Matchmaking.

Hawksley

Ever since that evening that he ran into Kalen and Sera and met Alicia in the park, Hawksley has had a transient sort-of living at his place. And other than the touch of her resonance here and there throughout the house, the way he is tuned into it more keenly than he might be to some others, he could go plenty of that time without knowing whether she is there or whether she has gone. On occasion, when he isn't sure if she's around and wants to make sure she doesn't futz with something he's in the middle of, he's put tangible wards on his altars.

Something moved will, moments later, simply shift back into place where it was. It's not like he couldn't just use a post-it note, but this seems more efficient to him. The No Touchy, Apprentice rote.

Collins takes care of the girl here and there, as he would with any guest. Collins knows when people are around and where they are and tries to anticipate their needs as best he can. Hawksley has more needs -- and demands -- than young Miss Romero, anyway.

Tonight, though, Alicia is off in one room or another, or sleeping, or in the library. And Hawksley is in the courtyard as the sun sets, seated at the little table where he often takes breakfast, and across from him is another chair, and in that chair is Serafine, one of the only people who is as regally, naturally comfortable in his home as he is. At least: that is how he sees it.

Between them are the remnants of a bottle of wine and a sumptuous meal. Between them is a half-eaten dessert, cold and bittersweet and smooth, eaten from long spoons. Hawksley, dressed casually, finishes his current glass and sets it down, watching her from across the table. A breeze moves the boughs of the courtyard's tree overhead. Drowsily, he sighs, and says:

"You should sit on my lap."

Serafíne

Collins was spared the very awful question of how to approach a young lady and sort-of guest-in-the-house about the fact that she hasn't changed clothes (and likely underthings!) in upwards of three days quite nearly a week and a half-ago when Sera nipped up to the house with armfuls of shopping bags of gently used or absolutely new things. Enough for a week, maybe enough for forever, given the efficiency with which Collins runs the household. A day or so late, Alicia was also supplied with a Sera-picked bikini, and maybe even a goddamned tennis skirts (Sera makes fun of them, but we would lay odds that she actually secretly loves tennis skirts) so that she could take full advantage of the grounds.

This weekend Sera wandered into a karaoke bar which was WEIRD and went camping and dusted her hands with chalk and climbed boulders until her fingers were raw and fell off them onto a makeshift crash pad and this morning she was savoring the lingering remnants of those wounds and now she is here and she is healed and instead of cargo shorts and an old PIXIES t-shirt she's wearing thigh-high black stockings and her garters with a few inches of creamy skin between the tops of the stockings and the tiny little ruched satin skirt she has paired with them and a nude-and-black lace blouse from which the modesty mesh has been torn because what the hell is the point of the illusion of nudity and she likes the and her hair is golden, washed and blown out and curled and drifting over her shoulders and it is sun set and the sun sets earlier these late summer nights, and earlier and earlier, which makes it even more necessary to squeeze all of the late summer sweetness out of the late summer days and she's wearing sunglasses and the dying sun paints a crimson splash of light across the lenses and her head is cheated toward him and he tells her that she should sit on his lap,

and that makes her makes her smile.

And she inhales, Sera, like she is pulling the idea-of-it into her and she likes the idea-of-it she always likes the idea-of-it so she takes her sunglasses off and she stands up and toes on her heels and circles the table, fingertips trailing on the discrete and lovely linens, and steps out of her heels and sits in his lap, facing him. His hands probably go to the place where her ass meets her thighs, to balance her there.

Her own hands go to his temples.

Still smiling, she kisses him, slow.

Then breaks the kiss, and just contemplates him, before she asks - "You like having Alicia here, don't you?"

Hawksley

Collins, thankfully, was going to wait until Alicia brought it up, or until Hawksley complained about it. Alicia was, at least, bathing. Collins, thankfully, does not concern himself with the underthings of his guests, only their comfort. It would be easier if Alicia actually used a bedroom instead of staying up all night in the library, then he could simply lay out pajamas for her and launder her sundress in the meantime but noooo.

Teenagers.

He has half-raised one already, that was enough.

--

Sera brought clothes. Some time later, Sera was invited -- by Hawksley -- to dinner. In. He doesn't know about injuries or bouldering the way he doesn't know what Alicia gets up to when she is not immediately in his perception and the way he doesn't know many, many things about people's lives when they are existing out of his immediate orbit. Collins, like Dan, keeps track of Ginger for Hawksley. Hawksley, unlike Sera, cares about far less that goes on, so he hears less.

He smiles. He invites, and she removes her shades and comes over and sits on him. His smile widens, as it does, lopsided and curving and wicked as he is. He does cup her beneath her upper thighs. He squeezes. He draws her a bit closer, and lifts his chin as she is touching his temples.

He cannot see the future, but he knows she's going to kiss him. His hands flex on her again, then smooth, up and down and back, settling. He breathes in slow exhale when she draws back. It was not an urgent kiss, no deep and devouring thing. He is not hungry. He is lazy and he is thoughtful and he is,

and she can tell this, the way she can tell anything about him it seems,

adoring.

--

The smile falters, as does a bit of the laziness and at least the expression of adoration in his eyes if not the adoration itself. He blinks, only because he was not expecting that. But he ponders it, unbothered, and nods. "Very much," he tells her. He does not bother to hedge. He does not bother to downplay, to gloss over. Glossing over would be his only hope, against Sera.

And not just because she sees through souls the way she does. In part, it's just Hawksley. He knows he cannot lie to her. The difference about Sera is that in this, he has no real inclination to try.

Hawksley's nostrils flare a bit as he inhales. He leans back in his chair, which is light and foldable but wooden, painted white, cushioned with orange. It's not the sturdiest place to have her perched atop him, but his legs are braced and the chair can hold their weight. For now.

"What made you ask that?" he wants to know, drawing her closer. Not to plant her right on his lap, here, let's do things other than talking, words are stupid. It's almost as though he wants to hold her, suddenly.

Serafíne

A neat little shrug is Hawksley's first answer to his question, and it means in part, I don't know, but it also means, more than that, that Sera is alive and aware of herself and aware of her body and has decided to take pleasure in every movement of her body the way she so often does,

especially when he is near, but just as Sera does not bother to lie to her, or to downplay, or to gloss over some things, well, Sera knows better than to tell him I don't know and to expect Hawksley to accept that as an answer to nearly any question he might ask, and he pulls her closer not in a way that says now but in a way that says something else and that something else makes her heart catch beneath her breastbone in a way that is both very very strange and very very present and it makes her breath catch, too.

And Sera kisses him again.

Not his mouth, his temple, and her own mouth opens as she feels the beat of his pulse and thinks about his mind inside his skull. All those neurons or whatever, electric, all the mysterious pathways of thought.

"She's been all transient. You know? Moving around from cheap hotel to cheap hotel. If you like having her here, maybe you could tell she can move in. Not in a crash in the guest room kinda way, but in the put up posters on the wall and your name in glitter stickers on the door kinda way.

"For as long as you want, or as long as she wants.

"I dunno, I bet she could use a home."

Hawksley

Hawksley isn't expecting her to kiss him then but, all the same, she does. And he knows as her lips spread over his temple that she wants to bite him there, and he thinks that if she could, she'd hold his heart in her teeth, and something about that sets it pounding. The pounding feels like trust, and

as well it should.

He listens as she murmurs things to him that he did not know, had not asked, was not planning on asking. Things he suspected, though, of the young woman who he has seen here and there, peripheral in his vision the way that she has been peripheral to his awareness in his home. He thinks of her now, and the way she looks, and even though she has other things to wear than the yellow sundress now, he pictures her in a corona of bright gold, searing and burning, roiling, the liquid heat of creation.

Hawksley's eyes close for a moment.

"Something about her tells me that actually making such an offer would make her bolt."

He exhales, and his chest moves with it. "You know as well as I do how people run from things that are good for them."

Serafíne

She does want to bite him there. He knows that, and he can also feel it in her kiss, which is equal parts tender and savage,

as she so often is, even when her savagery is hidden within her heart or bounded by her skin or buried, suffused, transmuted by her human form and her human skin and her human eyes and her human tears.

And some part of Sera is both caught up by something she does not precisely understand, some concordance she cannot identify or understand because there are so many things about herself that she cannot or will not identify or understand and the rest of her is right bloody here.

And Hawksley is telling her how people run from things that are good for them, and Sera moves her mouth against her skin, she says, "Not me," with such a momentary deadpan that there is a stutterstep before he realizes that she is laughing over that little lie, because when has she ever embraced anything that was good for her,

(except, maybe, him)

and of course she kisses him again because she is in the mood to kiss him and this time it is his brow and then she's pulling back, in close focus, her hair all tangled, her arms wrapped around him, forearms resting against his shoulders, fingers laced behind his neck.

"She told me she was waiting for the all-clear that no one was watching her before choosing whose couch to surf. Up to you what you say or how say it. She can stay though, right?"

Hawksley

He smirks. He smirks a smile at that. Not me, she lies, ohhh she lies. And he doesn't tell her she lies because she laughs.

Sera knows.

She draws back after another kiss, this on his third eye, and he looks right at her. He's serious. He's balancing their weight on the chair, her weight on his lap, his hands on her thighs. "If that's what she's waiting for, she's going to be waiting the rest of her life." He shakes his head. "I don't understand the ones --" he means the Awakened ones, "-- who center their choices around whether or not they're safe. None of us is safe. None of us should desperately be trying to hold on to such an idea."

Hawksley shakes his head; his disgust reads clearly. Not even disgust, just this air of are you fucking kidding me. "Of course she can stay. She is staying. For now." He narrows his eyes at her. "You never answered my question."

Serafíne

"I know," Sera tells him, and she does know; she understands; she agrees, when the fuck has she ever been safe, or sane, or responsible, even, in a way that anyone close to ordinary could begin to understand, "and maybe I'm fucking wrong, but she doesn't seem like the sort who is trying to be safe at all costs. More like, things got so bad she doesn't quite understand yet how to live without asking herself: when is it going to happen again.

"She just doesn't seem like the sort who's paralyzed by the Need to Be Safe. I could be wrong, you know? But she's got a helluva long time to figure it out."

And then he tells her that she never answered his question and Sera doesn't remember his question and she is asking him, with a neat little frown that creates a solemn divot between her straight brown brows, "What question?" when the lightning bolt hits her and her mouth rounds and she says " - oooh. You mean why I asked?

"I dunno," and I dunno has to be a placeholder, because Sera knows she's not getting away with I dunno with Hawksley. "She adores your fucking library. And she felt - to me - like she fit here. And I wanted to see if you agree."

Hawksley

"When I showed her my library," Hawksley says thoughtfully, "we talked a bit about safety. And the lack thereof. She seemed to get it. At least here she has some freedom to explore. She's taking to that. But she shouldn't make herself homeless because she's afraid someone she stays with might get hurt. I mean." He holds up both hands, temporarily removing them from her body,

such a sacrifice.

"I'm pretty sure with the right acceleration of base elements I could blow someone up. I'm not too worried about home invasion."

He lowers his hands again, wraps them around her, scoots her closer, wraps his arms around her waist. He bites her, gently, on her clavicle. It takes her that long to remember what his question is. And he is stirring, yes, she is warm and he is half-drunk and there are other things, too, other thoughts beyond her skin and her mouth and the wine, that bring him so readily to the surface.

"She does," he says, and there's a heaviness to his voice there, a weight that sinks in their bellies, he knows she has to feel it too, the way it tangles with lust, the way it matches the quickening of one pulse to another. His hand smooths up her skirt, up her hip, and he licks her throat. "And I do."

Serafíne

All Sera can do then is to hum her awareness, her understanding, her acknowledgment of his answer to her observation about the way that Alicia seems to fit because his hands are smoothing up over the straps of her garters, beneath her skirt, and his mouth is on her collarbone, so close to her right breast, and his other hand is beneath her upper thigh, just where she likes it, and by the time he tells her that he agrees with her she has forgotten what she said anyway.

Sera likes the way Hawksley goes from drowsy and lazily affectionate to wanting, to wanton, and it makes her breath catch and her heart seize in an entirely different fucking way from the way it did early, when he invited her onto his lap and held her close not like he wanted to fuck her insensate then and there, but like he wanted just to hold her close.

That was enough talking.

The way she's breathing is like she's offering her breasts to his mouth because she is, she is going to take off her stupid clothes she doesn't even know why she is wearing the goddamned things but his mouth is already on her right breast, over the lace, her nipple taut as he catches it between her teeth and she's, well, pressing her hips into his, she's already so fucking wet and she wants to feel him and this fold-up wooden chair really cannot take the stresses they are about to inflict upon it, no matter how strong Hawksley's thighs, no matter how well he braces his feet, and so he's standing up, picking her up with him, and her legs wrap around his waist and she's laughing, because that is what she told the future she wanted to happen and now it is and he takes her inside,

though they do not get very far.

--

Close to midnight, maybe they go swimming, naked and splashing and Sera dares him to catch her and he's so fucking tall, of course he can catch her, and it is like a movie montage, and they end up making out in the shallows of the pool. Sera has had so much champagne by then that she seems to be made of bubbles, when he picks her up again she asks him if that is why she is so light and laughs and even though she wants to kiss him like anything she also wants to make eskimo kisses with him and so she does, laughing, Moet and Chandon on her breath and tells him that he should come bouldering with them next time, she'd forgotten how much she liked it, how brilliant it is to climb and climb, and hold yourself aloft until you cannot hold anything anymore, and then left yourself go,

and fall,

except Hawksley wouldn't hit the ground, would he. He would catch a thermal, right?

And soar.