Misanthrope.

Elijah

Santa Fe was full of things. Art galleries, tattoo parlors, and restaurants. There were people there looking at art and gathering at food trucks and this was the sort of place that people wanted to be. Tucked into some tiny strip mall, between a gallery and a boutique, was a tiny shop that was unreasonably warm called Van Gogh to Go- which was funny, in and of itself because Van Gogh wasn't exactly a person who did pottery, but there it was.

A little hole in the wall shop that let people build and glaze and fire their own pottery. They even offered glasses, but the building was cursed. Nobody really understood it, this happened to be a good location but everything that went in this particular building seemed to die within a matter of months. No matter what the concept. On Saturdays, there was the offering of shots and pre-fired ceramics.

They weren't teddy bears or unicorns (unicorns are hard), but they did have quite a few bowls and the occasional lopsided coffee mug that was fifty percent off if you wanted to do something with it. They didn't trust people to fire their own work on a cheap booze night, but the staff at Van Gogh to Go, a little round woman with freckles and curls and a tall, gaunt fellow who smiled often and had crooked teeth but a sensuous voice, were more than happy to oblige their patrons.

The back smelled a little like pot. Back where the kilns were and the walls were bright and garish and swirling like it was starry night except it wasn't all starry night. It was... more aboriginal than Van Gogh. The name just sounded better with Van Gogh.

Elijah wasn't sure what he was doing with his Saturday night, but it somehow involved pottery. There he was, sitting on some crappy park-style bench against a wall holding an uneven cracked half of a bowl.

"Depending on the glaze?" the little round woman told him, "some of the detail work you're doing could get lost? So... uh... be aware."
"Mmmmn-hmmn," he replied.

He wasn't paying attention. He had shots of tequila lined up nice and neat and dead.

Serafíne

Awareness!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 6 )

Serafíne

The front door to Van Gogh to Go swings open and another blast of chill swamps the little storefront. Barely below freezing but after the balmy weather this week past the cold seems sharper and brighter and harder-edged, and has had absolutely no impact on the clothes our heroine has chosen to wear tonight for a pub-crawl briefly interrupted by a side-trip to a paint your own pottery store.

Tonight Sera's wearing a tight little leather skirt that barely covers her ass, thigh-high fishnets in a diamond weave texture, an old Siouxsie and the Banshees tee - white, washed so often the cotten is beginning to erode - over a black bra, beneath a battered leather jacket, shearling lined. Perhaps in deference to either the weather or the pub-crawl she's in her shit-kicker boots tonight so, you know. Not tall the way she often seems.

There's a little bell on the door and it rings to announce the arrival of anew customer and the little round woman looks up and, perhaps surprisingly, blinks her recognition of the new arrival.

Sera doesn't seem to notice anyone except Elijah. Makes a little beeline over to him and swings a leg over the flat bench - just one, straddles it nevermind that her skirt basically allows her no room to move her legs if she wants to maintain anything like decorum (she gives no fucks about decorum). Rests her chin on Elijah's shoulder.

"What the fuck are you painting?"

Elijah

What was he painting?

Precisely, or more accurately, what the fuck was he painting?

Elijah looked at the broken piece of pottery, cocked his head tot he side and tried to think about what was there. Really give it a name and a word because that was, in and of itself, a powerful thing. Giving something a name, imbuing it with properties by saying I dub thee a bowl, but frankly, he wasn't sure just yet. It reads across in his hesitation, the way that his mouth opens and then closes and then quirks to one side.

"Polka dots," he decides, "and little chevron things."

Chevron thingies.

He shrugs with his free shoulder, and leans a little against the woman at his side, "fuck if I know what the plan is, they keep bringing me booze so I keep painting."

Serafíne

"You don't have to know, you know," the creature murmurs, low beside his ear. She has a bony little chin and he has a bony little shoulder and he leans against her and she's naturally, thoughtlessly affectionate with him in a way that never precisely seems sexual. There's alcohol on her breath from the martini bar across the street and a martini bar doesn't seem precisely like her sort of scene but that doesn't stop her, wouldn't stop her.

And she's behind him, kind of, giving him space to paint and to not-get-paint on her favorite Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt. "You could just say fuck if I know. Who the fuck cares about having a goddamned plan. Slash the shit out of the underbrush and go whereever the fuck it takes you, yeah?"

Lifts her chin then. Places a delicate kiss behind the structure of his shoulder, over his jacket, tee, vest, whatever it is the tall blond boy is wearing.

The little round woman hovers. She's not quite fretting yet, but - she does want to interrupt and ask if Sera will be painting this evening.

And then there're the things she never picked up. The little round woman would like to ask her if she'd like those things, too.

Elijah

"Once we fire it?" he says, starts, "doesn't matter if I had a plan or didn't have a plan. The glaze is gonna do whatever the fuck it wants to do- hors de mes mains."

It's not sexual. He could be a number of things, and most assuredly was a creature who enjoyed sex, engaged in it, and generally did any number of things but his affections towards Sera weren't ever lustful. Weren't focused on her legs and how they were long (even though she wasn't tall, he didn't understand that, but understood that her legs were long and she was not and that made perfect sense to him) and that her features were striking and that she had any number of wonderful textures at any given time and he knew that if he could, he'd do whatever he was capable of for her.

But they are there, and she presses her lips to the fabric of his vest and the fabric rustles against his shirt underneath it.

"Wanna paint the other half? I was thinking about doing both and then, like, gluing them together or something."

Serafíne

"Hours of what?" Sometimes French and Spanish are just close enough that Sera understands one or two of the words sliding out of Elijah's mouth when he decides to respond to her in French. One or two. She breathes in and and smiles against his vest and this smile shows teeth - that he can feel - then kinda shrugs and lifts her left leg over the bench to join her right on the other side and close as they are her bony knee catches Elijah a bit in the spine but she's careful too, nimble if not precisely graceful, and she murmurs a little apologia and pats his back comfortingly.

"I'll paint the other side but I don't know that you need to glue the pieces together, after. Nothing wrong with being broken - is there? You don't have to put everything back together, you know? Sometimes that's just how things are."

mouse

[awareness]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

mouse

Even the most stoic of people must allow themselves some moment to breathe, even if it meant showing a side of themselves they'd rather not. This isn't to say that the 'letting one's hair down' sort of thing meant that the stoic was no stoic, but simply, that there were moments when being guarded was simply exhausting.

Arionna was no stoic, but the concept still held. She hadn't known they were there, and had simply ventured out in an effort to give herself some time to just...zone out, or give her own mind a rest. Studying had a way of tiring her out, despite the fact that she enjoyed it immensely. Since she had plans to work on art, or some manner of activity that would be messy, she hadn't bothered to dress as extravagant as she was want to do. No, she chose a simple peasant skirt. Green, with some sort of cultural pattern on it in gold. And a T-shirt with some manner of faded skull pattern on the front. Even her hair was pulled back into a long braid, then wrapped up on her head to keep it out of her face. Of course none of this was seen except for the moment she slipped in and took off her coat.

But it took a moment simply to do that. Her hand had paused on the door, the familiar feel of Sera and Elijah so very close to her. They felt too close, close enough that she wondered whether they were going to be exactly where she had planned to be. And then she questioned whether she ought to leave.

She stood there for far too long, the cold air of the city mingling with her own icy feeling. Her lips tightened, untouched by the usual colors of lipstick, and with a deep breath, she gave him and plunged right into the potential interaction of all three.

Arionna stepped in. She stepped in, removed her coat and took a seat at a free table for the moment.

Elijah

"Hors de mes mains, out of my hands," he clarifies.

He nods, listens to what she's saying and holds the piece a little gingerly at the sides. He's overworked one half, had been explicitly told that if he wasn't careful he could accidentally over-glaze the piece and it would end up stuck to the insides of the kiln. Elijah was not a child that had been trusted with things that were breakable. He now now also an adult that is not trusted with breakable things.

"I think that..." he stops, has to reorder, "I think it's a lot harder to be broken. I mean, if you break you just become something different. "

mouse

[LMAO helps if I change names]

Arionna

[*cough* no one saw that]

Arionna

Even the most stoic of people must allow themselves some moment to breathe, even if it meant showing a side of themselves they'd rather not. This isn't to say that the 'letting one's hair down' sort of thing meant that the stoic was no stoic, but simply, that there were moments when being guarded was simply exhausting.
Arionna was no stoic, but the concept still held. She hadn't known they were there, and had simply ventured out in an effort to give herself some time to just...zone out, or give her own mind a rest. Studying had a way of tiring her out, despite the fact that she enjoyed it immensely. Since she had plans to work on art, or some manner of activity that would be messy, she hadn't bothered to dress as extravagant as she was want to do. No, she chose a simple peasant skirt. Green, with some sort of cultural pattern on it in gold. And a T-shirt with some manner of faded skull pattern on the front. Even her hair was pulled back into a long braid, then wrapped up on her head to keep it out of her face. Of course none of this was seen except for the moment she slipped in and took off her coat.

But it took a moment simply to do that. Her hand had paused on the door, the familiar feel of Sera and Elijah so very close to her. They felt too close, close enough that she wondered whether they were going to be exactly where she had planned to be. And then she questioned whether she ought to leave.

She stood there for far too long, the cold air of the city mingling with her own icy feeling. Her lips tightened, untouched by the usual colors of lipstick, and with a deep breath, she gave him and plunged right into the potential interaction of all three.

Arionna stepped in. She stepped in, removed her coat and took a seat at a free table for the moment.

Serafíne

"That's pretty fuckin' wise," agrees Sera, with the equanimity of an inveterate stoner. Even nods her lovely golden head a little. She still has the side cut but has allowed the soft fringe of the buzz cut to grow out a bit so that is resembles instead the pincurled fur of a cocker spaniel whose coat has been closely trimmed to spare it the heat of the summer.

Okay so instead of sitting properly on the bench she chooses instead to sit criss-cross applesauce like a guru hovering a few feet above the ground. The big bulk of her boots awkward beneath her knees. "But I think there are a helluva lot of things that're broken. People that're broken. Or maybe they're becoming but they forgot the goddamned process. Got sidetracked. Got their asses hurt all over again.

"Anyway. You should glue it together again after I paint it, if you want. Is there teal?"

And Sera glances up somewhere in the midst of all this. She could feel Arionna's resonance from blocks away. This shiver cascading down her spine, close and closer until the door opens and the girl herself is there, hesitating in the open door, blasting winter into the otherwise warm little space while she makes a decision about whether to stay or to go.

Dark blue eyes touch neatly, lightly on the young woman, then swing back to Elijah as she takes up a brush.

"Your little friend's here. I don't think she approves of me." Murmured quietly, privately, with this supple thread of a smile. "I'm not sure she approves of anyone. Were you guys supposed to meet?"

Elijah

"That would suck," he proclaims, "being in the process of building yourself back up but forgetting to get to that part so you're just... like... fuckin' person pieces."

He reached across the table, stretched, stretched, stretched for something that he was pretty sure was teal- it looked teal, and he grasped it awkwardly with his left hand. Looked up in time to see Arionna and he smiled, bright and all sunshine, because he was sunshine, doesn't realize that his proximity to Sera might be considered odd. Doesn't realize that his proximity to a lot of people may seem odd. Only that he wants to be close, so he is. And that was that.

"Nah, this wasn't planned," he said, "it's more serendipity?"

And he handed over the teal, waved the little quarter-glazed piece at Arionna, since waving the other hand didn't seem to dawn on him. "Are you gonna come paint with us?"

Arionna

She set her coat neatly on the bench she was at, lightly pulling on the bottom of her shirt, as if it had pulled up where it shouldn't have, even though it didn't. Ari was even ready to make a decision on exactly the sort of thing she wanted to do, and without hopefully giving into the people not far from her. She wasn't a stalker after all, and yet being in another place that they were just seemed rather odd, even to her.

But Elijah was already inviting her over, waving some piece of pottery at her, and he certainly didn't look in the best of shape; alcohol had that effect didn't it? Her brows furrowed a little as she looked from Elijah to Sera, an obvious dilemma occurring. With a small sigh she removed herself and her coat from the chosen table, and stepped over to them, taking a place with the most distance from her and Serafine; maybe because she didn't like her, or maybe because she simply preferred her space. "You seem rather cheerful."

Serafíne

The Cultist doesn't comment on what forgetting might do to people. Strangers, anyone. She does give Elijah this look, which is both banked and lashed and contained, absolutely lovely against her profile. Then she glances down at the table on which they are painting. This slant-wise view that feels stolen, all the discrete implements necessary to the work in just one place, wrapped in shadow and stolen light.

And she breathes. Imagines herself with two great wings framing her spine. They're folded and damp. They're new. Sometimes they ache.

In that moment she goes a bit far away.

She's pulled back when Elijah declares that this wasn't planned and is closer to serendipity. That's when she wakes. Takes the teal from Elijah's hand and squirts some onto the paper plate that serves as their amateur palette, holding the brush briefly, neatly, between her sharp little teeth, then plucks it out and dips the tip into the glaze even as she reaches - with her other hand, the left, wrist bristling with leather bracelets, spiked and studded - for one of Elijah's shots of cheap tequila. Knocks that back like a professional.

Sera was going to tell Elijah that she has that word - serendipity tattooed somewhere on her skin. But Arionna decides to join them instead and the Cultist chooses to seam her mouth and swallow those words, glancing between Elijah and Arionna with lifted, lilting brows. Clearly that comment was for Elijah, not her. She'll let him respond.

Elijah

"I prefer not to be morose if I can help it," he tells Arionna, still has that bright smile on his face, because why not? Why not smile and why not be in a good mood. Tipsy though hewas, his words were precise and measured, like language held a purpose and would be executed with the same on-a-dime precision that it deserved.

"Have you met my friend Sera?"

Arionna

That he prefers to be cheerful...

But Arionna isn't sure he can be anything but it. Elijah always seems to be the sort of person who is like that. Always happy in some way. She normally finds such people to be rather annoying. How -can- a person be happy all the time?

She looks to Sera slowly. "Yes." Simple answers are preferred. There's no need to elaborate about the tacos, and the meeting with her and Kiara. There isn't much that would come out of it. She rises, steps away long enough to get a plate like item and sits back down to begin her own crafted item. It wasn't going to be lovely either, Arionna hadn't an artistic bone inside of her.

Serafíne

When Elijah asks if Arionna has met my friend Sera, my friend Sera sets down her shot glass, tequila burning the back of her throat, and flashes Arionna a peace sign with her left hand. The gesture is enough to expose the strange tattoo that takes up much of her left hand. Scissor blades evident on her index and middle fingers, which come together into the handles on the meat of her palm. One of the loops then slowly turns into a shark whose tale curls all the way down the tender skin of her inner wrist.

"We've met," Sera echoes / confirms, her crawling mouth tucked into a little smile. Her instinctive, unremitting compassion at war with her regular desire to make those with comfortable, well-settled opinions a little less comfortable, a little more un-settled. "Kung Fu Tacos was out in Lodo a few nights ago," unlike Arionna, Sera does elaborate. "Though fuck me, I don't think I ever actually ate my goddamned tacos. One of them was smoked duck with kim chi. Kiara was there and I got fucking side-tracked."

Then a glance back at Arionna. "You know, pottery painting doesn't seem quite like your bag. What brings you out here?"

Elijah

Yes, Arionna says, and he might be a little tipsy but something washes over him and he is suddenly made aware that things seem... awkward. Not completely awkward. Not Carrie levels of awkward, just... awkward.

Tequila is picked up and offered to Arionna. If she doesn't partake he drinks it and puts the glass down, upside down, on the table.

"I think Kiara just does that, not that she means to but it's, like, attention getting."

Arionna

She declines, visibly, by pushing the shot glass back to him. "I drove." Because while she's perfectly happy bending and breaking modern society's rules, the outcome of such bad decisions would be far greater in cost than they are worth.

"I wonder what it is you think is... my bag... exactly." She reached for a color, pulling it to herself and setting up her small space to begin painting.

"She means to." Arionna decided to add into it. "Her demeanor suggests that she desires attention, seeks it out, requires it. "

Serafíne

Serafíne is perfectly happy to claim the shot that Arionna turns down. Does so without a second thought, long fingers - tattoos framing them - reaching for the rim of the shot glass over the bristle of brushes and paint pots on the newspaper-lined plastic table.

Such a strange place. Such a strange conversation. Such a lovely burn at the back of her throat. "I never fucking drive," to both, as she tosses back the shot Arionna refuses for pretty solid reasons. "There's a reason fucking god invented cabs, far as I can tell."

And Arionna wonders what Sera thinks is her bag, exactly, and Sera kinda shrugs her narrow shoulders in a gesture that looks like surrender and doesn't really respond directly because it wasn't really a question directed at her and more to the point she doesn't really know.

But - "Kiara didn't distract me from my taco. I had this chocolate I was drinking and then I had to pee and there was a bar and I forgot about them until like four a.m. and I was telling Dee that I'd found Kung Fu Taco and she was so fucking jealous and she asked what I had and I was like.

"Fuck. I left my tacos."

Daub daub daub. Dot dot dot. Teal polka dots are being plopped almost-neatly onto the white ceramic broken thingy.

Sera's dark eyes flash up, across the table at Arionna, so far away, who adds that Kiara means to, desires attention, seeks it out, requires it.

Quietly, then, still daubing, "You sound like you don't approve."

Elijah

"That's cool," he declares. He should probably drink something else at some point. He tasted a little like tequila but he always did. Some people drive, and some people do not.

Sera proclaims she never fucking drives.

"Ah, and on the twelfth day the lord did look down upon the people and said, ugh, my people have to drive places and it doth verily fuck up their reverie, and he did bestow upon the earth the yellow cab taxi service, and it was good. But so as not to abuse the lord's gift, he made it smell like stale cheetos and White Shoulders, and it was good."

He grins, and stops his polka dotting for a moment, "I kinda like having attention. I'll admit it, totally not ashamed."

Arionna

"I wasn't aware that stating the obvious was the same as disapproval. If you want to know what I think, then you should just ask." Sera did daubing, Elijah made polka dots, Arionna began by slowly making a line around the outer edge of the plate. She worked slowly, trying her best to be as careful as any real artist might; maybe because she knew how bad she was at it.

"You're just as obvious, Elijah." Arionna hunched a bit more over her plate as they spoke. Normally she'd have her nose stuffed in a book; anything to keep her thoughts rolling. People could be boring,

"Why cheetos?"

Serafíne

"Sounds like you have us all pegged," Sera murmurs, and her paintbrush hovers but doesn't move much and mostly she watches Arionna over the edge of her own piece. Dark eyes lashed, remarkably sharp for all that the alcohol she has imbided tonight is surely stealing some of her focus right from beneath her feet. It isn't an admission: it is something else, though Arionna is unlikely to discern the sense of whatever it may be.

"What brought you to Colorado?"

Elijah

Why cheetos?
"The lord works in mysterious ways," he says with conviction, but can't get the grin off his face long enough to take himself seriously.

Though, admittedly, he does pause, he does think about it, and he does put his piece down. It would have been easier to bury his head in the sand. To busy his hands and not say anything but... he doesn't.

"Hey, Arionna?"

There is hesitation.

"I know you probably don't intend for it to come off that way, but sometimes you say things about people and it comes across as kind of... I dunno... angry. And I get you can be angry but, like, Kiara's my friend, ya know?"

Arionna

She hears them both. What they say, the tone that comes from Elijah, and the subtle warning that she gleans. She's insulted his friend and he isn't very fond of it, that's what she gathers. Her brush stroke slows, and she lifts her brush from the plate.

"My mother was committed. I was under age." It feels uncomfortable to say to anyone other than Danny, who she's come to be close to. Her lips pursed and she blew softly on the paint to be certain it was dry.

"Her disposition is her disposition. It won't change depending upon the friends she has. If you wish to keep truths from her to spare her person, then it's a choice that you make. I choose not to. " Her gaze lifted slowly and she looked at Sera and then the tipsy Elijah. "I assume that it's not favorable for you."

Serafíne

Sera cuts Elijah a glance as he speaks up to say that Kiara is his friend. And she has had more than a few shots herself, but still there is something aware in that look, quietly simmering, and then the glance banks and lowers to her piece. She isn't really painting now. Her brush is still and there's her shadow over the table the stillness of the room around them. The little round woman hovering but not precisely close.

Some three months ago Sera and some friends ended up here on a whim and Sera was stoned - tripping - and she painted a plate threaded to look like a mummy pink and orange and black. Hasn't been back to pick it up and the mummy has been sitting in the pile of to-be-claimed pieces for months. She doesn't really remember it.

"How old are you now?"

---

That's quiet, too.

Elijah

[manip+sub: because talking about this is totally normal for me!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Perception + AWareness as Empathy: Eijah.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 7 )

Arionna

[ditto on Sera's]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

"Hospitals are hit and miss," he tells her, "sometimes the food's okay but you lose time. I didn't know any lifetime residents, that's pretty rare from what I understand. I'm sorry that happened, though."

And that'swhere the genuine quality of it was. He did feel sorry, not in a pitying way but in a way that he really did understand. Being committed was a familial affair. It didn't just impact one person, it impacted the whole family. He understood tha this was hard, wanted to be present and give some insight, give something that was mitigating, but at the end of the day, he couldn't.

Bless him, though, for trying.

Elijah

It's more then that, though. It's more than just trying to show empathy, it's that realization that the minute he opened his mouth he shouldn't have said anything. Shouldn't have done anything, wants to abandont he topic wants to flee. Sera catches the little things. The fact that his eyes- a little glassy- focus on a wall for a moment like he was expecting something to happen. She could tell when his stomach tensed, the way that he froze up, that beyond that the experience he had owned up to was more of a miss than a hit.

Or maybe it was a hit when he was praying for a miss.

Maybe there is a touch of recognition, of relief. There but for the grace of god goes he, but it's always lurking in the back of his mind. That he may lose touch. That he may go back, that he might do worse than-

Well now, that's a story for another time, isn't it? Off in a flicker of a memory that tries to set fire to panic but is stomped out too quickly in the name of being rpesent for a friend.

Arionna

skip me for now

Serafíne

So. Arionna doesn't really answer Sera's question. And it was a question: directed at her, quiet, compassionate in its way.

Then her dark eyes flicker to Elijah. There's a beat of her always failing heart, and then that always failing heart skips, and then her attention is entirely on the young man, not the young woman. "My folks put me in rehab for the first time when I was twelve."

And she's slurring her words so you kinda understand why that fucking happened. How her teenaged years got devoured.

"When I was eighteen I stole a bunch of meds, checked myself out, and sold the drugs to buy a ticket to London."

Elijah

Twelve.

What had he been doing when he was twelve? He didn't know half the things he did now were even in existence when he was twelve. He wasn't even interested in girls when he was twelve, wasn't fascinated with holding hands or making out or anything remotely familiar in that sense until he was thirteen. Was thoroughly off in his won little world at twelve. Was just an imaginative child at twelve. One that didn't grow up quite fast enough.

He nudged Sera a little, eyes stay with hers for a moment. Does the quick math and knows she's at least six years off from that last visit.

"London's got to be a lot better," he admits, though it's not an admission for him. He's never been to London. "Do you have any good memories of being a teenager at least?"

Serafíne

Elijah considers the age and considers the source and does quick math: what he knows of her. How far removed she is from whatever when down, then. And he tells her that London's got to be a lot better than rehab and she gives him this simmering look, because yes it isholy fuck, other shit and she's a bit too tipsy to do anything else. To be anything else.

And he wants to know if she has any good memories of being a teenager at least and she gives him this near little shrug "'Course." Which is both truth and lie and shoots a banked glance at Arionna, whose one-line admission started this line of commentary and questioning.

And Sera puts her brush down and rises from her seat and grabs her little clutch and goes to pay, both for today's pieces and for the pieces she did months ago, before she went to London, before -

Gives Arionna and Elijah a little privacy.

For the nonce, at least.

(OOC: sorry was trying to wait for arionna but I am so tired. going to bed! night!)

Adult Diversion

Serafíne

Adult Diversion. 10 p.m.

--

That was the text Ian received sometime close to midafternoon, inviting him to Sera's next show. Adult Diversion is a dive bar on East Colfax, not far from the Ogden. The place is in a basement - this steep clatter of concrete stairs and iron railings leading to a narrow concrete apron of a courtyard where folks can loiter and smoke in fine whether or shiver and smoke in cold weather. Bouncer standing at the door with a cauliflower ear and a gold tooth where his canine should be and a black-painted door that opens into an impressive little space, vaulted like a wine cellar or a speakeasy, bookshelves on the wall where the hightops are scattered, a big, impressive bar dominating a somewhat small space that opens into a slightly bigger performance space in the back. This pair of pool tables and a small, open dance floor that isn't quite big enough to get a true mosh pit going but on Punk Rock Tuesdays (hand-written in chalk on the UPCOMING SHOWS board) someone always tries to throw arms and elbows and maybe even stage dive.

The crowd is exactly what you expect in a place like this. Eclectic, varied. Bright and lively at nine or nine-thirty, when the kitchen closes, turning somehow both bright and darker as the alcohol really starts to flow.

They take the stage at 10:15 or so. Play a forty-five minute set - reeling, varied, covers to originals and originals that everyone in the crowd thinks are covers because the people to whom they've sold songs - well. Dan knows what the fuck he's doing when he writes a song, and sometimes even Serafíne does too. They have such a chemistry, the tight little foursome. Dan's a killer guitarist and Dee kinda hangs back on the bass and lays it down and there's nothing flashy about Rick on the drums but sometimes you wonder what it is that keeps them going, why they are so fucking good on stage even as the lead singer herself is keeping lost and finding threads and stopping and starting and clearly not-sober and, if the bottle in her hand is any indication, rapidly becoming even more not-sober. There's a fifteen minute set break in the middle when they come back and play for another forty-five minutes or so, which is a helluva lot more material than most unsigned, unknown, unheralded bands can throw on stage.

Something about their presence: something about the night or the room or the way they work. The way they know each other, swing it and swing out and swing it, they way they know her says that maybe being: unsigned, unknown, unheralded is a goddamned choice.

But god, she's scintillating. The light loves her sharp features, her spare frame, her long limbs. Catching bright and hard against the fine bones and delicate arches, the dark dark eyes. Sera does have a guitar and she plays it sometimes and sometimes she slings it around to her back and holds onto the mic with one hand and the neck of her bottle with the other and croons, so softly you can hear every rasping breath.

The two songs are both covers: Lily and Parrots and then Tonight the Sky, both by Mark Kozelak. They play up that big-ass riff and make it louder and louder and even Sera needs her goddamned guitar to carry the line so that Dan layer in the scintillating runs over it, but then the vibe changes, rotates, slows and Sera gets rid of the guitar once and for all. Picks up the bottle. Grabs the mic, just sings. Tonight the sky will open for you / Mountains and big clouds divide us in two.

Then it is over, over for good and Sera waits for just a few seconds of the applause that comes before she turns to slide the strap for her guitar over her head and hands it off to Dee or Dan then jumps off the stage as if she handn't just spent hours on her feet in five inch heels. Walks in those things as if they didn't do a goddamned thing to hobble or shorten her gate. Slips through the crowd like water, headed toward the bar and probably Ian. She needs another drink.

Ian

When Ian arrived at the bar, he was alone. There'd been a moment, maybe, when he'd considered bringing someone else. But Emma didn't like dive bars and Jae-shin didn't like bars in general and Elijah was already going to be spending the weekend with him as it was. More to the point, Ian was the sort of person who could get away with going to a concert alone. So he did.

He didn't try to grab Sera's attention while they played. Perhaps she noticed him, standing back by the bar with his mouth close to the ear of some girl he'd just met. Or later, dancing in the crowd with said same girl. Perhaps he was just another beating heart in the room. Another force of life and will and vitality. People tended to blend together when you were on stage, becoming this interconnected, singular being. Ian was familiar enough with the interplay between performer and audience. The mutual exchange of energy.

Sera, and her band, were a revelation. Hardly a surprise, given what Ian had seen of them before, but that made it no less of an experience. As the hours passed, Ian drifted back and forth between the bar and the stage. He had a drink when he came in, but after that he stuck to water (partly because he was dancing, and because the room was hot with the press of bodies, but also because he had to be up at 5am the next day.) The girl he ended up gravitating toward was a few years younger than him - a college student from UCB who'd driven in for the weekend with her friends. They talked a bit, but mostly they just enjoyed the performance. Before she left, she gave him her number.

By the time Sera concluded her final song, Ian was back at the bar, leaning against the counter without bothering to inhabit a seat. He was dressed pretty casually, by his standards. Skinny jeans in raw denim and a black t-shirt. The boots he had on were one of his older pairs. A bit scuffed in places. Possibly splashed with spilled beer at some point in the night. There were leather bracelets on his left wrist. Wherever his coat was, it wasn't with him.

He met Sera's eyes as she approached the bar, smiling in this way that seemed lit with coiled energy. His shirt smelled like beer and pot, neither of which had come from him. The rest of him smelled like expensive hair and skin products and some kind of subtle cologne with woody and citrus notes.

"Are you always that fucking amazing?"

Serafíne

"Flatterer," Sera riposts, meeting Ian's eyes and she can meet his eyes because they are nearly of a height with her five inch heels on. They're black, nearly but not quite stilettoed, covered in a bristle of studs and spikes enough that they could double as a medieval torture device. The bottle she has in hand is whiskey, maybe a quarter of it remains, and it sloshes around as she approaches the bar, too close because she likes to be close.

Inhales, there, the musk of marijuana, the spilled drinks. Inhales again the scents beneath it, and does it in a way that would tell Ian she is - naturally - fucked up even if he hadn't just watched her drain that bottle over the course of the night.

"Course we are," she murmurs, leaning in to brush her mouth over the apex of his cheekbone. She was wearing a short pink dress covered in a fine print of cartoonish little bumblebees with garters and fishnets but midway through the performance she got too hot and peeled down the bodice of the dress to let it hang at her waist. Beneath: this sweet little black bra with these scalloped cups like shells or Frence madeleines, and of course her tattoos. The ink on her bicep and forearm, the ink crawling beneath her right breast and drifting over her right shoulder blade, tight against her ribs, and on and on. All blackwork.

"Thank you for coming," she continues, murmurs when they're close, and she smells like sweat and whiskey and her eyes are little bit unfocused so maybe there's something else in her blood, too. Smiles around the thought and lolls back a bit and pushes the bottle aside to make room for her ass because, "I wanna sit on the bar. Will you pick me up? And, fuck. Tell me how you know Justin."

Ian

Ian probably (no, more than certainly) wasn't the strongest person in the room. For all that his physique spoke of wired and elegant athleticism, he wasn't muscular in the way of, say, a football player. But Sera, despite her heels, was a fairly petite creature. And Ian had... rather a lot of experience with lifting people. Knew how to do it so he put the tension in the right muscles. Knew how to make it look graceful, even. So when she asked him to lift her up, he set his hands firmly on either side of her waist and hefted her onto the counter in a smooth motion that made it look as though he was expending less energy than he actually was.

(Thank you for coming.)

"Of course." He let the rest of his reply hang a moment, setting his hands on the bar on either side of Sera's legs. Leaning there, slightly in her space but still perched far enough away that he could pull back and give her room if she wished it.

"I met him while I was performing in Madison over Christmas."

Serafíne

Oh, Sera is a spare thing. Sinew and sharp, fine little bones. Sometimes she spends her days drinking and drinking and forgets to do anything so prosaic as eating. Sometimes she fasts, perhaps even purges, because it feels like ritual.

Someone once told her about ritual, so.

Tonight, though, Ian lifts her up and can feel her inhale, can feel her laughter - incipient, lateral - through her body, the promise of it in the tension of the muscles flanking her waist. Her skin is warm, even hot, and damp with sweat that darkens the snaking tendrils of her dyed curls.

She smells like sweat. Sweat and whiskey and Chanel No. 5. Sweat, whiskey, Chanel No. 5 and a fast-beating heart.

This release of tension in her toes and both shoes drop to the floor of the bar. Ian's in her space, but she doesn't seem to object. Not now, not yet.

"How is he?" she asks, leaning forward like she wants to bump foreheads. Like she needs a fulcrum against which she might sway. "Did you guys fuck?"

Ian

How is he?

Ian grew quiet at the question. Sera leaned forward until their foreheads nearly touched, letting her shoes drop to the floor. Like she was uncoiling, unwinding. Ian met her eyes for a few seconds, and there was something unfathomable in the velvet darkness of his gaze.

Then she asked if they'd fucked, and he laughed. It was, perhaps, the obvious question, given who she was talking to.

"A few times." He leaned down to collect her shoes, setting them neatly on the empty barstool to his left. "And he seems to be doing fine. As far as I can tell. He's saving up to buy some property outside of town. Said he wants to get into organic farming." Ian said this like it was just about the least exciting thing he could think of to do with one's life. "I think maybe he's a little lonely. But... who isn't."

Serafíne

"I miss Justin. I miss a fucking lot of people."

This ghost of a half-smile chases quicksilver across her mouth. Yeah she started the night with dark dark eyes and crimson lipstick but the lipstick is long since gone, left behind is just a faint berry-colored stain more evident when she seams her mouth than when she smiles. And she watches Ian lean down for her shoes and swings her legs a bit as he rises and her half-smile deepens or sharpens into something like real pleasure when Ian tells her that he and Justin had sex.

But her gaze dampens, banks a bit when Ian goes on, says something about organic farming and tells Sera that maybe Justin's a bit lonely and who isn't?

Her gaze hooks and her gaze hoods and something -

"You aren't lonely, are you?"

Ian

The thing about sensation is that, when it's constant, you stop noticing it. Like a teenage boy who can't smell the potent stench of hormones in his bedroom, or an older woman whose joint pain is so omnipresent that she stops realizing it's the reason she's always in a bad mood. The thing is still there. You still experience it. But you don't think about it anymore. It becomes the baseline.

Ian glanced at Sera's eyes. Her lips. Watching the way her expression fell. There was something a little sharp and a little too sleek about Ian's expression. The way he slid past the question. The way he didn't really answer it.

"I think that, compared to most people, I'm pretty fucking privileged in that regard." There was literally an entire library of numbers in his phone that he could dial if he wanted to get laid. Not that he needed to ask, really. Things like that usually just happened to him. "And anyway, I don't mind being alone."

That much, at least, was genuine.

"Are you?"

Serafíne

Perception plus awareness-as-empathy: oh are you avoiding the question?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Ian

[What, me? Not give a straight answer? Surely not.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

Serafíne

Sera watches Ian's sharpened gaze so closely and so carefully and she watches him with a regard that could perhaps verge on the tender, and this time that tenderness belongs entirely to him, and no on. Searches the nuance of expression in his face, chasing the bits that seem -

oh, elusive.

Her eyes drop from his face. She glances away, her profile stark against the soft, warm impression of the bar. The bustle of humanity, the haze of the soundsystem, the bartender behind her who tests the bottle she pushed aside before Ian lifted her up to the bar and decides that: yes, there is still drinkable alcohol left. A shot or two or three.

And she asks if he is lonely and he deflects and his deflection is so practiced and so polished and so - something, that it makes her feel a little bit more lonely so she cuts her eyes away and he has a brief impression of her delicate profile, the vulnerable column of her throat.

"Yeah." She says, then, with a tight little cut of her shoulders in a shrug. "'Course. Maybe not so often as you'd think, and more regularly than I'd like." This impression of tears ghosting over the surface of her eyes. I miss Hawksley. I miss alot of people."

A beat. Then: "What'll you do if I kiss you, now."

Ian

Ian had to know, at least a little, that keeping someone like Sera at a distance could be harmful. Almost even a little cruel. Or maybe he didn't know. Maybe for him, distance meant safety. (And not only for himself.) But he'd been more honest with other people before. Kalen. Elijah. Kiara, even. (And what did they have in common? Was sex really the only way to get him to act like a fucking person? Perhaps it was just the easiest way to start.)

But then, Sera had to know, at least a little, that trying to force someone like Ian to be vulnerable could also be harmful. Maybe even a little cruel.

Or maybe she didn't know.

But, give her credit. Sera answered the question. Maybe she was the stronger of the two, for all that she always seemed so perilously close to breaking apart. Ian didn't react to the admission as coldly as one might expect. Nor did he attempt to question her further. There was just this lingering look. Softer than it had been a moment ago - sharpness melting into something reserved and gentle.

What'll you do if I kiss you?

"You're drunk," he said quietly. "So... not much." It wasn't a statement of judgment, but of caution. She was not sober. He was. That was an imbalance. "But you won't know unless you try."

Serafíne

"I spent Christmas day alone," and her voice is low and her voice is raw and her voice is rich and she does always seem to be falling apart. She is is a permanent state of falling apart and somehow both her body and her soul retain the strangest sort of integrity. This hint of deflection because she isn't precisely looking at him so much as some piece of the bar, some passing hint of skin. A stranger's curving shoulder, a stranger's vulnerable through. Her own, swallowing. The sheen of her sweat starting to dry makes her shiver and the floor seems to very fucking far away.

"Flew back from London a few days before and went to Kiara's party and Dan didn't know I'd be home 'til I was and he'd already made plans to see his folks and I was like fuck it you have to go. Home, you know?

"And I went to mass the night before but not all of it because sometimes that shit pisses me off, and that night I went out and I picked up this guy and brought him home. He didn't stay. Wanted to be there for presents in the morning, had a kid brother who still believed in Santa and everyone else was gone and the house was empty and I woke up in the predawn and it was just my breath and it was just my heartbeat and it made me - "

A brief, quick breath.

"I went and slept in Dan's bed. Then I had a party starting that night, and the first person who came over was Emily and she was done with everything Christmas except cocktails and sugar-rims and more people and more people, and I fucked loved it, but I still missed the people who were gone."

Sera's half-closed eyes open again here. She hums, beneath her skin, opens her eyes and opens her legs and leans forward - sharply, swaying in a way that seems dangerous, and yes, she's drunk. she's probably something else as well and she kinda starts to laugh when she feels the world upend itself and she leans forward one more time until their brows touch.

And she kisses him: gently. Tenderly.

Open-mouthed.

Tastes like whiskey and smoke and magick, does our Sera.

Ian

And just like that, it all spilled out. The story of what Sera did for Christmas. And Ian always had been better at listening than he was at speaking. He didn't know the details of her life - not really. But he remembered these things that she told him. Used them to piece together bare sketches in his mind.

She didn't say anything about her own family.

And then she kissed him. She was sitting on the bar and Ian was standing with his hands still planted on the edge of the counter by her knees. When she opened her legs, he let his hands fall back to his sides and stepped closer. The act was instinctive, moving into her space as she invited him into it. Letting her gravity draw him there. Their foreheads met. His breath was warm against her mouth. Both of them smelled like whiskey tonight, but his was muted. Mostly washed away. His hair smelled like a high-end salon. His clothes smelled like the bar. Two pieces of his life, slotted together - not quite in sync. But... human.

He kissed her back. Open and slow, controlled and surrendered at the same time. His eyes slid shut when their lips met. When he tasted the whiskey on her tongue. A beat later, his hand found its way into her hair, threading into the longer strands to feel the slope of her scalp beneath his fingers. There was a subtle press to keep her close (even if only for a moment,) and his other hand came to rest on her hip. Pressed his thumb just slightly into the soft tissue of her abdomen.

When he pulled away, he ran his tongue over the swell of her lower lip, as though to reclaim some of the taste he'd left there.

"I usually spend Christmas alone. This year, I spent it with a guy who was too nice to be with someone like me. He made me stuffed french toast and egg nog and I let him fuck me. Then we walked in the woods for like two hours and I tried not to think about the fact that I had my first real kiss in those same fucking woods."

Serafíne

The bar is a great blur around them, all that noise. The cacophony of conversations distant and near have a watercolor uncertainty, but create a kind of music that fuses somehow both within and beneath the beat of music pulses through the soundsystem. Right now a cheery Saint Pepsi dance number which is a strange little counterpoint to what passes between them. No one in the bar who knows her will be surprised to see Sera perched on the bar proper kissing a near-stranger. Hell, strangers aren't surprised, either. She just feels like that kind of girl. That's how the world bends itself around her. How she wraps herself up in it. How she sinks her teeth into its skin.

The kiss ends and Sera breathes out half-a-laugh and gasps in another breath. She's smiling. The world is spinning, and she likes the way it runs around the axis of her body. Likes the way it sets her loose. Likes this too: her shadow over Ian's face, the twist of his fingers through her damp curls, the warmth of his hand on her hip. She stays close, brow to brow if he allows it, because moving now might break whatever spell has been worked around them and one of her hands comes up to his face, fingers stippled on his jaw, thumb against his cheekbone. Wrinkles her nose like she might just give him Eskimo kisses.

But no, "What the fuck - " she's laughing, all on an exhale, whiskey on her breath, " - gets stuffed into toast. Turkey? French toast. Snails and brie?" Then a moment where she's inhaling, slantwise, reflective.

Inhale, inhale. Consider: and realize that - no - she's not going to puke. That makes her smile, too.

"Why didn't you wanna think about your first real kiss?" Kisses him then, again. Nothing close to chaste, but not so lingering. "I like to think about mine."

Ian

This is the trouble with memories. Seemingly innocuous details get all twisted up with the things that break your heart. Sera laughed at the notion of stuffed french toast, which made Ian grin because he'd been skeptical of it too at the time. Their foreheads were close, touching so that she could splay her hand along his jaw. He left his own hand on her hip, but released the hold he had on her hair so that he could run the tips of his fingers down past the curve of her throat - this light, exploring gesture that traced the pattern of her pulse.

"Strawberries, actually."

Sera wrinkled her nose, which was... fucking adorable.

Then she asked him why he didn't want to think about his first real kiss. Ian seemed perfectly content to let their lips meet again - to fall into that second kiss rather than contemplate an answer. But Sera didn't linger.

Ian pulled back slightly. Let his hands come to rest on the bar again. He lifted his eyes to meet hers. To actually look at her. To take in the way the light in the bar made her eyes shine.

"Sometimes good memories hurt more than the bad ones." He breathed out softly; let some of the heaviness settle in his shoulders. "What was yours like?"

Serafíne

Sera's eyes are a dark, dark blue, framed by these rather straight brows and dark make-up. The pupils are ever-so-slightly engorged. Light-hungry in the dark bar, perhaps, or maybe she's on something more than just the whiskey he watched her down tonight.

Maybe she's always on something.

And there's this shutter-stop moment when Ian pulls back, settles his hands on the bar and looks at her - really looks at her - and her focus is interval, not quite caught up with his outward shift and she both looks and feels like she's floating, as if there were nothing beneath her ass or her hands and she was going to either fall or take flight.

"Katie O'Connor. She had freckles everywhere." Still smiling, Sera, and shining with it, though it is a very different sort of smile than one might expect - internal, integral and yeah - okay - maybe a little bit sad. Doesn't alcohol make everyone maudlin, though? "Everywhere I got to see, anyway. Nighttime, and we snuck off to the chapel. In the sacristy - these big leaded glass windows. Almost all the other ones were stained glass, but these were clear and the full moon shining through the dark woods outside cast these shadows that were long and strange and made it feel kinda like we were submerged, you know? Underwater.

"What about you?"

Ian

The ghost of a smile traced its way over Ian's features while he listened to Sera talk about her first kiss. (About Katie O'Connor and her freckles.) That smile melted away when she rebounded the question back to him, and for a long moment it seemed as though he might not answer.

"Naomi Alvarado. She was on the track team, but I didn't know that so I let her goad me into a race. She won. Barely." There was a flicker of something in his voice there. And edge of some old, forgotten warmth. "Anyway, we'd been hanging out a lot since both of us were in this play together, and things were getting... you know. How it is when you're fifteen and you meet someone you really like. So we were lying in the grass just trying to breath and she looked... perfect."

That small admission made his voice go still for a moment, and he glanced over Sera's shoulder. Behind her, rows of glass bottles decorated the wall, reflecting a slippery sheen of muted ambient light.

"I should have kissed her then. But I was being a stupid kid about it, so I didn't. I kissed her later when we were walking through the woods and ended up by this little creek. After she told me she wanted to be a musician and I found out we had the same favorite song. It wasn't actually my first kiss. But... it was the first one that scared me, and the first one that turned me on. So... it's the first one that mattered."

That wasn't true, precisely. But people place different kinds of emphasis on different kinds of milestones.

Serafíne

Hi Ian, what are your feels?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Ian

[Let's see, can we get, like, a middling amount of successes? Diff 8 because reasons.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 2

Ian

[IAN WHY]

Serafíne

Even with her drowning eyes, Sera is watching Ian so closely in those moments. Her breath is withheld and her body relaxed, spare shoulders rounded forward, goosebumps rising here and there as her sweat evaporates, chilling her bare skin. One of her bra straps has started to ride its way down the curve of her arm but the other remains solidly fixed, bisecting the bitewing of her left clavicle. Each breath she takes is a lesson in tension and movement - the concave hollow at the base of her throat, the flicker of her dark lashes against the curve of her flushed cheek. The way she closes her mouth, inhales, opens it, and breathes out again.

Somewhere in the middle of Ian's storytelling Sera has matched both arms around his neck. Her elbows or maybe her forearms rest on his shoulders, her fingers are laced behind, thumbs drifting vaguely through the dark fringe of his hair.

And Sera's smiling, and she makes this noise like yeah, she totally knows what it is like when you're fifteen and you meet someone you really like, and hell, she probably does know. Can absorb it through the pores of her skin if someone's giving her enough energy, though somehow - that isn't what is happening here.

That makes her mouth quirk. And it makes her ache and it makes her a little bit sad and it makes her a little bit something else, she doesn't quite know what, she doesn't always names things.

Doesn't feel the need to.

Maybe, she thinks, it changes them.

It doesn't matter. She's so drunk that her eyes are bleary and unfocused, and shining, shining. Brighter than before.

"Hey Ian?"

Ian

Sometimes he wasn't even aware of it - the way he starved people out. Gave them truth without emotion. Or emotion without the truth to give it meaning. (He was like that with so many things - as though he could only bear to be so open. As though intimacy was a heavy thing that could only be carried in pieces.) Sera was smiling because she knew - of course she did - what it was like to be a teenager falling in love. But Ian's smile did not quite manage to take hold. They were in a bar and the music was... not right. Not what he would have chosen to underscore the story he was telling.

It came out too easily. Too ordinary. And somehow that felt like a betrayal. (Of Naomi, and of everything that had come after.) But if it hadn't - if he'd told it differently - it may not have come out at all.

He let the moment be what it was. Let Sera fold her arms around his shoulders. And inevitably she said his name and he met her eyes again.

"Yeah?"

Serafíne

"You should kiss me again." Sera is leaning forward again and maybe she's swaying a bit. Maybe having her arms around his shoulders steadies her. This time they are not precisely brow to brow. The bridge of her nose against his cheekbone, her mouth edging toward his ear. Her voice is quiet and a little bit raw. She was singing - sometimes screaming - up on that stage for the better part of two hours, so if there is a sandpaper edge to her voice, well. There's a perfectly ordinary explanation written into the history of the night.

"Maybe a lot? I like to make out." A short breath out. It sounds like a laugh, and hell, maybe it is.

Or maybe she has her own mysteries, too.

"Then I think you should go."

Ian

Human lives were messy things. Somehow they always seemed messier in bars.

But here - see? They were talking. And the space between them was so small. And whatever he felt, Ian's body was warm and alive and his heart was strong enough - vital enough - to keep him there. To keep him grounded in space. To keep him hungry for things like the taste of whiskey on Sera's lips. Sera's skin had the salt-tang scent of sweat and Ian leaned his face into it - brushed his nose up the side of her neck to nuzzle behind her ear and just fucking breath her in. The pheromones and body chemistry that made up her pattern.

You should kiss me again.

His answer was to do exactly that. And this time it was less an act of measured sensuality than it was an immediate drive to be closer to another human being. And he pressed himself into her space - between her legs until his hips bumped against the bar - when his mouth opened against hers.

He kept kissing her until either she wished to pull away or the passage of time drew to a point where he was forced to do so (lest poor Elijah be left stranded alone on a mountain the next day.) Then he settled his tab with the bartender and left to find his way back to his apartment.

Kung Fu Tacos

Serafíne

(Arionna since you were here first do you wanna start? Or shall I?)

Arionna

[OH people!]

Arionna

[yes yes! I will!]

Serafíne

(Grins) I already started writing a post. Gimme a sec and it will be up.

Arionna

[kk!]

Serafíne

Kung Fu Tacos is a big yellow truck parked on a little pedestrian square at the intersection of Some Street and Some Other Street somewhere in Lodo. It's dusk and cool again and getting close to freezing - rude awakening after simmering sunshiney days in the 70s earlier this week. The sky has this deep, blue-rimmed hue that saturates the low-hanging clouds and the downtown core is lit-up and there are strings of Edison lights slung across the street. Vampire Weekend (M70) is coming from the soundsystem inside the kitchen and a blonde chick with a half-shaved head in a tight little leather skirt, torn fishnets and combat boots is ordering a Flock of Tacos.

Roast duck with mango salsa, one lemon pepper shrimp taco, and one mu shu veggie taco. She asks for a beer but they don't have them to instead she orders a Mexican hot chocolate.

There's a flask in the inner pocket of her leather jacket that she can use to dose it liberally with something alcoholic.

The order entered Sera steps aside, standing on the edge of the pavement, watching the city's skyline as dusk deepens into night, waiting for the guys in the truck to call her order up.

She's alone tonight, for now and there's a cloth bag dangling from her right wrist.

She's alone tonight, but probably not for long.

Probably never for long.

Kiara

[Let's do that thing, that tells us things.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Arionna

[People like me?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Arionna

Dusk is when all the critters really come out. Sure there are birds and other small creatures in the daylight hours, sometimes even a cougar, but often times the best animals wait until the sun begins the long drop into the earth. It's beautiful, the way the colors play in the sky, and anyone who found such things displeasing could be considered aesthetically inept. Thus it is expected that Ari wanders along the city streets; what sort of animal would she be to miss the best hours of the day?

Now it's not necessarily for Tacos that she's here. It's likely on her way to whatever destination she had in mind, which might mean that destiny has a way of throwing the oddballs together at the best times...or worst. The three of them seemed unlikely to fit...well...Arionna didn't fit well with anyone it seemed, except maybe Danny on occasion, so it may simply be that nature had a very interesting sense of humor.

She moved through the people who still lingered, her nose in a book as was often the case, and hardly paying much attention except for the recognition of a familiar sensation. Her gaze slipped over the book and ahead, the scent of tacos sliding into her lungs, and searched momentarily for the source.

Kiara

Serafine's probably never alone for long and it's true - tonight, at least, that she won't be. You could call it fate, or the fates or if you were leaning toward Kiara Woolfe's particular taste on things you might just invoke any number of Goddesses; any whim of nature's and call it so. This is where x decides to intersect with yz and so shall it be. The pagan's coming out of some establishment [a bar by the sign; some cocktail flashing intermittently on and off in sporadic unrest; all purples and reds with a neon green olive stabbed through its heart] just across the square.

She's alone; or on her way to be; sliding out the door and holding it easily for a pair of departing women; Kiara's smile tilted their way for a moment as they set off in another direction; calling wild farewells over a shoulder that are snatched away and carried across the open area. The Verbena unhooks her arm from the door; lets it click shut with snug fixture to block out the chatter of voices within and curls a coat around her body.

Boots. The brunette was forever in these tall; black knee high affairs that rustled the edges of her outwear and trumpeted her impending arrival far more dramatically than perhaps even her resonance did. That slow play of something eating at your senses; hunger; like that which drew the wandering to King Fu Tacos. Kiara doesn't halt, per say, when she gleans that touch of frost, that entrancing tug; a belly deep enthrallment; but she does smile.

Does lift her chin; the collar of her coat turned out against the dusking cool. Does reroute her footsteps.

She smells like a whirl of margaritas and change; the clever wind that blows through; that's Kiara. Wordless approach, though her eyes have already found Sera by the time she's closing on her. Would you call it predatory, that gaze? Perhaps only so much as the plant that strangles another. Unintended perseverance. Her lips are already bending in a smile as she clatters over; picking a path in those heels of hers.

Serafíne

I know these things?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

Sera is smiling and her smile is small and strange and a bit far away. She's lost in something and perhaps it is called thought. Then again, maybe it is sensation. She can feel the subtle shifts of resonance in the air from miles away.

Maybe she's lost in Time. She has that feeling about her, and she looks both forward and backward with near-equal ease, oracle that she is - though few others, even her fellow magi - understand that Time was in her bones and sinew long before she ever woke up.

Somewhere a door opens though, and three friends part. Somewhere the trajectory of a strange little girl going from Here to There is interrupted by a riot of sensation, and it is cold outside and neither Sera's tiny leather skirt nor her fishnets do much to protect her skin from the cold and there's a hint of a pink glow to her knees and nose and thighs and it is cold enough that she has pulled her shearling lined leather jacket closed and zipped it up and tucked her hands into the pockets where she rattles around in search of a lighter and a clove cigarette, which she does not light because her Mexican hot chocolate is ready before she has lit the cigarette and well before her tacos.

"Hey - ! What the fuck are you doing out here tonight?"

This smile for Kiara, warm. Open arms, a feckless hug if the other woman allows it, that lingers a moment longer than is strictly indicative of platonic friendship. The brush of Sera's chilly cheek against and the vague scent of cinnamon-and chocolate wafting from the cup lifted carefully over Kiara's shoulder for the duration of that hug. Held carefully behind Kiara's ear.

Then they are disengaging and Sera senses Arionna's resonance again. Shivers. Visibly, physically shivers. "Feel that?" Low-voiced to Kiara, dark eyes seeking out the source.

And settling there. Sera watches Arionna pretty visibly, and something about that stare seems to be an open invitation to approach.

Arionna

Sera...

With her perceived absence that Arionna doesn't understand. The politics, the names of their groups, the need to pull others into your own perspective, willing or not, and thus the breadth of the traditions is simply alien to her. Thus Sera's inclinations, the way her blood pulls her, the way she seems to be in some other place, are all unknown as anything other than someone who may be taking far too many substances to be even remotely healthy. Still, the group of magi she's come to know are interesting when watched from afar. They have their problems and oddities, and she knows well enough that she's not a 'part' of the lot of them, but they're still worth observing; that's precisely what she does for Sera. She watches, still and cold.

Kiara pours out of a building with others like herself in demeanor. Arionna lowers her book slowly, closing it just a little as her attention shifts to the new, changing wind. The affection the two of them might have is obvious, the sort of affection she still finds to be odd. The more she kept herself on the out of things, the stranger it all seemed. What -was- the purpose of a hug when not used for soothing? It felt, suddenly, like an odd cultural construction.

When Serafine looks in her direction, Arionna shifts her gaze back to the woman. Perhaps the invitation is gifted silently with merely a look, and perhaps Ari knows what it is. There's no movement as of yet. Approach seemed easy for some people, though for for her it was harder to approach than to flee. She had to decide if she wanted to join on the onset, and exactly what the entire meeting could provide; her recent encounters had been less fruitful than she had hoped, and had contributed to the reemergence of her inherent wariness.

Kiara

There's laughter; quick and bright and spirited as she winds her arms around the other woman in greeting, is greeted, with that emphatic demand. Kiara's hands span and easily rub in some brief foray of pleasure and greeting over the Cultist's back; scratching between Serafine's shoulder blades with her fingertips before she pulls away; still smiling; her dark hair drifting into her lashes.

"As much as I like being one with nature," this, Kiara's little lip curl, her throw back to time spent away from Denver's heart and in another sort, "Sometimes a girl just needs to cut loose and get a little drunk with her lady friends." Her thin fingers tousle in and pry her mane of hair from under her collar; throw it over a shoulder and turn; twisting in some synchrony when the other woman asks -- shivers, because -- "Oh." Kiara's eyebrows rise a little; arching up in their fine little groomed lines as her eyes join Serafine's in their quest to pinpoint -

"That - would be Arionna." Something to the way she speaks the other woman's name; at once curious to find her out here too and ripe with some expectancy. There's another book in the Orphan's hands its presence draws the slightest flicker of reaction from the brunette for a beat. Kiara's dark eyes roving over Arionna with some cursory appraisal.

There's a murmur aside; toward Serafine's ear as Kiara turns momentarily to study what the Kung Fu Tacos might have to offer her. "I get the decided impression she doesn't approve of me." There isn't so much reproach to that; to Kiara's inkling; her assumption; as there is a warm sort of humor to it. An understanding, a recognition of the severing of ways.

Serafíne

Denver is on a high plain and in the plains it is fucking windy. No wonder Kiara's dark hair whips around her face, gets tangled with the sweep of her lashes. Sera shakes her own face free of the long licks of bot. tle-blond curls and turns her face into the wind a bit, head canting as Kiara cranes to follow that glance, chin half-rising as Kiara supplies the girl's name.

This threading glance, from Arionna to Kiara's profile and then back again.

"Hah." She murmurs back, this grin spreading across her fine little mouth that is sharp and lively and challenging. "Who the fuck wants to be approved of. I bet the both of you are better off."

Meanwhile Sera is prying off the lid of her chocolate. Steam rises, banks, and is carried away by the wind. "Hold my lid, huh?" This to Kiara.

Arionna

It was a burnt sienna colored cover with a black square along the spine that wrote Magic in History as if it were part of a series. The tan box on the front which held the title was small, though Strange Revelations might have been made out. Probably not anything remotely important; she simply enjoyed reading.

She might not have come for tacos. But when one is standing near food without having had dinner, and whilst walking and reading, the intention can change. She wasn't hungry before, but the smell of the tacos is starting to stir her appetite, and the orphan slides her book into the bag at her side, pulling out her wallet instead. Ari wore black. The only bit of her that had been allowed some reprieve from her usual pattern, was the fur like material along the top edge of her boots, of which it had a grey peppered appearance; imitation rabbit or some such.

Stepping right up to the taco stand, once the line had been cleared, she ordered something simple with beef and cheese. There's no need to be complex tonight. Food is food, particularly when your stomach begins to growl. This didn't suggest that she neglected the appearance of the other two. No. Arionna paid attention, to what she could from her place away from them, but she certainly didn't pass them off as simply as she would anyone else.

Kiara

Kiara's tasked with holding Serafine's lid and she takes it easily in hand; running a fingertip through the chocolate dusting coating the inner side and stealing a taste of it as she does. It leaves an incriminating trail blazed across the plastic that she's unrepentant for as she licks at the sweetness and savors it; stroking at the edge of her mouth as Arionna encroaches; takes up a place in the line and puts in some order.

She watches her progress, Kiara, with this suggestive little squiggle shaping her red lips and waits for Arionna to claim her order before she steals over; lid in hand and cranes up to whisper something to the vendor before tapping the tiny serving counter with a palm and twisting back; hand raised against the breezy falling evening to face Arionna.

There was a tiny bit of ledge; a crumbling sort of brick facade just shy of the Taco Stand and it's toward this Kiara meanders; pauses mid-step to look again at the Orphan. "Hey - " Calls it out; her out; tilts her head. "Come join us, yeah? If you want to." Kiara's dark eyes settle there on Arionna for a long pause as if there's plenty more she'd like to add; her coat unfurling and wrapping back against her legs.

She doesn't though, add more. Just slides there onto the wall; crosses her legs and offers Serafine her lid back; if she wants it. Exchanging this little look with her as she does; some brief, enigmatic thing that reads of olive branches and persistence. Why not, it offers.

Let's see where this takes us.

Serafíne

Not often is Sera quiet. Not precisely quiet, not regularly quiet, nothing close to reserved. But there is a sort of space she cedes to Kiara in between the beats of her invitation to Arionna, quick, wry twist to her mouth. A certain way her gaze lingers on the bow of Kiara's red lips after that little look passes between them.

In the time it takes Kiara to lick that lid and toss off that invitation and return to the crumbling brick wall against which Sera half-perches, half-lounds, Sera has dug out her flask and topped off that hot chocolate with a healthy dose of Stranahan's and retrieved the plate of tacos she orders. Three sprawling things wrapped in foil that smell heavenly but not quite as heavenly as alcohol-laced cinnamon hot chocolate. So the tacos are set aside, and may not be consumed at all.

Steady eyes, dark blue - something about her that seems to be more contained, far more sober than the state of intoxication two nights before - a mobile mouth curled over the lip of the cup, this sharp profile. All that sensation around them.

Sera glances at Kiara's profile, again.

Back at Arionna.

Waits to see what the shivery kid will do.

Arionna

An invitation was the least of all actions she might have suspected, and she's still a little unsure as to whether it actually occurred, and why. Her lips tighten, brows furrowing just a little as she stands off to the side and waits for the tacos to be made.

The truth is, they're trying. Danny has been trying. Not just to include, but to explain the way others see things. These are not her people, but they are potentially better than all those others out there, blindly walking through life. Ari knows she doesn't much like the sort of people Kiara would be lumped into, and while she doesn't know Sera, those two are cozy enough that she suspects she wouldn't much like her either. And yet...

Ari takes her taco silently, reaching for some hot sauce on the bar to squirt in the food. When she stepped away from the truck, she made certain to step closer to the two women; within speaking distance but there would be no firelight dances or sharing of marshmallows anytime soon.

Kiara

How does Kiara Woolfe see the world; behind all those smiles and lingering glances there had to be much that she wasn't saying, right? There had to be story to that. To her. There was, always, after all, a beginning for all of them. For Serafine and Kiara and Arionna. Their interactions so far, the latter two had skirted rather perilously between awkward and uncivil. A corrosiveness that could not bend or soften to suit platitudes. They were, in short, who they are and there was a gulf between their vantage points of the world.

Kiara's might have been a gentler dismissal when it came to the ways Arionna seemed; the way she saw and pushed against; but it was there all the same. And yet -- there were times, there were nights, when it seemed almost a given that they gravitate together. That likeness should call to likeness despite the tiny nuances where they differed. Perhaps it took seeing certain glimpses to alter perceptions enough, to give pause enough to do what the Verbena did just now -- find the give; offer a little.

Keep the wolves at bay just a little longer.

Serafine is watching and Kiara cuts her a furtive look when the Orphan seems given to bridge the distance even a little. That tiny edge of a smile there; the tiny ghost of it giving humor back to her mouth. "You've met officially, right?" This, as Kiara is draping her coat over her legs to keep them warmer; her dark eyes shifting between the two women.

Serafíne

Kiara drapes her coat over her legs to keep them warmer. Sera's legs are pretty fucking bare - shapely, shapely legs that seem long not because Sera is tall (although without the gentlemen around to tower over her, she is a perfectly adequate height. Even tall, by Arionna's diminutive standard) but because her body is made in such a way that her limbs seem long. And they're sprawled out in front of her, crossed at the ankles (boots so worn the leather is supple as a second skin, not stiff), pink from cold beneath the diamond weave of her thigh-high fishnets, torn in places.

If they were in Federal Sera might be taken for a hooker.

They're in Lodo, though. She has tattoos on her hands, framing her palms, on her palms, on the inside of her fingers, all blackwork, visible when she lifts the mug in greeting to Arionna. The scent of chocolate, thick and rich, and whiskey.
Always whiskey.

"Not officially." Which may or may not be true. That is to say: " - or, if we have, I don't fucking remember. I'm Sera. That was quite the dance, you getting over here. You always that fucking shy?"

Her voice is wry, warm. This spark to her gaze.

Arionna

It was true that they had commonalities. Nature, life, older magic, more primal magic. It was all there. The outlook were widely different, with Arionna embracing the darker aspect of their natures. Sometimes the similarities shine brighter than the differences, and maybe..just maybe..that was what was happening now.

"No." Arionna says simply. She can't recall an official meeting between the two of them, or if they ever exchanged any words that would have meaning. Her weight shifts a little, moving to the right leg and and further from the two of them. They're an interesting set of three. Kiara seemed relatively normal, at least by Arionna's standards, and Sera seemed to move to the end of the spectrum that she found personally distasteful fashion wise; that was unfair, she couldn't deny she had a few skimpier clothes in her wardrobe that she pulled out for summer. She was more interested in the ink on Sera's skin, though unwilling to press in enough to examine it.

"Arionna." Spoken after a small bite and a slight swipe on her lip with her finger to transfer the sour cream to her mouth without using her tongue. "If you mean to inquire as to whether I am often timid, then the answer is no. I find timidity to be a trait of the inferior. If you mean to question whether I often dislike the presence of others and therefore refuse an attempt to engage in social behavior, then the answer is yes. I suspect that's a bit new for you."

Kiara

Not officially, gets this little twitching suggestion of mirth. Then: or I don't fucking remember, which gets the briefest flash of white teeth. Kiara's sharp little mouth widening in a smile before she lifts her chin and waits to see if the foundations of introduction need laying. They do, but - they happen without her input and the Verbena takes the chance to rise and reclaim her own cup of chocolate, pushed out onto the tiny counter for her when its ready; steam rising from a tiny slit in the plastic lid.

She steps back; fingers curled around the cup to the tune of Arionna making it known she's not timid, that she dislikes the presence of others, often. Kiara, prying the lid off with one hand, turns her focus on the petite black clad female beside her, commenting with the quickest, curling, throaty noise of amusement. "I had noticed that, actually."

It's hard to deduce if Kiara's making fun; she could be. Her eyes are bright; there's a way she smiles that's suggestive of something close to it. She doesn't press at it, though. Put her fingers to the wound and wait for the blood to well to the surface. "What brings you out here tonight, I'm supposing it's not -- " She gestures in a brief cutting gesture; arc back over their shoulders; toward the bars; the restaurants.

Social behaviors, seems the unspoken commentary.

"People." She finishes; lifting the chocolate to her lips.

Serafíne

Kiara drapes her coat over her legs to keep them warmer. Sera's legs are pretty fucking bare - shapely, shapely legs that seem long not because Sera is tall (although without the gentlemen around to tower over her, she is a perfectly adequate height. Even tall, by Arionna's diminutive standard) but because her body is made in such a way that her limbs seem long. And they're sprawled out in front of her, crossed at the ankles (boots so worn the leather is supple as a second skin, not stiff), pink from cold beneath the diamond weave of her thigh-high fishnets, torn in places.

If they were in Federal Sera might be taken for a hooker.

They're in Lodo, though. She has tattoos on her hands, framing her palms, on her palms, on the inside of her fingers, all blackwork, visible when she lifts the mug in greeting to Arionna. The scent of chocolate, thick and rich, and whiskey.
Always whiskey.

"Not officially." Which may or may not be true. That is to say: " - or, if we have, I don't fucking remember. I'm Sera. That was quite the dance, you getting over here. You always that fucking shy?"

Arionna

[methinks that is a repeat]

Serafíne

OOPS.

Here was the real post:

Arionna might find Sera's wardrobe even more distasteful if her leather jacket were unzipped and unbuttoned, for all she's wearing beneath it is a somewhat transparent black and pink bustier, the cups studded with little silver rivets. So, yeah. Skimpy as fucking hell, on a blustery day when that shit just seems unreasonably revealing. That and a line of studs and hoops crawling up her ear and a heavy silver spike right through the cartilage. A bar ring across three fingers of her left hand and a copper one on the index finger of her right.

They are too far for Arionna to get more than a flash of the ink, something open and curving on the inside of her left palm, though, curling down over the tender inner skin of her wrist. And: these cramped lines framing the palm that seem certain to be letters or numbers of some sort. Perhaps Roman numerals. They have that officiousness to them. That narrow heft.

Arionna introduces herself and Sera's mouth quirks into a small half-smile and she's probably about to share some pleasantry like Hey or something else when Arionna continues, annoucing first that timidity is a trait of the inferior.

Sera breathes out all at once. Laughter like a blow but there's something disbeliving to it - "Jesus fuck - " she swears beneath her breath. And that laughter turns into something else, just a supple note of disbelief, something intermediate.

"Naw. It's not new to me. I just think it's a shitty way to treat yourself and others, you know?"

Arionna

"I like to wander." That's the best reason she can ever give for finding herself in some street at some part of evening for no other reason than because she wanted to. "Before the winter leaves us and the nights become shorter." Because soon enough that's what will happen. The sun will return to shine on them for far longer than the moon will breathe, and poor Ari will no longer feel the strength of the darkness. Something about the sun made her skills less...capable. She lets the potential teasing from Kiara slide, but then she's accustom to such things and to misinterpreting them.

She eats, crumbles up the foil and slides it in a nearby dumpster. There isn't much to her mannerisms most of the time. When she returns, she remains still, curling her hands in front of her and holding them there as they talk, never wavering her attention.

But Sera laughed. She laughed and Ari moved her attention, focused it entirely on the tattooed woman. "Ah, an original perspective. The dislike of social isolation is something that many humans express disdain for. Not surprising you'd express the same sentiment. I enjoy my place. I fail to see who I ill treat myself, if I find it pleasurable."

Kiara

There's something to the way Kiara listens to Arionna's words; head tilted just so toward her; that thick, dark hair of hers falling loose around her shoulders; the slide of her tongue along the edge of a tooth. She's watchful and perhaps -- quizzical, the draw up of her eyebrows; the smoothing down of a momentary shift; the curve of her supple red mouth into a line; a frown.

Emotions working there as the Verbena's throat moves to swallow. Her eyes shifting to encompass Serafine's reactions; a smile captured amidst her body's stillness. The impression of momentary perplexity in the dimple that arises; surfaces and fades as Kiara regains her momentum. Gestures at the book; always one; always something; found in the Orphan's clutches. "You keep some company, though." This as she moves to resettle herself; her coat flaring open as she slides one leg over the other.

She's got tights on, beneath her coat; black; winter thick but they strain at the knee; draw thin enough for her skin to be glimpsed beneath. Kiara rocks one foot a little; the lacing on her boots rattles against the leather. There's zippers somewhere; an impressive heel one imagines must sink some inches into soft earth. "All those authors, their impressions, their thoughts. People aren't so bad. Well," There's a brief, consolidating smile. That edge of the tease again.

"Some of them. Some of us." Here another glance at the Cultist; Kiara's long lashed gaze shifts back. "I can't say I blame you avoiding others, but - " She takes another sip of the cooling chocolate. "Get messy, sometimes."

Serafíne

"You ever been in love?" Sera asks Arionna. It sounds like a quip. There's a supple curl to her mouth, lips pressed together, contained but - " - or lost someone you love? Ever found yourself eating an ice cream cone, your favorite fucking flavor, and suddenly you're just sitting, there and you realize you cannot stand anything about it. Ever piece of it is offensive to you?

"Or broken down in the bathroom of a dive bar off Seventh and Fifth. Had a strange hand you scratchy toilet paper under the stall because yours was out and you needed to blot your running mascara so you could get up and wash your hands and go back out and keep making out with the guy you're taking home that night, and he's got this smell of onion on his breath okay fine and a little bit of a paunch but these yawning, yearning eyes.

"Ever gotten stoned and watched the sunset or remembered, suddenly, this perfect slant of childhood or lost an earring in a cab and had the cabbie track you down at a priest's house two days later and return it. Sweetly you know? Expecting nothing because he though you were a prostitute?

"Ever stop a sixteen year old girl from jumping to her death from the roof of a hospital with the power of your mind - I mean, tell me you've done one of those - just one of those fucking things, or just kissed a boy and made him cry - and I figure then you'll stop talking about humans on the whole like there was any such thing and just think of them as people.

"I mean, though." This quicksilver smile. That rant was low and lovely and passionate and bright and even at the end there are equal parts of irony and beauty in Sera's eyes. "The hell do I know? I'm only human, and I gotta piss."

She straightens, then, Sera. Looks around and spots that bar that Kiara came out of not long again. Takes her coffee and leaves behind her tacos and says, "Be right back - " to Kiara and even Arionna, and then, to Kiara, " - hey. Are you meeting your ladyfriends later? Or wanna come home with me?" even as she's on her way past, heading for the bar and presumeably - bathroom - within.

Serafíne

(Also! I need to run. Super tired. Thank you for the RP!)

Coffee is boring, drink gin.

Serafíne

I stumble into every open scene, but once again only for a flyby and I'm'a let someone else start. :)

Serafíne

or I might not pop in. because maybe sera's presence would be really distracting.

Grace

[Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Ian

Bardo Coffee was one of the better coffee shops in the Denver area - or so the reviews claimed. The shop was on Broadway, a bit South of downtown proper and not terribly far from Washington Park. The coffee there was excellent, and the pastries weren't bad either. Both of these things were lost on Ian, who did not drink coffee or eat pastries. But he was there anyway, seated at a table by the wall beneath a large abstract painting. A Windows tablet was propped up on the table in front of him, and he sat back with one heel resting casually on the edge of his seat, his attention focused on the screen and on whatever audio was currently being fed through his bluetooth earbuds.

A cup of black tea sat curled in one hand, warming the skin of his palm. All in all, a very mundane pose to find him in.

Grace

There's better coffee at the office, because Kalen always manages to find the best of everything. But Grace was in the area, and the office is all the way across town. Besides, this way, someone else gets to make it for her.

She's wearing her coat today, and has yet to take it off as she strolls up to the register to order a large caramel frap thing, all ice and sweet, more of a desert than a drink.

Really, she wouldn't have to be open to the bend of magic in the air to notice Ian in the room. It's like a vision out of a menswear catalog wherever he shows up, like you could just cut a square out of the world with just him in it, and it wouldn't seem out of place. She stares. If he looks up, she'll give a little wave while waiting for her drink.

When it does, she strolls over to his table, wincing a bit at the Windows tablet. What is it with Clippy's minions infesting her life lately?

"Hey. What's up?"

Serafíne

Dan isn't especially, noticeable to mages. Blends in with the hipsters, just a tall, lanky guy with a nice, full, blond, hipster bear. Hard to tell the difference between hipster beards and Duck Dynasty beards but in Denver the nuances are obviously: he's in black skinny jeans and a red-blue-pink plaid button down with the sleeves rolled up, buttoned over a band t-shirt (someone you've never heard of, naturally. his tastes is probably better than yours) with tattoos visible on his arms, colorful, one blending into the other.

He's not getting a table and there's a line just then, staggered because it is just one of those things. People are not ants, marching neatly without stumbling into each other all over the forest floor.

And sometimes Dan sparks on awareness but tonight either that sense is turned off for him or he's just suppressing it.

See, that pile-up happens just after Grace retrieves her frap. There's something malfunctioning behind the counter, or too many special orders at once. Maybe he catches Grace's eye as she slips past him and gives her a quiet wave. You know: acquaintances passing each other in line, that kinda thing. He's intent on coffee and its ordering, is Dan.

For the nonce.

Ian

[Awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lena Reilly

[[Pre-emptive Magedar! Spec: Uncanny Instincts]]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Ian

Grace's impression of Ian wasn't an inaccurate one. Today Ian's outfit consisted of skinny black deisel jeans, boots and a thin grey sweater that hugged his upper body and zipped up in an asymetrical L-shape. The high collar was left partly open, so that the edges of it fell away from his neck and collar bones.

As it happened, he was watching a movie. Depending on the angle at which Grace approached him, she might notice the lush colors and cinematography that were notable hallmarks of a Wong Kar Wai film. Either way, Ian paused it when she approached, glancing up from the screen as he pulled off his earbuds.

"Hey." He glanced over Grace's shoulder at the milling line, spotting Dan's familiar beard. If Dan happened to catch Ian's eyes, Ian would nod in his direction. A casual acknowledgment. Maybe he even glanced around a bit to see if Sera was in tow, but she wasn't, so a moment later his attention refocused on Grace.

"How are things over in Graceland?"

(Ha ha.)

Grace

As she headed back to Ian's table, her eye was caught by Dan and his waving. He got a smile, a little wave. She said hi. But then, she had a place to be.

She raises her eye at Ian, and his 'Graceland' comment, as though she hadn't heard that a million times in school. "I'm not a reincarnated Elvis. I think I'd know if I were."

She slides into a chair at the table, plopping her frappuwhatever down. "Graceland's good though. I met someone new recently. Jo. Kinda just ran into her at the DMV. New enough not to believe in fairy tales," she says, smirks.

Lena Reilly

It's not "cool" to like Taylor Swift these days. Hell, it hasn't ever really been cool to like her. But since when has Lena Reilly given a rat's ass about being cool? That's the best part of freeing yourself from the bounds of societal conventions and pushing your boundaries; you very quickly learn that what other people consider to be acceptable just doesn't matter. Be yourself, they say, and Lena's all about trying to do that. She doesn't always succeed, but she tries.

And that's why she's bopping her way down the street in a grey jacket that rests over a grey T-Shirt with an vaguely anime-like drawing of Rogue surrounded by glowing playing cards with a banner that reads "Can't Touch This." Her jeans are black, with her usual sandals dancing their way along the sidewalk. Her hair is falling free and waving around as she half-sings along with that most famous of current pop stars that echoes through her headphones.

"I've been picking up the pieces of the mess you made, people like you always want back the love they pushed aside. But people like me are gone forever, when you say goodbye!"

Yep, that's what not being cool looks like. But she earns points for enthusiasm.

As she dances along toward the coffee, that feeling tickles its way down her brain and she smiles a little. With a little side shuffle she hip-checks the door open, slipping inside as she pulls the earbuds out. She gives a quick look around and gives a little smile and wave to Dan on her way toward Ian and Grace.

Serafíne

Ian catches Dan's eye okay and so does Grace. So: he is noticed. He is noticeable enough and the guy gives Ian the edge of a smile. One corner of his bearded mouth. There's some acoustic version of one of the new tracks from the new Decemberists' album and something about rhythm makes some part of Dan move unconsciously to it. Just a staccato tap of his forefinger against the meat of his thumb as he waits.

Sera isn't in tow: not then, not now, not yet, but that line is one of those things and she must be around, maybe they can feel her outside or coming closer, if they are Feeling Things. Her patience is far from legendary, particularly when she's still kinda coming down from whatever she was doing the night before, and she hasn't slept and she wants a drunk. Last night Sera was wearing a cocktail dress seamed with rhinestones, crystals, diamonds maybe. Tonight she's back to battered denim cutoffs, fishnets, combat boots. An olive green military-style jacket, ragged so it feels all authentic, swings open over a slice of her torso, the suggestion of her own tattoos just visible beneath a lacy black and lime green bra.

Sera carries a brushed nickel travel mug with her into the coffee shop. Gives Dan a Look because You Are Taking So Long, Dan and wanders over to Ian's table to wait. Kisses Grace on the crown of her head. Pulls up a chair without asking permission, gives Ian a look that is wry and hung over and still kinda rolling. Leans over to inhale his tea, because she likes tea, Sera.

Offers both Grace and Ian the chance to sip whatever is in her coffee mug, and if either one accepts, I'll tell you what heavenly concoction they find therein.

Serafíne

(The curse of posting at the same time: edit.)

Dan's turning around to glance at the door as Lena comes in and she gives him a smile and a little wave and he lifts his chin in acknowledgment, blue eyes tracking her progress through the coffee shop as she dances through it. Longer than he'd meant to. Sera slips in after Lena, still finds her way to the table and everything else. Offers everyone (Ian, Grace, Lena) a sip of her Drink, whatever it may be, but is also: still, pretty quiet.

Ian

"Mm, fresh meat," Ian teased lightly. "Don't send her my way."

(As if anyone in their right mind would actually think of him as a responsible mentor.)

There was a swirl of activity at the counter. The drinks were taking too long, and soon enough Sera appeared to check on the progress. But she wasn't the only familiar face to wander in through the front door, and when Ian caught sight (and sense) of Lena, his eyebrows went up.

"Hey you." This was offered to Lena with a broad, toothy smile. Ian had teeth that were too white and somehow a little too sharp and even when he was relaxed - even when he was smiling - the effect was subtly reminiscent of primal things. Sera offered everyone a sip of her drink, but Ian shook his head. He did, however, raise his own cup to his lips.

As the table began to feel crowded, he popped the stand on his tablet and put it away, sliding it neatly into the small messenger bag on the floor beside his chair. The headphones he left hanging around his neck, for now.

"Don't I feel popular." He winked at Grace. Half a flirtation.

Grace

She declines Sera's offer, even as she accepts her kiss. It probably doesn't have much coffee in it. Probably maybe it's straight whiskey or something. "Sera. Hey," she says, soft and quiet to match her friend. As Sera leans down, she'll likely feel that winged-ness that is new to Grace. Wings that are there thought they cannot be seen sprout from her back, passing straight through the real.

"She doesn't seem your type," Grace says, sighs. "I think I'm going to have to grab on to her and hold on tight before the Techs do."

Lena walks in, and that's a beat Grace hasn't felt in a while. Her head turns, and her eyes widen -- so many Mages in this place right now, even the sleepers must be feeling it -- this curiously thrumming cat with wings notion in the air. She waves at Lena, after a moment's concern.

And that concern? Why does this always happen? Mage convergences are weird like that.

"Lena! Hey!"

Lena Reilly

Serafine also gets a smile and a wave as she comes over to the table. She turns her attention to the whole of the table once they're all converged. "Hey, you guys. Been a while. How are things?"

She doesn't move to take a seat until Ian frees a seat, which is essentially a silent invitation. She politely waves off the offer of whatever Sera's drinking and settles in. "How have things been?"

Lena Reilly

[[Ack! Delete that first "How are things?" Lena isn't a broken record.]]

Serafíne

"A-Okay," Sera returns, when Lena asks how things have been. There's a drawl to her voice, like somehow the speed on the record player has been shifting lower, lengthening like there's a needle skipping the groove, but maybe that has something to do with Last Night or Tonight or whatever is in that coffee mug. Look closer.

Languid. That's the word for it. The demeanor of woman who has not slept in more than twenty-four hours and is returning, moment by moment, sensation by sensation, to the confines of her body.

She sips her coffee mug. Sips it with pleasure, sips it thoughtfully.

"I dunno," Sera interrupts, then, as Grace tells Ian that her new friend is Not His Type. "Maybe some folks need to be with someone who isn't their type. What the fuck's gonna happen to us if we don't challenge ourselves and everyone fucking else? Just sit around sliding into complacency.

"Sides. I bet Ian's great with lost little lambs. If you'd only give him half-a-chance."

Ian

Ian put a finger to his lips in a silent hushing gesture at Grace's mention of the Technocracy. (Speak of the devil, after all.) An echo of his smile remained when he pulled his hand away.

"And what is my type, exactly?"

The Decemberists were playing over the speakers, which was perhaps to be expected in a Denver coffee shop. Before Grace could answer his question, Sera interjected, and you could actually see the muscle in Ian's cheek twitch with the effort it took him to hold back his laughter.

"On second thought..." There was a sharp gleam in his eyes. Deliberately predatory. But he dropped the act a moment later. "To be fair, I don't really have a fucking type."

(Oh but see, that was actually not true. It just depended on what variety of the word type one meant to imply.)

He made a gesture toward Lena, as though to include her in the statement. (Not like that, mind. They'd never slept together, or been in a cabal together. But she knew his habits about as much as anyone else at the table did. Probably a bit more. Or at least, she had known them.) "Life gets boring without variety."

A moment later: "By the way, Justin says hi."

(How the fuck did Ian know Justin?)

Grace

"Things are," Grace says in response to Lena. "How they got there is a great mystery." This is obviously Grace being silly, but hey...

"That's true. I mean, I'd probably still be scoffing at fairy tales or thinking I was batshit if it weren't for you guys having been there. Jo, she's got boxes around her thinking habits. I keep thinking of how to break them. Thought to show her the parallel worlds if only I knew how."

Oh yeah, coffee. She has some. It'll all melt soon if she doesn't get at it. So she slurps up some caramel.

"Things have been amazing, though, Lena. I met someone else recently too."

Lena Reilly

She grins a little at Ian's response to the idea that he might have a type. She did rather anticipate a response like that.

"Having types makes for a dull way to go through life. My type was always 'has a pulse.' Everything else is negotiable, for the most part." Which isn't to say she was ever particularly promiscuous (except for that little bit of time, but we don't talk about it). But she never was one to think inside boxes, even before she Awakened.

"And I'm not gonna lie, Sera...I'd pay good money to see Ian mentor someone." It's said with the tone of a good-natured tease, a sidelong glance given to him.

She nods her head a little in time with the folk rock...not normally her jam, but again. She doesn't have a type and that goes to music, as well. She looks over at Grace when she says she met someone else, brows raising in interest.

"Oh really? Who?"

Jo Hamilton

[Do I know what yooou know...is there magic in the room?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Serafíne

Dan's line Started to Move and he moved with it. His order did not take long and as Ian is telling someone (Sera? Lena? both?) that Justin Says Hi Sera is giving him a briefly sharper look, the arc of her gaze defining a motion like a scythe, for all that not very much about her seems bladed.

But then Dan's behind her and he has a tray in hand and he's murmuring something about the match and she tips her head back and submits to being cosseted and cozened and cajoled out of her sprawl. She's walking slowly, s if the world were at once infinitely new and infinitely and there is that strange steadiness about her as she informs Ian, "I'd like to know how he's doing, sometime."

Low-voiced. Her gaze briefly caught on her reflection in the window, some strange echo, contained in her body. Some passing time.

Then she's up. Dan's slung an arm around her shoulders, rests his chin on the crown of her head, and off they go.

Serafíne

(Thanks guys. Bedtime for me!)