Not mine, yours.

Serafíne

Friday night, after the dinner hour, before midnight. Before the day has turned and changed, a text:

I want to see you.

Everything's spelled correctly so maybe she's sober. But iphones, man. The things they auto-correct.

Hawksley

There hasn't been a time yet that Hawksley just hasn't responded. He's been away from his phone for a while, or asleep, or in another country, but eventually he always gets back to Sera with relative promptness. Tonight is no different. Tonight he texts her back a couple of minutes later:

Where are you this time?

Serafíne

It makes her smile when the text comes back. She's still at the bar, has returned to her half-finished drink after watching Ian leave, and there's the flash of her smile quick-striking to the bartender.

This fucking bar.

The silly smiles lingers as she taps the bar for attention and leans forward to ask him, What the hell is this place called again?

And bartender tells her, of course.

And then Sera, smiling, tells him:

Wms & Graham.

Hawksley

So helpful.

Hawksley has responded to that first text before she gets the answer, the other one.

Cool. See you in a bit.

Which he does. He doesn't text her or call her from outside the speakeasy that is made to look like a bookshop. He goes inside, dressed in those yellow jeans of his, but this tee is granite-colored and he's wearing a striped hoodie as well, navy and white. It's dark now; he doesn't have mirrored shades clipped to his front. They open the the bookcase for him to let him into the narrow hallway that leads to the bar proper, and he can see Sera sitting there within seconds of coming out of that dark tunnel.

His keys dangle from a finger. He stands at the mouth of the hallway, jangling them slightly at her eyeline.

Serafíne

Per+aware for my reference.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 5, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

Sera is by herself and she's seated at the bar, yes, and the barstool beside her is no longer empty, but the person who has filled it is talking to someone else, on the other side, and she has a hand around the mouth of her glass and she is contemplating it as much as she is drinking it, feeling the heft of it in her hand, watching the light move and allowing herself to entertain the vibe of the crowd, just to feel it. Her senses all open; and she can feel him outside and maybe half-a-block away, not half-a-city away, but she feels him before she sees him and that feeling sinks warm into her skin, warm enough that she shivers, pre-emptively, before he darkens the first door.

Already has money on the bar to pay for her probably overpriced but she's fucking loaded like she cares drink and a generous tip to boot by the time he's through the tunnel and when he's on the other side she looks up, this spiking glance that finds him through the crowd.

Sera's wearing a short black cocktail dress; the sides bare, open, just braided together, the fabric itself the translucent sort of black likely to go sheer when illuminated by flashbulbs, like she fucking cares. And as she rises she's reaching for a little weighted clutch with a handle like brass knuckles shaped like skulls that cost thousands and a patched and battered leather jacket she got in a thrift store for nine dollars and seventy-five cents.

She has been thinking of Hawksley - distinctively thinking of him - for quite some time tonight, and she's so pleased when he appears framed by the tunnel as if by magic shaking those keys at her and she cuts back from the bar and leaves behind her cash and tosses her jacket over her shoulder and walks right up to him and drops her goddamned jacket (though not the clutch) on the floor and wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him and the kiss says welcome and hello and oooh absurd yellow jeans and keys! and many other things.

She tastes like gin and lime and cherries.

Pulls away and drops her brow to the bridge of his nose. Looks down the line of his body and the line of their bodies and the lines between their bodies.

"Take me someplace better than this."

Hawksley

The door is dark but Hawksley, within it, is light itself. The light that, on earth, all lights imitate and echo. The original light, the life-giving light, the single star that is so loved because of its proximity and its gravity. It is not much different from other stars, though. Not really. They are all the same in the sense that they are all warm and unique and bright and distant.

Like mages, that way.

He doesn't know she's been thinking of him, or that she could feel him. He knows she's wearing a dress of cutouts and that she's walking over to him and people are noticing her because they saw this woman sitting there, they've seen her tonight, they do not think she makes much sense in that outfit with that clutch walking up to a guy in colored jeans and a hoodie like he's the whole reason she came here tonight.

He puts his hands on her waist when she gets to him, and his hands are warm right on her skin through the cutouts and his keyring is cold where it is still looped around a finger, pressed to her side. She kisses him with invitation and warmth and depth and delight and silliness and his hands, briefly, tighten on her body. It's a quick flex, involuntary, as he's lowering his head to kiss her back. We're sorry to you, Sera, for even in your absurd heels you are not as tall as this man, who you kiss like that almost every time you see him,

when you aren't bleeding from a head wound. And sometimes even then.

They stop kissing. It's not terribly gradual. He is looking at her, eyes bright and sunlit even in the shadows they stand in, his hands unmoved from her body, his knee slightly between her thighs because you have to get close, see, in that narrow hallway and for a kiss like that one. He doesn't move just yet, his back to a wall.

"What am I, your chaffeur?" he quips, like he cares, which -- if he did -- would have kept him from coming tonight at all, or even answering that text. He lifts his head, looks around. "I don't know," he tells her, "it doesn't seem so bad. You didn't like having to go through a bookcase?"

Serafíne

"Dan's my chaffeur," Sera returns, and she catches her lip between her teeth and turns her head without breaking that point of contact between her brow and his skin. His nose or, now, maybe his cheek. Casts a half-lashed look back into the bar, which feels alien and unsettled and fine and strange. "You're not my any fucking thing."

She breathes out sharply and tips her head back to look at him, fully this time, then drops her eyes to his shoulders and then his chest and then lower.

He is against the wall. Sera opens her hands and then glide over the muscled frame of his shoulders as she steps into him thighs around his knee, pressing him back against the way.

"You belong to you. And I fucking like it like that.

"But I still wanna go. Take me anywhere. Fuck it, take me dancing."

Hawksley

[I FEEL NOTHING. manipulation + subterfuge. // diff +1 for reasons.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

[What does you feel!]

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

Hawksley

There's a flash, a pull, a twitch of a grin that wants to live when she says that Dan is her chaffeur. Next time he sees Dan he will probably tell him that. But it's followed by the other side of the twitch, the part that pulls down, the one that makes his brows ache to draw themselves together you're-not-my-any-fucking-thing emphasis on the my but emphasis mostly on the not preceding it.

He is not good at hiding anything and he seldom tries. He's not good at doing this with anyone but with people who have one very specific thing in common with Sera he is even worse and those people with that one very specific thing in common with Sera but not in common with Hawksley comprise the majority of human beings on the planet. He can't lie worth a damn, he can't hide, and this is why he doesn't try, but he tries now.

Hawksley blanks his face. Doesn't, as a good liar would, replace it with something else, just as believable. No deflections, just a shutdown: he's fine. See? Look at his placid brow and straight mouth, he feels nothing, he is fine, his chest did not just momentarily cave in, that word echoing in the back of his mind isn't ow.

Even if she likes it that way. Even if, pressed a bit to the wall, he is also wanting, also aroused, also thinking no, not dancing, she just wants to go she wants to go anywhere and he is thinking of his car parked down by the Platte River and of that already-short skirt hiked up her hips and her saying the word now, of her saying something about feeling like a map of light, which only makes his breath catch to even think about it.

"The river?" he says, more seriously than he means to, and it already seems odd and off because normally Hawksley would just take her somewhere, wouldn't ask or suggest or check, would just... go.

Serafíne

The truth is, Sera does not want to look. Not too close, not precisely, not tonight, when she also does not want to think about how a too-slick stranger's too-slick come-ons and his hand settled deliberately beside her own and his finger tracing its way up the back of her hand made her think of Hawksley, made her want Hawksley, right there, in that moment.

She likes strangers; likes their hands and likes their bodies and likes the way they turn themselves toward her. And here they're close and she's leaning in and pulling back and her gaze is somehow slantwise and oh there is the beating of her heart, the quickening of something in her chest, which she does not name because she does not Name things. Because she lets them be, because she just feels.

So, listen, her gaze is shunted away from his face, down through the shadows, and her breath catches too and he suggests the right and there is a question mark, there is a question mark, Sera there is a question mark right there and she hears that and feels the strangeness of it bcause her eyes sweep back to his, dark in the shadowed space and Sera reaches up, breathing a bit ragged now, and rests the meat of her thumb on the center of his lower lip. Holds it there as she studies the shape of his mouth around her thumb, then replaces the thumb with her mouth.

This kiss is deep; is not precisely an apology, is more some sort of savage seal.

"The river." Sera confirms, murmurs over his mouth. Catches his lip between her teeth and he can feel the caging tension in her core, through the braided straps that hold the dress together. Each breath she draws before she draws it. Her mouth pulls from his, glides up the sharp sweep of his cheek and she cannot reach his ear unless he bends his head to her but he can see whait she wants, and maybe he wants to feel her hot breath against the lobe.

"Did you drive the Porsche?"