Listening post.

William

There had been a text, or perhaps a phone call, or perhaps a number of things that could have been a means of communication. It's William we are talking about here, he could have sent Sera a fucking letter, all careful script and intention dropped in a mailbox and sealed. It seems like the kind of thing he would do, but he isn't one for official correspondence.

He had made his intent known, though. He wanted to see her, wanted to do something even if he didn't know what that something was. Something more than getting shitfaced and spouting poetry because that was a normal night for him. Though, honestly, a normal night was more staying away from people and being sequestered trying to find answers to questions that he has no frame of reference for jumping off from.

But when William concluded he wanted to see people again, he concluded that he wanted to see Serafine first. First person he visited after becoming a right and proper Hermetic. Probably the only person that would call him William without thinking about it.

Whatever it was, the message had been clear: I miss you, let's go do something daring.

So there he was, waiting for her to show up at some place where people were mourning David Bowie playing his last great work and something stirs. Somewhere in Santa Fe. Somewhere that there are artists and creators and poseurs and Will, darling creature, considers himself one of the latter instead of anything in the former. Tips a shot back- tequila with orange and cinnamon instead of salt and lime.

Sera

She shows up maybe forty-five minutes later, wearing this sleek, spectacularly fitted Alexander McQueen corset jacket covered in black feathers. Nothing on beneath: just bare skin, the curve of her breasts a shadow beneath the black on the verge of revelation every time she moves. Alexander McQueen and an old pair of denim cut-offs she picked up at the Buffalo Exchange (aka - second hand) then made shorter and shorter still with a rigorous application of Dee's pinking shears. Thick black leather belt, all studs and grommets, encircling the rather high waist of those shorts. Black thigh-highs, with skulls up the back where the seam on nylons would be. Low-heeled combat boots her only concession to the weather.

--

The air in the room changes when she walks in. Yeah she looks like that and yeah she dresses like that but it's the charge in the air that has people turning, turning, turning to seek her, to watch her, to want her. The gut-wrenching, enthralling intensity remains the same as ever: but there is something new-and-changed about her. This sensation of wildness, of freedom and something else too, which burns-brightly. Which catches-to-flame.

And she finds Elijah at the bar and bartender comes over and Sera orders a round of French 75s and do they go with tequila? Who the fuck cards.

"Hi William." The brief communion: her nose against the back of his head. One arm around his shoulders, the other hand ruffling his hair. She just inhales. Then lets go, and takes that seat beside him, and orders her goddamned drinks.

William

Sera wears whatever she damned well pleases and owns it. Every bit of it. Elijah has worn some permutation of the same thing since he got here. Occasionally, he doesn't have a vest on. Tonight, he does, because he needs somewhere to put his pocketwatch. You know, the one that doesn't work except when he tells it that it is going to work. Functions as a watch and an unbroken circle-both equally important.

She orders a round of French 75's. Soixante Quinze.

She tells him hi. Hi William, specifically and he smiles, something tinged with internal and external pleasure, buries her face in his hair for a second and he smells like whatever shampoo Jenn left when she left. He's running out, figures he should go buy another bottle sometime soon. The apartments getting lonely, to say he doesn't mind would be a lie.

She feels different, something that makes him pause, makes him almost falter before that smile turns into a grin and-

"How did it goooooo? You've some something different with your hair. Or your soul. Probably the latter," he's joking except he's not. William isn't completely clueless.

Sera

"Letting the hair grow-in."

He's right actually, that's the weird thing. About both, but what she does is she turns and cants her head so he can see the soft, messy fringe where she had kept the side-cut shaved. It's not too long, not now, not yet. Pin-curl territory maybe, and it has the texture and the gleam of a cocker-spaniel's coat with a close summer clipping.

"And the soul." Quick and wry, that. The 'tender has brought back the round of champagne and gin drinks she ordered and she gives this pleased little shimmy, scooting closer to bring the bubbly concoction to her mouth.

"Woke up one day and there was something in the air."

Briefest pause, some cant of her head. Refocusing, see? Something still-seeking about that look.

"I haven't seen you in forever. How're you?"

William

Reaches out and touches the little bits of messy curl growing in, speaking of potential and there is delight- always delight because there are few things that can dim the fact that he generally believes the world to be beautiful, that people are the highlight of it and its death all in equal measure. Something about being incapable of separating the wonder from horror. He is not horrified now.

Imagines that there Willl be a point where she has long hair framed with ringlets. Pulls his hand back and takes the glass in hand once it comes. "I guess that's how some change works, you feel a change in the pressure and you either deal or you go find out where the window opened," shrugs. A quick rise and fall of his shoulders.

She asks how he is, though. Less of a grin but he takes a drink. Puts the glass down, and it tastes like Christmas time to him- anything with gin in it does. Something about juniper is indistinguishable from pine in his mind. He likes pine trees, so it doesn't matter.

"It's been kind of self-imposed exile. I put Sam in Quiet," again. Neither time was his fault but it doesn't seem like it to the blond, "and Jenn moved to LA so I've been kind of off."

A second.

"Sorry for not making Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. I feel bad about that, I probably should have called or something."

Sera

Maybe that is how the world works, but for Sera that comment was a place-holder, marking-time. Nothing about her new power was accidental. She wanted it and she worked for it and she knew she was ready for it and she sought it, and sought it, and sought it; and, finally: found. This clarity about her that feels somehow both stark and expansive.

He touches her hair and it has just that furred softness you'd imagine, trimmed so it frames her elfin ear (bristling with piercings, of course) just so. She tucks her head into the touch, also just as you'd imagine. She likes to be touched, Sera. Touched, petted cosseted, adored.

Doesn't everyone?

But there's her drink and it - has bubbles! and gin, and she has this engaging half-smile on her face, that smoothes out as he tells her that he has been on a self-imposed exile. That Jenn went to LA and he put Sam in quiet and he's sorry: he wasn't there for Thanksgiving, or Christmas.

Sera inhales. Through her nose, not her mouth. Turns to the young man beside her and reaches out and cups the back of his skull with her tattooed hand and brings him close, and closer. The grace of her mouth on his temple, his brow. The scent of clove cigarettes in her hair, and champagne on her breath. Chanel No. 5 on her skin.

"Tell me what happened."

William

People blossom when they are paid the care they are due. Each person requires something different, but the feeling that someone cares about you, the feeling that you are adored is one that is almost universal. Sera is almost too much to process, almost too big to be real, it stands in contrast with the fact that she is so very, very human. It is the contrast that he adores, it is the completeness of her and the pieces that are still missing, still changing.

She is not static. The embodiment of writing your own definition, in being a living and changing Truth.

William loves contact. It is something he sees less and less frequently, either by the nature of those he interacts with or the nature of his work. And there she is, with perfumed skin and champagne lips and deliciousness on her breath.

She asks what happened.

"I asked Jenn to help with the whole weird human chimera thing, which I thought was covered because everyone said it was handled, then it turned out to be a nephandus and things got shitty for her. She ended up going to LA to be that one Michael guy's assistant, plus when I talked to her she made a good point that the art scene was better. She moved when I was in Boston. Left most of her stuff, but she said she got an apartment so we're making progress sending stuff to her. She said I could sell the furniture," he isn't going to sell the furniture, though.

"I went out with Sam and figured, oh my god, we should go look for yetis, because we were drunk and it was cold and I didn't think we'd actually find anything, just going out and exploring the wilderness is fun, you know? So we're out, and there's just this thing, right? And it's black and all Slenderman-esque and it has this-" this is where he laughs, an escape of air, a release of tension "-blue tie. And it starts asking Sam these questions and I don't know why the fuck he felt like he needed to stand in front of me- but, I mean... I get it. It asked how many people like us were in Denver and he wouldn't answer and I was like jesus fuck, dude, just let me get us out of this but it was fucking terrifying and it stuck, like, needles on the back of his head and there was blood and-"

Again, the takes a point and centers and exhales.

"I took care of it. There was a problem and things got bad, but I took care of it. I called Kiara to come help, I got our GPS coordinates, I made sure nothing killed us while we were waiting. But I almost got my friend killed, and he was messed up for a long time, because I wanted to go out and do something stupid and didn't think anything better," he says, continues, "and I do that. I did that with Jenn for years, I did it with Sam, I did it with Alicia, I fucked up Kalen's life, I almost got -you- killed because you had to help me."

After he got shot. Twenty first birthday. Sera saved Elijah's life, tore the world apart and reeled from the damages because she didn't want him to die. And she knows why she did it, but he doesn't. He thinks he knows, but has so many contingencies and why nots in him that the idea baffles him.

"I had to decompress from that."

Sera

And Sera listens.

Listens with intention, listens with awareness. Listens with her golden head canted and her fine little fingers draped around the stem of the champagne flute in which her drink has been served. Eyes half-closed, not always looking directly at him, but always close, the weight of her awareness and her attention and her presence and her interest evident in every line of her body. The supple threads of tension in her neck, the bruised gleam of her gaze, here just so, or there.

There is an awful lot to unload, and she lets him: unload. Listens, her head canted low, her dark eyes on his profile, then the windows beyond, then his profile again. Something aware about the way she watches him. Considers him. Listens to him. Hears him.

And there is a helluva lot that she wants to say, but she starts with this:

"Have you decompressed from that?"

William

Sera listens with intention, because everything she does is with intent. Because William has never seen her be careless with anything (or she is careless with everything, so a part of the world and willing for it to be, yet so completely capable of imposing her will upon it.)

She has never been deaf to his experiences, though. Has never made him feel lesser because he has been human; there aren't many people he can say that about. There's not many people who he thinks actively care about him, except perhaps Sera and Dan. They are a fixture in his life, and yet he chose to be somewhere so ideologically far away from them. Or maybe he sees the reason and tries to bridge a gap, tries to find a universal truth that unites all things but that is too complex. His dreams are incomprehensible, and that is certainly a concrete dream to have.

But has he decompressed?

"Sort of, it's kind of like being a glass of water and someone poured soy sauce into it. You just get moved to a bigger container and you add more water to fill it but the previous experience will still color it, I wouldn't want to bleed it all off and be a fundamentally different substance," he takes a drink of the bubbly Christmas tree concoction, "I've decompressed enough to know that I need-" people? Friends? Her? "-I don't need to be alone."

Sera

Oh, Sera. Lovely creature, who doesn't know what the fuck William is talking about, with water and soy sauce and coloring and containers or even perhaps the idea of containment, but she's watching his face in that bar and the air - fuck, the air should be smokey, should be edging-toward-opaque, but Denver has all those pesky anti-smoking laws - still the air has a haze-to-it, some sort of lambent gleam. She doesn't know what the fuck he means, but she thinks she gets the intent behind it. All this stuff in me: is settling. I'm changed, I'm always changing, I'll always be the person-who-changed, not the person-who-was. He's telling this to a time mage. She eats seconds the way strangers in a bar at closing time devour one anothers' hearts.

Or, maybe it isn't hearts they're devouring.

Sera tosses back her drink. Is there another one? There is another one! Maybe by magick: there is another one, but there it is. This strange thread of coincidence running through the moment, something like serendipity, which, if we are counting, is the word that an earlier Sera, a different Sera, had tattooed in script up her flank. If William has ever seen that word, it was only in pieces, none of which make sense without the rest.

And she offers him her hand and tells him that they should get out of there: there's a world outside, right? a bright, cold, brisk night, frame in light, the remembered sky. Her grip is stronger than you might think, with callouses that are stranger than you could understand and she pays the tab and off they go.

Outside on the sidewalk, she is still holding his hand. Doesn't seem like she's gonna let go.

"You blame yourself for a lot of shit, you know, that's not your fault. And some shit that is maybe is. And I'm gonna start at the end and maybe work back to the beginning, okay? You didn't put Samir in Quiet. Shit happened to you and it sounds like you saved his life."

William

Sera, lovely creature, Sera who does not know what he is talking about because he rambles but she gets the jist because she knows him. Because she knows people, but in his own young adult universe it is more important to him in some instances that she gets him specifically. That she understands where he is coming from- she can understand things. He's never seen the tattoo up her side, doesn't know that it says serendipity but he can tell some things because there are a finite number of things that the shapes of almost words can say.

He's good at noticing things that aren't presented to him; it's made him good at reading people without meaning to. When he tries, he's clueless.

What she says has him nodding, paying attention to her and forgetting that he has a drink until she finishes hers, which is a cue for him to finish his. Doesn't think too hard about it, just gets it all done with.

"I think sometimes it's easier to blame yourself than admit that you didn't have complete control of a situation."

Sera

This quick, quiet little smile skims over her mouth, equal parts elegant and thoughtful, as Will speculates that maybe the problem is that it is hard to admit how little control one has and she's opening her mouth to say something but something about that: strikes her, oh, just so.

They are, after all, creatures who have awoken to a universe where so many hidden things are now within their thorough control.

And without, of course.

So there she is, turning over the mystery of his idea and walking and COLD and there may, there must be some idea of a destination, the way she's walking now. The purpose that has infected her stride.

"Sometimes it's just a little switch inside you that means: you blame yourself, logic be damned. But Samir: you guys got drunk and went out into the woods. Maybe you convinced him. Okay: if you had been attacked by bears or fallen off a cliff I might allow you a small piece of the blame, not much because Samir is a damned adult. But: those are expected goddamned dangers in the woods that you exposed yourself to by being drunk and wandering around. What you described is nothing that could've been anticipated and again: Samir, adult, disciple event.

"So. Now: Samir - quiet. That's his thing, you know? It happens to him. It's happened to him more than once, and whatever it is in him that means reality is that much harder or stronger or more present for him that breaking its rules fucks up his brain for a while is something that he has to learn to deal with.

"Have you talked to him, since? Because, if not - I think you should."

William

"We haven't talked," he replies, "it wasn't for lack of desire, but-"

He stops himself, as though he knows when and how to call out his own bullshit before it starts to run rampant. He knows the reasons that he didn't talk to Samir; he had enough problems without William coming by and reminding him of what happened when they'd last been out. He'd come as far as being able to see the damned trailer before turning around and going home; William marked himself a coward for that. Perhaps his lack of gumption was brought on by a desire to not remind someone of the pain they'd experienced.

Samir was an adult, though- he was as responsible for his own well-being and self regulation as William was. He may be a contributing factor to a situation, but William lacked the ability and desire to literally make someone feel a certain way.

"It all just felt weird. I went by in December but he's kinda dropped off radar. I'll try again."

Because that's what he can commit to- trying. Considers flagging down a waitress and re-upping his drink. Decides against it for the time being.

Sera

"Mmm," the quiet hum of her voice, this inherent musicality to the thoughtless intonation. Medieval philosophers once believed that certain intervals reproduced the clearly harmonic arrangements of the sky: the perfect movement of the sun-and-planets around a thoroughly fixed and central earth. Here is: Venus to Mercury to Mars.

Gentle, she leans over to him. Reaches out and cups his golden head with her well-inked hand and brings him close. Her mouth in his hair, as she kisses him, not quite on the crown of his head.

"The longer you let it go, the weirder it'll get. But he's your friend. I bet he'll be happy to see you. Now do I need to tell you that you didn't ruin Kalen's life, or can we agree that I'm right about every-fucking-thing and I am really, really glad you decided to stop decompressing and ask me out?"

William

He laughs, and the sound is pleased, an acknowledgement that- yes, she is right about everything and -yes, he is also glad that she came out with him. She kissed him =on the head and he had leaned in because of course he would. Hasn't ever shied away from her in any memory that he has. Perhaps once, perhaps twice, but never significant enough that it would scar his psyche into thinking that, yes, he had backed away from her.

Except for the time that he half-drunkenly remembered Sera and quinoa muffins. Though that might have been Dee. Or Jenn. Now that he thinks of it, hazing drunken memories involving quinoa muffins was probably either Dee or a dream about Dee.

"Do you like roller coasters?" he asks, "literal roller coasters."

He smiles, the non-sequitur and the pleased look on his face says it all- he is happy she came out.

Sera

Later she might tell him some other story or pull this one back into focus and it will hardly matter. The world knits itself together into these exquisite, minute little moments, and then it tears itself apart again. She is breathing a framing smile and letting go of him and there is about it this sense: untangling.

"I've never been on a goddamned roller coaster." Something about the way she holds up her sharp little chin in that moment is either bravado or challenge. " - but I love carousels. Round and round and round. I like the ones with tigers though, and fucking ant-eaters and shit. Not the boring ones with flying elephants and baby bats.

"And you changed the subject, but you didn't ruin Kalen's life, either."

William

"I'm prone to histrionics," he admits. She calls him out on changing the subject and he smiles like he'd been caught doing something that he shouldn't have been doing, or perhaps read a cue wrong. Whatever the case, he didn't ruin Kalen's life. He didn't get Samir nearly killed, either.

"And I'm willing to concede that I didn't ruin Kalen's life, and maybe I didn't completely and irrevocably mess Alicia up," but he doesn't say that he didn't have a hand in making her leave (or rather- not giving her a reason to stay. Not that she needed a reason to leave, she had a mission in mind and it didn't involve waiting for the awakened world to go help her.)

Sera