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Alicia

This is where she comes after she gets off the light rail from Littleton.

She could have just taken the light rail from Littleton back to Cherry Hills Village. It would have taken the same amount of time. Instead she took the light rail from Littleton up to downtown Denver and now she either has to get her ass back to the station before 7pm or call Collins to come get her. Or find a place to crash for the night.

Alicia does not do so hot thinking longterm. Right now she's walking into a bar near the metro station looking distracted but not miserable. Like she's got a lot on her mind and is in here to relax.

They have a bocce ball court. That isn't why she's here. She's here because she doesn't feel like walking all over the goddamn city.

Serafíne

The Matchbox is slow on a Monday night everyplace is slow on a Monday night Monday nights are tragic. People are recovering from the weekend and plunging back into work, trying to get back on track with deadlines and assignments and the rest of the usual bullshit that does not impact Serafíne in the least. She has neither a job nor a schedule and she's kinda waiting for Rick to get off work at the toystore then they're gonna walk home or does she even remember that he told her this morning that his shift was gonna end early and what the hell -

there's a bocce ball court on the back patio, and they're playing Andrew Bird (If your loose and libel lips/Keep sinking all my ships/ Then you're the one who sank my Lusitania / But some how it don't register as pain at all/Till it finds your crooked vein) on the sound system and it is piped onto the back patio and as Alicia walks in to The Matchbox she might maybe feel something familiar, which is to say: gut-wrenching and compelling and stripped of definitions and on-the-verge, that between feeling, that sense of some goddamned threshold.

Sera is whistling along and laughing over the strange things one has to do to make a whistle with a tall tattooed guy and a girl with dreadlocks and they're gonna go do whatever now 'cos they are NPCs and anyway Sera is excusing herself to go intercept Alicia as Alicia walks in.

"Hey, Alicia. What the hell are you doing here. Wanna beer?"

Alicia

"Yeah I want a beer," she says with a lopsided smile. "You buying?"

Of course Sera's buying. Sera is the gregarious one with a house and funds and friends. She could pay for it herself but she isn't going to turn down a beer if someone else is offering it. Up to the bar they go and she offers whatever seasonal ale they have on draft. She isn't the world's biggest pumpkin fan but she won't turn down a good Oktoberfest.

Once she has her drink she hops up onto the stool so she can be somewhat at eye-level with the Cultist and her crazy heels.

"So... I was at the library and I didn't want to go back to the ranch just yet. Are you heading back there tonight?"

This is a gateway to her asking for a ride. Look everyone. Alicia can be taught.

Serafíne

So Alicia gets an Oktoberfest and Sera has a bottle of something (it is a sour ale that tastes like sour cherry juice) in her right hand and she rests it on the bartop and of course she's buying and of course people come to see what the fuck she wants when she wants it, and she's about to order another but - "What the fuck is the Rumchata by Elvis - " gets a brief sketch of an explanation from the 'tender and Sera flashes the chick a grin, " - but make mine a goddamned double, cool?"

--

"Why, you need a ride? Sure, I can take you home. One way or another, we'll get you there."

Alicia

And Alicia is content to sit and watch the happenings between Sera and her friends. She's too young to be in here anyway but if she were by herself she has a document that serves as proof that the bartender can serve her. Nobody has asked for an ID in here for weeks. They're good judges of character. They can smell a cop from a block away.

After the conversation she had with Hawksley the other night she isn't going to mince words. Doesn't matter if she needs a ride or doesn't need a ride. If she could make it out there just fine with her feet. Alicia gives Sera a smile and lifts her beer in a toast.

"Thanks, girl," she says.

Serafíne

Alicia's beer comes back quick. Sera's bizarre drink concoction takes much longer and requires the use of a blender and the peeling of a banana and Sera's friends - the folks from the bocce ball court - wander back in and they're heading out, she'll see them around, and the truth is she just met them tonight and cannot really remember their names except with magic but they're already in her phone and they'll probably show up to her next party, like they've been part of the crowd all along.

When Alicia lifts her beer in toast Sera tips out the base of her own bottle and clinks, see. Chiming. The noise feels right and there's a bit of weight behind it and she takes one last sip and tells Alicia, "You should try this, it tastes like a sour cherry pie. It's brilliant - " when the bartender brings back her Rumchata by Elvis concoction and presents it with all due fanfare and Sera admires it as is only right and proper and leans herself against the bar, all hipslung and sort of gives the bartender a look when she seems inclined to linger close and make conversation and sends her back to the other end of the bar.

"All that library shit," Sera is savoring her drink now. Swirling her straw through its striations. " - you're gonna go blind." A quiet little smirk that blooms and recedes just as easily as it comes on. "Seriously, though. You settling in? Getting on out there?"

Alicia

"I thought it was masturbating that'd make you go blind."

That isn't an evasion. There's room for bantering a bit before Sera says she's serious and wants to know how she's settling in. Alicia shrugs and considers the row of bottles and the glass behind them before she looks back at Sera.

"It's alright. I'm used to staying in motel rooms, so the space is a little..." She chews her lip. Swallows down whatever else she might have said that. "Overwhelming. Sometimes. I'm not going anywhere though."

Serafíne

"The nuns used to tell us that shit. Not in so many words, mind - they'd be all evasive and call it self-abuse, but whatever. Unless your kinks involve razor blades and soft tissues - "

And Sera is still playing with her drink. Pulling the straw through the murk, pulling it out. Licking off the whipped cream and marveling over the whole of the concoction. And still, you understand, her eyes are dark and are quick on Alicia's countenance. There is lip chewing and swallowing-down and it doesn't feel like evasion but something else and Sera's smile - the curve of her mouth - is in that moment so exquisitely tender, so markedly gentle that it doesn't seem like the expression belongs anywhere close to the countenance of a girl like her.

"You need anything. Or, I don't know, just want to get out and go shopping or what the fuck ever, you let me know. Cool?"

Serafíne

Also PER + AWARENESS AS EMPATHY how you feel?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Alicia

There's something she isn't telling Sera and it has to do with the present for a change instead of the past. But the past is going to cast a pall over her until she is truly over what happened to her and her father. She may never be over it. Hard to get over something like that. Life will go on and she will have good days and she will have great days and there may be days when she doesn't think of it at all. Whatever she swallowed down was not like that.

It's going to take some time before she trusts herself or the people around her enough to talk about the good things she remembers about her father. Before she can talk about her Awakening or the abduction. They have some time. Probably not as much as they'd like.

In the Alicia looks at Sera for a few moments and then smiles. It's a sad smile. She's tired. Maybe she's gone lonely on them.

"That..." And she sounds hopeful just before she decides if she's going to commit to this or not. She decides. She smiles. "Yeah. Cool. What are you doing tomorrow?"

Alicia

[IDK where that sentence was going but get rid of the "In the" in the first sentence of the third paragraph.]

Serafíne

"Whatever the fuck I want."

So says Sera, and she says it with a curving mouth and just enough surety that no one could ever disbelieve her. That is, after all, what she does almost every night and that is the way she likes to live her life. Whatever the fuck she wants.

"You wanna hit the Buffalo Exchange? Or do you have something else in mind?" There is a beat; Sera takes a sip of her drink. It is insanely ridiculously delicious and she makes such a face - bliss, you understand - and then she exhales and opens her eyes and says, a bit more quietly, nudging one of Alicia's feet with her own. "Something else going on? I mean, it's cool if you don't wanna talk, but it felt like there was something else you were gonna say, there. You know?"

Alicia

The fact that Sera notices and wants to know more makes Alicia smile a conciliatory smile. She rocks a bit with the collision exaggerated because Sera did not nudge her that hard. Just an acknowledgment. She is not trying to close herself off.

"Nothing," she says with a scoff. If it weren't nothing Sera would not have noticed. "Sorry, I don't want to talk about it. It's about Hawksley. It really is nothing, I just... you know, he... misread something I'd said, and we were shitty at each other for a minute and I started crying and it was super awkward. We're okay now. Please don't say anything to him. It's just hard, you know, adjusting. I'm..."

Just say it Alicia. Nobody's going to think you're being a baby.

"I miss my dad."

Alright. Congratulations. You're an adult. Drink your beer.

Serafíne

"Can I give you a hug?"

Alicia

Her eyes immediately well up. She grits her teeth and swallows and they even out though they still shine. The breath she blows out her nostrils is heavy and hot. Sera can see her thinking about it.

Alicia takes another bracing slug of her beer and quick-nods her head with her jaws still clenched.

Serafíne

So Sera hugs her. Sera is warm and she smells like cloves and cinnamon and PEANUT BUTTER BANANA ALCOHOLIC MILKSHAKES and she is lean and quick and her arms are wrapping around Alicia and she is cupping the back of the other girl's skull with a tender hand and pressing her mouth to Alicia's temple, humming a bit, against her skin.

"I'm glad you guys are okay, now."

Quiet, this. Sera's breath warm and her awareness humming and her mouth curving in a quick-ling sort of smile that Alicia can feel rather than see, soft against her skin. Everything about the gesture is tender, and also somehow strangely respectful - of whatever boundaries Alicia might have, and of her grief and her right to it. Sera does not want any of these things to go away. What she is saying, with her body rather than her mouth, is not: don't be sad. But rather: you can be sad. I'll be right here.

It is such a hard thing to be human.

To be human and to endure loss, to live with it. To leave someone behind and relegate them to history. To wake without -

"And I know you miss your dad."

It lasts as long or as briefly as Alicia desires, that hug. The cradle of her hand. As long or as briefly as Alicia desires, and then Sera is pulling away, planting a kiss in the center of the other girl's forehead, the third eye though Sera does not know this, does not know any of these things, and Sera buys Alicia another drink and then suggests that they go elsewhere, she got a text from so-and-so who suggested the Thin Man, has Alicia been there?

Before the night ends, Sera gives Alicia both: her cell number and her address, just in case she needs either. And Sera can stay out as long as she wants or as briefly as she needs, one way or the other, by the end of the night, Sera returns Alicia to Hogwarts.

Home.