The text invitation: Easter party / brunch / whatever! Bring yrself and maybe someone else.
That was a mass text. Sure, Sera changed phones and numbers after texting Alexander's phone repeatedly while he was imprisoned by the technocracy but she then proceeded to redownload all of her old contacts and reinstall them and text everyone her new number. Or well: Dan built up the contacts again, patiently, excising only: Ginger and Alexander and any other number he knew had been ditched as a number-of-possible-interest. Haven't been as many mass texts lately but there is what the housemates have taken to calling The Project and then for a certain Cultist and a certain Consor there was also: the other project.
And other reasons, besides.
--
Four or five days ago Denver had a blizzard and the blizzard brought a foot or more of snow and also the god Horus back down to earth. Thursday was bright and warm and everything just started: melting. Okay: there was so much snow that great melting monstrous mounds of it linger in parking lots and pedestrian malls where contractors piled it up with heavy equipment but: the streets and sidewalks are all clear, as is much of the grass. Hummocks of snow linger in the deep shadows of north-facing slopes, on the south side of streets, in the no-longer-recognizing slumps that used to be snowpersons.
There are several used-to-be-snowpersons in the yard at 719 Corona Street.
There are also: plastic eggs "hidden" in the bare branches of the trees, amidst the wild tangle of viny forsythia that is flowering despite the lingering snow. Open doors and people on the front porch and people in the house: open windows nevermind the chill, and a blazing fire and warm bodies against which one can jostle and be jostled. The most amazing spread of largely pot-luck dishes in the warm white kitchen, on the island and counters, and an array of beverage options, alcoholic and otherwise. From grapefruit-rosemary-vodka martinis to peach sangria to spiked lavender lemonade to a deeply wicked spicy bloody mary.
The back yard: more people, tramping through the mud. Fire in the firepit, all kinds of smoke in the air. Sera out there, too. In muddy Doc Marten's and a frothy black confection of a floral Dolce-and-Gabbana frock by way of an Easter dress.
WilliamSometimes, you have to wear a suit to things and get an uber.
He got the uber namely because he knew he wasn't going to be driving home and riding a motorcycle when it was cold was kind of shitty. Jenn had moved out, so he didn't have free access to her car anymore. She's a Big Deal now. Lives in Los Angeles and sells paintings and is the personal assistant to a fairly well regarded Euthanatos. It was a good move.
But still: no car. He'd spent the money he was going to use for a car (because his parents told him to get a goddamned car) on a bed that was nothing short of a masterpiece that was very beautiful and ethereal and was very conspicuous when one decided to fuck like they going away to war the next day and this may be the only opportunity they have to make their way to the English literature majors at DU.
He's gotten a lot of compliments about that bed. It's sturdy, but not quiet. Not loud, but certainly not quiet.
He hadn't gotten a new phone number, instead ported the old one and continued to maintain two phones because he couldn't bring himself to tell his parents that he probably was never coming back to Louisiana. Set up call forwarding to one cell phone and bang, no worries there. He's been a busy one, William. His instagram account and FourSquare put him across the United States for good chunks of February and January. One occasional stint in Antarctica, but that was GPS spoofing. He took some picture with a girl wearing the kind of headphones that serious gamers wear sitting in an apartment with vertical blinds and a half-shaded view of a pretty city skyline.
William came with deviled eggs and cupcakes. And a bottle of vodka that was neither top shelf nor bottom shelf- distinctly in-the-middle shelf.
And peeps.
He's outside and off to the firepit, with his nice pants and button down vest and an eskew tie and a shirt that looks like he actually pressed it. He's still wearing about half a dozen bracelets on one wrist (some red and woven with gold, some navy, some leather with metal. They actually have purposes thank you very much) but the necklace that was tied on too tight has finally fallen off, and the little sun charm has yet to be added to the pile.
"Have I told anyone recently how fucking fantastic this place smells all the time?"
SerafíneSera does not instagram or four-square or facebook so she doesn't know where William has been or has pretended to be unless he has texted her and told her, and even then she might not remember. She does text though, and take loads of selfies and know many, many, people, and something about the way she collects things and sometimes people is very much like a physical tumblr but whatever. She hardly knows how to use those things. She understands texting and selfies but often has trouble remembering how to work her iPhone. That is 50% substance related and 50% she doesn't give a fuck about technology related.
She prefers: people.
And Will encounters some people he knows in the house: Dan or Dee maybe in the kitchen to accept deviled eggs and peeps and vodka and Emily Honey Bunches of Chokes and her wife (what! yes: they eloped) Jenny and, you know, others. People from up the street or down the street or around the corner or around the world. Sera opens her arms and greets Will with a great big rising-to-her-tip-toes hug. Her nose finds his ear.
"That's because you haven't been here when you needed to hold my hair up while I puked my guts out. Doesn't smell fantastic then.
"Want a marshmallow?"
WilliamEmily got married?! ("Whaaaat? Do you guys need a toaster? Registry or something- I wanna get you plates-" and general congratulatory excitements) And then it's out to the outdoors, where Sera stands on her toes and he beams like sunlight and feels like he always dopes- like the storm and the sailors on the ships tossed on it. Hands go around her waist and he does come down to make the height difference a little more bearable. Seven inches-ish. Maybe six on a bad day and eight on a good day.
Pulls back and laughs, "I feel like that is the next level of our friendship. I think you're usually the one doing the hair holding."
Possibly. William has puked at her house all of twice, once early on when one could hardly notice because he's so damned quiet about the whole thing. Rinses his mouth out with something high proof and goes about his night like this is normal. It was a big party, you don't want to miss it.
"I would love a marshmallow," he tells her, "I brought peeps, but those aren't regular marshmallows. Peeps are Peeps."
SerafíneWell: well well well.
Will says that Peeps aren't marshmallows, Peeps are Peeps, but when Sera said marshmallow, Sera meant Peep. Will wasn't the only one to bring Peeps to this party. Sera and Co have a neat little set of fondue forks that Sera and Emily found for $2.99 at a thrift store because the fondue pot was cracked or broken or thrown-away or sold-separately and the handles are kinda long and they are keeping them staged on a little wrought-iron table near the firepit so anyone who wants can make a Peeps-flavored-Smores (or graham sandwich, or whatever) while getting high.
Sera picks out a bright-blue-bunny Peep and skewers it mercilessly and hands it back to Will, triumphal. Tucks her right arm through his left and rises up again to her tip-toes to kiss him all chaste on the cheek, even as she gathers her skirt up so it: doesn't catch on fire.
"Haven't seen you in forever. Glad you came. And that you're alright. Anyone fill you in on what's been going on?"
WilliamPoor Peep. Poor, poor Peep. He looks on with mock-mourning as she stabs the poor little blue bunny mercilessly. "Sera, you animal!" he says in his most southern, most high pitched and most assuredly damsel-tied-to-the-railroad-tracks voice.
And immediately the peep goes into the fire without a second thought. Just at the edge, like he's trying to coax some confession out of the peep and he's a Grand Inquisitor wanting to yell repent! Repeeeeent! As though the peep was very clearly consorting with the devil or an enemy of the Great Peep Church.
"Grace told me what was going on," he says, "the Denver chapter of the pointie hat society had a meeting beforehand and I went oh, okay, we need to go make friends with people... which turned out not too bad, actually, but I came back and shit hit the fan. Grace was pretty peeved that I wasn't here
"But I heard that Alexander's physically fine from her a few days after she'd told me."
SerafíneWill screeches that Sera is. an. animal! and in that voice and of course everyone in the yard turns to look. The two strangers sitting the wrong-way in the rainbow hammock smoking a bowl and the hippie-girl barefoot in the mud making giant bubbles and the trio of professors from the neighborhood (adjuncts, the lot of them) standing as close to the house as possible because 52 degrees is pretty damn warm after a blizzard and pretty damn chilly any other time smoking some allegedly Cuban cigars.
Sera laughs; she is: plainly, uncontrovertably happy in that moment. Were she more forward-thinking she would be getting a graham cracker ready for him, but no. He will have to navigate blue molten bunny-goo very much on his own.
--
Neat little frown when he talks about the pointy hat society. She doesn't get it? Doesn't know what he's alluding to? Doesn't know to connect it to an early morning visit from Pen or anything else that came after.
But - "I don't - " another neat frown. This quick little pause as her eyes dart out over her friends, the smoke rising, rising, golden head cocked just then as if she were listening to something. "I don't try to speak for Grace, but I don't think she'd be mad at you for not being here? That sounds kinda like a misunderstanding?"
WilliamHe's got a head on him, but doesn't think to get a marshmallow, either. Soon enough it's molten and gooey and he does what everyone does when they have a bloated delicious marshmallow cooked to perfection but in immediate danger- he turns it until he can grab a graham cracker and slop the peep onto it.
Laughs along with her. Happy to be where he is.
---
She says it was probably a misunderstanding.
"It was? I mean, I made it a point for us to get together later because we've had this weird dynamic going on for awhile, and I get why she was angry- she had some pretty big shit blow up in her face and she had a lot of pressure on her," he continues on, "when she came over and we talked she was super tense and was basically ready for me to write her off."
He purses his lips. Takes a bite of marshmallow and cracker and takes a second to chew so he can figure out what he's going to say. Decides not to say anything.
SerafíneSera has her golden head down as she listens. She must be freezing in that dress, which is basically a spring-themed negligee over black lingerie. She was wearing a crown earlier; had it planted high among her curls, but this is the sort of party where everyone can have everything and friends and strangers and everyone (or well: not everyone but some everyones) wanted to touch it, feel it, marvel at it, try it on and Sera, very very strangely, found that today of all days: that was something she didn't want to share.
The loose imprints of the earlier hairstyle are there now. Strange little kinks, unnaturally angled curls to match the natural mass of them. That listening aspect she sometimes wears, and feels: so very intimate, and so very animal.
"And were you?" Quiet, neatly probing. "Writing her off?"
William"No," he tells her, says all nice and quiet, "she's been on my ass when I mess up, but she doesn't mean to come off abbrasive and I haven't figured out how to read her yet."
A second, "she's said some pretty shitty things before, but I don't think she ever means to hurt people. Grace is just very... with me or against me."
"No, I wouldn't write her off."
SerafíneSera is still tucked up against Will. That one neat arm. They haven't seen each other much in recent months. Just the once much earlier this winter. Before that: it was November. The week before Thanksgiving. The day she came home after a long, terrifying, ridiculously lonely walkabout. She was: so very thin then. She'd been fasting off and on all summer, and then Thailand, and then: that exile, and it's not likely she remembers with any regularity to eat even when her friends and lovers are around to sometimes see that she does.
She's gained back much of what she lost, though, and she looks just as lovely now - replete - as she looked when she was harrowed and hollowed. More perhaps. Especially in that see-through dress with its tumble of appliques and the exquisite French lingerie she has paired with it, beneath.
"Tell me the last time Grace was 'on your ass,'" slanting, banked little look, shaded by her lashes. "for messing up."
William"Back when that stuff happened with the weird body shifting Nephandus? The first time Sam went into Quiet?" he is quiet about it, doesn't broadcast because, for all people knew, he could just be throwing things around in some foreign language. She's tucked in all nice and close and things are warm. He remembers when she was so thin, remembers when she felt and looked like she was wasting away not because of a lack of food but because of a lack of nourishment- a time away from the people who fed her soul.
"Anyway, I'd asked Jenn to do those paintings so people would know what we were looking for and when shit hit the fan with that there was a standard dressing down. Before that I got a talking to about wanting to investigate the whole weird monster in the park that tried to eat us thing and the subsequent investigation and the pretty continuous drop it, it's over when we found out later that it definitely wasn't over."
He stops. Exhales. Looks guilty for a minute before offering her some marshmallow peep goodness.
SerafíneSo, here's another thing Sera doesn't really know about. To-wit: the weird body-shifting Nephandus? No one has ever told her that story. Tied the pieces together for her. She has these fragments of it but again: no means of connecting them to the whole, outside of dreams or visions and thank god she doesn't have too many dreams or visions like that.
But she does: remember the certainty that something had been taken-care-of and other pieces of that. She also: hears something in Will's language and intonation that has her no longer looking down, but: at-the-fire.
And she is: careful. Careful.
"Remember the last time we talked?"
This - liminal - pause.
The hitch of her smile. If he glances at her from the right angle at just that moment, he can see that there is something about her today that is - oh - aching. Well beneath the surface.
"You blamed yourself for an awful lot of things that weren't really your fault. Remember?"
WilliamThere are so many questions he would like to ask her sometime, but is certain he wouldn't get an answer. Not a verbal one, because Sera isn't words she is actions and those actions are Words in and of themselves. Doesn't need to say much because she says enough already to people who have eyes and hearts and know how to listen and really grasp what she said.
"I'm probably filtering our interactions through that," he says, ike it's a conceit, like he realizes something and doesn't quite know how to acknowledge it. She's looking at the fire, and he looks back at it for just a moment. The fruits of the tree of life are flames.
"Yeah, I remember."
SerafíneNeat little nod of her head. Like she's agreeing with the music of the spheres, the notes of the universe, the rhythm of a joint being passed around a fire. Smiles a little, too. This banked glance she gives him, slanting neat and up to graze his profile.
He gets it. What she's trying to say to him. Which: pleases her.
"That's what I was thinking. Maybe you guys should talk again sometime? You know: without your filter. Grace, man. She's got enough filters of her own."
Said with a wholly affectionate curve of her mouth.
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