The Winchester is the sort of hole in the wall that has literal holes in the walls and those holes in the walls are papered over by vintage posters of obscure and long-defunct bands that have been shellacked into place by a strange distillation of cigarette smoke, human sweat, and spilled beer. They have more beers on tap than you can count on your hands and feet and no, they do not carry Budweiser. Not on draft, not in cans, not in bottles, not in nothing. The people who come here come here because they like to drink or they like to smoke or they like to throw themselves into other bodies on something that approximates a dance floor, or because they like that bartender who comes in on odd days of the week, who pours her cocktails with a heavy fucking hand.
Memorial Day is not precisely party at the bar day but The Winchester has created its own draw by hosting a cook-out on the outdoor patio. Brats and Tofu and a plethora of grilled vegetables send smoke up from the barbecue and the remainder of the spread is summer picnic potluck. They've got spiked sun tea for two bucks per red Solo cup and another punch made of gin, blueberries, sparkling water, and rosemary, and on and on. The band's on a break but there's an expansive feel to the picnic atmosphere that gives the place an energy and a vibe that feels like nothing so much as summer,
and among the revelers are the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls. They're all wearing t-shirts and retro, 1950s style jackets, though in the heat of the afternoon with the alcohol flowing many of them have shed the jackets and Elijah has for the last fifteen or twenty or thirty minutes been chatting with one of the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls.
Her name is Dee. It is embroidered on her jacket, which she wears over a short, white rockabilly halter dress covered in a print of red cherries and red lips and she is tall and ample and lovely, with porcelain skin and dark dark hair and a red red mouth and she is animate and laughing and they all have names, he meets also Honey Bunches of Chokes, who is a badass chick named Emily who shows off her deeply bruised knee and a rather-boring guy-named-Rick who is mostly hanging around with Dee and occasionally arguing with the bartender over the best B-sides of some obscure 1980s post-punk band you've never heard of, which opens him up in a way that makes him - briefly - beautiful.
As the night wears on the crowd thins. There's only so much party most people can manager at the tail end of a holiday weekend, with the work week and the real world looming early tomorrow. The Derby Girls stay though. They're celebrating someone's birthday or some fucking victory or some goddamned thing. They're celebrating, see.
And it is late, it is later, when a white Ford Econoline van pulls into a parking spot down the street and a certain pair known to all of the Derby Dolls, and Dee in particular, slide out of the passenger's and driver's seats respectively and saunter back down the street toward the bar.
He's tall and has tattoos covering his arms and skinny jeans and a Pitchfork Music Festival t-shirt and a beanie on his blond head and a nice, full, I am such a goddamned hipster beard.
She is:
not tall. Blond too, though her color comes from a bottle because she leaves the dark fucking roots to show, and she has a third of her hair shaved and the rest chaotically long and she appears to be wearing an oversized AARP t-shirt and scallop-patterned fishnets. The AARP t-shirt is barely long enough to cover her ass when she's standing still, so when she braces herself and leaps over the wrought-iron fence framing in the smoking patio from the sidewalk, well -
- it is a lovely arc of singular motion. She comes up behind Dee and wraps her arms around Dee and inhales Dee and Dee is both surprised and pleased to find her there and exclaims - "Sera! I didn't think you guys'd make it."
And Sera nuzzles Dee happily, rising to her tiptoes to rest her chin on Dee's shoulder and look over Dee's shoulder at Elijah. "Like we'd miss Em's party," Sera murmurs back to Dee. "Who's your friend?"
Elijah. She means: Elijah.
ElijahDamned right they shouldn't carry Budweiser. They were in the land of the free, the home of the brave, and this? this was the Sparta of microbrew. You drink to the heavens because gods if this isn't fabulous. There's sun tea and Elijah was more than willing to doll out whatever one could have and drink whatever was there- and tea is fucking delicious. And he, in his vest and his jeans and his long hair a mess and he's having a blast.
He's had enough to drink the drown a water buffalo, and it doesn't matter what his ID says because he's drinking now and Elijah had an eye and an ear for the finer things in life, and the finer things happened to include Derby Girls and talking about music most people haven't' heard of. Which he hasn't heard most of, but damned if he couldn't bullshit with the best of 'em. damned if he couldn't call people out on their Pre-Pixies B side fascinations.
"Elijah," he offers, "nice hang time on the fence."
SerafínePerception plus ze awareness, because.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )
Serafíne(Also what was her hang time? Dex + Athletics.)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )
Elijah[awareness?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneElijah introduces himself so Dee doesn't have to and Sera is still fucking high from the way she jumped that fence. God that was lovely and fuck it felt good. The swing-and-jump of it, the solid retort of her booted feet on the ground. There's something to bed said for her combat boots over her usual ridiculous heels, at least when it comes to feats of -
feats of whatever that was.
Sera nuzzles Dee one more time and then lets her go and sort of sidles around her and finds a place to lean against the bar or a high-top table or whatever there is against which to lean. All hipslung.
And it is dark and her eyes are dark and there's a spark of something in them and fuck, Sera feels the way she feels - gut-wrenching and enthralling and also, see: between, by which we mean, outside of the ordinary definitions. Of thresholds, and gateways, and half-open doors.
"Serafíne." She introduces herself right back. "Call me Sera."
And she holds out a goddamned hand.
It is covered in tattoos and framed by a black leather bracelet studded with spikes. A bronze ring on her right index finger, a silver knuckle-duster covering ring, middle and index of her left hand. Somehow Dee is already absenting herself.
She's going to go get Sera a drink.
ElijahHell if he knew how that worked, but Elijah for his part was enthralled just watching her clear the fence. Her eyes were alive and his heart was beating and the blond man couldn't wipe the grin off his face. it was hard to look away; he couldn't look away from her. She was athleticism and she was grace and she was feral freaking hotness so why not?
Also, she felt like something, so he couldn't not look at her. His grin turned into a smile and his thoughts turned to damn, could she do it again? That looks fun, knowing good and well that he sucked at such feats of very clear athletic prowess that didn't involve getting him somehow in bed. He took her hand, confident and content to give it a shake. Not presumptuous, but he had considered presuming all sorts of things because he is young, male, and has an active imagination.
"You are something, Sera," says the man who feels like the beginnings of a storm, the start of a revolution, the feeling of unrest, the drive, the ticking away of something. He most certainly isn't normal, and he soon enough retrieves his hand.
"So, insert cheesy line about the frequency at which you come here."
Serafíne"Fuck if I know how often I come here," Sera tosses back, her eyes still dark on Elijah's face. That alert, that intrigue, that spark of recognition notable in her features because as clearly as she can usually see everything there is to see about a stranger, well, she is also virtually incapable of hiding anything. So:
interest, see? The spark of it. This supple thread of awareness in her rather straight if rather animate brows, all straight lines over her deep-set eyes.
" - you don't expect me to remember every bar I hit on every Friday night since ever in fucking Denver. We live in Capitol Hill. Come out pretty regular. Played here, once.
"What about you? I haven't seen you around, before. Friend of one of the Derby Dolls?"
Elijah"Shaaaaame, not remembering every bar you've ever hit on a Friday," he said with about as much falsified chastisement as he could muster-which wasn't a lot. Was he one of the Derby Dolls' friends? "I'd like to be, Dee's pretty wicked. SHould be at their next… what are they? Meets? Matches? I suspect she's gonna clothesline me if I'm using the wrong term."
That didn't answer the question, the whole question, "I just moved here. Pretty good stuff, I'm all shiny and new at pretty much everything."
Serafíne"Dee's amazing," Sera enthuses, because Dee is amazing, and Sera loves her and adores her and wants everything good in the world for her, " - but I don't think she'd fucking clothesline you. Em maybe - or one of the others, right? but Dee's the fucking sweetest thing."
Which is objectively true. Dee, charming Dee. Dee who blushes in a charming column from her decolleté right up her throat to her milk-pale cheeks when strangers flirt with her and who somehow manages to paint her mouth a perfect crimson that never seems to fade.
"She's one of my housemates, so I think I'd fucking know."
A quick flash of a grateful grin as the aforementioned Dee returns with a couple of red solo cups of drinks. The twisted sun tea, and the gin-blueberry-rosemary concoction, both for Sera to sample. Sera takes them both and sips one and then the other and settles on the gin-concoction as her preference and offers Elijah her tea since she doesn't want it yet.
Her half-smile flashes briefly wider when Elijah says that he is shiny and new at pretty much everything.
"That's the sense I got. That's the way you feel.
"What brought you to Denver?"
Elijah"So, like, if I asked if she wanted a cheerleader for her next meet-match-race-something she probably wouldn't be completely offended?" Elijah grinned, he knew Dee was standing right there, but he asked anyway in that particular fashion to see if that crimson blush would creep up her décolletage again and if those perfect crimson lips would turn upward into a smile.
If there was tea, he was going to drink it. He was a Southern boy, and those creatures would drink any kind of tea so long as it was sweet, especially if it was boozy. Elijah Poirot had never been accused of being a dry young man, not by any stretch.
"Eh, ya know, I needed a change of scenery. Louisiana wasn't really working out terribly well college-wise and I just had that feeling that I needed to be somewhere else," he said with a shrug, not one to not go on a feeling, "I figured that Denver would be quieter."
Serafíne"She wouldn't be completely offended." Dee answers for Dee, see. Answers with a smile that is curling ironically over her perfectly crimson mouth and a glance at Sera's profile and a glance back at Elijah as he takes a sip of that sweetened and boozy tea and shakes her lovely dark head. She is blushing, just a bit, not the remarkable blush that overtakes her when - say - Hawksley makes like he wants to sup on her, as he sometimes does, which he sometimes does, but still. Lovely, pink. Blush. "But she might expect the full regalia if you decided to show up at a match and play cheerleader."
A wink.
The blush deepens and someone across the way waves and Dee is departing to secure another drink for herself and toast the birthday girl and on and on.
Sera sips her own red solo cup, watches Dee as she slips away, and glances back to Elijah. Seams her painted mouth, and takes another sip of her drink.
"Have you found Denver as quiet as you'd hoped for? I don't know. You seem like you might carry some of your own noise around with you. Some of us are fucking like that. Going to school here?"
Elijah[just out of curiosity, app+subterfuge]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Elijah"You know that feeling you get when you walk into a place and you feel like it's exactly the right place to be and the right time to be there, regardless of whether or not anyone else thinks that? That is what Denver is like," he says with a certain degree of confidence and awe and relief, gods and it is such relief in his tone and relief in his shoulders and relief on his face that one has to be curious as to what the Hell it was that had him so damned tense to begin with.
"I met a few pretty cool people. Finally-" he looked at Sera and he grinned "-i'd say something, but it'd make me sound crazy."
Elijah"You know that feeling you get when you walk into a place and you feel like it's exactly the right place to be and the right time to be there, regardless of whether or not anyone else thinks that? That is what Denver is like," he says with a certain degree of confidence and awe and relief, gods and it is such relief in his tone and relief in his shoulders and relief on his face that one has to be curious as to what the Hell it was that had him so damned tense to begin with.
"I met a few pretty cool people. Finally-" he looked at Sera and he grinned "-i'd say something, but it'd make me sound crazy."
Serafíne"Whatever it is you wanna say," Sera is looking at him so directly, now. So intensely. Dark blue eyes in her striking face, aquiline features and that prominent nose, straight dark brows that show as clearly as her dark roots that her blond curls come from a bottle rather than nature. She has a neat little mouth and a slow-crawling smile, the sort you cannot quiet shake out of your mind, same way you cannot quite shake her from your mind,
because of the way she bends the world.
And there's something bright about her and something anticipatory and something needling and something hungry, right, for whatever she can have and whatever she can feel and whatever she can consume and whatever she was ten minutes ago or five hours ago or this time yesterday hardly matters because she is here and she is now and she is everywhen, and she continues, " - fuck how it makes you sound."
That word on her mouth with that vehemence: it doesn't sound like an expletive. It sounds like sex.
"Say it."
ElijahThis is the quiet I was looking for," Elijah breathes. It's not a sigh, it's not a moan, but damned if it's not the words you say to your lover. Damned if there isn't that aching, wanting longing feeling that is finally, finally actualized. IT's a musical, a symphony, a lay two years in the making and finally coming to fruition and he tastes the booze on his lips and he can almost taste the seconds ticking away and he can feel the watch in his pocket reminding him of the moment they are in, of the way his heart beats and the seconds just tick…
tick…tick..
And keep on in their steady rhythm, and she has a voice like she commands the world and in that crowded, noisy, breathtaking party, in the middle of the chaos, he finds his silence.
"This is what i was looking for, the moment where you stop screaming at yourself, when your soul stops demanding that you live, live because you die tomorrow and that the end of it all is coming, that your world will fall apart and instead of telling you to live, instead of feeling like I'm going to die-
"I'm living. Participating. Touching, tasting, having and instead of being afraid of what my Voice is telling me, I'm living… Good, bad, it doesn't matter. I hear enough reminders to be in the moment, every moment, and I used to be afraid of it and coming to Denver made me realize I don't have to be."
He took a drink.
"Makes a man have a cyclical soliloquy."
SerafíneOh Sera.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
SerafíneSerafíne is smiling; smiling and watching him and he is enthusing and enthusing and he is winding himself inward and he is spooling himself outward and he is measuring heartbeats and hearting measurebeats and feeling feeling feeling,
and goddamn if something strange is happening, in the space they inhabit together or beneath his skin. Starting to happen below the surface of things, not noticeable specifically except for the way it percolates over his senses, sends each moment smearing into the next. The way it establishes a kind of intimate space between them that no one else seems to inhabit because everyone else, everyone else is different, they don't quite belong here do they, they don't know how things are.
They never remember precisely how their hearts are beating, or why, or what it feels like when they pound, the lurching, insistent contraction of it.
There she is though. Smiling, see. Lifting that drink to her laughing mouth and smiling over the rim at him and then setting it aside, moving in slow-motion or is that the world or is that just that he has had one to many of those twisted teas and they are starting to go to his head, because she is stepping into his space, sliiiiiding in to it and looking up at him and lifting her face to him and reaching behind his head to cup the back of his skull,
gently,
firmly,
tenderly.
Angling his head lower, and lower, and lower, toward this impressionistic flash of her face. The glittering lights of the outdoor patio reflected in her eyes, the flash of her teeth behind her red red mouth, the solid hunk of a spike pierced through her ear. The impression of ink on the tender points of her wrist, even in the hollow beneath her ear, and he knows she is going to kiss him, knows that in his bones and every hollow space in his body and every solid space in his body too and every part in between,
and maybe he assumes that she is going to kiss him on the mouth. Maybe he closes his eyes, anticipatory, see. Fuck, maybe he even reaches for her.
Regardless: she kisses him not on his mouth, but in the middle of his forehead, a point equidistant from both blond brows, and her mouth is warm and her breath smells like burnt sugar and alcohol and her skin smells like pine needles and woodsmoke and she is a little bit high so he can taste the 'shrooms maybe too, the hallucinatory afterburn, and then she drags her mouth across his brow and kisses him on his left temple, too.
Such a lovely, lovely boy.
She does not know that she has not yet said that out loud.
Welcome to Denver.
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