[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Serafíne(someone else is initiating this scene, FYI. :D)
Hawksley Rothschild[123 not it i'm making steak]
Kalen Holliday[Trillian chirping at me totally woke me up so if I do it it will be nonsensical. And might involve technicolor mermaids. I'm not saying I won't - just that you should fucking be prepared if you try to make me use words in this exact moment.]
Alicia[How am I supposed to top technicolor mermaids? *goes back to typing*]
AliciaDetails aren't important. This is a large outdoor event and it costs nothing to get in. Tents everywhere. People are selling things or trying things before they commit to buying the things and there is a stage somewhere small where a band is playing. A brass band no singer though the songs are popular if not easy to recognize and the general aura surrounding the event is casual and mostly harmless and slightly drunk.
It's a nice day. Sunny. Nightfall is imminent but nightfall doesn't mean anything to the event or the people at the event. It's outdoors. Somehow lights will come on. Strings of them or candles. It smells like citronella in places where it doesn't smell like cooking meat or frying vegetables.
Alicia is near the brass band. She has a bright green paper bracelet around her wrist and it matches the bright green of the dead plastic watch on the other wrist. She's wearing sunglasses and a yellow sundress. Her hair is down. She and her plastic cup of beer are dancing.
Someone somewhere is smoking a joint. It isn't Alicia.
As of this moment there are no mermaids.
Adam[And alas, my friends came an hour early to scoop me up. :< Bowing out without even a cameo. Sorry y'all!]
Hawksley Rothschild[awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne(also awareness!)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Kalen Holliday[How distracted are we by Resonance?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Hawksley RothschildHawksley is sleeping on the grass. He would be a good candidate for Hipster or Homeless? if it weren't for the fact that his neck is neatly cleanshaven, his fingernails are as clean as though recently manicured
(the secret: they were recently manicured)
and his clothing has that subtle but evident touch of quality, of cost. The softness of the fabric, the careful drape and fall, the way every piece seems made just for his body, tailored specifically to his form
(the secret: all of his clothes are tailored to his form).
His arm is over his eyes. His back is flat on the grass. He's wearing shorts, white linen ones. He's wearing a t-shirt, a dark blue faded one with a V neck, but not a deep V, because Hawksley is of the opinion that the deep V is gauche. There is a watch on his left wrist, and the band is white leather and the rim is white gold. Because his clothing is so tidily, perfectly tailored, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes calls attention to the shape and shadow of the muscles in that chest, which are firm and which are strong, as though he spends a significant amount of time shaping them with weightlifting, feeding them with lean proteins, sculpting his body as though it is as much his masterpiece as anything else he might offer to the world.
You will be able to guess one more secret.
Here's the last: none of Hawksley's masterpieces are offerings to the world. Hawksley does not give much of a fuck about the world.
--
It's very hard to sleep, suddenly. His nostrils flare; he breathes in sharp. He opens his eyes and see his forearm pressed there, all red and gilded by the fading light. He shifts his arm. He moves it down his nose, past his mouth, rests it on his chest, while his head tilts back.
He looks directly at Alicia. Upside-down, mind you, but looks straight at her. His eyes are pale, his eyes are piercing. His head, upside-down or no, tips slightly to one side, avian in its curiosity.
Hawksley stares. This is rude.
Hawksley does not care about that, either.
Alicia[every time an apprentice botches an awareness roll an angel gets its wings]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Alicia[hah HAH NO WINGS FOR YOU TONIGHT SUCKER]
Kalen HollidayKalen lets someone put a strip of paper around his wrist. Not very long ago there was music and someone tying bracelets on his wrist. They were knotted hemp and colorful glass beads, and despite the fact that he still can't remember who put them there or why he still hasn't cut them off. They've been on long enough to soften now. To pick up the scent of incense and shampoo.
The paper bracelet joins the ranks of things put on his wrist by strangers and then he wanders into the crowd. Other than the things at his wrist, he is not colorful - pale grey jeans, darker grey shirt, pale skin and pale blonde hair. Even his eyes are so pale you have to be practically on top of him before you can tell they're green. He looks like hasn't slept in...possibly decades at this point. At least not much.
The world stops for nothing, though. So he drifts through the crowd and ends up with a plastic cup full of something that people claim is beer, though he himself would (in a less charitable mood) raise an eyebrow at that claim.
Drift. Drift. Drift.
Look! Alicia. He waves and he might have gone to her except he is drowning in sunlight and he might be flying and it takes him a few seconds to find Hawksley because Hawksley is on the ground and that doesn't seem right because nothing seems anchored to the earth but he heads toward Hawksley anyway.
SerafíneThere are no mermaids. Just a creature in a hot little leather skirt with a bit of an A-line and silver buttons down the front and a cropped white t-shirt turned inside out over a black lace bra. She has a crop of necklaces encircling her neck, everything from rubber to leather to an elegant Tahitian pearl - black - set in a high-polished swoop of platinum that nestles in the hollow of her throat, and a spike through her ear and a knuckle duster ring spanning three fingers on her left hand and a little bronze ring and a handful of others on her right and a huge leather cuff around her left wrist draped 'round with something sparkly and that something sparkly has to be fake because who the fuck looks like that and has that many carats of D-flawless diamonds around their wrist?
Well: her.
There's a tent where these two local guys - one an ex-Pharma exec, the other a mediocre poet - the sort who uses it to get laid rather than to, you know, explore his own humanity - are selling their home(ish) brew absinthe and Sera has been 'tasting' the absinthe in all its incarnations and now has some sort of concoction in a red solo cup that is decidedly not a beer and the night has a bracing brilliance to it; somehow she wanders out of that tent and does not quite expect the sunset. Might be thinking that the world made up this setting-sun thing just for her, and Dee's sliding up behind her, wrapping an arm around Sera's shoulders, leaning close to murmur something in Sera's ear, carrying a bag with their purchases (ABSINTHE, Christ) in the other hand, and Sera's mouth skims over the mouth of her red solo cup and she turns her head, inhaling, murmuring something close to the rim of Dee's ear when she feels -
- what does she feel?
something chaotic.
So. So.
Sera murmurs her goodbyes and kisses Dee first on the temple (tip-toes) and then on the mouth and leaves her friends behind and approaches Alicia at the edge of the crowd and lifts her own cup in toast and and and and -
"Hey! You - ! I remember you.
"I remember," like you know, memory is a zipline, is a constellation, is a universe, is a revelation, is not just something people do every fucking day, "Alicia, right? Fuck. It was - "
Hawksley RothschildTrue story: Hawksley never feels anchored to the earth. He never has, but especially these days, he may as well be levitating a bit above the grass. No, not a bit above it: he is caught mid-dive, he is down here to snatch up a mouse that was scurrying, unseen to the humans walking around it but a red flare of life, calling out to his hunger. Any second now he will have it in his talons and be taking off again, beating wings against the earth, fighting gravity and winning,
again and again and again. Always.
It rained earlier. The air still smells of it. Hawksley breathes in and smells the grass that tickles his temples and of course he smells the meat cooking and the beer and all the people, but he is feeling other things beyond those immediate sensory impressions. He's feeling the roiling primordial chaos of time before time and creation before form, and he is feeling the endless potentiality of all things at once, when they have not become Things at all.
He is also feeling a storm in the air.
He is also feeling the sky herself, though not many would describe her as such. But visceral: yes, to him. Enthralling: yes, to him. Liminal: yes, of course.
On the other hand, that girl feels like the beginning of creation, and she is wearing his favorite color. So he goes on staring.
AliciaOnce upon a time Alicia did normal teenage girl things like gymnastics and volleyball and getting wrecked skateboarding in the park like she wasn't supposed to be doing. She isn't very old. She hasn't forgotten how to move as if her bones are made of water but she wouldn't call herself normal anymore either.
Hard to tell if her eyes are open as she's dancing. She's keeping her limbs in close so she doesn't smack someone with a flailing wrist but she doesn't dance stiff like a reed blustered by breeze either.
She has an effect going. It's not powerful but it is complicated. Space and patterns and the essence of everything. Time. Searching without focusing.
A convergence of other people and their resonation and she keeps dancing. Hawksley can stare all he wants. She stares at Kalen for a second until the recognition hits and then she returns the wave. Matches him for strength and exuberance and then twirls around. Her hem and her hair kick up and there's the woman she couldn't ignore. Still can't ignore.
One cup lifts and Alicia slows but does not stop her dancing. Has to rake her hair back from her brow to get it out of her face.
"I Never," she says. Takes a couple steps back like to make room for Sera and points over to the band with her cup. "They're awesome, aren't they?" And goes back to dancing.
Kalen HollidayKalen does not wave to Serafine when she comes slipping through space and probability and a crowd of people. Instead, he pauses, meets her eyes for a second, and then nods. It's through a crowd and it's barely any motion at all and it is still somehow more than almost anyone gets from him. Perhaps because there is nothing of a show to it. Kalen does so very few things that honestly. Simply on occasion, but honestly...that's never been his thing.
He continues toward Hawksley and settles onto the grass beside him. For a second, as he drops to the earth, for an impossible second, it really does seem like they might not be on the ground at all. But then there are blades of grass under his fingertips and earth and tiny rocks. The rocks are flying and they are on the rocks and everything is-
"Hey," he says. He combs through the grass with the hand not holding a cup of beer he's already lost interest in.
SerafíneI Never and Sera does not understand the reference, just then, she's hearing it as something it, feeling the words tied together and then pulled apart in the back of her skull, thinks that Alicia is telling her that she has actually never something? and Sera is already inhaling, tipsy, not drunk, but other things also you see, to tell Alicia
no no no you have and her mouth is forming the words but they aren't getting much traction in her throat and Alicia is making room for her and the band is great, aren't they?
"They have a tuba!"
There is no tuba. Maybe a trombone or too and a nice horn section and whatever, the music is fine but weird for her, too tame, and dancing barefoot in parks is less her thing than stagediving in dive bars, and Serafíne feels Alicia's small complicated magics, tastes them in the back of her throat, takes a drink from her own cup, the fine herbal burn of the Absinthe-cocktail-concoction bittersweet at the back of her palate, and reaches out to take Alicia's free hand in her own free hand and spin her around,
dancing,
dancing, with, you know, a lovely little bit of drunken stumbling worked in there for good measure, and doesn't seem inclined to let go of Alicia's hand.
Everything in the world is better, after all, with connection.
[Watch the Weaving: whatcha up to, Alicia! Difficulty 5: -1 for practiced.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Hawksley RothschildThere is something predatory about Hawksley, but it's not entirely his fault. It's his eyes, and the aquiline features he has. And then there's the part that is entirely his fault: the lack of concern, the dampened empathy, the distance. Or maybe that is not his fault so much as his nature, just as much as the eyes and the face. He seems very far away, and the world is distant to him.
Except he smiles a little, because he sees the cheery yellow sun talking to the endless sky. It makes him happy, in a small and oddly tender way.
Kalen plops down beside him, and for the first time since opening his eyes, Hawksley takes them off of Alicia. He looks at the other Hermetic with drowsy eyes that have lost some of their sharpness. "That was the most hitting-on-me 'hey' I've heard since I woke up,"
not that Kalen knows he woke up about thirty seconds ago. He gives him an upward nod. "How you been?"
AliciaHard to tell what Alicia is feeling for when she opens up her senses like she has them open but Sera can see the way it pulses out over everything pinging like a sonar and dissipating when it does not encounter metal buried inside flesh. Nothing to worry about right this second but that does not mean she has nothing to fear. One of the first things she learned when she opened her eyes was fear.
They have a tuba!
"Where!" she asks.
Her magick comes from her fear and the alcohol. The dead plastic on her wrist and the music. Everybody knows what she could be feeling for. She doesn't know everybody knows. Alicia is not on the Ginger access list and Elijah has not told her who he's told. She takes Sera's hand and twirls.
And then stumbles. She almost falls into Sera. Maybe they do fall into each other. She laughs. It's a clear sound and honest and she intends to dance through the rest of the song but the song is over in a few more seconds.
She rakes her fingers through her hair again.
"Woo!" Like it's a word and not just an exclamation. "Is that Kalen?"
Kalen Holliday"Mmmmmmmmmm...I must be having a good day if my whole goodwill toward men thing extends to hitting on you," Kalen says, a hint of something warm and amused edging into the tone. It isn't quite the answer to the question Hawksley asked, but Hawksley would probably stop paying attention a few words into a real answer anyway. If he hadn't stopped paying attention before he finished asking the question.
"You?" He looks away from Hawksley, watching through shifting currents of people as Alicia and Sera dance. He doesn't need to see Hawksley. He probably doesn't need to be this close to Hawksley. This is probably as advisable as drawing close to the sun. But those who were not born to the sky were so very enamored of their wax and feather wings.
Hawksley RothschildKalen gets it: he could go more in depth, but Hawksley would stop listening. At least today. At least right now, when there's music and people. Hawksley stretches, then, all legs and arms, his body tensing for a moment from toes to fingertips, and then he sits up. He does not brace his hands on the grass. He sits up, arms going over his knees, knees coming up, coiling into a sitting position. Reaching back, he scuffs his hand through his hair, shaking out a few blades of grass. His back is to Alicia and Sera now. He has noticed how close Kalen is sitting, but he already mentioned Kalen hitting on him and Kalen didn't deny it, so he's not precisely taken aback.
"Been at least moderately drunk for about three days," he says. "Summer's fading."
So says the weatherman. So says the rain. He sighs. Glances over his shoulder at the two women, one of whom he knows and one of whom he wonders about: is she new-last-Tuesday? Another one? He looks back at Kalen. He doesn't say a word, but the glance is a question, an open hand expecting information.
There is something regal about that. Casually, ambivalently, unintentionally kingly.
SerafíneHere is a wee little secret: Serafíne does not pay much attention to Ginger. There are periods when she gets a little obsessed with Ginger's sexy robot voice and sprawls in her armchair (and shoving all the accumulated clothes off onto the floor) or in the middle of her bed, the windows in her room high and wide, filled with the branches of the old, well-tended tree around which the backyard proper seems to have been constructed, and, stoned, calls Ginger again and again and again just to hear that voice.
Not lately, though.
Dan pays attention for her.
--
So: fear; enough right there to bring even fucked-up Sera briefly up short, to make her inhale, and lift her chin, and open her eyes wide enough to see Alicia move, see the lights skim brilliant in varying succession over the glossy waves of her dark hair. Sera is not taller than many, but she is taller than Alicia. Much, much taller, you now, as a relative measure. She can see the crown of Alicia's head, the stapled pattern of her strange and complex working, the undercurrents framing it and -
Alicia stumbles. Maybe falls into Sera; almost falls into Sera; and then, does not precisely fall into Sera but is pulled in and Sera wraps her arms around Alicia's shoulders and presses her humid mouth to Alicia's temple and there's alcohol on her breath and alcohol sloshed out of her cup and nothing about Sera feels like safety. Her resonance is quite-the-opposite of safe, but here she is, a brief moment carved out of every other one in the midst of the crowd, smiling against Alicia's skin, hardly seeming to notice when Alicia draws back to start dancing again, or whatever.
Is that Kalen?
"Mmm." Murmurs Sera, " - and Hawksley. C'mon."
Unless Alicia insists on more-dancing, Sera starts to tug her through the crowd, toward the gentlemen.
Kalen Holliday"In this hemisphere," Kalen says, but he is smiling. "Please don't be about to get all mythic Greek drama about winter. I don't think I can draft enough epic similes to keep up with that madness. And that kind of thing really does lend itself to epic similes.
"Way better than rhymed couplets though."
Hawksley get his attention back, at least in the sense of where Kalen is looking, when he sits up. Kalen follows Hawksley's attention to Serafine and Alicia. Returns his attention to Hawksley and raises an eyebrow at that look. He doesn't seem annoyed by it though, at least not tonight.
"Ah. She's...." Kalen shrugs. "Honestly I don''t really know. She's not terribly fond of me. I may not have been in the most patient or gentle place when I met her. I may have handed her off to Lena." He doesn't seem terribly concerned what Alicia thinks.
Hawksley Rothschild"You?" Hawksley says, feigning surprise. "But Kalen, you're so naturally personable and socially smooth." He says this, and it's about as dry as you can expect. It's up to Kalen whether he interprets it as malice or just... Hawksley. "What's her name? And who the fuck is Lena?"
AliciaIf she didn't pull away from Sera she would have stayed there longer than is healthy when one barely knows a person. They know each other better than they did two months ago but alcohol has the ability to obliterate connections just as quick as it creates them and they were drinking the last time. When she slowed down time and Elijah decided he wanted to kiss Alicia and so he did.
She doesn't know where Elijah is right now. She has a life that does not revolve around him.
Sera does not hold onto her tight and the moment plays on. Hair out of her face and soon as it's swept back her hand is taken up by the Cultist's and Alicia goes with her not terribly fond of Kalen or not.
"I haven't met Hawksley," she says.
Alicia makes everyone look like a giant. She's wearing sneakers and they don't do her height any favors. As Sera guides her towards the two men of questionable gentleness the girl takes a big swig of her beer.
Serafíne"Ooooh," Sera is saying and sipping her absinthe-thing from a goddamned red solo cup as they leave the dancing behind and pick their way over the muddied ground, past the dancers toward the lawn, and it is dark or getting there, so the sober picnickers are all packing up and the drunk ones are - well - some of them are enjoying themselves in all the ways one enjoys oneself on a late summer evening.
"Hawksley's amazing. You're gonna adore him."
She has her own blinders, Serafíne.
And Kalen has time to answer Hawksley's questions but then, you know: Serafíne is there, circling in, pulling Alicia behind, having figured out the calculus of juggling girl-and-drink and is stumbling into the setting, a bit sloppy see, laughing and steadying herself with a hand freed briefly from Alicia's to brace herself on Hawksley's shoulder as she lowers herself to the grass on the side opposite Kalen.
"This is Alicia," she is telling them - one? both? - smiling and happy to be smiling, holding up a hand to introduce Alicia. Then she looks down at the mug and holds it over toward Hawksley, introducing the red solo cup as well. "This is absinthe. Hi.
"Hi Hi Hi." Sera says, the way she does. Then she kisses Hawksley, the way she does. Then she peaks over and sort of finger-waves at Kalen, smiling, inhaling the scent of rain still lingering in the air.
Hawksley Rothschild'Hawksley' has just about the most on-the-nose name since anyone. That explains the way he looks. That explains the sharpness in his eyes. That explains the way he notices when Sera and Alicia are making their way over, canting his head that way, quick and light. Say this, for his questionable gentleness:
as they approach, he rises. This time he does use the earth for leverage, which is one of the only uses he has for the blasted thing (one might surmise). He has an inherent grace, but that may just be his resonance playing with the mind. And yes, he is quite tall, and his shoulders are quite broad, and his skin is golden and in another light, in another life,
under another sun,
he would very much pass for Apollo. Or Ra. Or someone else, some other sun-god, son-god, less identifiable, less human in seeming.
--
He is amazing. And he is worthy of adoration. And totes adorbs, to boot.
Kalen has time, and maybe Kalen answers, but then Alicia and Sera are there, and Hawksley is watching as Sera lowers herself to the grass, smooching him on the way down, bracing herself against him on the way down, and perhaps he offers her a hand, smooth as you please, to ease her way. And he is staring at Alicia again, though less intently, and not upside-down this time.
"Alicia," he says, and offers her a hand. To shake. To five. Hell: to lay her palm on his palm all ladylike and fancy. Probably to five. God fucking knows. His other hand is at his side, plucking the cup from Sera's hand and taking a sip of absinthe-something, absently.
Kalen HollidayIt is Serafine who introduces Alicia and Hawksley in the end, which suits Kalen fine. He keeps going out and running into people, sometimes at park benches and sometimes on rooftops and sometimes fated meetings at gunpoint and all of those things fall into place in the same way that stars and planets shift into alignment, but Kalen came here for the kind of strangers that tie things onto his wrists and maybe his skin or their skin has a lingering impression of teeth in the morning. Hawksley was one thing, because despite being a stranger Kalen sees often enough, Hawksley is still mostly a stranger. There aren't any teethmarks, but that is fine. Even Alicia would have been fine for his original purpose because with enough distance...with enough distance nothing touches you.
But Serafine...there is no world where he could not feel anything for her. Because of her.
He watches them draw closer, watches Hawksley rise, watches introductions and kisses and greetings in silence. When that is over, he meets Sera's eyes again and gives another nod that is more a lowering of his gaze than a motion of his head. And then Alicia gets another wave. "Hey."
SerafíneThere is a kind of symmetry here. Hawksley rising to greet them, Serafíne curling in and making introductions and and handing off her absinthe-something cup and yes, accepting his smooth-as-you-please hand to lower her to the ground and now he has the cup and she does not have the cup and Sera is somewhat surprised by its absence and also Hawksley's grandeur and she tips her head back and her curls and loose and framed with sweat and she's smiling and in one of those moods where she is just so fucking amazed by how long her hair is when she tilts her head back! It is a miracle! It is so much longer!
So she tilts her head back and Hawksley and Alicia who are SO HIGH UP make her think of Titans or some fucking thing, and she inhales, happy that her lungs still work, then drops her head and catches that glance and nearly-a-nod that Kalen gives her and smiles at him all indulgent and rises from her ass to her knees and sort of crawl-curls over to stretch out - on her back, in the grass - beside Kalen, both hands laced to cradle her skull.
"Hey," she says to Kalen on the way over. Nudges his knee with hers mid-crawl. That hey is both a greeting and an inquiry, you understand. It is a checking-in. It is just for him.
Alicia"Sup!"
In their presence it is an obvious thing that her power is tiny and new. That she cannot open up a door in a solid wall or levitate an object too heavy to pick up or call down lightning out of the sky yet. Sure as shit can't rewrite time. She can see time and she can sense its passage and she can tell when someone has rippled it. That's a power in its own right.
She doesn't give those who still slumber the idea that they're in the presence of a strangeness. Only people like them can sense the nature of her Working. That there's no order to what she's doing.
Their presence could overwhelm her but she isn't so new as Elijah is. She doesn't have that same childlike sense of wonder at the world around her.
Hawksley gets a high five. Her palm is warm. She does not have delicate hands. She wears a plain silver band on her right thumb. That silver band is loose on her and it resonates with the Working of the person to whom it belonged before it belonged to her but it's a quiet resonation. Cyclic and bubbling and explosive. With enough time it will fade away.
"Your beer's so full," she says to Kalen.
Hawksley RothschildAlicia says Sup! and Hawksley is overcome, quite suddenly, by an urge to glomp her up and squish her, oh my god. It's not even her relative lack of power, which is of about as much interest to him as another video on Facebook of so-and-so's first baby learning to walk,
not that Hawksley has friends who are having babies, or continues to have friends once they have babies.
He wouldn't be able to put his finger on it directly, but he's not really trying. He just has that overwhelming urge, and it passes because he does nothing with it. That is the difference between Hawksley and the Cultists, when occasionally it seems he fits in with them a little too well: he has an urge, a passion, a drive, and simply brushes it aside sometimes. In favor of other things. Other pursuits. Other passions.
She fives him and they both have warm hands, but it's summer. He feels a vibration go through his palm, tingling in his wrist and up his arm, insinuating itself into his humerus and up to his shoulder, stabbing into his heart, and it takes just about everything he's got to keep himself from grabbing her hand and examining it -- not the hand. The vibration. The Work. Hawksley, though, is far more self-controlled than he lets on. And he is not gonna grab some strange girl's hand like that when he's trying to be polite and stuff, Jesus.
He takes another sip of whatever it is Sera handed him. He hands it back down to her, effortless, blindly, knowing she will find it, sure as a blind kitten finds its mother's teat. Not that Sera is a kitten. Sera is a Disciple of her Art. He looks around the park, mindful of the Hermetic, the baby mage, the woman he is so often seen with that no one would be faulted for thinking they are attached at the hip. Mindful of the sky. "I think it's going to rain again."
And wouldn't he know. He isn't feeling the turning of the earth as it relates to the construct of time; but he can feel a change in barometric pressure better than anyone.
Kalen HollidayKalen smiles at nudge that is a question and a hello from Sera, but he doesn't say anything. He does reach out and trace a finger from the bridge to the tip of her nose. Playful.
And then he drops back to contemplate Hawksley and Alicia with her. Perspective plays tricks, but Kalen is less swayed by sight than less mundane perceptions. Everything is an immediate tangle of possibility. He can taste blood and peaches. Possibly also dreams.
When Alicia speaks his eyes shift to just her, and there is nothing guarded or agitated about them. The only other time she saw that was the very first time she saw him, when he was leaving her notes in the library. And even then, from the distance she kept, she may never have seen that at all. "Ah. It is. I forgot it existed. Did you want some?" He holds the cup up toward Alicia.
He nods at the statement about rain, though whether that's to indicate he heard or because he agrees is anyone's guess.
SerafíneSera is not a blind kitten but by god she knows where the nearest booze that she wants to drink is, so her sprawl on the goddamned ground does not last long. Playful Kalen draws a double-take first, though, and in the failing light it is difficult to trace the arc of her surprise, the lilt of her. He doesn't say anything. But she takes that as: well or better and it makes her smile, this humming backgrounded smile right at him until she is, yes, sitting up, reaching for her drink, drawing it to her mouth, leaning forward to sip.
"Fuck - " Sera, informed that it is going to rain, curses. "I can't get wet." She's looking up at Hawksley, then, smiling at him, trying to remember why -
- oh yes. "My boobs'll get electrocuted or something. You should invite us back to your place.
"Tell Collins there'll be four for dinner."
AliciaAnd she is oblivious. Whatever Hawksley wants to do and does not do coasts on past her and she looks as if she could smile at this sculpted godlike wonder slapping her five like that. Tension around her mouth like she's about to smile. Friendliness isn't difficult for her and neither is enjoying herself. Troubled but the trouble leaves her be when she's around other people.
Did she want some of his beer.
"Yeah I mean if you're not drinking it..." Down goes the rest of whatever was in her cup. She doesn't have far to reach to take Kalen's cup from him. "Thanks." She puts the full cup inside the empty one and lifts the nested cups in a toast. Makes a clicking noise like the next thing she's going to do is make a finger-gun. She does not make a finger-gun. "You're not getting it back."
'Some,' her ass.
Hawksley RothschildThat gets Hawksley's attention. He looks down at Sera, raises his eyebrows. "Well don't let that happen," he says, and then:
he should invite them back to his place. Tell Collins there'll be four for dinner.
This makes Hawksley smile. And both Kalen and Alicia see in profile what Sera sees straight on: a small smile, not a grin, fond at the corners. Intrigue lining the eyes. It grows: the smile, that is. He looks between other-Hermetic and wee-apprentice. "You both should. And stay the night."
There is a pause. He moves his hand at his side and lifts it again; he is holding a martini glass that looks like it could be made of smoke, the rim just settling into place. There is even an olive speared within it. He sips. "I have plenty of space."
Kalen HollidayHis eyes widen, just a little, when Sera tries to relocate them all to Hawksley's place. This was not where he expected tonight to go. Lying on the ground with Serafine and Hawksley, surrendering his beer to Alicia. It is not, however, the kind of night he has objections to.
And then Hawksley is saying they should stay the night. He has space. Of course he does. He has the entire fucking sky.
Spending the night in the houses of strangers or practical strangers isn't the kind of night he tends to object to either, but this invitation is not one he is as sure of. He doesn't have to see those strangers and practical strangers again, though he does on occasion. But there are complications to staying in places overnight, at least if he is sleeping. And sooner or later he won't have much choice about the sleeping tonight. Not with as much sleep as he already hasn't had.
He does not answer right away, and instead looks a question at Serafine.
SerafíneSera is so pleased that Hawksley has extended the invitation that she sort of drums her heels against the ground, and there is enough force in her charming little celebration that she spills a bit of her absinthe-cocktail, which slothes over the rim and reminds her that it must be drunk! so she takes another sip just beams at Hawksley and then Kalen and Alicia and forgets that she wanted to show Hawksley her light-up bra and instead is reaching out with her right hand toward Hawksley in a help-me-up gesture and enthusing to Kalen and Alicia,
"You have to come, his house is fucking huge and he has this majordomo, do you know what that fucking is? who is goddamned amazing, and there are a billion rooms and a ballroom and there are so many fireplaces and one of them has a bearskin in front of it, I swear to fucking god, and there's a s - " she was about to tell them about the secret passage, but catches herself, because a secret passage that everyone knows about is hardly a secret is it now, Sera? " - s -solar, and a conservatory - "
and she is going on and on and on, pleased, you understand, disposed to be pleased, until she catches that wordless question Kalen asks her with a glance.
And she knows: of course she does.
"You'll be fine, Kalen. Sleep all night through." Soft, that. Strange and soft and fine.
Hawksley RothschildYes, Kalen. Hawksley has the sky. He is in it, he rules it,
or seems to.
There is that. But there is also the fact that his earthly palace is comfortable and well-appointed. He would notice Kalen's hesitation, but he's sipping the martini-from-nowhere and sort of watching Alicia and also sort of watching Serafine. He only notices Kalen's hesitation by proxy, when he reaches a hand to help Sera up -- he does this thoughtlessly, like he does it every day, but Sera knows he doesn't always -- and she's babbling about his house and then catching her eyes on Kalen's to tell him he'll be fine.
Hawksley glances at Kalen. He doesn't ask. He is still lightly, lightly holding Sera's fingertips. In his other hands is that ghostly martini. The glass moves; wisps of it rise. Made of smoke. He sips again.
"I don't believe Collins would describe himself that way," he mentions, either of the term 'majordomo' or 'goddamned amazing'. He doesn't deny a billion rooms, though it's untrue. He doesn't deny 'ballroom' because that would make him a liar, but he does deny this:
"I do not have a bearskin rug." He pauses, frowning. It's rather clear: he is not sure if he has a bearskin rug. Did he once? Shit.
"I can't believe you're not even mentioning the library. It's like you don't know me at all," he scoffs.
AliciaThe Orphan drinks the beer she stole from the Hermetic and it's hard to see where her eyes go with the sunglasses in the way or who she's looking at. Just because she appears to be looking straight at Hawksley when he offers to have everyone stay the night doesn't mean she's not letting her eyes bounce between Kalen and Sera.
She looks over to Kalen when Sera reassures him. Also doesn't ask. Right now she has to feel like a freshman in the presence of upperclassmen. Awkward and immature. Not as if she's cramping their style. They are wild things and free. She couldn't cramp them if she tried.
He does not have a bearskin rug.
"Deal breaker," she says and starts to wander off. Maybe she's kidding. She has to be kidding. As soon as she hears the word 'library' Alicia pauses and twirls around and marches herself back over there. "You have a library?"
Hawksley Rothschild"Well I can always get one!" he exclaims, because -- well. Because that's true, and because she and Sera just seem so into the idea of the bearskin rug, and he's about to grouse about women and their obsession with dead animal pelts, and this could very well turn into a rant about evolutionary psychology and threats to bring them the heads of dragons or something, but
Alicia turns back, upon mention of the library.
Hawksley, sipping that strange martini, smirks, watching her. He doesn't answer, because the smirk, well. It's answer enough. Does he have a library. Scoff.
Kalen HollidayHe perhaps trusts Hawksley and he does not really trust Alicia, but those things are irrelevant because he does trust Sera. So he rises, a trick on his own, but his shoes are rather more sensible than Sera's and he has not been tasting absinthe.
His eyes track Alicia heading and drawing back at the word library. That gets a flicker of a smile.
"Okay."
SerafíneOn her feet now, grass clinging to the tangled waterfall of her hair, her spine, her leather-clad ass, her fishnets, all of it and Hawksley has her fingertips and it feels like her fingertips are flying and Kalen says okay and Sera smiles, indulgent or perhaps something else, and then she notices the martini made of smoke. Or well, notices that Hawksley's martini that materialized from nowhere was not something she just overlooked, but that the fucking bastard made a martini out of goddamned smoke.
"Oh my god - " Sera is having two or perhaps three conversations at once, "of course he has a library - did you just make that!!!!?! - it has a fucking lot of books and it is enormous and I love it and it has very sturdy chairs - "
- and if, at times, she only has eyes for someone or something right now it is Hawksley's smoke-martini. She slides her hand in his. Full contact. Folds their palms together, as if they belonged like that, while she enthuses, " - bring it closer. Let me see it."
Hawksley Rothschild"Just make what?" he says absently, coyly, to Sera. Her hand is sliding into his and he is taking it, easily, holding her hand. He certainly does not let her get a closer look at his martini. He very nearly starts holding out of her reach, keep-away, in part because he knows if he lets her look at it she's going to want to drink it and he didn't make it for her.
So he sips. And he is looking at Alicia, he has been looking at Alicia since he first woke to sensing her, and he keeps coming back to looking at her. He doesn't even try to hide it. He doesn't apologize for it. He stares, sometimes, and at other times his regard is sidelong, but it is almost always protracted, studious, attentive.
In his eyes there is, for a moment -- and just as unhidden as anything else -- a flicker of recognition. It is not the same thing as understanding. It is the basis of it, though.
"I'll get Collins," he says, as he is finishing his martini, lowering his hand to his pocket to pull his phone out. He does not let go of Sera's hand. He does not toss the smoke-made martini glass anywhere; he just finishes the drink inside of it and then his hand is in his pocket and there's no martini glass there's just his phone, sleek and white and razor-thin. "Unless you all want to cram into the Porsche." It does have seats in the back, the 911. They aren't what you would call roomy. He looks around, cocking a brow, hand poised to send a text to summon his... driver? Majordomo? Manservant? His Collins. He is looking at Alicia again.
AliciaIt's going to rain. There are books and a lot of other words for a lot of other rooms that Alicia doesn't recognize. Kalen let her steal his beer and now he's been assured that whatever badness happens when he sleeps won't occur he's going to come along.
She has met a lot of people in Denver who suffer from nightmares. Alicia does not suffer from nightmares or if she does it isn't every night screaming and sweating and fighting off something that wins regardless of the outcome. Nightmares happen to everyone. Some of their waking moments are nightmares.
The first time they met Alicia trusted Kalen enough to grab his hand and drag him inside the coffeehouse before telling him and Lena what had happened that brought her to Denver. Then they had a misunderstanding and she told him to go fuck himself and that was the end of that. It may mean something that he almost smiles when she comes back or it may mean nothing. What she thinks of him is of no importance to him anyway.
"Uh," she says, "you have a Porsche? SHOTGUN."
Kalen HollidayKalen does not exactly smile when Alicia calls shotgun, but there is a little huff of breath that under some other circumstances might have been a laugh. Those circumstances mostly involve more sleep.
Then he is looking questions at Serafine again, because he will not object to being smushed into the back of the Porsche with her. Look. Who would even do that?
SerafíneSera is trying to get a closer look at the martini and Hawksley is playing keep-away and yet somehow they are still holding hands: her right, his left. And he has a longer reach than she, a longer fucking wingspan and he is considerably more sober in these precise few moments so: keep away. Hawksley wins, he keeps his drink entirely for himself and Sera is holding her own closer to her body and sort of resting her head against Hawksley's shoulder, watching the smoke-martini more than the people, fascinated, fascinated, and resigned that he won't let her get any closer and a bit - you know - she really wants to see it, and then he sips again and finishes it and makes it go away and reaches for his phone.
"What was that. Were you really drinking?"
--
And Alicia wants SHOTGUN and Kalen is looking questions at Serafíne and Serafíne says, " - just tell him about the company. We can cram." Or take a taxi, if cramming really doesn't work. What the fuck does Sera know about the available space or the physics of sports cars.
Hawksley RothschildWhen Alicia reacts to hearing about his porsche with calling shotgun, that's when he grins. It flashes over his face, sudden and quick, and he laughs. "Yeah," he says, still laughing. He puts his phone away, no text sent. He has a beautiful woman's head on his shoulder and he just drank a magic martini. He also has a house that Sera calls Hogwarts and within that house he has a majordomo who comes when called, he has a library, he has a pool, a sauna, a steam room, a cinema, fifteen bedrooms, a ballroom, and he has forgotten how many kitchens.
He turns his head, and kisses the top of Sera's, and starts walking. He will be followed. He knows it. "That was a discrete illusory conjuration. Something I picked up in Egypt. And as far as I can tell, I most certainly was drinking."
Sera wants him to tell Collins about the company. It doesn't occur to Hawksley to pull his phone back out -- ugh, the effort! -- and tell his manservant that he's bringing three Awakened home. If Collins can't take that in stride, after everything, he really isn't worth his paycheck.
--
In a parking lot somewhere there is a Porsche 911 anniversary edition. It is in a color known as 'anthracite brown', which the 911 anniversary edition does not come in: unless you are Hawksley, apparently. It answers the remote unlock like it is coming to life, and perhaps there is some life to it, the way its paint job looks a bit like the glistening feathers of a golden eagle, or gold scattered on earth. They climb in, cramming, cramming, stuffing Kalen and Sera in the back and perhaps Sera chooses to drape her legs over Kalen's lap or maybe she just tucks them up and Alicia called shotgun so shotgun she has. Hawksley drives.
Of course Hawksley drives. Smoothly, confidently, whipping away from downtown and the parks and out towards Cherry Hills Village. It is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the country. And Hawksley's estate lies down winding, tree-flanked paths that hide mansions, other estates, a far cry from his own -- you can shout on his property and remain unheard. And his property is... considerable. His house is significant. Stately. Old-world, with an expansive drive and hardwood and chandeliers and marble. There are multiple chimneys. There are tennis courts. There is a garden. There's -- a lot, really, and of no matter. Hawksley pulls the Porsche into a side building that serves as garage for that, for a hulking black Mercedes SUV, and for something else low and curvy and covered with canvas.
When they walk up to the front door, there is an older gentleman standing there, dressed in a smart charcoal-colored suit. He opens the door for them, watching as they enter.
"Four for dinner, Mr. Rothschild?" he asks, his tone a bit arch, and Hawksley turns, grins,
he's holding Sera's hand again.
"Yeah," says the master of the house. "Make up some rooms, too. They'll be staying."
And Collins -- for this is he, dark and stoic and calm and calming -- gives a low nod. "Of course."
--
Somewhere in there, Kalen and Sera get lost. To the kitchen, or the pool, or the gardens outside. Hawksley loses them, but not Alicia, who he is taking
to the library.
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