Hangtime

Elijah

He had ducked out the back of a bar for a much needed moment to breathe.

Santa Fe looked very different when you weren't looking at the store fronts. The allies and the backs of buildings and the trash cans all made the places look the same. There was the occasional puddle, the loose gravel and hints of grass trying to stubbornly shove itself up through the pavement and say that it endured, because it is true and strong. Elijah wonders, briefly, if the Order felt strongly about weeds, how they persisited. How they were the epitome of something exerting their will upon their environment.

Weeds will grow because they want to. How dare anyone try and say otherwise.

But there he was, sneaking out the back of a bar with his top button unbuttoned and for the first time in a long time feeling like he was drowning in the open air. Feeling smothered by the actuality of the world around him and tonight, yes tonight, he was trying so goddamned hard to be present. COuld have gotten shitfaced but, instead, was outside of a bar in the back alleys sober, deciding instead that he needed to walk. Needed to pace. Needed to recenter himself before he rejoined the rest of the world and pretended that his best friend wasn't in mortal fucking danger. That there was nothing he could do about it.

That he could pretend that one of his other friends was dearly hurting, so disconnected and curled in on herself and splitting apart and he doesn't even know where the fuck to find her. Knows someone is taking care of her but, frankly, given who it is Elijah feels like his world is resting too much on the shoulders of a man who he has barely met. Trusts, yes. But perhaps...

Perhaps.

He makes his way through the back alleys, wonders if he should try and score something harder than whatever he could comfortably get from Samir.

Being present is fucking hard.

Serafíne

AWARENESS!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Serafíne

Weekend and still early enough that the bars and galleries are packed and there's foot traffic, not so much in the back alleys where Elijah has gone to pace but still: a cater-waiter taking out the trash, a prostitute with a short man in a dumpy suit negotiating at the back entrance to a dive bar. And so on.

Chilly but not precisely cold, with banks of clouds slipping across the sky, and between the clouds and the light pollution there's not even a hint of the stars tonight. Not from the downtown streets.

Elijah finds Sera on the empty patio of a small bistro (the last few patrons inside linger over after dinner drinks and desserts). Coincidence this, really. No reason, but sometimes the world functions like that. Things fall apart, other things are put together again. She's sitting on one of the wooden tables set back against a brick wall. In summer these are shaded by great big offset market umbrellas but the umbrellas have been taken down: either for the night or for the winter. The chairs are locked down and shunted forward against the table, but there she's sitting, leaning back against the brick, legs crossed at the ankles, wearing her curb-stompers and fishnets and a leather skirt that is half-metal rings, an old Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt, a flannel shirt, a leather jacket.

Leaning back against the brick, smoking a joint, one hand resting on Sid's big head. The dog, of course, curled up beside her.

Banked glimpse toward Elijah out of the corner of her eye as he emerges from the mouth of the alley next door. "I knew you were around." Closes her eyes again, takes another drag. "No one else feels like you."

Elijah

He exhales, hard and harsh like he took a hit of something that was too strong and it didn't feel good in his lungs. Like he was fifteen and lighting up for the first time because it seemed like something that could be fun or it got passed to him at a party and you fucking go for it, freshman. If you're gonna party with seniors, you don't wuss out.

"What do I feel like to you?" he asked, "I know how i see you, but it never really hit me to ask how I come across on a-" waves a hand, doesn't want to flat out say metaphysical level and words are failing him "-y'know. I get a lot of hurricane but I could never really swallow the irony."

comes her way, because she is there, and she is present and she isn't some ghost to him. Then again, where ghosts ever just something to him, either? For all intents and purposes, this is just another sepctre he could spend the night talking to. He takes a seat by the bricks so he isn't towering over her. Doesn't take much, it feels like.

Except he knows that isn't the case, in his perception Sera had never been small, just like she had very rarely been human save for those moments that reality was unkind. Thinks about whatever one-sided conversations they've had when she's been out and he's been introspective.

Serafíne

"Mmmm." She is quiet tonight; or if not tonight: now and her voice hums in her nose and mouth. She is: considering his resonance and something about the lilt of her chin or the set of her jaw is reminiscent of a wine tasting. That consideration. Shifts the joint from one hand to the other and offers it to him if he wants, then turns that first hand over like she was holding a hidden stone inside her palm.

There is no stone, nothing there, just her skin, and she wonders what sort of magick it would take to show him a visual representation, an illusion, an allusion.

Instead: "Ever been sailing?" A beat, a moment of recognition or not. "Ever been caught out in a gale?"

Elijah

He settles in, takes the joint and takes a hit because it's there. Because he's tense, because it's offered and hospitality, you see. Holds his breath and hands it back. She's there and she's been there for... he doesn't know how long. Serafine has a taste for these things. He doesn't... she just knows. Doesn't know how she knows, but she does.

She asks if he's been sailing, and he laughs. Something small that makes the breath escape from his lungs and lets the remnants of smoke out into the air.

"I've never been sailing," he says, smiles a little, "I actually kind of find the idea fucking terrifying."

Serafíne

That brings her dark gaze quite immediately back to his face. This slanting glance, half-shadowed by her lashes, half-shadowed by something else, entirely. Still, look, see: aware. Alive to the nuance of expression. And she kind of straightens, stretches through the spine enough to lean up-up-up and kiss him on the temple.

Soothing, affectionate. He finds the idea terrifying.

And, really, she should have known.

"Then I'll find another fucking metaphor. You feel like a storm on the horizon, and the monarch trying to outrun it."

Elijah

"To me, you'd always been... just this gut feeling, when you're right at the edge of falling off of something and you're in that moment of hangtime. Like fucking skydiving," he said, had a smile on his face and his voice was tinged with fondness.

He didn't quite know whatshe needed, what would keep her anchored and present. What would keep the pot holding on to the kettle as it were. It was a struggle to remain in the moment sometimes when your mind can go so many other places, "but yeah... I fucking loved that feeling. It's before you ever even consider opening your parachute."

Serafíne

"Parachutes are playing it safe when you can learn how to fly."

The quick, wry curve of her mouth, mostly hidden by shadows. She tips her head to the side and rests her temple on the young Hermetic's shoulder. Gives him a little nudge with her elbow.

"I'm alright, you know? You should go on with your night. See where it takes you."

Elijah

She says she's alright and there he is, her temple on his shoulder and he closes his eyes. Takes it in, feels what is there and the weight of her head and the residual softness of her hair and drinks in that wry smile or smirk or grin or whatever it is that she wears.

She tells him she's alright.

"... I would rather spend my night with someone I don't have to lie to," he confides, "even if we sit here the whole night and don't say a goddamned thing."