Sometime around sundown on Friday Sam Lakhani walked the perimeter of his studio apartment checking the blinds. He opened and closed each set of blinds one time for every year he had been alive and then he sat cross-legged on the floor and awakened the black handheld computer that was never far from his person.
If he lives long enough to wield any sort of real power this machine will make anyone who does not bear his pattern feel as if the device is stabbing their hands. Sam is still young. He doesn't think himself a hero. He's just trying to get by same as everyone else on this planet.
The life data arrays of the woman he's looking for is not yet known to him. He has not yet studied life data arrays at all. Her virtual body though. The sense of her. That he's starting to know.
A green-on-black glow as the low light of the sun gives way to the dim light of neons and street lamps. Overcast as it is tonight the sky will glow a post-apocalyptic pink when he steps outside. He types a series of commands into the array window and waits.
Coordinates. Easy enough to translate into a physical address. Another window and another set of keystrokes and he figures out where Serafíne is and where this party she's invited him to appears to be occurring.
It takes him longer to get himself out of his room the older he gets. He does the same thing he always does when he knows he's going to meet someone. As much a ritual as his technomancy: he rises from the floor and sits down at the desk where a fraction of his computer equipment waits. Packs and lights a bowl and smokes until he's down to resin and then he shuts himself in the bathroom. What he does in there is his own business. He emerges showered and dressed and before the high from the pot wears off he slips on his jacket and tucks a baggie of round white pills with the letter K punched in the center into his pocket. Checks the faucet in the kitchen and the locks on the door. Doesn't matter how high he is. He has to check.
Two hours after bodies started drifting into the party Samir dismounts a three-speed bicycle and walks it up the curb in front of the house. He locks it to the nearest street sign and checks his pockets.
Here goes nothing.
---
Samir @ 10:07AM
[Corr 2 - Where the hell am I going? Diff 5, -1 unique focus, -1 quint. Spending WP.]
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
719 Corona Street is a house full of pleasures.
Maybe not for Samir Lakhani, but hell. It is nearing dusk and therefore the light is slanting and lovely in a way that makes everything familiar go strange and changeable and there is the facade of a house that is three stories at least, blond-brick, with a wide porch that sports a handful of houseplants, a wooden porch swing hung from two hooks, a spinning prism swinging from a hanging basket and a unicycle propped by up the front door. Light gleaming from windows and an open door and the sound of music, murmured conversation, laughter somewhere inside.
Herbs in a flower box on the banisters framing the handful of steps up the porch and an old floor mat covered in multicolored sunflowers in front of the front door. The musky scent of pot smoke wafting from somewhere and an array of Edison lights framing the big picture window out front - and that's just the front porch. Her resonance everywhere. Sunk into everything.
This couple ahead of him - two girls, both pretty butch, holding hands as they jog up the front steps - goes right in. The screen door opens, then bangs shut behind them.
Moment of truth or something right?
Right now he's singular, intact, whole, himself, now.
Who knows what waits on the other side?
SamirEscaping tendrils of pot smoke tell him he's in the right place. Ought to tell him he'l fit right in with this crowd. He's met Serafíne enough times that he thought not be surprised at her proclivities. If he were the entrepreneuring type he would see a hotbed of new clients laid out for him. He is not in the business of making money. He is in the business of staying alive.
He watches the couple hustle up the steps and let themselves inside. Moment of truth or something. The young man paces back and forth in front of the doorway four times and then quick and sharp like jumping into a lake in the early days of spring Samir takes hold of the screen door and hauls it back. Lets himself in.
Now all he has to do is find Sera. Find Sera and not let his nerves overcome his lingering high.
Serafíne'That kid's here.'
So she tells him. When Samir is somewhere: down the block, perhaps, around the corner. Walking his bike up to the curb, locking it around the metal HANDICAPPED PARKING sign with arrows erected for the lady two doors down with no discernable need for it, but - no matter. This summer last a person might've seen this anthracite gold Porsche 911 parked there (does Dee still think that was a Jag? No. Someone surely corrected her in the intervening years), on occasional summer nights.
These days, it doesn't come around.
--
So he gets up. Climbs over the back of a green velvet couch in the somewhat crowded living room. Glances over his shoulder, out into the dark garden laced with strands of Edison lights above, the startling sparkle of the shadows dusted below.
--
Last time they met, or perhaps the time before, Samir asked her how she knew - or maybe why - that Denver was becoming home. Maybe he knows, now, what she meant. This place feels like a home, like her home. The noise and the crowd and the smoke. Something lively in and around and beneath the walls. The collection of shoes upturned beneath the antique halltree, the eclectic mixture of art, photographs, collages, figurines, books, posters, flyers, plants, fucking macrame. Yeah: macrame, a macrame owl hanging from the ceiling above an enormous canvas of an oil painting of a street scene, some ordinary corner, sprawling, low-rise, dreadful. Apex just off-center, a bus - sighing, kneeling at the corner stop. The sun coming out after the rain.
And this is the entryway.
--
Samir is looking for Sera. What he finds, first, is a tall, lanky, tattooed man with a scruff of blond hair and a scruff of blond beard striding up the hall towards him, holding out a hand. His own personal welcoming committee.
"Samir? I'm Dan. Good to meet you."
SamirThis place feels lived in.
No reek of sterility soon as he walks in. Clutter everywhere. Dust. He can see stains most other people wouldn't think to look for. It's the heat from other people's bodies sinking into the walls. His eyes scan the spines of the books if they're visible and note whether the hardcovers still have their dust jackets or not.
It's almost possible for him to hear the ghosts of yesterday's parties underneath the throng of the live one.
That kid tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans so soon as the door has clapped shut behind him. He doesn't have much interest in talking to or touching anyone. When Dan met Samir his friend was locking lips with him on the curb outside whatever gastropub they'd gone to by the park. If he had been nervous been it was not an obvious thing.
He doesn't look nervous right now. Tense sure but he's got enough THC running through his system and knowing that there's clonazepam in his pocket has him anesthetized.
A moment's pause before he registers that Dan is holding out his hand to shake. At some point Samir had dropped saline solution into his eyes. They are not bloodshot. It's hard to tell if he smells like smoke. Everyone in here smells like smoke.
"Hey, man," he says as their palms connect. Sounds as if he isn't feeling any pain right now but he isn't sloppy. "How's it going?"
Serafíne"Night's just getting started. Already feeling good."
The flash of white teeth, quite, mobile, framed by his blond beard. Dan's taller, see. Doesn't shy from his height. He's skinny enough that it makes him seem even taller, sometimes.
"C'mon, I'll give you the tour. You want a drink? We've got pretty much everything, but the signature cocktail of the night is this gin, blueberry and rosemary concoction. Least it is until no one's in a state to be making signature cocktails."
Calloused hands, these. Probably hard for the computer nerd to read them, the story they tell but. The guy's a musician.
A fucking good one.
SamirComputer nerds don't have the softest hands in the world. Especially not the computer nerd who knows how to operate a soldering iron and routinely cracks open dead pieces of equipment to get at the guts inside. Dan doesn't have time to examine his digits but Samir has little scars here and there. Burns or cuts and none of them self-inflicted. He is neither strong nor particularly delicate. He has the potential to be either. He's young. All he is is potential right now.
He just met him and Samir already likes Dan. It may be impossible to not like Dan. No resonance about him but the chillness is infectious. Samir does not have a naturally limp grip. That hesitation has more to do with inescapable fear than social awkwardness but the two are mistaken for twins sometimes.
"That sounds... interesting." This of the cocktail. "I'm alright, right now. Let's..." He makes a loose fist and hoists it diagonal across his chest up to his shoulder. An old-timey gesture of affirmation. "Let's get that tour going."
SerafíneDan knows his way around a Mac, at least.
Is also the designated curator of Sera's iPhone, which he has surprisingly never listed on his resume.
So: they have something in common.
--
Samir gets to duck into the front parlor (Dan says, front parlor with a certain irony some people might find punch-worthy) and there are partygoers there, chilling on antiques, ignoring the books, drinking, not-yet-making-out because it is early, flipping through LPs, eating bits of things off napkins, laughing, glancing out the window the way you do when headlights flash by and you're expecting someone you haven't seen yet. Introduces Samir here and there, gives the odd fist-bump (IRONICALLY though not entirely), then back into the foyer, down the long, long hall. A glimpse of the stairs leading-up-up-up, a framed portrait of Amelia Earhardt and a spider plant hanging from a hook on the landing ceiling in another macrame holder. Fine woodwork all the way up up up.
More places for dust to settle, for decay to set it, for mites to learn first to crawl and then to bite.
The kitchen: big and white - renovated and expanded for sure, younger than the house, though no longer young. 15 or 20 years old now. Good work though: marble counters, custom wood cabinets. Food and drink in abundance, on the center island, arrayed around a big round table on the breakfast nook attached, sliding glass doors open to the backyard where more people hang beneath those criss-crossed Edison light. Pulls the screen open and ducks outside, standing on the patio looking out over the lovely setting, he pats himself down until he finds a pack of clove cigarettes and digs a little joint out of the mass of kreteks.
Offers it, philosophically, to Samir.
Along with a light.
"We try not to smoke inside," he remarks, as he waits for Samir to fire or not-fire it. Samir can feel Sera, somewhere back in the house. Can see, too, deeper in the garden the cabana bed beneath the big oaktree that dominates the garden.
Hell, there's even a bridge, higher up, from the third story of the house to the loft above the garage that fronts the alley, with a little balcony overlooking the garden and an elegant iron staircase leading down down down. "Studio's up there." He says, with a nod of his head.
A moment later, "Sera never told me what Tradition you were."
Quiet this but. You know: telling.
SamirOthers might have but Samir has no interest in stopping to touch or examine anything he finds. He glances here and there but it's the ambiance of the place. The humming of the code calling to him.
Dan introduces him around and Samir is polite but he is also not the friendliest individual in the room. The fewer hands he has to shake the better off he will be. By the time they reach the kitchen he has had enough of casual human contact and has removed a small bottle of hand sanitizer from his jacket. Applies a quarter-sized drop to the palm of his right hand and returns the bottle to his pocket and rubs them together.
Outside is better than inside. Relatively. That house feels like Sera and Sera's Home and he can sense her somewhere inside but he doesn't hone in on her. She can feel his resonance piercing through the crowd. Took growing magic to get him here. It wasn't a text or a Google search.
They try not to smoke inside.
Samir offers his gratitude when the joint comes his way and removes his own lighter from the same pocket responsible for the hand sanitizer. He lifts his eyes when Dan points out where the studio is. Right. Sera's in a band. He probably met the whole band tonight. He awakens the joint and takes a coy first hit before pocketing the lighter and drawing a proper second slow down into his lungs.
Sera never told Dan what Tradition Samir is.
"Oh," he says. Releases the lungful and passes the joint back to Dan. "She never told me what hers is, either."
SerafíneDan gives Samir a bemused sideglance when Samir says that. Waves off the joint, without explanation.
Maybe he doesn't want to get high(er) just now.
Maybe someone named Sera noticed some of Samir's tics, once upon a time-since-past, said something to her longtime friend.
--
"Well. We fulfill the stereotype pretty fucking well. I bet you can guess."
Samir"Oh, no..."
It's almost funny what one can recognizing about oneself without realizing other people will notice. Like the cigarette thing. Sure he could figure Sera would think it weird that he wouldn't want his cigarette back but most people don't notice tics like that.
Especially not most people Samir knows. The stereotype of social awkwardness doesn't come from nowhere.
"You guys are Hermetics, aren't you?"
Maybe Sera also mentioned that he is capable of saying something slightly funny once in a while. Maybe she didn't. He is trying to be funny. They're obviously Cultists.
Serafíne"That's it." Dan, a quick grin, this throaty, baritone chuckle, appealing in its openness. Has his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, again. "House Only the Gods Fucking Know. My Craft name is Ramalamadingdong.
"I was always a big fan of The Edsels. The secrets of the universe are buried in their non-sense verses. Gonna go with Etherite for you. You've got a mad scientist thing going. And, as you can see, your goggles would probably totally fit in with the vibe of the guests."
Glances down at the disappearing joint.
"When you're done with that, we'll go find Sera. Just, I wanted to give you fair warning, sometimes she gets a little chaotic, you know?"
SamirYou've got a mad scientist thing going.
Samir lets out a "Hah!" that is both a- and bemused. Doesn't ask Dan to clarify his statement but he doesn't need him to.
With the glance down at the joint Samir begins to consider how stoned he's getting. How he's tried to pass it back to Dan and Dan hasn't gone for it. Sometimes Sera gets a little chaotic.
"That's alright," he says. Passes the joint back to Dan again. If Dan takes it that settles that score. If he doesn't Samir is going to have to pinch off the cherry and stash it in the pack of rollies he keeps in his jacket pocket. Either way: "I'm good with this."
SerafíneSamir's laugh has Dan grinning again. Quick and sure and engaging and maybe there's something a little bit self-satisfied in his chuckle but charming folks are allowed to recognize their own charms, now and then.
Still grinning, not ear to ear but you know, as he takes the joint back when Samir offers it. One big hit, holds on to it, head tilted back, looking up past the eaves of the house, through the branching arms of the big oak tree, the night sky washed out by the city's glow beyond.
Exhales. Takes another hit to finish the damn thing off and stubs the remainder of the roach into a convenient ashtray on a mosaic plant stand by the sliding glass doors. Which open here and close there as people slip through, most of whom know Dan, some of whom haven't seen him tonight and greet him as they come and go. Here's something else: most of those folks don't really notice Samir. Dan doesn't draw attention to him, either.
"C'mon."
The rest of the tour. Back through the kitchen (where Dan stops to pour a highball glass of that gin-and-blueberries-and-rosemary drink), back up the hall, to the living room. Another big room on the first floor of the sprawling old house. Fireplace, that jumble of art work on the walls, antiques mixed with modern pieces. Curtains framing a series of high windows overlooking the back. The windows are open, curtains dancing in the breeze. Sera holding court on an antique green velvet couch crowded with strangers.
She glances up at the Dan and Samir wander in and Dan circles behind her, dropping a kiss on the crown of her head and that drink in her hand.
"Dan." She says, lolling her head backwards, mouth slurring around his name. "What the fuck is wrong with you. Why the fuck doesn't he have a goddamned drink."
SamirIt takes premeditation and purposeful movement for Samir to find himself in a place where he can cant his head back and look at the stars. It takes the same amount of effort for Sleepers to look for him or hold them in their minds. He fades from recollection so quick that if any of them ever had any reason to run his name in search of a background or criminal record the system wouldn't betray his existence at all. Even his birth certificate seems to have never existed in the first place.
As they travel back through the house in search of Sera the Virtual Adept does not tag close to Dan's heels. Neither does he amble exactly but the haziness of his high lets him appreciates his surroundings more than he would have been able to straight. Then there's Sera.
He doesn't invite himself to sit down. He hovers from a short distance until Sera addresses Dan. Then he gives a small chuckle and says, "Should I have a goddamned drink?"
Serafíne"'Course you need a drink," the creature rejoins, dark eyes ticking from Dan to Samir and lasering in to focus. Her cheek against the green velvet, and then - lifting - her chin. "It's a fucking party. You have a drink. You get stoned. You talk about beard care - " an ironic flash of a glance to Dan, " - or artisan cocktails or That Thing That Guy Did and you flirt or you dance or you find someone new to fuck, or maybe someone old. But you start with a drink."
Then she turns her wobbling head, focuses on the guy parked next to her on the couch and tells him to Get The Fuck Off. Looks back at Samir, then. Pats the spot beside her. "Come sit with me."
SamirThough Samir does not let the moment of hesitation show on his face he does hesitate. Could be momentary separation from temporal stability given that he can't exactly feel his limbs and the silence where his nattering neuroses tend to be is as loud a sound as the silence where the chaos from a herd of small children would ring to a mother or a nanny. He accepts it though. He is Awake. He can see the Code in everything. This does not distress him even if he is aware of it.
The guy on the couch next to Sera fucks off and Sam hesitates but then he says "'Kay" and closes the distance between them. Keeps his hands in his pockets as he sits down on the couch. He's numbed a bit but that doesn't mean he's stiff. Depending upon how fucked up Sera is she may or may not notice the looseness in his limbs and the lack of jangling electricity in his eyes. As if he's not imagining the creeping germs he can't see like he usually is.
Leaned back against the couch he cannot feel the velvet through the thickness of his jacket. He does lean back though. Lolls his head to look over at Sera and gives her a quick up-and-down glance. Assessing but the assessment is blunt. Blunt like something dulled rather than something direct. The blunt end of a pencil. He is feeling no pain.
"I don't know shit about beard care," he says. Maybe Dan is still behind them. He is aware of him if he is. Touches his face to assure himself of the absence of hair and goes on, "Maybe I should grow one..."
SerafíneShe's curled there on the couch wearing a little red cocktail dress and fishnets. Shoes kicked off, and someone has thoughtfully nudged them underneath the coffee table because otherwise they would be weapons. Both legs curled beneath her body right now, that drink Dan brought her in her hand.
Having delivered Samir unto Sera, Dan doesn't linger lurking behind them like a weirdo creeper, no. He's not a butler either so right now Samir does not have a drink, even though Sera is shooting Dan a recalcitrant look that edges into a pout, these are the kind of looks from her that he can ignore and does now and she's drops her gaze back to Sam just as he touches his cheeks to make sure they are still baby-smooth and laughs and reaches out and captures his jaw in her free hand and sweeps her thumb across his cheek.
"I know way more about beard-care than you could fucking imagine. And I like scruff better than beards. And I like this just fine."
Tries to hand him her blueberry-gin concoction, because it is a party and he does need a drink and anyway she still has her bottle of tequila tucked against the side of the couch, so. She'll be a-okay.
"Let's play a game."
SamirIf Samir had wanted a drink he would have had no problem asking for a drink. It isn't as if he doesn't drink. Sera has seen him drink. Sure he's got his little rituals that he goes through when he's out in public rearranging things at restaurant tables and futzing with things with which he oughtn't futz but it isn't as if he's so paranoid he won't consume anything he didn't prepare himself.
He's stoned. That's why he doesn't want a drink. He's stoned and maybe Sera can sense his stonedness once he's sat beside her. So soon as Dan leaves the room he won't forget why he went in there in the first place but it's a fair bet he'll forget about Sam.
Sera laughs and Sam does not fight to regain control of his jaw. His eyelids threaten to close when her thumb brushes his skin but he keeps them open. They're dark in this light. So are hers. She likes this just fine.
So she hands him her drink and Sam eyes it a second longer than would be considered strictly polite but in the end he does reach out and take it. Condensation slicks his fingers and he swaps the glass to his other hand so he can wipe the water on the thigh of his jeans. He replants his feet on the floor.
It takes some effort for him to lean back against the sofa. He isn't anxious but that doesn't mean he's relaxed either.
"What kind of game?" he asks.
Serafíne"I ask you a question and you answer it," this is wry, which is a strange thing to surface through all the drugs she has taken and/or will take tonight but there it is. Somehow they pull her back to stitch her sometimes in her body, in a certain place and time, where she is everything she ever was and also: this.
Here.
Now.
A girl with on a not-anxious, not-relaxed young man's jaw.
"That kind of game. What was the last party you went to? Your cousin's first birthday party counts."
Samir"Whoa. Hold up."
Laughter stains his voice which is slowed and dulled by the pot he'd smoked outside. That's what he wants out of a joint anyway. To mellow the fuck out enough that he can try and live outside his own head for a few hours.
"Am I supposed to answer truthfully? I guess it wouldn't matter. If I just lied and didn't say anything you wouldn't know. Except I just told you I was thinking about lying. ... fuck. What was the question?"
Serafíne"You think there's a supposed-to?"
Hasn't let go of him, Sera. She's still sitting there, sort of sprawled, in her little red dress, cheek against the green velvet, her dyed blond hair spread in curling tendrils all around her shoulders. Still the same wry twist to her mouth.
"The last party you went to. Then your favorite flavor of yogurt. Then why you came tonight."
SamirWith her hand still on his face Sera can feel when he almost smiles. The tension in his jaws that betrays his nerves. Muscle memory holds up beneath the mellowing influence of the pot but Sam's eyes are calm. No sign of the normal sheen of wariness that comes to him when she's happened upon him out in public.
"That's so many questions..."
Maybe if he puts his hand on her head she'll take hers off his face. He tries that. Puts the palm of the hand not holding the lemonade concoction on her crown and smoothes down her hair. He's fascinated by the way the yellow strands stand out against and hold to the velvet but this shouldn't surprise anyone. Virtual Adepts are not known for their mastery of forces but many of their apprentice's rotes require its application.
"I, ah... well, you said it was tonight, so I came tonight. Also I... you know... wanted to." His eyes are on his hand and her hair now instead of on her face. "They'll take my leet card away if I act like being outside the house isn't the worst thing in the world. I really don't trust flavored yogurt, is that weird? Like, plain yogurt with honey on it is amazing, and I've had it with strawberry or vanilla before, but the way they have to process the shit out of the milk to make it taste like lemon or chocolate or whatever without killing the bacteria kind of weirds me out."
SerafíneThere's this din around them - it's a party after all - but sometimes that din creates a thoroughly private space, even in the midst of a crowd. Then there's the way that Samir seems to fade into the background when one isn't immediately focused on him. The ordinary folk cannot quite seem to focus on him.
And, well: why would you, when Sera is around?
There's something awkward about the way he's holding that drink she gave him, so Sera reaches out and takes it right back from him and briefly upsets the whole apple cart by sitting up and scootching far enough forward to set the drink down on a much-battered chapbook of a friend's poetry. The movement has the strands of her long hair caught in and slithering through the nap of the velvet, organic and geometric, somehow, all-at-once.
Slides back into almost the same position, except now one knee is tucked very neatly beneath her hips.
"Yogurt's bullshit, I like booze."
So maybe he's still looking at her hair, the sharp, burnished angle of her features. Maybe he's sinking into his high or rising above it. Maybe that anxiety is still twitching in more-than-his-muscles, it hardly matters. Here is the grace of her gaze on the edge of his profile, banked yes, but never wholly shuttered.
"And I have no idea what the fuck a leet card is, but I think we're both better off that way."
--
She turns her head a bit then, closes her eyes, breathes in the noise and the brilliance and the energy the way she is given to do. Shifts her weight, then, from a hip to a knee and is rising up-up-up, reaching back to brace herself against the back of the couch, and he might think that she is getting up - drunk right? - and other things, swaying as she reorients herself to the motion of the room and threatening to fall on him.
But no: that's not falling. She's headed upright and then she's shifting herself to straddle him and that's a fucking choice not any sort of accident. Hands braced on the back of the velvet couch behind him, head tipped so that she can look down at him.
And maybe his hands stay kinda awkwardly where they are. Slip from her hair back down the velvet couch, or maybe they find her hips, which is where they seem to fit best. Her mouth is soft when it finds his, but nothing close to yielding.
When the kiss ends, she stays close. Brow-to-goddamned brow.
Her breathing is shallower, now.
"Have you ever had sex before?"
--
Apparently they're still playing that goddamned game.
SamirIf he's going to indulge his mental illness then Sam would have to admit that he is perfectly fine with the fact that he fades from memory just so soon as he has turned from the other person. That the government can't pull up anything on him if they ever find a reason to search for him.
But he is mentally ill. Sera has picked up on that. She has picked up on his compulsive behavior and the little rituals he performs out in public. The fact that he has an antagonistic relationship with germs and that he doesn't allow himself to like physical contact. He is fine with accidental contact. If a hostess touches his shoulder or a stranger brushes up against him or he hears a sudden loud noise he maintains his shit. Sure handshakes and making out are germ-laden but it's something else. He has been distracted most if not all of the times she has seen him. Even on their coffee date Samir seemed as if he were making an effort to focus.
Sera has a centripetal pull on him. Maybe she hasn't picked up on what exactly nags at him yet. But something does nag at him.
Not right now. Not as loud as usual. Right now he lets her pull away from him and shift and then oh fuck she's straddling him. Sam is not a robot. He is not detached from his sexuality. He has not buried it. He is not awkward in the sense that he does not know how to talk to people or relate to them.
He likes her. He likes being around her and he is attracted to her. She knows this. She has picked up on this the same as she has picked up on the fact that he is troubled if not outright crazy. Hard to tell if a person is crazy or not just by meeting them a few times. Sera has never used her powers of Mind on him without his permission.
That's another reason he likes her.
Anyway: she kisses him. He is wire-taut beneath her but kissing Sam is not like kissing a post. He responds. He relaxes when her mouth finds his and yes. Yes he lets his hands find her hips. He does not pull her down hard onto him but they do not float over her body either. Pressure. Pressure and wanting and in his shoulders is where he carries his tension. The shoulders support the neck which supports the brain. Sam spends a lot of time in his own brain.
Brow to goddamned brow. His eyes are closed when she speaks. Her breathing is shallower and his is faster.
Then her question. Then his lie.
Sam opens his eyes and she hears the hitch of hesitation before he says, "Sure." Beat. "Once." Beat. "Almost." Beat. "Okay, no, not technically, but..."
SerafíneThe hedge of her smile, a crescent curve against his mouth.
They're no longer kissing but she's still straddling him and her arms are loose around his shoulders and one of her hands has found its way into his hair and she's looking right down at him, pupils blown wide open.
"Promise me something, okay?"
SamirSo she's drunk and possibly high. Fuzzy perception. Sera has perception to spare and her hips are flush against his. Sam is not uncomfortable right now. Not physically anyway. If he is mentally uncomfortable then the pot has done a good enough job of ironing that out of his mind that it does not affect his body.
His hands leave her hips to slide around to the small of her back. Maybe she can see how much time has passed since he's touched a woman like this in the way his eyes threaten to hood. Fuck she's got her fingers in his hair he could die right now and be happy. Her pupils are blown open because of drugs. His are thrown open because of anxiety. They're open to each other.
Dry mouth. It's not entirely the pot's fault.
"Okay," he says.
Serafíne"If I ever do anything that makes you uncomfortable - not uncomfortable in a way that you are seeking, yeah? - when you're pushing yourself because you want to push yourself - "
Strange the way the noise of the others in the room - other lives, other conversations, even the music threading through - just kinda recedes when you're this close to another person. Becomes part of that background hum.
" - but uncomfortable in a way that is fucking material to you, let me know. Just say it."
Gives him a little nudge with her forehead, and then kisses him again. Brow, temple, cheek, mouth, her hand spreading open in his hair to support his head as she bends him backwards.
"We can go upstairs now, if you like. But you did just get here and the party's hardly started."
SamirRecession doesn't mean oblivion. Sam is aware of them but it is a spiteful sort of awareness. Refusing to let himself completely fall into himself and his own experience because who knows what could happen if someone decided out of nowhere to come over to them and interrupt their moment on the sofa.
A moment can last forever and Sam doesn't ever know if he's going to see Sera or anyone else again after he leaves them. He's listening to her as if she is the only person in the room. That counts for something. Everyone else is there but he refuses to let them matter right now. Her flesh and her bones and her gaze feel too good to him right now. Jangling awareness that he would not enjoy it so much if he had not gotten stoned twice first.
A nudge and a kiss and Sam lets his eyes close as Sera nuzzles him and cradles him and Sam does nothing to fight her.
"I don't really like parties," he says with his eyes still closed. A stutter as he keeps whatever his next sentence was to be to himself and then, "I like you."
Thank you, Pot.
Serafíne"Alright."
That's all she says. Murmurs, really, with a certain distinctive and clarified tenderness against his brow.
Then she's sliding off him, half-stumbling, it's awkward - there's the coffee table behind and her discarded heels somehow but god, this is something she has done how many times, with how many other strangers and not-so-strangers.
The creature reaches for his hand as she shifts back and gains her feet and pulls him after. Turns and does this deft little handoff of his hand from her left to her right as she does so. Murmurs some apology to a friend trying to squeeze by for the last seat on the couch and leads Samir around the green velvet couch, back into and then down the dark hallway, then up the stairs, rising to darkness.
They turn the landing and keep going up and then there's a hallway, doors closed, and then there's one door that opens with a faint creak onto and into a large bedroom with a wide bank of windows overlooking the back garden.
And there's so much damn stuff in there that it is hard to take in, and god, if he weren't stoned. The things to be counted and sorted are so endless and varied he might never leave the space.
"You don't have to lie to me, about what you've done or haven't done, Sam," she's telling him as she pulls him inside and reaches back to pull the door closed behind him. "I like sex and I'm a good fucking teacher. You can sit down on the bed if you want.
"Take off your shoes, maybe."
Samir`The part of him that doesn't like germs or contact with surfaces of dubious cleanliness doesn't want to take off his shoes. The other part of him that recognizes this is abnormal behavior that won't go away unless he bombards his brain with exposure to the stimulus it fears most in that moment doesn't particularly care.
In the morning if he is still here in the morning Sera may have to deal with a mental engine stall. Chances are about equal either way that he will or will not still be here in half an hour let alone in the morning. But Sam let her take his hand and wind him through the party. Though the bones of his hand proper were taut the bones of his fingers were not and they did not seek to knit with hers.
Sam is now sat on the bed. He's told her he would promise her something. Fuck. What was it. Maybe she can tell that he's very much focusing on her to the exclusion of what exists in the space around him. Conscious effort. Sought discomfort.
It's scary to meet someone who recognizes your mental fucked-up-edness for what it is and not judge it. Maybe he's more scared than anxious. He's gone his whole life without proper intimacy.
He sits down on the bed. He's watching her with whiskey-warm eyes but not touching the bed or taking off his shoes.
"I'll tell you," he says. If she does anything that makes him uncomfortable. "I'm not."
SerafíneShe's lovely, really. Loose curls and a tequila haze and certain spare vulnerability to her features when seen in profile. As now: Sam is sitting on the edge of the bed and not taking off his shoes and trying very hard to remember what he was meant to have promised her and ignoring the canvases stacked against the far wall, the lingerie trailing along the floor, the make-up stacked on the vanity, the books on the shelf, the clean-clothes-monster piled on the armchair by the windows where she likes to sit and read when she can remember that there's a chair there.
Has tugged open the drawer in the bedside table and pulls out a couple of condoms (colorful ones: one pale pink, the other a rainbow gradiant) which she palms and carries with her as she walks back to where Sam is sitting on the bed and drops the little packages on the bed within reach as she climbs up on the bed, straddling him again.
Tells him, as she is sinking over him. "You should put your hands on me. Over my dress, or under it if you want."
Then she's kissing him, again and again and again with such care and such breathless focus that it seems like it will go on forever.
Until it stops.
She's breathing harder, flushed a bit, her mouth red from kissing him.
"You okay?"
SamirThe body beneath her is focused on her body. Not the disorder around him or keeping his hands to himself that he might not contact the germs on the duvet or the floor or whatever thoughts kick down the door in his head and come barging in hollering and hovering uninvited and loud. They're called intrusive thoughts for a reason. Without the pot he would have never made it to the party let alone into her bedroom.
Tension electric in his bones as he waits for her but Sam is not anxious. Anticipatory, maybe. Uncertain, sure. The inside of his head is a bigger mess than this room but that doesn't mean his body is an operating theater. She disengages for a moment and in that moment Sam unties his boots. Does not get so far as actually removing them.
He has his hands to himself when Sera comes back with prophylactics and when she tells him he should put his hands on her Sam takes his lower lip between his teeth. Breathes heavy but not loud through his nose and lets his eyes drift over her body and then her mouth captures his. His hands are calloused and blind but he finds her thighs and slips up under the hem of her dress. Finds the small of her back and the pulls her down to him.
Sam is breathless and disembodied but he is not unaroused. When it stops he has to take a moment to catch his breath.
"Yeah," he says. Breathless. His hands find the sides of her face her hair her neck and shoulders. He kisses her again deep but quick and opens his eyes once before finding the corner of her jaw. His voice comes from there. "Yeah, I'm good."
Right. Shoes. He holds on tight to her and kisses her neck and shoulders as he uses one heel then the other to extricate his feet from their bindings. The clunk of the soles as the heavy boots hit the floor.
SerafíneSomewhere in the midst of all this, her hands find his face, too. Span his cheek, cup his jaw, her neat little tattooed fingers thread their way into his hair. There is something quick and fine and tender in the way she holds onto him, though it both loosens and sharpens as his mouth slides from her mouth, finds her jaw, her neck, her shoulders.
Her head sags back then, and her hands slip from his face to his shoulders. Her breathing is heavier, and sometimes she stops him, makes this little noise or twists a hand into his shoulder, grinds her hips into his. Sometimes she bears down on him, demands that he surrender his mouth to her. Sometimes she laughs, because she's fucking ticklish. Mostly, though, he can explore her neck, her mouth, her shoulders, her body for quite as long as he likes.
"Wait," is how she stops him, next. There's no rhyme to it except she had decided she would like to be slightly more naked than she is right now, and she's smiling, of course, laughing down at him, this edge to her smile that is both indulgent and challenging, and then she's reaching down for the hem of her little red dress, pulling it up, up, up and sort of shimmy her spare frame. More tattooes on her torso - a word in elegant script on her left flank, dark knotwork framing her right breast. A scorpion over her right rights. Stripped down to her garter belt and her polka dotted black cotton boyshorts (no bra, not beneath that dress), she pushes him back down onto the bed, beneath her, starts to get him naked, too.
"Stay here with me, okay? It doesn't matter if you don't know what to do. No one really fucking does."
SamirChances are Samir won't ever feel comfortable telling Sera why when they met each other he was twenty-three years old and couldn't say he had had sex without dancing around the subject. Maybe years from now after he's popped the hood and rearranged the wires inside his head. After they've gotten to know each other better. If they get to know each other better.
She is a woman familiar with pain. She knows what it is to walk through life with demons lurked beyond her periphery. Their shape and intention change from person to person but every fucking body has a demon or twelve. Sera has let him keep his in the shadows so far.
It stands to reason she's the first seer the hacker has ever met. He's made jokes about the presence of the Order in every city he's inhabited since his Awakening before. Samir's exposure to the other Traditions is purely text-based.
If she is capable of reading his thoughts she has kept that to herself. Maybe he thinks if she were she would tell him. Maybe the girl with whom he almost lost his virginity was. There are a lot of maybes. When Sera sheds her dress Sam's gaze is rapt. When he loses his jacket and his shirt his chest is bereft of ink. Ink-black hair follows the tracks lain by his ribs and sternum and his trunk and arms are slender but not meatless. He is not emaciated. He just doesn't spend much time at the gym. He lives on the computer.
Even if no one has ever told him this: Samir still owns a mirror. He is not blind. He knows he is a handsome young man even if he hasn't got a fit body or amazing sexual prowess.
His hair is still tied in a knot at the nape of his neck but Sera's ministrations and their collective manhandling has loosed tendrils from their bindings. Lengths of it frame his face. He swipes it back from his brow as he lies beneath her half-bared and electric.
Stay here with me, okay?
A quick flash of pain. Vulnerable isn't a look he wears well and he isn't comfortable with acknowledging it as a facet of his person anyway. He doesn't want to talk about his illness. He knows it's an illness. A virus taken over his synapses. It doesn't matter if he doesn't know what to do.
Half-a-smile follows the pain. Just a flash. He's nervous. His fingers find the waistband of her boyshorts and slip beneath them. Run the inside of their perimeter before kneading her buttocks.
"Okay," he says. Lets out a breath like he's been holding it. "I'm here." Another breath slower and quieter and he wants her out of her underthings. "I'm here."
SerafíneThat spasm of pain has her heart seizing in her chest, if only for a moment, and she cannot help but wear that responsive empathy absolutely openly. She breathes out and she braces herself, hands on either side of his head and bends to kiss him again. Gaze raw and tender as the kiss.
"Here."
She pushes herself upright again, still straddling him though now they are tumbled deeper into the bed.
"I love the way they fucking look, but. Garters are kind of a bitch."
Shows him how to undo them, though. Undoes the left and then reaches back for his hand so that he can undo the right one. Stays there, smiling but also quite still, allowing him to explore her hips and thighs with his hands as much as he likes. Encourages him to touch her between her thighs, if he moves to. Over the boyshorts, or beneath them, either way he is rewarded with a hitch of her breath, maybe even a noiseless wimper and a roll of her hips.
Then she rolls off him, and maybe he follows ("Help me with these - ") and she's laughing and kind of breathless, scooching back into the bed and bending her knees and peeling off first her stockings, then her boyshorts and garter belt.
And then, fuck. She's naked and kind of squirmy and propped up on an elbow beside him. Oh wait! Condoms! So she's naked and kind of squirmy and propped up on an elbow and then naked and clambering over him to grab one from wherever it has tumbled in the sheets and she comes back to him (propped again on an elbow, hair all loose, a warm flush of arousal bright beneath her golden skin) and drops the condom in the middle of his chest before she reaches down and starts to undo his belt.
Her hands are neat and deft.
She knows what she's doing. She's done this before.
Doesn't seem to care that he's a virgin at twenty-three or the whys and wherefores of it.
"It's your first time," she tells him, quiet as she's doing this, and she's very fucking turned on now, but she's banking some of that, holding her desire back to keep her eyes open, and on him. "Do you want to be on top?"
SamirThey are both empathetic creatures. He doesn't have to ask why his flinch elicits an answering coloration in her gaze. He doesn't want to ask her any more than he wants her to ask him. This isn't like ripping off a Band-Aid. Sera lives in the moment and Sam as much as he is held captive by his compulsions has a strand of opportunism in him.
He lives a full and rewarding life on the Internet. He is an initiate of the Mercurial Elite. This may be one of the last experiences he has in his physical body but Samir would like to think that they are more than their collective paradigms.
In general he would like to think. Right now his body is tugging at him and his mind is tugging at him and he just wants to stay here with Sera.
Kissing helps keep him centered. The rhythm of breathing with his lips locked to hers and his body rising to meet hers groaning deep in his throat when the friction between their hips stokes a sharp fire in him.
Garters are kind of a bitch.
He laughs that distracted laugh she's starting to know quite well by now. If she is a patient teacher then he is a quick study. Clips and straps and Sam unwraps her quick but not rushed. Foil square meets hot skin and his eyes find her hands as her fingers work the tongue through its clasp.
In the silence she can hear how hard he's breathing. Cannot quite hear how hard his heart's beating. He wants her. She knows what she's doing.
Sam may be a virgin but he is not ignorant. While Sera works on his jeans he unwraps the condom. Another flinch as she reminds him this is his first time but that flinch may well have something to do with the sensation of losing his clothing. Nude before a girl he likes and his eyes are the eyes of a troubled man. Whatever thoughts are crowding his skull he keeps to himself. He keeps his wits about him.
Their eyes meet in the middle. His chest rises and falls steady and fast and does he want to be on top. A small distracted nod.
"C'mere," he says. He kicks his jeans their belt and boxers onto the floor. Takes one of her hands and brings it to the rubber disc. "Help."
Her experience eclipses his. He kisses her as she sheathes him and gasps against her mouth as her fingers find him. Gasping turns into soft panting and maybe she's close enough she can feel him frown. Stay here. Stay here. He keeps kissing her as he leans into her. Chest to chest back to mattress and he holds himself up on an elbow keeps kissing her while his other hand finds the junction of her legs. He likes the noises she makes when he touches her. Knowing that if he touches her a certain way she'll move her hips a certain way.
He's stoned. He could touch her like this all night. He does not touch her like this all night. Something gives or she pulls him to her and Sam's eyes search Sera's face thorough and quick at once before he lies between her legs. One hand between them until he's flush against her and he tries but cannot keep quiet.
No idea what he's doing and it's hard to see her face when he's on top of her when he wants to bury his face in her neck when he wants to--
After nearly an entire distracted minute Sam says, "I lied." Christ. She feels so good to him. He can't see her face. She can hear some distant distress in his voice but she told him to stay here. He stays here. "Shit... Sera..." He kisses her cheek takes hold of the back of her head kisses her cheek again kisses her brow kisses her mouth. "... I want you on top." Kisses her mouth." Could you...?"
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