Post superbowl, pre-seeking tacos

Kalen Holliday

[And then magically, we move to tacos.]

Kalen Holliday

After they talk with Pan, they move on to get tacos. Of course they do. Kalen has a strange obsession with making sure Grace has eaten. As he does about half the times he drags her out to get food, he doesn't seem terribly interested. Probably most of his tacos are going to be boxed up and taken home.

"So. Ah. How was the...entire half hour we were apart?" He asks Grace, a little amused, once they've settled into a table.

Grace

"It was boring. I had time to think, which is a terrible thing really," she says, and then crunches into her (green chili pork) taco. Her face registers a shock at the bright green fire coming from the thing, but then she mutters "mm goom" with her mouth full. The thing is full of fresh green chilis that taste like they were picked and chopped and served that day. In other words, fantastic. And completely too hot to scarf down.

"These. are. so. good," she remarks, once she can speak again. Federal may not look like much from the outside, but you cannot complain about the street's food. This is where little old grandmothers will serve you the same thing they feed their grandchildren, and it can sometimes be just that glorious.

Serafíne

So.

Serafíne did not actually rejoin the mages who repared to the priest's book-filled study. She's been there before; she knows where it is. Something else commanded her attention or dragged her from the immediate and temporal to what- and where- the fuck ever. Kalen and Grace and Pan had time for a genuine conversation with currents and threads and peaks and valleys before hunger or duty or whim brought the gathering to an end and Kalen and Grace to the taqueria on the corner of Federal and Eleventy-Fifth Street. Which may not be an actual address.

The place is small and close and has a window from the street right into the kitchen where you can see the cooks making the tortillas by hand. Slapping them out expert and quick and frying them lightly on the griddle, one side then the next.

Though it is usually crowded, the location is not crowded tonight. They haven't got a single television mounted to a single bracket anywhere in the tiny dining room, so the Super Bowl fanatics have parked themselves elsewhere.

Grace and Kalen practically have the dining room to themselves. At least until the front door opens and a certain someone slips into the place. Still wearing her ridiculous sunburst-bright sunglasses, her nearly pristine white brocade jacket over a fitted fishnet top over a black satin bra. Her arms are stacked with particolored bracelets glittering with glass, mirrors, bits of crystals, which make a quiet song with every movement she makes.

Kalen Holliday

"Well, perhaps you must sign up for more classes, so that all of your thoughts will become structured and boring and in danger of calcifying or something." Kalen teases. And then he catches sight of Sera. Or the feel of her. Either could be responsible for the pause.

He lifts one hand to wave.

Grace

"Sera!" Grace says, and waves her over. It's a bit of a surprise, because while she may have slightly been aware of the Cultist's presence at the church, that feeling vanished soon after. Wasn't expecting to see her again today.

"You should try the tacos. I mean seriously, try the tacos."

Grace is dressed in her usual jeans and sneakers and turtleneck combo, her laptop bag slung over her still, even though she's seated now. Maybe she's thinking it belongs as close to her as possible? She's also wearing this grin on her face, what with her two favorite people in the world now in the taco place, with tacos that are hot as hell and heavenly besides.

Serafíne

Sera tips her sunglasses down her nose so that she can look over those gilt, baroque frames at Kalen and Grace, as one waves, and then the other. Her mouth is painted and absolute crimson today and it makes the coil of her half-smile quite a distinctive and crawling sort of thing, though that precision last just so long, before the smile widens and deepens and she is waving back and sauntering over.

Distorting the world with her presence, the way they all do.

She catches the waitress on her way over to the table and murmurs an order in the woman's ear and, Grace, Sera's not order tacos. She leans over Grace all familiar and drops her mouth to the crown of Grace's head and smiles over the crown of Grace's head at Kalen and a few strands of Grace's hair catch in the intricate frame of the glasses.

Everything feels so surreal tonight. Sera lets Grace go and pulls out a chair, dragging it across the tiled floor. Shakes her head quietly to Grace over the tacos.

"Dan made me eggs this morning."

By which she means: two hours ago.

"You'll have to enjoy them for me, yeah?"

Meanwhile, the waitress is already approaching with Sera's order. A bottle of excellent tequila. Three shot glasses. Lime, and salt.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen sighs and leans across the table to pick up Grace's taco. He takes a bite of it, and makes a face, but he doesn't actually seem put off by the spice, just surprised. He sets the taco back down on Grace's plate once he's swallowed.

"I see we like our endorphins," he says to Grace with a laugh. "It is good though."

He watches Sera and Grace, perhaps a bit curiously. He doesn't seem bothered about Sera's assertion that she had eggs this morning at this hour and he seems amused when he sees what Sera ordered, though beyond a slight widening of his smile it's hard to be sure, exactly what he's thinking. Outside the church, he's a little more concerned with the possible entrances and exits and a little less open.

Grace

"I always like my endorphins. They're very nice," Grace says, just as Sera bends over and kisses her head. Which, by the way, she accepts like the does most of Sera's touchy-feeliness, like it's just a thing. Doesn't both her, really.

"Dan's a good guy, then, but you are missing out."

Well, okay, maybe not missing out actually, since tequila is coming. With three shot glasses. Why Sera? Are you trying to get Grace drunk again? It's a question with only one possible answer.

Serafíne

The bowl full of limes, the dish of sharp little crystles of rock salt crowd their way onto the already full table. The basket of chips and the bowls of salsa that come gratis with the meal, the plates of tacos and beans and rice and accoutrements for the meal in which Grace and Kalen were already engaged. She has pulled the white hood of her brocade jacket up to rest on the crown of her head, in a way that emphasizes rather than conceals the razor line of her sidecut. For the bottle of tequila, Sera pays immediately and in cash with or perhaps two of those larger, more crowded bills, waving away any change.

"I never miss out Grace," Sera remarks with a deep, rich inhale as she takes the seat beside her. A spark of a look across the table at Kalen and while Sera is easy as fuck to read, she is wearing sunglasses tonight which makes it a mite more difficult. Still: something about the survey she takes of him, the way her chin drops and then rises in a lifting arc suggests that she has taken note of his wariness. The shuttered body language.

Sera herself sometimes looks for entrances and exits. Usually when she wants to go smoke.

" - and see," quietly, murmuring, challenging, as she unseals the bottle and starts to pour the shots. " - endorphins. Perhaps you were meant to be one of fucking us."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen seems mostly content to watch the exchange between Grace and Sera, and beyond them the rest of the remarkably empty restaurant. His lips again curve up into a smile as Grace insists to Sera she is missing out on the tacos and Sera bids that maybe Grace should have chosen the Ecstatics, with a little more force than he ever has about the Order. Granted. Grace could have been happy as an Ecstatic. The same is less true with the Order. Of course, when Marcel had brought Kalen home, wild and wary and unconcerned with things like books or rules...there had been a pretty heated debate about even trying to train him. Marcel had won. And he had been right.

There is tequila falling into shot glasses and it sounds for a few seconds like rain. Waterfalls. He can taste the air in the rainforest where it once rained so hard the roar of the water drowned out all the sound and consumed itself somehow until everything was a great roaring silence.

No. They are not somewhere to go falling through time and memory now. He forces his attention back to the sight of Sera's hands and all those glittering bracelets and people making tortillas.

Grace is used to that by now, the way his eyes lose focus and then snap back, suddenly clear again. She's been around for a few times when he suddenly snaps back and has to figure out what they're talking about. He's never asked her what day it is, or anything terribly dramatic. But it isn't uncommon to watch him trying to fill in the last thing you must have said based on the last thing he remembers and the thing you're saying now.

Grace

"Man, all the time, nothing but the blasted recruiters after me," she says, but it's no complaint. The grin on her face says as much.

There have been others, oh Sera, oh Kalen. Between the Ecstatics and the Order, she'd pick the Ecstatics every time, but then their ways do not make any sense to poor, logical Grace.

She crunches her way through her taco again, all glorying in food while Kalen is off in la-la land. She's off in a la-la land of green chili sweetness.

"Speaking of recruiters. I met a guy named Adam Gallowglass the other day. Has a book shop. Also desperately wants me for his crowd," she rolls her eyes at that one.

Serafíne

There is a rather distracted air about Serafíne tonight, as well. Later, later she will slip out with her housemates who are also her bandmates for a show. Their first show since she they were infected with the Hydra virus. Since she was kidnapped and locked away for a week or more, dying. Drowning in her own blood. Sera does not really think about such things these days, and her distraction is less specific and more general, this spark of something, this kernal, this thing-to-be-known inside of her that she can feel between her sternum and her skin or perhaps beneath her sternum; some sort of bright aura haloing strangers at the edge of her field of vision. Something, god - something.

Still, she is nearly always aware of the people around her. Their shifting moods; their sudden changes. When Kalen snaps back to the hear and now he may find Sera's eyes quite directly on him. Her glasses, rather: two of his selves framed in the dark lenses, framed by a sunburst of ornate little gold discs.

Something remarkably bold, absolutely frank, about the way she stares.

"You good?" Sera asks him, outright, as he comes back.

Tequila. Sera takes a shot, licks her thumb for salt and does not bother with the lime, after. Pours herself another in quick succession and scoots the other glasses toward Grace and Kalen respectively. Sera is not trying specifically to get Grace drunk. Sera is trying to get the world fucking drunk, and Grace is just a casualty. Still, she does not insist, like an asshole, that they drink if they wave their shots away. Just takes that in stride as well.

" - never heard of him. Where's the bookstore?"

Somewhere in an expensive handbag we have not yet described, Sera's phone is starting to buzz.

Kalen Holliday

"What?" He asks, tiling his head at Sera. It takes him a second to understand why she's asking. "Oh. I'm fine. Thank you." It's difficult to be sure if that thank you is for asking, or for the shot he's accepting, or for both, but he takes the shot glass in his hand. He does not drink it though. Kalen is accustomed to toasts.

And speaking of memory...Adam.... "You would not be so poorly matched to his crowd of people, Kit. They have a particular thirst for knowledge. More reading. Less adrenaline. I'm actually half surprised he's come out into the wild." Kalen smiles, but it is a fond smile.

"If he stays, he'll probably help us with our project." Something occurs to him that sends a frown appearing and disappearing so quickly it's difficult to catch, and then he smiles again. "It's good that he's in town."

Grace

[[To Jess: I told you, it would show up in the scene just like that. To the others: Jess has yet to figure out where the bookstore is, so assume you know IC!]]

"So Denver is the wild eh? Where is the not-so-wild? Think he'll help us with all those books?" she asks, and takes her own salt-covered shotglass in hand. There's something hungry there, in that look she gives Kalen, that has nothing to do with tacos.

"The bookstore is at the corner of [blank] and [awesomesauce]," Grace says, spinning the shotglass around and admiring the crystals of salt, the glass. "And it's full of neat stuff. I signed a book for him."

Serafíne

Sera does not make a verbal toast. She drinks and pours herself another and Grace is admiring the viscous liquid and the gleam of light on the salt crystals and Kalen is asking hmm? and saying thank you and Sera does not seem to care what or why for. She is already on her second drink and will soon be on her third, but there is a very precise way she picks up the shot glass and sort of crashes it firmly and deliberately into Kalen's shotglass and then into Grace's shotglass. Just enough to splash a little tequila on the table or at least the nachos for the gods.

Then she inhales, all sharp, downs it all. Makes note of the address in her head as Grace tells them that she signed a book and Kalen comments on their project. Projects! Sera does not like projects. Sera does not like work and -

- her phone is buzzing and she retrieves and thumbs it on and curls her tongue over her lower lip in consideration as she listens to her consor on the other side and she doesn't know where she is so Kalen and Grace hear from her "Okay" and "okay" and "you can pick me up but bring me something else to wear." and "I don't know" from Sera's end before Sera hands the phone to Grace asking Grace to tell Dan where they are and therefore where he can pick her up. "

And. So.

She will pour herself at least one more shot and hang out a bit longer after Grace passes on the directions, but soon enough she will escape, slip out into the now-darkness, sunglasses still firmly in place, hardly knowing what she's following but understanding that it is all inside her. Always.

Grace

[And I think we are fading there! Goodnight!]