Magic.

Serafíne

It hasn't been long since they walked out of the bar. They can't see the doors from the goddamned alleyway that stinks of piss and something slow-rotting and blood now, assuredly blood, the sharp stink of the victim's fear as he lay dying on the pavement.

Sera has blood on her. On her hands and on her thighs and smeared on her dress though the dress is black so the blood is less visible. She lets go of Elijah's hand and expels a long, slow breath.

"I've gotta get out of here - " she says, beneath her breath, reaching for the phone in the pocket of her suit jacket. " - fuck. You okay?"

Elijah

He's taking off his vest, pocket watch still in hand and he hands it over to Sera like having the fabric might help her clean herself up, but there was blood everywhere and this was going to look really, really bad and someone was going to notice someone who was that kind of gorgeous in that state of disarray.

Elijah took a kick look round to see if they could get to the parking lot without anyone thinking anything weird.

"I… how the fucking Hell did you do that?" he was in awe, but now was not the time. Elijah shook his head quickly, "We… uh… we can't stay here, is your place close to here? Mine's not far."

Serafíne

Elijah hands over his vest and there is Serafíne, barefooted on the filthy asphalt, and he's handing it over so she takes it because there is a kind of rhythm to almost any human interaction. When someone offers you something, you accept it.

Her hand is shaking just a bit, from the excess adrenaline or -

Well, shaking just a bit and she balls the vest up and she doesn't know why he has handed it to her, doesn't understand that he intends for her to maybe try to clean herself up with the slick, glossy back, the tailored suiting on the front and it seems so absurd, in the wake of all of that, to have a vest in hand.

So she breathes out something like-a-laugh and gives him this quick, taut, close-mouthed little smile and looks down at her hands, his crumpled vest, and then up, a swinging glance up and down the alley.

"Magic." Is Sera's only reply in that moment. Magic, magic. He can feel it still, the sensation of her resonance so heady that it almost feels as if they are drowning in it. "And I took a cab, no idea how long it would take to walk. I was gonna have Dan come pick us, but if your place is close, he could get me there."

Elijah

"that works," he says.

He looks still, his breathing shallow and his hands weren't shaking but he had to remind himself at that juncture that he needed to breathe and that they needed to get somewhere and that this was going to be awkward. Elijah needed something to do with himself, so he looked for her shoes. Because they were fantastic shoes.

"I… I wanna learn how to do that, you saved that guy."

HIs mind was blown.

Serafíne

Elijah finds Sera's heels near the mouth of the alley just where she abandoned them. One is on its side The other is standing upright, just as it was when Serafíne stepped out of it. Sera is still (absurdly) holding on to Elijah's crumpled vest, though she has carefully tip-toed out of the dark, slick pools of blood and is looking up, up, up, past the dark frame of the buildings flanking the alley, up toward the still-dark sky.

And she is still like that when Elijah returns with the shoes.

Her sharp profile in swimming silhouette against the dark smear of the alley, the dull and acid glow of the dim bulbs hanging over the back entrances to the street's storefronts obscured here and there by the hulking shadows of oversized dumpsters.

When he comes back, she takes the heels from him. Tucks her fingers into the leather and takes the heels and hands Elijah back his vest reaches out to brace herself against his shoulder as she lifts first her right foot, then her left, to slide her shoes back on.

"I told you," Sera says then, breathing out quietly. " - magic. It's just - it's hard to fucking explain. It's just something you do, you know. You start by listening to heartbeats. Feeling for living things, you know. The quick in them - their patterns all charged with - fuck.

"It's hard to explain. Now c'mon. Lead the way."