which is a euphemism she would like to take from him, to consume, even though the mere thought of it brings a subtle framing tension to her spine beneath his hands.

So they’ll sun themselves, and swim. Then dinner and dancing and Hawksley will shore up his rather dubious reputation by carousing with a girl-like-her at the grand gala of the social dance, the dinner, the awards ceremony. Sera laughs, then drops her head so they are brow-to-brow, promising with mock-solemnity, and a razor-edged grin he can feel more than he can see, “Then I’ll be sure to be on my worst behavior.”

---

They make quite the scene at Garden of the Gods. Hawksley, in his board-shorts or maybe he’s fucking European about it, wears his speedos, golden-skinned, sun-drenched, soaring¸ with a body to rival those of the marble gods and heroes on their pedestal. And Sera, in a black (of course) bikini, accented by silver studs and metal O-rings and a crystal-eyed skull and a spiked leather bracelet and that bicycle chain she wears sometimes as a necklace, wrapped around her neck and the ends left to dangle down her spine.

Quite as soon as they arrive Sera takes off her bikini top and leans back to sun herself in the heat of the desert afternoon. Up in the highest mountains it may already be snowing, but out here summer lingers like a long-lost lover. Reappears at noon, the sun at its zenith, the air crisp and dry and bright. The pool complex is vast, luxe and elegant – a deep azure that belongs to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Maldives – framed in by remarkably groomed, remarkably green cedars and cypresses, upright and compact and proud, flanking white marble reproductions of classic Greek and Roman statuary of the gods, all framed by soaring, ionic columns, that splash a baking white against the crisp blue autumn sky. There is a DJ and dance floor but the cover charges are astronomical and it is not like Rehab. One can dance or lounge or drink or swim without squeezing through packs of drunk, muscle-bound dudebros. And at Venus, at least, most of the women are as topless as the men.

Which makes a Sera very, very happy. These are her fucking people.

So, she lounges like a goddess and he lounges like a god and they have practically a fucking suite. Not just a cabana but also a daybed but one of the scoop daybed because who knows where they might want to curl up and make out or drink or people watch? They drink bellinis – ripe, juicy peaches just crushed into the champagne – and graze on elegant little canapés. Tiny little tarte tatins or smoked salmon mousse on crisp slices of cucumber or perfect little prawns. The staff bring around cool towels and warm towels and slices of cucumber for your eyes or mist you with fragrant waters from some clear mountain pool in the Swiss Alps or the fucking Himalayas. There is a bowl of fruit on their day-bed – seedless black grapes still on the vine, which look so fucking lush – and crisp apples and dark plums, peaches, berries of all sorts. Sera props herself on one elbow while he lays prone, half in the sun that loves him, half in the cooler shadows of the bright white sail overhead, feeding him grapes one by one by one. Grinning as he catches them between his teeth.

He swims. Plows through the long lanes of the azure pool with the furious physical surety that is his right and reward for all the work he does to maintain that body. Sera sits at the edge of the pool, topless still, topless always, and watches him, kicking her feet through the water. Watching the play of sunlight over all that blue-and-white luxury. Watching him move, the way he slices through the water, not like a sea creature at all, but like a raptor. She likes the butterfly the best. The way he emerges like an animal, furious, that reaching wingspan, just attacking the water, sunlight playing across the muscles flanking his spine as he plunges back below. She is watching him so intently, so hungrily, so single-mindedly as he comes back to her, striding through the water like, yes, one of those statues come to a sort of sun-blessed, golden life, that she misses entirely his own intent: which is to drag her, laughing, into the water.

Later, during the hottest hours of the afternoon, they retreat to the shade of the cabana. There are more drinks, and different ones now: fresh fruits and top shelf liquors, a pitches of delightfully herbal basil mojitos sweating on a tray, crushed ice cracked and gleaming and fractures as diamonds in the glasses. Sera draws the curtains closed so they are wrapped in baking shadows and explores his drying skin like a medieval cartographer. Every square millimeter deserves her attention: the grace of her mouth, the scrape of her teeth, the thoughtful, artless sweep of her thumb, lazy, descending, intricate, thorough. She pushes him away, quite firmly, quite decidedly, every time he reaches for her.

He’s hard long before she frees him from his still-wet suit and takes him in her mouth. He has to use a pillow to muffle his curses as she goes down on him, lazily, languidly, and, Jesus Christ, so fucking –

- shamelessly thorough, just devouring him, until he comes. She cannot kiss him to silence. Her mouth is otherwise and quite thoroughly engaged.

Afterwards, she crawls up his flank, props herself against the padded headboard, and pulls him to her, her hand in his hair, his head pillowed against her breasts, the short, wet strands sticking to her own sweaty skin. She caresses him with an artless and wordless affection, an idle thumb, a drifting forefinger, as sleep takes him. Even in the aftermath there’s rhythm here. The beat of his heart and the beat of her own and the beat of strangers outside the drawn curtains. Their shadows moving against the sun. The beat of the music and the beat of strangers’ murmured conversations, stress and downbeat and insistence and laughter, the beat of the sun against the canvas as it turns itself in the sky. All this lazy magic.

Sera is seated at the vanity and still in her lingerie when he comes in to her room to show her how to tie his bowtie. And her lingerie for the evening consists of: panties so she is almost entirely unclothed and he is so thoroughly buttoned up as she biffs the process two or three times because, let’s be honest, she is already a little bit drunk. And there were the pills, blue stamped with daisies today rather than pink-with-butterflies, thrown back with a mouthful of peaches-and-champagne. Finally she gets it crooked but sort-of-right and is delighted and gives him a very thorough kiss by way of thanks and then shoos him out because magic-is-about-to-happen and the great and abiding pleasure of giving someone a beautifully and unexpectedly wrapped gift is rather lost when he sits there perched on the edge of the bed and watches you wrap it.

So, Hawksley. Shoo shoo shoo.

He’ll have to wait. Or, no - she sends him off with a kiss on the temple to catch the start of the competition. She’ll sneak in later. Save her a seat.

Sneak in later she does, and he can feel her at the base of his spine like a punch in the gut even before he sees her though there may be a moment where he does not quite recognize her because she has dressed the fuck up for him. Her hair is tamed and pulled over her left shoulder in a sleek Rita Hayworth wave. Which, it must be said, accentuates rather than conceals the soft dark buzz of her sidecut, the dark shape of her oft-hidden triangle tattoo, tucked just so behind her ear. Her right ear naturally bristles with earrings, the largest a thick spike all through-and-through. But the gown, is Chanel.

Longer than anything he has ever seen her wear, this dark, exquisitely, exquisitely quilted silk gathered at the shoulders by perfectly jeweled little fabric flowers that cuts open into deep and plunging neckline that then tucks neatly into a jeweled empire waist, which would be scandalous and revealing and delicious on someone more well-endowed but which seems almost

perversely

modest on Sera. At least until he catches a glimpse of her from the flank or the back.

All modesty ends there; the back is deep and plunging and bare, criss-crossed by thin golden straps that drape from the roses at her shoulders with elegant precision. The sort of dress that one should remove with exquisite and worshipful slowness, rose by rose and strap by strap, from behind. Perhaps, later on, he will do just that.

The flanks are even more risqué than the plunging back. Every single one of her tattoos is at least somewhat visible, dark and crawling on her skin. Serendipity in a cursive scrawl down her left side, that twisting knotwork on her right side. All the tattoos on her arms and hands, the ridiculously grinning skeleton, everything. The bodice just glides over her breasts rather than clinging to them. He can see them moving, unbound, as she laughs and tucks her head against his ear and apologizes, and brushes her body against his before she tucks herself into the empty seat at his side. The soft weight of them over her ribs, inviting eyes, inviting hands, inviting mouths. Inviting,

him. With every breath she takes.

So it goes. Hawksley is elegantly scandalous. Sera is – wildly inappropriate. Drunk and high and devastating, and devastatingly, breathtakingly lovely in a way she rarely is, because she is usually simply fucking breathtaking.

Later they dance and he leads and she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing and she doesn’t care. He does know what he’s doing and he makes her feel like she’s flying and she wants to kiss him so she does, thoroughly and hungrily and heatedly in the middle of the dance floor as if there was no one else in the room. And she flirts, with everyone but mostly with him, in her suggestive and off-color way. Offers some of those conservative young dancers in the ladies’ room a few of those pills she took earlier. Invites them and their partners back to his suite, for a party, in the fucking hot tub.

There is no time to think about anything except: Sera-at-his-side, or Sera-in-his-arms, or the gossip that ripples out from them, and everything they do.

The dinner is different, of course. It has to be. But: Sera’s there at his side, getting – yes – a bit more drunk, still flirting with all and sundry at their table. Leveling suggestive little bon mots into his ear. Demanding that the waiters just leave the champagne at the damned table already, and on and on. When the awards begin, she’s closer still, her head tipped against his shoulder. Beneath the table, her hand finds his.

Of course it does, natural as breathing.

Hawksley

But isn't residential facility such a pretty name? Don't they have names with 'bright' and 'meadow' and 'dawn' and 'spring' in the names as a rule -- if they aren't named after famous benefactors, of course -- so that the mere mention of them brings up images of hopefulness and new life after long winters

when everything is gray

and feels cold,

endless,

wasted.

Why on earth would such a thing make Sera feel a chill up and down her spine, coiling at the base of her neck like a hand growing tighter, not to choke but just to control? After all, they're just trying to help you see reality. They're just trying to make you clean again, and fit for the company of humans once more.

For what it's worth, Hawksley seems almost resigned to it, accepting, even perhaps a little relieved. He's been there, after all; he knows what it's like and he knows it's the best, the absolute best money can buy and better, because his family is not averse to slipping a little extra to key players in his mother's care network. It doesn't bear imagining the hell Hawksley himself would raise if she weren't being as well cared for as if Collins himself were still attending to her, much less the holocaust of his wrath if she were harmed.

But it does spring to the imagination anyway. Perhaps because that hell, that holocaust, flickers in his eyes when he talks of her, thinks of her, and all that rage is turned inward.

Okay. And it is, because it must be, and this is why he is so comfortable with her, so at ease, so natural in her presence that the two can seem like twins of a sort, always together even when they aren't, always communicating even when they're not talking. He squeezes her. She bites him. He smiles.

He lifts his head and kisses her, slow and drenching and almost-almost stirring something up again. She promises to be on her worst behavior, and he stands up with her in his arms, walks her back to the bed, and then there is nothing almost-almost about anything, because his robe is most definitely opening, falling over them like a blanket, and when he kisses her he tastes like strawberries again and when he kisses her, deeper and darker and worshipful,

she tastes like Life,

and Death,

and Power,

and many things he cannot name.

He is reaching for a condom -- it's orange, Jesus -- even while he's on his knees. And she is still coming when he enters her after that, their two bodies grinding on the rumpled bedspread, sweating into cotton and terrycloth alike. There is his brow resting on hers as he is gasping something that is not quite her name, and the shudder going through him when her teeth rake over some piece of his flesh is almost convulsive. There is nothing slow nor rushed about this, and the carnality of it does not seem dissuaded by its tenderness, and this is how he likes it, and how he likes her, and he does

like her so much,

he whispers, rolling to his side and pushing her hair back from her face, sweat-drenched as it is, looking at those intense angles of her jaw and her brow, so strange and so captivating as to be visceral and enthralling regardless of her magic. He hasn't quite spoken to her like this, in all this time, but he does now, just that he

likes her so much.

And kisses her with surprising softness, nothing rakish or hungry or godlike at all, merely human and sometimes forgettably young when his soul feels like it has been alive as long as the peoples of earth have created narratives to frame the terror they felt when looking at the endless sky. He kisses her mouth there, like this, and her cheekbone, and just above her eyebrow, then back to her lips like a ritual, a drawn circle, before they part.

And bathe

and put on these scandalous-as-fuck bathing suits, hers with studs and skulls and his tight and charcoal-colored with a singular line up the front colored a scandalously attention-drawing orange. The condom earlier was grabbed at random; it's complete coincidence.

They look like they belong here, at this Garden of the Gods that is not even a little bit like the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. They compel attention just by walking in. People try to think if they know them, if they've seen them or their band or their movie -- no, it's probably a band -- if she's the star and he's her boy toy or if she's the star and he's her guitarist-whom-she-is-fucking, but they can't place them because they don't actually know them. They just recognize the feeling they get from them, like they are looking at people who are not entirely human.

Because Hawksley is not entirely human. Sera is not entirely human. They are as different from these people as the gods that these statues are made in the image of.

As soon as her top comes off he stares at her for a while, for a long while, predatory as a raptor for a few heartbeats before he looks away. He lays out in the sun, drapes beautifully until he feels in truth as sun-drenched as he always feels, until looking at him hurts because he seems to glow, and after all that, after a long while, he goes to slip into the pool, in a neat and tidy dive that is not professional but certainly hints at a long history and continued love affair with athleticism.

And she fucking watches him swim, as she said she wanted to and was going to, and there is something driven and raw about the way he moves. He's not roaming around, floating on his back, lazing in the water; he can do that whenever. This is the only exercise he's had (thatisnotfucking) since he got on that plane with Sera, and it's the first time she's ever watched him exercise (inawaythatisnotfucking) and she can see the same intensity that was in his eyes when she walked in on his hotel room and his hand was bandaged and he was drawing enormous salt-circles in the Four Seasons, which was just foreplay before staying up all night to read.

Hawksley swims like he's hunting something. Perfection, maybe.

After some time -- after he feels pleasantly worn out, after he feels as though everything ugly or knotted in his existence has been wrung out of him -- he stops. He rolls over and he floats, chest to the sky, eyes closed. When they open again, he finds her like a ruby in the sand. Swims over to her, lazily now, right up to the edge where she's sitting, and folds his wet arms over her lap, smiling up at her.

And she smiles back.

And he throws his arms around her hips, wraps her up, and throws them both sideways into the water.

He seems so much happier, after he's pulling himself up out of the water, scraping water from his hair and skimming it from his limbs, halfheartedly drying off with a towel. He throws the towel over one shoulder when he walks with her to the cabana, the curtains closing after they've been brought their drinks and snacks. He is, let's be honest, already reaching to remove the wet swimsuit so he can lounge, lazy and naked, atop his towel, when Sera looks at him in such a way that makes him go still, and lay back against the cushions, watching her, almost daring her.

She discovers that Hawksley has enough self-control to keep himself quiet, quiet on the verge of silent, his gasps hidden by the sounds of music, splashing, people talking all around them. She only has to push his hands away once. Okay, twice: and that second time he makes a soft moan of protest because she's had her breasts out all fucking afternoon and he's been so fucking classy and now she still isn't letting him --

"Fuck," he breathes, fighting himself down as his hips involuntarily arch, as she's sliding her mouth down on him. God, he knew she'd be enthusiastic, be shameless, he probably even knew -- and thought it with utter charity, by the way -- that she would be good at this, but he hadn't given much thought to how she could actually make him feel. He has his jaw clenched and his hand loosely, abidingly in her wet hair because he just wants to touch her somehow and this much she's allowing.

When it becomes evident that she is not going to leave him, that she isn't going to draw a condom from the ether or tell him she doesn't care again (and right now he would not be able to deny her

anything),

when he realizes that his whispered (gasped) warning is not a warning at all and would not be heeded even if it were, when it hits him that she wants him like this, just like this, that is when Hawksley starts to swear. That is when, pantingly, he starts saying things that would ignite a nun's habit, and that is when he grabs one of those soft cushions in blue silk and bites down on it, his groan almost a growl, his entire body an electric arc of pleasure that lasts only long enough to torture him.

He is panting against the pillow as his teeth depart it. His chest is moving, heaving with each breath, and his hands are clumsily, eagerly pulling her close to him as she is pulling herself up anyway. He puts his mouth on her breasts first, making a relieved sound, feeling his cock twitch torturously with momentarily renewed arousal comingled with satisfaction... and exhaustion.

Kiss me, he says, insisting on it, though he doubts she's shy about this. He says it again if he has to, and his lips are loose and comforted and adoring until he can't hold his head up anymore, resting it instead on her breasts. Covering one of those breasts with a possessive hand, closing his eyes just because the sun and the chlorine and not intending for a moment to fall asleep,

but he does.

His first question upon waking is what time it is, but it's only been fifteen minutes. He is smiling at her, his hair mussed and damp, his body languid, his arms wrapping warmly and firmly around her bare waist. He kisses her breasts, all the fuck over them, like he's been waiting all day for this. And he palms her ass. And he seems like he is about to roll her over and really behave inappropriately in that cabana, but surprisingly, he feels... satiated, right now. Content to -- to be blunt -- rub his face on her tits and grin lopsidedly at her before they stretch, and he yawns, and pulls on that still-damp suit again and tosses back the rest of a mojito with its melting ice and sweating glass, tossing canapes into his mouth and throwing open the curtains with both arms even while he's still chewing, looking out over the pool and the people and cypresses and statuary as though to make sure they are all still there.

His hand is offered to Sera. The sun is behind him.

It is a little surprising when, upon taking his hand, they both don't simply lift off the ground.

Later on, Hawksley is in a goddamn tux. It's jet-black and in all other ways traditional, his white shirt and the cut of the jacket both conservative. There will be men dancing tonight in tails, but Hawksley is not performing. He wears a vest beneath the jacket, and even his bow tie is black.

"I cannot tell you how fucking erotic this is," he says quietly, and in a tone of almost bored patience. This is after he's had her stand behind him on a stool so he could show her how to tie the bow tie the way his hands are used to doing it, this is after several fumbling attempts, this is when she's standing in front of him wearing that one piece of lingerie. He can't help himself; he wraps his hands around her ribcage while she's tying it for the third time, drowsily letting his thumbs circle her nipples, smirking at her when she struggles with the tie because of it, grinning when she -- well, let's face it. He's going to grin at her whether she shoves his hands away or leans into his touch, so either way he's smiling.

It's crooked but mostly okay. And he is shoo'd. And throws up his hands, departing her room for his own across the suite with mock-grousing, which is where Collins stands ready to just... adjust... that bow tie a little. Collins, who is left with instructions to make sure that Serafine gets to Hawksley later on in the evening, because Dan isn't here, is he? Collins has to do double duty, because that is why Collins is here.

Collins, though Hawksley gives him dire warnings about making sure she's taken care of, does not mind. He is rather amused by Sera, deep down. He escorts her to the auditorium later on, giving her his arm, feeling a surge of protectiveness in the style of gentlemen and cavaliers at the way people look at her, the flickers of awe in their eyes, the pride he takes in treating her as though she were, in fact, a Lady.

Hawksley's reaction, when he sees her, is not awe but something quieter, almost an ache, and when she slips into the seat beside him he takes her hand in his immediately and warmly, drawing it to his lips to kiss her knuckles. There is no superlative expression of how she looks. There is no whisper of what he wants to do with her later or what he thinks other people must think of her, and then. Not now. Just the heat of his mouth when he kisses her hand like that, part gratitude and part desire and part... something. Nameless somethings that are permitted, between the two of them, to remain nameless,

for they might perish if they were named.

It's not as boring as you might think, watching a lot of other people dance. They're very good. Sera misses a lot of it but they can talk a bit while they watch the rest; he puts his arm around her shoulders and urges her to lean against his side. He tells her little things about how they're doing: that the seemingly impressive thing she just saw is just a dance trick, it's not real technique, it's just flash. That there was a slip just barely covered up, but well covered up all the same. That that one guy, dancing right now? He is a dick, and his manager is a dick, and he goes through partners like bad bosses go through secretaries, and if you want to accidentally step on his foot with those ridiculous heels of yours I'll pretend I didn't notice because he is a fucking asshole. Things like: we're going to do that later. It's actually an easy step, you'll just look amazing doing it.

And later, they do. He teaches her by doing, which is the best and sometimes only way to learn anything. They don't dance as quickly or excitably as dancers who are wearing tea-length dresses or body-skimming glitter-covered miniskirts or dancers who have T-straps on their heels and scuffs on their soles to keep from slipping. But they do dance, and when she laughs people look and when he dips her at a wildly inappropriate moment for the song it is hard not to stare and hard not to hate them and love them in turns.

Of course Sera flirts. And frankly, so does Hawksley. They trade up partners a few times and she gets to see him with one of those dancers in T-straps and a short hemline, his jacket shrugged off and draped over a chair so he's in vest and shirtsleeves and they fucking tango and it's obvious which of them is the better dancer but since his job is primarily to lift her up and dip her and make her look good, it works. Oh, they make some friends. With Sera and her pills in the bathroom talking about the hot tub, and Hawksley with his eyes on the male partner of a woman he's got pressed up against his body, a look that man knows way too well and knows is meant for him and has nothing to do with that scantily clad dancer in Hawksley's arms.

But slower dances, as the social hours move on, Hawksley spends with Sera. He lets his attention drift from sudden friends and potential lovers and takes the floor with the one he brought, his hand on the small of her back, his mouth on her mouth,

his heart

pounding

for her.

Dinner. A catered affair, not as good as it could be, but most people are just hungry and replenishing on protein and downing alcohol like most of them haven't all day and Hawksley and Sera have since they woke up. The lights are dim and the centerpieces are low so people can talk. The tablecloths are long and white and soft and stain-retardant and flame-retardant as well. He has put his jacket back on and straightened his hair and his bow tie. Awards are given piecemeal throughout dinner, growing more frequent as the meal goes on and the courses are exchanged.

"And now," says a gleaming-toothed woman with her hair in a tight bun and her facelift really only evident at the corners of her eyes, "the lifetime achievement award."

There is a speech after that. Everyone already knows who the recipient is, but they're coy about it anyway, talking through light strains of music that hearkens to an earlier age, a golden age for the country and their fair, sporty art form. They mention her turns and her awards at various years of Blackpool and the advocacy she took part in regarding ballroom's acceptance by the IOC. Into the speech they show pictures of her: young and beautiful and fair, with a winning smile. Truthfully, she doesn't look much like Hawksley. Her features are too delicate, with an elegance that his masculinity turns a bit rough and animalistic. She's dark-haired, but there's something of him in her smile. Something of her in his smile.

Through all this, Hawksley holds Sera's hand, his expression carefully thoughtful, respectful, as though he were listening to them talk about someone he does not know very well at all.

In the pictures and videos, though, Sera gets to see how effortlessly and energetically his mother moved. She was top of her class, a leader in her field, and she loved what she did. They have clips near the end of her dancing with a young man, young enough to have not hit a pubescent growth spurt, wearing a suit that fits him surprisingly well. And the boy is, with only mild embarrassment, doing the cha-cha-cha. Just for fun. It's a brief clip, but it makes Hawksley's mouth pull to one side in a nostalgic, brief little smirk.

"-- could not be with us here tonight," says the presenter, her voice quieter for that. Rising: "But she is in our thoughts, our hearts, and our prayers. Accepting the award in her place tonight is her son, David Livingston."

A swell of music and a round of applause. Thankfully no spotlight swings over to him. Hawksley squeezes her hand, was already pushing his chair back, rising to his feet and buttoning his tuxedo jacket in one smooth motion. He walks without looking at applauding people up to the stage, and he takes the award from the presenter after she clasps his hand and he smiles at her and they kiss each other's cheeks. Everyone can see him try to beg off without approaching the microphone and they clap harder.

In the end he stands, actually somewhat awkwardly, at the stand and lowers himself to the mic instead of having it adjusted. "Ah... thank you," he says, his brows pulling together. "Thank you for this. I know my mother would have loved to be able to be with you tonight. She'll be so happy to know you're thinking of her."

He pulls back. That's all he's going to say. There's almost deafening applause. There's a goddamn standing ovation when he clears his throat and leaves the stage, walking back through people are standing for his mother, for him in his mother's stead, smiling and nodding at a few people who look at him as though his is their own son, back to

his seat beside Sera, with a gleaming, crystal-clear piece of non-artistic sculpture set on the table between their dessert plates.

With relief, the ceremony turns to a few more items, lighter ones to close the evening on a high note, and as those are going on, Hawksley leans over to Sera, whispering where their tablemates cannot hear:

"If you're keeping score, that was the second most awkward moment of my life. Collins walking in on me masturbating when I was thirteen still wins, though."

Serafíne

Sometimes the room spins the way the earth spins and she thinks that right and proper and sometimes the room spins the way the moon spins around the earth, and that feels appropriate too. Strange because while this room full of strangers-who-know-him are having their first drinks of the day, getting their first, bright little buzz going after All That Work, Sera is becoming just a bit more sober. Things are settling back down; the room becomes not a sandstorm of sensation out of which individual pieces swirl into brief and utter focus, but a buzzing shadow-cast sea, all darkness and light.

There are moments during the progression of the meal, which feels rather endless, all these courses and none of them as good as they could be because that is the nature of the beast, when Sera drifts and leans close to him, rests her temple on the apex of his right shoulder, quite as she did during that final competition, when he encouraged her to lean into him, wrapped his arm around her, and murmured little secrets about the dances, and dancers, on the floor. Her ridiculous heels go a fair way to erasing the height difference between them when they are on their feet and there's no noticing it when they are fucking because who has time to notice that, but seated side by side, it returns. So it is easy for her to rest her head on his shoulder, and she has to lift her chin ever-so-slightly from there to murmur little bon mots into his ear, amusing or suggestive by turn.

There are people applauding. There is that standing fucking ovation and down the corridor through which he walks from the dais back to the round table at which DAVID LIVINGSTON and GUEST were seated, the men closest to him are reaching out to clap him on the back, as if he belonged to them, as if he were their own son. They know that this is a phase, right? Girls like her. Sow your wild oats and come back to the fold, because this is wear you belong. The women are beaming over the rapid movements of their hands, watching him, seeking him, trying to find his eyes. Sera hates them all. It is black and immediate, this wholesale twist of it in her gut, god. She hates them. The way they touch him like he fucking belongs to them, when he does not belong to anyone,

except himself.

Everyone's standing. That's how it happens. One person rises and then another and then another and then by some sort of osmosis, the behavior spreads through the room. Blooms through it, erupts through it wholesale. The applause follows him down from the podium and all the way back to his table, and where all his tablemates are standing, their chairs pushed back.

Everyone's fucking standing. Sera is standing. She is not clapping. No, she is watching him with this bruised and breathless intensity. The whole time he was on the dais, accepting the award and refusing the microphone, speaking after the crowd started fucking stomping or what the fuck ever, insistent: the whole time she saw him swimming. Cutting through the waters of that azure pool, furious and driven, the water sluicing over the tapered planes of his muscled back. The way he just sliced through the lane.

Things happen in stutter-step, bounded and defined by the pounding pulse of the applause. He is half-way back and then he is there and she is just

reaching

for him and she does not know or remember how. Her arms unfold around him. She is cradling the back of his head with her left hand and sliding her cheek against his cheek and she wants to tell him something but she does not know what to say. So she speaks with her body instead of her mouth, reaching for him and then folding him closer, her eyes closed, just - holding on, fingers tightening in his hair. Her breath is hot against his cheek and her body, in that dress, is a study in intensity. Her eyes close. He can feel her lashes against his cheek. Her nose against his jaw.

She could hold him for fucking forever.

But see? soon enough,

she lets him go.

Later, he bends close and speaks to her below the hearing of their dinner companions. She withdraws, just far enough to meet and hold his eyes. It is not searching, that look, but it is so oddly steady, from a creature to unstable.

"You were brilliant," she tells him, and means it. She is going to kiss him again. Not the way she kissed him in their private cabana, when he demanded it, and tasted his come on her tongue. Not the way she kissed him at the breakfast table, when he pulled her into his lap and she let herself fall. Not the way she kissed Collins, so very chastely on the cheek as thank-you for his escort to the competition space. It is on the cheek, closer to the shell of his ear. It is warm. It is apologetic. It is fierce. It is not suggestive, but it is not remotely chaste.

"Sister Mary Bernadette." Murmured back to him, low. The awkward moments in their lives. "She had this little mustache. I was in the bath. I hadn't quite figured out yet how to make myself come." It's harder for girls. Not quite so linear.

She has already decided that she will undress him tonight. She will do it slowly, and she will do it reverently, and she will start with that fucking tie.

Hawksley

That embrace, for whatever it is worth, suddenly and surprisingly endears Sera to everyone in the room, all those people she despises for their ovation, for their claps on the shoulder and their whisked-away tears that only exist at the corners of their eyes. But she is living in multiple times, and in all those times she is watching Hawksley like this. He cannot join her in that slipstream, and does not recognize it, but he is embraced and he is startled a bit by it, but he eases his arm around her and slips her down to the seats with him and they speak quietly together about the poor people who caught them masturbating when they were younger.

Hawksley smiles at her, resting a hand above her silk-covered thigh, and says, instead of anything else he could be saying right now,

"Let's go out again tonight. We'll find dancers who are sick of their coaches and tourists and bachelor and bachelorette parties and we'll make them all feel like they really came to Vegas." A soft kiss, tenderly seen, much more heated in sensation: "We'll invite our favorites up to the room and lick vodka off their stomachs and have a good old-fashioned orgy. And you'll make sure every cock is candy-colored and condom-covered," he adds, quite enjoying the alliteration, as well as the fact that he is whispering this in her ear at a fucking banquet of squares.

That smile is still in place when he leans back. "I'm so glad I brought you." And this, still a murmur.

Serafíne

"What if I want you all to myself tonight?" Her head is tipped toward him, her sharply delineated profile given to the other diners at their table. She remembers none of their names and the conversation that begins to buzz around them feels banal and starched and cloying - quicksand rather than quicksilver. But see, the elegant waves of her hair falling over her rose-clad shoulder, the alert listening posture, the intimacy of her half-smile and the way her eyes capture and reflect, darkly, the candlelight.

They are the picture of elegant lovers.

She looks quite nearly perfect beside him, if you can ignore the dark-buzz of her hair, the scrawl of her tattoos, the dark ink skirling away from the eye beneath her bodice, or no, not even that one. The grinning skeleton on her upper arm, all those tattoos on her hands that flash every time she reaches for her water. Her dress is draped across her torso so loose and liquid that everyone at the table can see her breasts. Not her cleavage: her breasts, unbound, the way they move over her ribs with every breath she takes. Half the women in the room are wearing those microminis, spangled to the nth degree, cut down to here so as to draw the titillated eye to their bodies in very precise and micromanaged ways. But the gown Sera wears does not seem to have been shaped to reveal or conceal or boost or frame the view of her body, so much as -

merely

- to ornament, to adorn.

She lingers close, smiling this edgy little smile that he can sense more than see. Her mouth is lifted to his ear and her teeth are a bright white edge behind her lips and her head is turned aslant and her breath is warm against his skin and smells like the brandy alexander she ordered with her desert. Her head tips forward and she captures the curve of his ear between her teeth. Bites him, firm and delicate, and then closes her mouth warm and soothing over the impression of her teeth in his skin.

"What if I prefer tequila - " Nuzzling, murmuring, promising him every sort of debauchery beneath the sun. " - with my candy-colored, condom-covered cocks. What then?"

Her laughter is quiet as she draws away from him, picking up her little sequined bag and snapping it open. The candlelight runs in honeyed waves through her dyed-blond hair as she moves with an exaggerated precision, as if this were all a play. There is something pointillist and prim about her, as she takes a small square Tic-Tac container out of that expensive little clutch and shakes it, and taps his knee until he holds out his hand. Then she taps one of those little pills into his palm, grinning at him, sidelong.

It is blue.

The stamp is a messy approximation of the Cheshire Cat, disappearing into insubstantiality around a rather toothy smile.

Perhaps she has endeared herself to the whole room with by standing up to embrace him. The mood at their table has mellowed toward her, the frostiness of her initial reception has ebbed. The woman seated next to her, half of a power couple connected in some way to this whole affair feels comfortable enough with Sera's presence by now that she ducks her head and assays an experimental half-smile and mentions in that delicate and sidelong manner some people affect to make everything from the simplest request to the most monumental feel like a delicious little conspiracy that she herself could use a breathmint. Would you very much mind?

"Oh no, ma'am," returns Sera, with a beatific smile and a rather British pronunciation of the word ma'am, though that is the only place anything like a continental accent creeps onto her tongue. "I'm so sorry. They're not breathmints.

"They're drugs."

She's speaking loud enough for everyone at the table to hear them, but tilting her head toward the older woman, yes, as in friendly conspiracy. Sera shakes her tic-tac container rather fetchingly in the older woman's direction.

"But you're more than welcome to have one.

"Or two if you're feeling frisky."

Sera is feeling frisky. She is all humming to herself as the meal breaks apart and taps herself out another little not-really-a-Tic-Tac boost to her current high along the way and tucks her arm into his oh-so-properly as they exit. Someone grabs the award he was there to receive, lifetime achievement, and as they wend their way through the remaining tables this gentleman or that lady or this coach or that judge or that couple want to shake his hand. Hawksley - David - Davie - fends them off or takes their hands or offends them utterly while Sera waves over dancers and partners and hangers on, extending or re-iterating the half-issued invitations given earlier in the evening, whether wordlessly on the ballroom floor or quite directly in the ladies' room, where Sera scattered her little blue pills like breadcrumbs among the painted women in spangled-costumes.

They go back to the suite to change. Sera insists on undressing him, entirely herself. She is becoming higher-than-high as her second - third? - dose hits her bloodstream, smoothing the tuxedo jacket down off his shoulders losing herself in the texture of the vest beneath and against the palms of her hand, the way the fine weave of the fabric catches at her calluses, the warmth of his skin radiant through the layers of fabric, in a way Sera thinks that she might be able to taste. She can feel the beat of his pattern and the heat of his breath in the strange and implicit silence of the suite and it feels correct, it feels so exactly correct to be both close and at arm's reach. To dissolve into these sensations while holding herself - anticipatory and apart - against him.

No no no. She neither wants not requires his help, though there is a decision to be made at every step. The vest next or the tie or should she kiss him or no, she will not kiss him, not until she can kiss his skin rather than merely his mouth, not until the buttons of his shirt are coming free miraculously with the concentrated work of her hand.

Look at how her fingers move; and her thumb all-in-concert as the buttons slide through-and-free.

And no, no no no. She will save all other pleasures for later. She will savor all other pleasures later. She will -

They arrive at ghostbar an hour-or-so later and trail through the packed dance floor to the tables not reserved but still somehow open for them hand in loose hand, natural and thoughtless. The evening's formality is long since packed away. Sera has replaced her Chanel gown with a remarkably short skirt, that wraps her hips and ass in black leather straps secured by battered silver buckles, setting off her opaque, thigh-high black stockings rather nicely. Black leather boots, with platforms and stilettos and another round of buckles-and-straps lift her to within five or six inches of his 6'2" frame. She has paired these with a collared flannel shirt she leaves entirely unbuttoned over a black-and-plum push-up bra with hint of pinstriped satin framing the transparent cups, which themselves are set off by a sweet, rather twee little plum colored bow in the precise middle, just over her sternum. Point and counterpoint to the spiked leather wrist cuffs and the length of industrial chain she has looped around her neck as jewelry.

Within ten minutes of walking through the doors of ghostbar Sera has stripped off the flannel and tied it around her waist. Sometime over the course of the evening, both the flannel and the chain around her neck disappear entirely. The chain will resurface once or twice - slung over Rodrigo's shoulder, or wrapped a half-dozen times around a woman named Appollonia's wrist, before it vanishes entirely. The flannel will never be seen again, but really, Sera only put-it-on in order to take-it-off again.

She acquires a new necklace, later. Midway through the evening. Someplace with aerialists slung in trapezes overhead and a balcony overlooking a reflective through-a-glass-darkly pool illuminated by simmering gas-light contained in wrought-iron lanterns and glass cages, where two or three professional mermaids cavort, topless, while dancers gyrate on the pool deck and the competitive professionals with whom they are partying give everyone a rather remarkable show. The new necklace: a small silver vial with a neat little spatula stopper on a long silver chain and from it she offers him white powder to snort. The sort that zips right up the spine and then opens, 'plosive right? every blood vessel in the brain.

The many, many parties on the strip are still going strong when they adjourn to Hawksley's suite: with its balcony and its bar and its six-person-hot-tub. With its black lacquered ice bucket full of candy-colored condoms, which Sera reveals with an engaging flourish. Sera who is so giddily fucked-up that she can hardly say the four words six person hot tub without dissolving into something that feels-like flame, though she is trying most gamely to reiterate them laughingly into the ear of a comely twenty-something brunette whose professional partner has long-since begged off the evening's festivities claiming that sleep was a functional necessity.

The atmosphere is charged and hungry and strange and delicious and human and awkward and there's silence in the room and then there's music and someone accidentally turns on one of those televisions that rise out of the sideboards and it is set - as such things always seem to be in hotel rooms - on the inanities of The Weather Channel. Someone throws the curtains wide open and then the sliders and someone discovers the ice-bucket full of condoms and someone else discovers the jacuzzi-tub in the marble-and-chrome bathroom that fits six. Before the night is through, with the giddy energy of the young, the beautiful, the sexually uninhibited, they will squeeze in a few more than that. There are more men than women for reasons too diverse to be remarked upon, which is fine. More of the men are primarily interested Hawksley-and-each-other so things work themselves out. There's the Latin dancer with whom Hawksley has been flirting since the social dance and a redhead named Eustace with hot blue eyes, specialist in the Viennese waltz and the beginnings of a rather unusual tripartite pairing in one corner of the balcony, but really it is all just a slightly-more-debauched-than-usual Vegas cocktail party until the first someone gets naked -

- and naturally that first someone is Sera.

Who pushes aside the centerpiece display of fresh calla lilies on the dining / conference table with the heavy base of her half-drunk bottle of Patron, who laughs because the room is spinning opposite to the axis of movement of the earth, both of which she can feel in her spine and in her toes. Who requires so much fucking assistance (laughing, she demands it) with the buckles and zips and laces of her boots but not a single extra pair of hands as she works her leather skirt down over her hips in an undulant movement that looks like sex and feels like a work of fucking art before she pours that tequila over her still-clothed breasts and in a river down her sternum to half-pool over the taut, inverse curve of her stomach, rippling with the tension of her laughter and arousal. She leans back braced on her elbows, more goddess than sacrifice, a slice of lime caught delicately between her teeth as reward for the first person to please her enough to be invited up for a kiss.

Then it is Eustace's turn and then Sera's brunette and they lick tequila, not vodka, from the dancers' skin and sometime later there are three naked men making out in the jacuzzi and a couple steaming up the shower and Hawksley is sprawled on the low, modern leather couch in the suite's central room, jeans unbuckled, boxer-briefs pushed down over his thighs, while Rodrigo gives him a thorough and thoroughly professional blowjob and one of the women - who has not taken off a stitch of clothing other than her rather uncomfortable heels but who still wants to fucking watch and has therefore appointed herself bartender and taken up a position behind the suite's little bar and appointed herself bartender for the evening - just watches. Sera's arms are wrapped loosely around his shoulders, her mouth on his temple, her teeth razored across his pulse, her breasts crushed against the spine of the couch, and she is muttering these lovely, perfectly incongruous and rather chaste little endearments against his skin as he comes.

They dance with others, see? Sera and her brunette in the dark shadows of the only empty bedroom - technically his - Hawksley and whomsoever tickles his fancy. He ends the night, though, with the one he brought. Finds her curled up on the bathroom floor in the predawn, her temple against the travertine tiles. She is not sleeping precisely but seems so zoned-out, so blissfully fucked-up that she cannot quite move voluntarily and that bottle of tequila around which she has loosely wrapped her rather small fist is her second of the night, and it is fucking empty. Most of their guests are gone - slunk off to their own rooms in the waning hours of the dissolving night - somehow both enervated and invigorated by the letting-go, the hunger and ache, all that debauchery. A few remain, one sleeping naked, sprawled on the chaise on the balcony in the cold, dry desert air. Two others wrapped around each other on the low leather couch. The woman who appointed herself bartender - still fully clothed - faceplanted in the middle of her bed.

Sera still has one stocking and her garter belt on, the latter twisted around her hips, off-center and askew and she wakes enough when he bends down to pick her up to wrap her arms around neck and even more when he drops her in the center of his rumpled bed to realize that she wants him now and she wants him thoroughly and she wants him with every square inch of her overstimulated skin. And all he really wants to do is slip her beneath the covers and follow her and pull her close and sleep but somehow - god knows how - he's hard again for her and pulls away, yes, to work down the covers but finds himself reaching for a condom - pink, for god's sake - while she's whimpering and boneless and barely coherent and there's a red mark in her cheek from the pattern of the tile and he couldn't ask her to ride him because she has ingested so fucking many substances that there's no way she could remain upright but she wants -

wants wants wants wants wants

- wants him to fuck her until she

dissolves,

into nothing, into everything, in his arms, one more time.

Hawksley

"Then you'll have it," he murmurs, and he means having him all to herself. He also means tequila. Whatever she wants. Anything.

What else does he have to offer, after all?

Hawksley kisses her there, at the table, with these mundane creatures surrounding them, with an award for his mother gleaming on the table. He brings his hand up and wraps it around her ribcage through that dress and against her skin itself, cupped just beneath her breast. It is a very slow kiss, and it goes on for a long time, until they are quite lost in it, in each other, in the way it feels to do this in the midst of light-speckled darkness and low voices beneath a loud soundsystem.

His tongue slides tastingly over her lips when they part, and then sealingly over his own when he draws back from her, watching her, and the truth is that he doesn't care which they do. Invite a half-dozen dancers back to their suite for an orgy or kiss her neck slowly, gaspingly, while he moves inside of her until they sleep. He doesn't care. He runs his knuckles over her jaw, permitting himself to be entranced, while she is getting treats from her thousand-dollar purse and giving him an after-dinner mint.

Hawksley knows it's pure, that she wouldn't bother with anything less, but all the same, he just downs it in a swallow rather than crushing it with his teaspoon and taking it under his tongue. Doesn't want to make a show. Doesn't want to sit there with his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth for fifteen minutes to avoid tasting that shit. So he swallows it, and in a while he will take another and roll with it for hours upon hours.

His eyes flick to the woman asking for a breathmint, and Sera's answer. He smirks. The woman, well-trained by society, looks at Hawksley suddenly as though to confirm or permit Sera's behavior, and he gives her a bug-eyed, mocking little look that is nothing short of nasty, nothing short of mean, til she shrinks away and returns to Sera, to their conspiracy, to the offer of drugs.

Under the table, he smooths his hand up Sera's thigh. Her dress is too long to get anywhere; the silk folds in between her legs anyway. He cups his hand over her cunt anyway, strokes her through all that silk, though what little lingerie she wears under it, and the more champagne he drinks the less he cares, until they are getting up to leave before they're quite being dismissed. Outside the ballroom, the hallway is elegantly lit and thickly carpeted; Hawksley presses her to the wall there, in between columns, kissing her like he's going to eat her starting with her breath, fingers tugging mindlessly upward at her skirt like he's going to eat her starting with her clit and

the drug hasn't even really hit him yet.

People begin to walk out and are startled but try to ignore them, the way he's kissing her neck and the way she's looking at them daringly, some dark goddess staring past his shoulder, warning and luring them at once to be bewitched just like this one.

Some are given more direct invitations. Some only get that: Sera's eyes. Or Hawksley's, searing and avian and predatory. Both of them sharp. Both of them knowing, because Knowing is what separates them from mere mortals now.

One of them whispers to the other: let's go change and the other nods. It hardly matters who.

When they undress, Hawksley is feeling it. He can't. Stop touching. Her breasts. He strokes them with only his fingertips like he's sculpting a meringue into a peak. He is fascinated by the way her nipples harden and tighten in on themselves, and they lose quite a lot of time when she has his jacket and vest off, shirt undone, and he's pulling her towards him, trying to cajole, muttering no, no, it's fine, let me like worrying about permission is at all part of her argument for not letting him suck on her breasts for oh, say

an hour.

Two, tops. One for each.

In the car he's all over her. Wearing whatever it is he's wearing, casual and thoughtless and dark, trying to convince her that there is nothing at all in the world she would like better than to let him finger her to orgasm in the back seat. Maybe she lets him. Maybe she comes and he is laughing, panting against the satiny cup of her exposed bra, and he is tasting her off his fingers with a low, lazy grin and she follows that taste with another pill she drops onto his tongue like Communion, another pill he takes in a single swallow.

In the bar he's somewhere, they lose each other, that's okay, they can find each other again in a heartbeat. With magic. Without it. They are magic. And everyone who dances with them and follows them and aches for them and takes drugs and drinks and tries to understand how they are As They Are can feel it. That is why they follow, like the rats and the children following the piper.

Sera is the Piper, though, and Hawksley knows it, and Hawksley loves her for it.

That is what he thinks, later on, when he finds her at the place with the aerialists and trapezes and mermaids. They are on the balcony and the desert night has cooled off but they smell like sweat and people and music. He comes up behind her, presses to her, wraps his arms around her and tucks his head down on her shoulder in a quiet sleepy tender moment that he cannot and will not help, and when he rubs his mouth over her shoulder because the feel of her is so amazing, so amazing, he thinks many things, and she

offers him a line. He hasn't done coke in a long time, but he does it now, breathes it right into his skull and the top of his head explodes and this is drunker and higher than he has been in years and will be for longer but they are in Vegas

and his mother is in a fucking residential facility

and Hawksley does not want to think about one of these things.

There are running-away drugs and running-towards drugs and sometimes these are the same things. Just depends on what you're running from.

Or to.

Not everyone they invite makes it to the suite. Not everyone who says they'll be there makes it to the suite. Some realize, when out of the presence of the wizard and the seer, that they do not want to go that far. That it would be too much. Some are just lost: some drug-fueled, alcohol-hazed dream of their own, and good luck to them in it.

Hawksley is making out with Rodrigo while Sera is trying to say six-person-hot-tub and laughing and igniting. Hawksley is also muttering to Rodrigo to shut up when he starts to ask about the Weather Channel, and this is going to be the beginning of Hawksley pushing Rodrigo to his lap, but in the meantime, there's a beautiful slip of a blonde sliding onto the couch next to him, and she slides her hands up his shirt, kisses his chest, sucks at one of his nipples and tells him not to stop when he stops kissing Rodrigo for a moment. So Hawksley obeys, and arches when she bites him, and for a little while he loses track of time and where he is entirely.

Until Sera shoves the calla lilies off the table. Water and flowers roll to the ground and the vase rolls to the corner but doesn't fall, and there are two mouths on Hawksley's body, four hands, but he's watching her while people paw at her, take off her boots and try to reach for her skirt and in some cases this sight would horrify him and he would incinerate them but right now, right now tonight and with her laughing and gasping like that, all it does is make him intensely, achingly hard. The way she moves when she lifts her hips and pushes the skirt away. His hips lift in answer from across the room.

"Get down," Hawksley mutters. It's unclear who he's talking to. Rodrigo gets there first and the blonde lifts herself up and Hawksley makes her turn so even with his mouth on her he can stare at Serafine. While Eustace and the brunette and run their tongues all over her. While someone gets a slice of lime traded to their mouth. He barely comprehends what else there is. He is getting his cock sucked. The blonde is whimpering and the bartender is staring and Sera is walking slowly across the room, smelling of sweat and sex and tequila and lime, and he

frankly

orders the blonde to kiss her. As his head falls back, his breath panting, as Rodrigo is paying him back for every mean little utterance by dissolving him like this, he wants to watch that girl worship Sera somehow, kiss her stomach or her pussy or her ass, kiss her breasts, her mouth, her hand, whatever Sera allows. And Sera flows over him from behind him, hair curtaining his face, still smelling faintly of the hotel shampoo, and that is when he finally just

closes his eyes.

She tells him lovely things. She whispers them in his ear, tender and pretty and soft things that he is listening to, fixated on, even when his hand is in that latin dancer's hair and he is -- to be as blunt as one can get -- fucking the man's mouth. Coming. Dying.

Hawksley goes naked onto the balcony, stands there looking out and down into the darkness. He feels the great world spin all around him and decides no more. No more tequila no more E no more nothing, but he doesn't need tequila or E or nothing right now. He steps over someone unconscious, goes back inside, and Rodrigo is somewhere with someone. Hawksley hears Sera moaning from the bed -- his bed that he hasn't bothered with -- and he has a brief thought that he wants to join them, wants both of them, wants all of them, everyone here, but he doesn't. He walks by that little blonde who is sitting looking dazed on the couch. He picks up her hand, doesn't say a word.

Walks her to the front sitting room, mostly untouched by the party -- mostly but not entirely -- and sits down with her on his lap at first, until she is squirming and whimpering and pleading. But when they turn, she is on her knees clinging to the back of the couch and his condom this time is electric blue and he tells her afterward that she's lovely. She's so sweet. He touches her and she's so sensitive that she almost screams at him, bucks and makes him grin -- a bit evilly, sure -- at her. Hawksley kisses her cheek. Tells her that if she goes across the hall a nice older man will get her a cab and even pay for it, and make sure she gets safely... wherever she's going.

She seems surprised and asks if she can't sleep there, and Hawksley tips his head and laughs softly and says: "Of course not."

That is how the rooms end up cleared out. Gradually, one by one or in pairs or trios. The sleeping are waked, nudged. Hawksley is shameless about this. He is not cruel about it unless he has to be but he wants them gone and he does not care much where they go, only that they leave. He's perhaps gentlest to the bartender-girl, shaking her softly awake and smiling at her and telling her the same thing he told the blonde: across the hall. Nice older man. Cab.

All the things he says mean get out. I'm done with you.

The chaise he leaves on the balcony. Emptied out, the suite looks wrecked but not trashed. He looks around and then goes to find Sera, who is lying on the floor of the bathroom.

Hawksley leans his head against the doorjamb and smiles at her. He wonders if she'll need her stomach pumped or just fingers down her throat or something. He thinks these things fondly, a little achingly, and when he bends to her he whispers that if she needs to he can help her throw up in the tub, which is just about the most goddamn romantic thing he can think of to say right now. But he cradles her, not nearly so far gone as she is, probably will never be quite so far gone -- in this manner -- as she is on a regular basis. He nuzzles her, and is still drunk and high enough not to think much about things like how filthy they are. So he just takes her to his bed, flipping back the blankets that she and the brunette fucked atop off, throwing them to the ground.

In sheets only, he tucks her down and crawls in beside her, quite prepared to wrap his arms around her and sleep for twelve years, a hundred,

when she moves the way she does, and turns to him, and she's reaching for a condom and rubbing herself like that against him. Maybe she uses words. He can't understand words but she's touching him and his head is falling forward against her, brow to her clavicle, wanting to let her, wanting whatever it is she wants, but Hawksley has a point that is

too much,

even if she never does.

He strokes his hand down her arm to her wrist and stills her hand where she's touching him. He kisses her shoulder and he whispers no, again no, nuur 'inayyi, an utterance that has no meaning to her at all. No, and she whimpers. She whimpers like that and Hawksley can't bear it. So he kisses her. So he touches her, like he did in the car, like he likes to, his body over hers and his hand between them, til she comes, til she dissolves, til she can sleep and til she can let him sleep and til he thinks that if he dies in his sleep sure it's okay because of the way she looked and the way she sounded just now, arching into his arms, held down by his body so she couldn't fly away.

Morning comes, and then afternoon. At some point one or both of them get up and piss or drink water or something sane but mostly they just sleep until it is dusk again. The room is put back to rights without ever touching his bedroom. Breakfast is waiting for them and discarded. Lunch is waiting for them and discarded.

When Sera wakes up, Hawksley is in the shower. The water is running and the unused pink condom is lying on the foot of the bed. The empty bottle of Patron is on the nightstand. There is a banana and a bottle of water beside it with EAT ME written on the banana's peel.

They stay in for dinner this time. Hawksley eats rich, fatty, salty, horribly unhealthy food drenched in butter, but only drinks water. They eat in front of the television with his arm looped around her shoulders and his head resting against her head, watching Animal Planet. His hand moves on her upper arm and he tells her quietly how amazing she feels.

He tells her, just as quietly, he'd like to go home after dinner. When they get back to Denver it will be the hour when Sera sometimes wakes up and goes out, and if she wants to do that it will be perfect timing, but she can probably already tell that Hawksley will not go with her.

But he will take her home if she likes, too. To Hogwarts, to that palatial and antiquated home. He will go ahead and put on some music that no one ever intended to dance do but he will dance to it with her, and elegantly, and take her upstairs and take her to bed and this time, this time,

wearing some boring plain condom from his own supply,

fuck her until she dissolves

into everything.

Serafíne

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Vegas

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