Gigantic.

Serafíne

Wednesdays are the slowest nights in Lodo. College students are still making some stab at studying or finishing assignments due this week or maybe last or perhaps next and it's too early and/or late in the week for the conventions and seminars that tend to get bookended against the weekend so that middle-management types can "make a weekend of it" somewhere other than home, and everyone else, well. They have to fucking work. Can't really call in hung over on a Thursday when you are a third year associate in a struggling law firm who spends ten hours reviewing property deeds to answer obscure mineral rights questions.

So: Wednesday, Lodo, The Summit House, this hole in the wall place with a single tinted picture window and green-painted door fronting the street and a weird dogleg shape to the inside. Long narrow bar - classic, right? traditional, booths and tables and barstools, a traditional wooden bar-and-mirror theme going like something out of a saloon, connected to a larger, weirdly bulbous space that is up a half-flight of stairs and definitely wider than the lower level bar, tucked behind a small kitchen from which an up-and-coming young never-went-to-culinary-school chef serves up a ridiculously delicious menu of locally sourced sandwiches late-night. The little-back-room as it is called features a small stage. Tuesday nights and Saturday afternoons are open mic.

This particular Wednesday night is not open mic. There's a band, a fourpiece. Ridiculously good guitarist hanging back in the shadows, this striking, compelling mess of a Cultist with her eyes closed and her long fingers wrapped around the neck of a bottle of liquor, simmering her way through a cover of the Pixies Gigantic. One of those iconic songs it is almost impossible to resist covering.

The last one of the set, too.

Ian

[Oh right, Awareness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Ian

There were two people with Ian when he walked into the bar. Both of them (a black woman and a pale man with ginger hair) looked like dancers. They had that same graceful way of moving: that same brand of muscle tone that Ian did. (The kind you only ever really saw specifically in people who danced ballet.) The woman gave a bright peal of laughter as she slid up to the bar, curling a long scarf from around her neck. The ginger-haired man took a seat beside her, grinning at some joke that only the three of them were privy to. Ian leaned an elbow on the bartop as the three of them ordered drinks, but his attention shifted toward the sound of drifting music that filtered in from the back room.

"I'm going to check out the band." When his drink arrived, he pulled away from the bar and his two companions, making a slow path up the stairs. He knew, of course, who he would find there when he arrived. It was becoming a bit of a habit with them - this passing in the night. At a bar or a park or a party. Sera got around. Ian got around. They were bound to run into each other periodically.

And of course, there she was. On stage, crooning out that Pixies cover like she was meant to be there. Ian found a table and sat down with his drink. His eyes lit on Sera's form - on the way the stage light painted her face and reflected all soft and golden off the bottle in her hand. He took a sip from his glass and, after a moment, closed his eyes. Content for the moment to absorb the lush sound of Sera's voice and the amber warmth of whiskey on his tongue.

Kiara

Did things ever happen without some degree of deliberation for any of them? A chance meeting, a fork in the road, the path less taken ... it all amounted to the same thing. Meetings. Points of connection. It's possible that the brunette that slips into The Summit House is here for a reason. It's possible that reason is currently jamming out a set on a stage somewhere up the back -- up those stairs; past the winding; laughter-strewn minglers and off to the right, in her own world.

Kiara Woolfe has never known Serafine any other way.

She has a glass of wine in hand; the Verbena; this slim figure encased in jeans and a velvet shirt. It's all jagged; theatrical sleeves that flare out below the elbow and rich; royal purple in shade. She gleams a little where she stands; back to the wall; half figment more than identifiable woman but for those with the means to deduce her from less mundane means. Glittering with her necklaces and bracelets; a coat folded over one arm.

She hasn't been here long, by all accounts. There's a heel pressed to the wall; the tilt of her head and her focus; the red-lipped bohemian, shifts just so when another joins the throng watching the band. The edge of her mouth shifts a little but Kiara doesn't alter her orbit just yet.

Let the momentum build, you understand. At some point -- the roads will rejoin; it's what happens.

Serafíne

There they are, there she is: on this little wedge of a stage tucked up against one of the corners of the oddly-shaped little back room. Just enough room for the equipment and the people and not much room to move around, except that she does. Crooning, yeah - that's the right word for the way she curls her voice through the mad, surreal little verses: breatheless, internal, intense. But then the chorus explodes as it was meant to into a great, messy celebration. The chick on the bass (that's Dee, to those of us counting out the Corona Street houfsemates) concentrating on that legendary bass line looks up during the chorus and finds the mic in front of her and joins in, harmony. Hell, a quarter of the audience does too.

Gigantic is almost as hard to resist as Sera. Especially in her element.

Then the song ends because everything does, everything has to end, and the set's done - for now and perhaps for the night, although it is early, it should be noted. They don't start breaking down the gear. Just hang up the instruments. Sera lifts the guitar she did not touch at all - at least during that last song - up over her head and hands it off to Dan and jumps down off the little stage onto the pockmarked floor with the deliberate pleasure of a child jumping into a rainpuddle, nevermind her goddamned heels, and somehow she catches herself, and somehow you know that she would - catch herself before falling.

Somehow she always does.

--

The liquid in the bottle tonight is clear but it catches the light when she moves. Shines, a bit viscous so you know it sure as hell isn't water, but you knew that all along, really. Saunters over the little dance floor and through the scattered tables until she gets to Ian. Waves hi with her bottle.

Really wants to kiss him on the crown of his head but the bastard's standing up so she contents herself with wanting rather than kissing. Maybe she reaches out for Ian's hand.

"Ian! Come meet Kiara. You wanna shot?"

In between sets music comes on the sound system. Whatever it is sounds like the love child of Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen, came out last week. Sera's in heaven.

Ian

The audience cheered at the end of the set, and that was when Ian stood up. Truth was, it didn't really matter whether or not he liked the Pixies. He was an artist - a performer. And watching (or listening to) other artists in their element was something he had a taste for. Of course Sera's band killed that song. It was exactly the kind of thing Ian always imagined her singing. So he smiled when the song finished, standing up to give this high, appreciative whistle.

Kiara was there. He felt her more than saw her. Perhaps he might have looked, but then there was Sera reaching out for his hand.

Come meet Kiara.

He grinned. "You should invite me to one of your shows."

There was an easy-going grace to the way he allowed Sera to lead him toward the back wall where Kiara stood. In response to her question (did he want a shot?) he lifted his still-mostly-full whiskey glass. "Maybe later."

Kiara

"You sounded fucking amazing." This, the first thing they're greeted with when they meet up with the other woman. Kiara smiling through her emphatic declaration; leaning in; pressing forward to tuck Sera (and those ridiculous heels of hers of course) into a brief; intimate expression of satisfaction. There's easy intimacy in the way Kiara kisses her face; this fleeting tilt-and-peck of cherry red lips against her jaw; cheek; some point before she draws back; smudges her thumb because lipstick.

Pulls back; registers the man with her with this brief-but-intent charade of surprised pleasure. She'd known; her eyes had strayed to him on the approach; this tiny, tiny little bank of something there hiding in the edge of Kiara's lips (there was always something to her smiles, this woman).

"Ian, isn't it." This, with a cutting little look. A sharp-edged smile; her focus shifting to Sera. "We've met. Once or twice."

Elijah

The air is thin.

Nobody warns you that the air is thin in Colorado, they just assume that if you are in Denver that you know that the air is thin but, you see, Elijah has been at sea level for awhile now. He's been at sea level longer than he would have liked, really, and since school was starting back up he had more than a few good excuses to be somewhere that wasn't home and, instead, to be crawling through bars and remembering that it's easier to get drunk when you aren't accustomed to taking the appropriate amount of air into your lungs.

There are things that he thinks about. Things that he ponders and contemplates and all those other thinkie words, but he isn't thinking at that particular moment, he is just doing. That doing includes going to a bar somewhere in LoDo and being blissfully unaware that he missed one seriously badass performance. Woe and misery abound, woe and misery indeed.

So, there he is, making his way into the place like he belongs here, because he does belong here, being all tall and blond and lanky and be-vested- because he still carries a pocketwatch. He still carries a very particular pocketwatch because even if he isn't attached to the hip with the person who gave him said watch, it still meant something to him. It was still important, still integral, still necessary for symbolic communication because he talks in symbols and that's how the world works. All mimicry and poppets.

Anyway, in with him. Alone and turbulent and passionate and all those other things because he is who he is and he is how he is and he isn't going to be anything other than who and how he is.

He's been a non-presence for awhile. Bars are a nice welcome home, aren't they?

Serafíne

Oh Sera. What do you feel?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Sera smells like - well, that's tequila. A good tequila, but whatever. She'd drink the rotgut shit too if that were the only thing on offering, and she's wearing a short leather skirt and thigh-high fishnets held up by garters and a purple-and-black lace bra with scalloped cups and a sweet little black bow between them beneath an unzipped hoodie, wrist cuffs pushed up her forearms. Red mark over her neck and shoulder where the guitar strap lay, (bottle) blond hair dark at the roots, curling and a bit damp from sweat.

Callouses on her hand and the cool kiss of the bottle as she trades the bottle from left hand to right to take Ian's hand and lead him onward, which he accepts with an such easy grace.

And he tells her that she should invite him to one of her shows and Sera laughs and throws a glance over her right shoulder, long hair tangled in the hood of her jacket, the room spinning as she says, "Come to one of my fucking shows."

The edge of her smile, sharper than you'd think. That might've been a joke.

Then Kiara, with her lipstick and red wine, and Sera accepts the kiss to her cheek, her jaw, with pleasure. Eyes closing, inhaling, leaning in to bump brows, never quite letting go of Ian's hand. Pulling him after her and presenting him to Kiara and now (finally, yes) freeing Ian to do whatever he will in greeting Kiara.

"It is Ian." A bit emphatic - too far gone perhaps to get the sharp edge of Kiara's smile or - no, probably not. Undercurrent there, right? Feel it against her skin. "Ian this is Kiara. You've met. Say hi or something."

Sera kinda drifts back. Takes a breath. Takes a shot, right from the bottle.

Closes her eyes and lets sensation bathe her being.

"Elijah's here, too. I'm gonna go get him."

She hasn't moved yet.

She will, soon.

Ian

"Three times, I think."

It'd been more than three. But Ian wasn't actually counting the times they'd met.

Elijah was there. Sera was going to fetch him. Maybe she'd introduce him too. Ian glanced briefly in the direction of the stairs, down to where they led - where Elijah's chaotic resonance beat out such a familiar pulse; where the two dancers Ian had arrived with were still chatting each other up at the bar. They didn't seem especially concerned over his absence.

Ian took a sip of his drink and smiled, subtly, at Kiara over the lip of the glass. Some light, secret thing that might have been: it's nice to see you. Or maybe just: you look nice.

"Hi," he finally said, as per Sera's request.

Serafíne

Then she is moving. Long fingered hand sliding through her damp hair, lifting her right shoulder to her right cheek, handing the tequila bottle as lightly and neatly as if it were some cheap, mass-produced beer at a picnic or a blockparty. Gives Kiara a glance and rolls her eyes a little bit when Ian says "Hi," just as instructed and hmmms (internal, entire) over his pronouncement that they had met three times, he thinks.

Sometimes Sera can read everything in the room. Every vibe, every flirtation, every feud, every desire. Sometimes, well, that shit is hidden from her, or she's too wrapped up in her intoxicants to take stock of anyone else's.

Tonight, Dan has finally finished stowing the guitars and has jumped down (really rather easily overlooked) from the little corner stage and crossed the bar and sauntered up behind Sera to touch her waist, lightly, and murmur something into her ear.

That's when she backs up a bit. Waves the bottle to say goodbye! or perhaps see you when I have another one of these! or whatever and saunters back downstairs in her Alexander McQueen heels. Five inches, stiletto, black, the spine and heel wrapped 'round with coiled metal dragons, the sides and toes covered in enough metal spikes that the damn things have to be handed over to security when she flies. Gotta put that shit in your checked baggage. Counts as a weapon in 71 countries.

--

Downstairs, Elijah! Hello. Sera greets him and tells him that Ian and Kiara are upstairs and he should go say hi and she's going out for a smoke, she'll be back right? Or she won't. Maybe she'll be elsewhere, the next time he turns around.