I know.

Hawksley

It's later, and it could be hours and it very well could be days. It depends on how long the party goes on after that smoke with Pan, after that song in the kitchen. Time has more more and less meaning for Sera than it does for most people; Hawksley keeps an eye on it but time is really something other people need to concern themselves with. The passage of days, the appropriate time for meals. That's why he has Collins. Collins is his watch and calendar.

When he is in the Corona Street house, slightly buzzed but far more high, he does not think about time at all.

--

When she comes upstairs to her room next, Hawksley is lying there in those white jeans and that white belt. His socks and shoes are off, his shirt is off, and he is spread-eagle on her rumpled bedcovers, wingspan open, head tilted back, breathing in and out rhythmically as though in meditation. He senses her before he hears her, or sees her, and his eyes are opening as the door is closing.

"Maxine," he says hypnotically, and she knows he is reciting.

"back from a weekend with her boyfriend, smiles like a big cat and says that she's a conjugated verb." One of his eyebrows flicks upward, arching like a gossip's. "She's been doing the direct object with a second person pronoun named Phil, and when she walks into the room, everybody turns:"

Hawksley smiles and rolls to his side, but does not prop himself up. He rests his head on his bicep, watching her. "...some kind of light is coming from her head," he muses, as though he is seeing this right now. "Even the geraniums look curious, and the bees, if they were here, would buzz... suspiciously around her hair, looking for the door in her --"

he knows this is funny, this is too perfect: "-- corona."

Sighing, Hawksley rolls onto his back again, closing his eyes. "We're all attracted to the perfume of fermenting joy," he mutters, as though to himself. "We've all tried to start a fire, and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own."

Perhaps she has come closer, and he opens his eyes because he can smell her now, looking up at her. "In the meantime, she is the one today among us most able to bear the idea of her own beauty." His arms slide closer to his sides, and bend, and he pushes up on them, forearms flat and chest pulling a bit tighter with the motion. "And when we see it, what we do is natural."

Now is when he realizes he cannot finish in this position. He sits up all the way, drawing his knees up, heels to the bedspread, legs apart, back a strong but subtle curve as his elbows come to rest on his akimbo'd knees. "We take our burned hands out of our pockets," he whispers, looking at her, "and clap."

Which he does, softly and slowly, three times.

Serafíne

There are so many ways to get buzzed in that house and just as many ways to get high. Music still resonant from somewhere. Laughter in the garden. More people than was likely legal for a building of this size at some point in the thick of the night, silver paper drifting through the air, brightly chaotic, reflective as a light, glistening, subarctic snowfall. Still more people in the house even now than it has rooms or bedrooms or perhaps even space on surfaces appropriate for sprawling where one might lay down, as if for rest.

--

And: later. Hours or days and it hardly matters to the two of them and the party will sprawl on in some vagrant form or another for quite literally more than a week. Whenever it is is later and the house is almost as quiet as it will ever be on these days. Night stains the sky but dawn will come, and sooner than one might imagine. Sera's hair is loose and a bit tangled, the curls gone blowsy, her lipstick has more or less worn itself off her mouth, or maybe she's kissed it the fuck away. This does not stop her from giving him a crawling smile when she finds him where she knew she would - shirtless in the middle of her rumpled bed.

That smile changes when he begins to recite. She's still halfway across the room, closing the door quietly behind her, feeling it clock home, her spine against the wood, her hands behind her body, just that click, solid, precise. The latch in its groove, the mechanism tumbling home.

She breathes in. Her eyes are closed those first few phrases. She savors the sound of his voice as if it were a solid, physical, tangible thing - a caress. The heaviest sort. She is not still like this for long; and indeed soon enough there is her scent. Her shadow across the bed. Her weight depressing the mattress, her knee on the edge, and her hands, fists forward as she leans toward him.

--

He claps, three times. She breathes in sharply, her eyes quick on him and crawls forward, urging him backwards, prone, first with her eyes and then with her hands and then with her body. She has not quiet bent to kiss him, but he knows that she is going to do that, and soon.

The way she's smiling at him; no small hint of wonder in his eyes.

"Who wrote that?" Sera is asking him, this remarkable light in her eyes. "How do you always know these things to say. How do you find them in your mouth when you need them. When I kiss you, will I taste them there?"

Hawksley

And he can get high on life. Hawksley, when buzzed, can watch sounds move through the air like colors. He can see people as networks of electrical impulse. He can see the world as so much more than they think it is, and in the end he decided to come up here to this sacred place, this shrine to Sera, who did not dress up as an angel even though he said he'd pay her if she did but he would not go to church with her so he dressed up as an angel even though,

really,

the costume doesn't suit him.

--

Leaning close to him, their noses are inches apart, their eyes bright in the darkness, and when he gives his three soft claps he relents. She stalks him backward and he lowers himself, not a flop but the smooth, controlled recline of core strength. She climbs over him and his chest lifts on an inhale.

"I did," he lies, and obviously so, because he can't keep a straight face. But he gives her many answers: "Tony Hoagland. It's called 'Grammar'. I thought of it when I met you. I read a lot. Magic. I don't know."

Serafíne

I did he tells her, and

"Liar," she says, her mouth spreading around the word. It is not an accusation. If there is any sting in the term, well, she kisses it out of his mouth. Her knees are on either side of his chest and her fists punch down into the pillow top on either side of his head and her hair is loose and smells like cloves and pot and Christmas and Sera, absolutely like Sera.

The kiss is slow and deliberate and she is tasting the way his mouth opens beneath her own, opens to her own. Opens.

Then she pulls away - not far, just gives him his mouth back so that he can give her those answers. He reads alot. He's fucking magic. He doesn't know if she'll taste the words on his tongue.

"I think I did taste them," she's telling him, but some of it is oblique and strange and some of it is reflective and bright and her nose glides against his and their mouths are close enough that he can feel rather than see the crescent curve of her smile. "And you do read a fucking hell of a lot.

"Do you know what I got you as a Christmas present?"

Hawksley

A flicker of light in his pristine pale eyes at the word, even though he technically did just lie. An obvious lie, but still: the light flickers, and then renews, and he smirks. She kisses him, and his eyes close, his mouth slow on hers. Lazy. Savoring. They kiss for a long time. At some point his hand comes up to bury itself in her hair, his fingertips massaging her scalp.

They part just as slowly, and she tells him she thinks she tasted the poetry on his tongue. He smirks again. Her question: his answer:

"It wasn't in any of the books. What did you get me?" And here he bites her lower lip, a quick one. No reason.

Serafíne

Sera makes a noise that is decidedly not a wimper when he bites her lower lip. It is closer to a growl. Then she does something absurd: opening her mouth and scraping her teeth along the bearded line of his jaw. Her mouth glides over his ear and she spends quite a while nuzzling him there, her nose against the lobe, her tongue against the hollow beneath, tasting his pulse, alive to his every reaction and savoring each and every one.

Teeth scrape over the cartilage - little nips that are firm, but not cruel.

"I made you space - a whole fucking shelf - on my bookshelf. You can fill it up with whatever you want. Whenever you want. I won't even cover it up with a pile of clothes."

Hawksley

Considering that the second or third time they met she was doing things like biting his temple, Hawksley's threshold for 'that was weird, Sera' is set pretty high. She's a Cultist. He's lucky she hasn't asked him to hang from hooks on the ceiling yet, for fuck's sake. So her scraping her teeth over his lightly bearded jaw doesn't shock him. He just smiles, lazily, stoned-ly, closing his eyes as she gives him her raw, visceral sort of affection.

Time slips out of his grasp like water through his fingers. That is all right. He encircles her with his arm, helping her down to lie beside him a bit firmly, because snuggling.

She made him space on her bookshelf. He blinks his eyes open, turning to look at her, his expression inscrutable primarily because he has not quite sorted out his reaction yet. "But... I don't want anything when I come here. I come here because you're here. If I need something, I just... bring it."

Or leave.

This is the point where we marvel at how smooth he is and how good he is at accepting gifts, gestures, offers like this. Meaningful things.

Serafíne

Sera is still wearing that ridiculous green velvet dress. The one with the long sleeves and the rabbit fur and the deep vee and the leather lacings all the way down to her navel. She has lost somewhere during the evening the push-up bra she added to give herself the cleavage that lacings like that seem to demand. Take it off, given it away. Burned it maybe in the chiminea in the garden: who fucking knows.

So he pulls her down to lie beside him because snuggling and her spine arches against his hand as he does so but she goes; of course she does. Drops her mouth his shoulder and the laces are starting to come undone and her dark eyes are now slanting across the hard planes of his torso. Her right hand follows, down the solid slabs over muscle flanking his ribs, over the hard plane of his stomach, thoughtful, savoring, seeking.

"See, I thought maybe sometimes you come over here. We fuck or we get high and we fall asleep. Or hell, maybe you're just here - " that thought she doesn't really finish, "and maybe you wake up in the middle of the night and want to read one of those books that would drive me mad and hey, there they are. But fuck it, you don't have to put anything on it. I could just fill it up with my stuff. That fucking angel costume you were going to pay me to wear. To church, On Christmas.

"It'd still be yours."

Hawksley

She will not be wearing it long. Hawksley's hand that is not wrapped around her back is already toying with the lacings, even as he is failing to graciously and humbly accept this generous offering. It's a loaded gift, though. And of all the things playing through his eyes and she sees every one of them, most likely, it's the wariness that is starting to surface most overtly. The way he rolls a leather lace between thumb and forefinger is only somewhat lascivious and is in other parts a bit anxious.

Granted, they are coming undone, and his eyes skate down her body to look, of course he looks, and that numbs his anxiety a bit. Breasts, after all. He thinks of her in Vegas, topless and swimming and gorgeous. He thinks that when he is with her he hates winter all the more, it's a ridiculous season, they're supposed to never be out of the sunlight. He wants to cup her tit in his mouth and suck for a good long while. Until summer. Until spring, at very least.

And she touches him, appreciating his chest and the fact that it is bare, and she explains that maybe when he stays he could just have a book here and then, perhaps, he would not leave to go get it and read in his own house instead. Which he has done before.

He breathes in. He doesn't have to put anything on it, and it would still be his, and oddly, this does comfort him. He drops the laces and puts both arms around her now, closing his eyes, just holding her. And he's done that before too, especially when she was so weak. Especially when she was recovering. He stayed. Sometimes he did bring books here, he remembers, and he would read in bed while she slept her strength back, stroking her hair and telling her shh. shut up, Sera, I'm reading when she would struggle in sleep or briefly stir, uncertain of where she was, afraid she was in a hospital, but

nope. Bed smelled like her and Hawksley was scritching her scalp and telling her to be quiet so he could study whatever-the-fuck and it was decidedly not pristine or anything like a hospital, and she would sleep again.

She got him a shelf. She acts like she got it and there's no receipt, so it's his, whether he uses it or likes it or not. And he is comforted the way she would be comforted, when his shushing reminded her that she wasn't trapped anywhere at all, just... sleeping next to Hawksley. Who was not sleeping, but picking apart the universe to learn its secrets.

--

He exhales, and lowers his brow to hers. "I'm sorry I'm such a fucking douchebag," he says quietly. "Thank you," he adds, and kisses her brow.

Serafíne

Sera would disagree with Hawksley about winter. Winter is a perfectly reasonable season. It gives her the excuse to wear green velvet elf costumes trimmed with white rabbit fur matched with patent leather belts and patent leather boots, and leather laces down to her navel. It gives him the chance to take all of these things off her body.

They are not, however, talking about seasons they would keep and those they would discard.

Her eyes are on him; neither particularly sharp nor especially piercing, but quick as they so often are. As in, to the. And she sees the way the sight of her breasts numbs that rising anxiety - a bit - and worms her right shoulder in a way that pulls the bodice of the dress open, so that not even a shred of fabric obscures his sight line, offering him a better - perhaps more comforting - view. Something about her posture - the arch of her spine, the rotation of her shoulder - means that her breasts strain against the laces. Well, that's lovely too.

--

They're facing each other now; brow to brow, and her eyes are open so that her view of him is strange and piecemeal, like a Picasso painting - immediate, intense, but out of focus. They are close enough just then that her lashes brush against his lower lip as he lifts his mouth to plant that kiss on her forehead. She has lowered her gaze, her eyes all half-lashed - not in shyness or modesty, but from a quiet, abiding pleasure - in him, in his immediacy, in the fact of him, his solid body and booze-tinged breath and the way his scent, and hers, and maybe even a half-dozen strangers' cling to his skin - so deeply and immediately and entirely felt that that that quiet, abiding pleasure feels immodest, brazen. Strangely obscene.

"Liar," she tells him, then, "you're not a fucking douchebag," and even if he cannot see her mouth just then, he can sense her smile from the curve of her cheek, the supple shift of tension in her temple as her mouth curves wider. Her voice is quiet and there's something playful there, yes, when she says liar, the way her tongue shapes the word so very precisely, but the stillness feels real and solid and deep. "You're a Hawksley."

Because he's not a fucking douchebag.

And he is very much a Hawksley.

Briefly and firmly and even fiercely, Sera leans her brow into the pressure of that kiss. Then she's pulling back; not to break contact but to make it: eye contact. Sera finds Hawksley's eyes and she holds them.

"It wasn't meant as an anchor." The depth of that eye contact is remarkable. She means every goddamned word. "I don't want you to do anything but soar."

Hawksley

Even "liar" is a pretty word in Sera's mouth, less so "douchebag" though not by a wide margin. Hawksley pays attention to her breasts, and the laces loosening over them, and he's far from oblivious so he knows she's reacting to him, like she gets that yes, tits make everything in the world a bit easier to deal with. He already knows he's a coward and that he will most likely remain a coward, at least in certain things, but oh well: there are still boobs.

And he brings his hand up and covers one of her breasts with his broad palm, elegant fingers, closing his eyes for a moment as he very simply holds her, weighs her breast in his hand, breathes out as through laces or air or green velvet, he feels her nipple hardening to the touch. Yes. That's lovely, too.

She draws back and so his eyes open to see where she is going. His hand does not move -- not away, at least. He considers the shortness of her hemline and the pleasing hint of her derriere it affords, decides he wants to get a better look at what she is or may not be wearing beneath it, wants to get his mouth on that bit of flesh on the back of her leg where ass becomes thigh, and he is steadily arousing himself with her nearness and her body pressed up against his and, of course, his hand on her breast.

Her eyes, though.

Damn.

Not an anchor, she says, and he is briefly tugged from thinking about her in ways both carnal and obscene and only sacred if you're Sera, and his lips twitch in a smile. "Thank you, Sera," he says, rather than apologizing again. His hand smooths up her chest, her clavicles, the side of her neck, into her hair, rubbing his fingertips on her scalp, like she's a cat or something. Or dog. Or a Sera.

"My gifts for you are way more materialistic," he quips.

Serafíne

Even her bedroom is decorated, lights framing the windows framing the garden view and they are on and unobtrusive but cast a rather charming and reflective glow over the whole of the scene.

And our Serafíne, she smiles. Curls her head back into the pressure of his fingertips on her scalp, his hand twined through her hair just precisely like a cat or a Sera. Her body follows, first the shoulders, then a fine, spreading, quite nearly architectural arch that spreads through her spine as she lays back on the bed, her half-lashed eyes are occluded with fixed on his as she just - wordlessly offers herself to him. Or the universe. Either, both.

Hard to imagine the shadows that overlaid her; that still sometimes overlay her when she smiles at him like that, quietly simmering and wanton and willing and delighted by his presence in her bed. By his existence in the multiverse. By the shadow of desire in his eyes. By the way his heart pounds. She wants to eat him the fuck up.

"Was it drugs?" Sera is tossing back, still pressing her head into the curve of his hand. Twisting her shoulders, curving her spine, wriggling her goddamned hips. Because she wants to. Because her body feels the way it feels, which is delicious, entirely delicious right now. The movement rucks up the sawtooth hemline of that absurd little dress and lo, Hawksley discovers that - if she started the evening wearing some sort of underwear, well, it did not last the night. She's wearing nothing beneath that dress. "Did you get me drugs? I'll let you feed them to me, one by one. Like grapes. Each one a new surprise.

"Maybe while we fuck."

Then, really before he can react or respond, a new light in her eyes. Which looks almost precisely like one of those metaphorical lightbulbs going off over her head: just so. Her expression changes, she catches her lower lip with her teeth and smiles all around it and there's this bright spark in her dark gaze and she's all in sudden motion. Shifting - bouncing up, really - to settle on her knees by his hips.

"You got me this," leaning into him and over him, Sera reaches down to find and cup his erection through his jeans, quite the way he held her breast. That sort of mindfulness, that awareness of his reaction to her. She gives him a bit of a squeeze, her hooded eyes never leaving his through perhaps his have left hers as she tells him, "It's just what I wanted." Voice rough with desire. Her heart beating the way it beats, so fucking strong. "I might have to take my time unwrapping it, though."

And she leans over him, plants her open mouth below his navel, above the waistband of his white jeans, her tongue rough on his skin. She's still holding him, too, through his jeans, like she's never going to let him go.

"Make Christmas last."

Hawksley

It's been easier, after that first/last time, when he held her on his lap while he played Scrabble with Dee, and how he had nothing to offer her but his mouth when she was done telling him about the Hydra, and how that was enough. It feels easier, less fragile, when his hand slides into her hair now, when she leans into him, and against him. And that ease is so treacherous, in its way.

"Not drugs," he teases her, a grin flashing across his face. He looks like he just caught the prey he's been chasing all morning. He looks like he's returned to some high branch after diving to pluck some silvery-flashing thing from a river. His fingertip strokes her jawline from earlobe to chin. "That would be like giving ice to an Eskimo, Sera."

But her eyes are lighting up, and she is -- quite frankly -- putting her hand on his junk. He huffs a laugh, his own eyes flickering in response, as he rolls onto his back beside her. He wouldn't dream of denying her access. He just reclines, eyes closing, opening again only to fixate more firmly on her, trail over her. She squeezes; he breathes in sharply, pressing himself into her hand. "That's mine," he exhales, grabbing her wrist, but not to push her away. To keep her there. His tongue slips out over his lips, unabashed. His eyes flutter closed, then open again, like he doesn't want to take his eyes off of her,

because he doesn't.

"Don't st--" he's saying, when she bends over him. She isn't, though. She's kissing him, soft lips to bare skin, rough tongue on the hard ridges of his abdominals. She's still touching him. Hawksley has it in mind, briefly, to tell her that no, that's not her present, but he'd be happy to share with her for a while, but he's not got the processing power to determine if this is cheesy as fuck or not and she is rapidly removing what little mindfulness he has. He looks at her, eyes burning now, no longer flickering or sparking but gleaming with that molten core of heat that he has.

"Come here," he tells her.

Serafíne

She seems so solid right now, Sera. Immediate and tangible and physical, exactly the way a Sera should be. The arc of movement as she leans into his touch; the glimpse of her teeth when she laughs, lightning-quick and open mouthed, at his quip about ice and Eskimos. The warm flush of a well-fed buzz glowing beneath her skin, making itself felt particularly at the end ranges of her motion, where she can almost feel her skin bleeding into the molecules or what the fuck ever - the atoms and smaller, and smaller, and smaller still - of everything all around them, and the everything all around them bleeding right back into her. The glow of desire in her eyes, when she manages to focus them on him, is merely and simply wanton. All consuming, torrential desperation seems so very far away.

--

Sera seems to like that joke about the ice and Eskimos. She laughs more than it perhaps warrants, opens her mouth like she's tasting his words in the air and would throw something on the border of mad and inane right back at him and insist that drugs would be a perfect present (because darling, she would very much like some) except her hand and soon her mouth are otherwise occupied.

He lays claim to his junk (that's mine) which she is quite boldly exploring and she hums, not a skeptical hum just a quiet, rather sweet hum of acknowledgment, which sharpens into a hungry, rather fierce little laugh as he grabs her wrist. Something about the gesture makes her breath catch in the back of her throat. That, too, he can feel, because her mouth is on his stomach now, open.

And, you know, lovely the way she's bent over him, her long hair spilling over his solid, rippling core, that silly goddamned dress she is wearing half-off her now, the laces loosened so far that the plunging neckline has opened enough to bare one lovely shoulder and one point five lovely breasts, which brush against his flank and hip as she moves.

Don't st- he's starting to tell her, except she isn't stopping, who the fuck thinks that Sera would stop anything like this once she's started. Still, it makes her smile. She lifts her mouth from the hard, flat plane of his stomach to his cock. The outline of it through his jeans. Starts kissing him, open-mouthed, her tongue a warm, solid pressure, between the soft heat of her lips, right through the rough denim.

And she's started unbuckling his white belt and she's doing it one-handed because she's stroking him with the other and so that rather clumsy work is the counterpoint to the slow, deliberative movement of her mouth, until he tells her to

come here,

and she looks up, then, her mouth still open over his hard cock, which is still confined in his white jeans, and finds his eyes all molten on her, which is something she finds very hard to resist.

Sera considers, briefly, just fucking ignoring him and undressing him slowly and sucking him off exactly the way she intends to do right now, but there is that liquid heat in his eyes, which always stops her heart, and then restarts it, just a little bit faster.

So she lifts her mouth from his cock and drops it back to his abdomen and gives him a very deliberate kiss and opens her mouth and starts climbing her way back up his body, scraping her teeth over his rather remarkably well-cut muscles, breathing out warm and humid to sooth any roughness as she moves. And she leaves her hand where it was, though she's now stroking him, with a casual though double-stepped rhythm, smile that is more felt than seen widening whenever he takes in another one of those sharp breaths. Biting him sometimes, for emphasis, when he exhales.

Leaves her hand where it was as long as she can but he's fucking taller than she is and there is only so far that she fulfill both requests.

"Don't stop," she is telling him, when she's close. Close enough to rest her chin on his shoulder, or maybe even hover her mouth over his. "Come here. Silly boy, I don't have your wingspan. I can't do both."

Hawksley

"God, you're so high," he tells her when she's laughing way too much at that rather dumb Eskimo joke, but her stupid laughter makes him laugh too, even if it's not as much. He smiles at her, teasing her face with his fingertips for a bit before they are doing other things, thinking other things, and he is not smiling but staring at her, fixed on her, telling her to come here, only to find that she is now kissing him, licking him through the heavy but soft white denim.

Still, he tells her to come here. He knows what she's thinking, though he's never been much of one for the study of the sphere that would let him know for sure. He knows because he's seen that look in her eyes before, right before she pulled down his swimsuit and ate him alive in a covered cabana in Vegas. He knows because he knows her, like this. And in other ways.

Sera comes there. Bites and kisses her way up his body the way she does, the way she is given to, and skin and velvet both slide over him and make him breath in, because of course she's still stroking him, stroking him until she's not, and accusing him of forgetting that actually, she is quite tiny. He huffs a laugh and doesn't answer. His hands come up from her body, of course they were on her body, running over her sides and her shoulders and over the velvet and slipping under it. Now they come up to her neck, her face, cupping her jaw in his hands to draw her mouth to his.

That's all he wanted. It wasn't too much to ask, was it?

He has a feeling nothing is too much to ask of her, and this suspicion wraps like a hand around his viscera, around the column of his spine, tightening until he cannot move.

--

But he kisses her, deeply and consumingly, pulling her nearer until his arms are folding behind her and he is sinking back in her bed, panting against her mouth, until he is reaching down between them and his knuckles brush her and the feel of her wetness makes him shudder but does not dissuade him from his belt, front button, zipper, undressing blindly while he kisses her.

"Just like this," he mutters to her mouth, and so it is just like that. The white jeans and he's wearing fucking golden underwear are pushed down, the rich green velvet doesn't need to be pushed up because it is already so short, and that is all. This time he doesn't ask her if she's sure, he doesn't stop, he doesn't hesitate unless she stops him, asks him if he's sure, hesitates. The few guests who are still conscious can hear them outside the door, hear their breathing, their panting, the little cries Sera is letting out, the soft worshipful swearing Hawksley exhales as she moves on him.

They roll near the end, and people outside the door and down the stairs can hear them a little under the music that is playing, always playing in this house somewhere, hear the way she reacts, the sound she makes every time he thrusts, but for all her kitschy surroundings this is a fine bed and the springs don't creak even if the headboard thuds a bit, rhythmic against the wall. Hawksley pushes himself up on his arms, watching her beneath him, that same fixed, piercing, hungry look in his eyes.

Until they close.

Until he goes very still, shoulders trembling from strain, his hips shuddering as he does not so much lose himself as finds something entirely new outside of himself.

It lasts for a moment, as it does. And only that moment before it lets him go again, before gravity reasserts itself, before he slides into her again, again, as though trying to recapture it or trying to slow that fall but this is not a magic he has and perhaps not really a magic he wants. He kisses her neck when he comes down over her, weight on his forearms because, really, she seems so fucking fragile to him. He kisses her neck and nuzzles under her hair and mutters something about her triangle and tells her, again, though she doesn't know it is Again:

'ana ' sef. 'ana ' sef, serafíne.

And kisses her, and kisses her, until he cannot move anymore.

Serafíne

Hawksley tells Sera things in languages she does not know. He tells her Again and she does not know it is again and she does not have anything close to words herself now, not anymore. Not after he tells her to come here because he just wants to kiss her, because it wasn't really so much to ask, because -

yes Hawksley

- nothing is ever too much to ask.

And she is so fucking high. She laughs at that moderately terrible joke far too much and is delighted in the weight of his hands on her body and gets lost in hte map of his skin on her travels back up his body from his belt to his mouth because there are places that require exploration, because she did not know that that fit there, because she's stoned and so pleased with him, and wriggles with a deep and satisfying sigh as he diverts her from her intended course and takes her along another rather equally delightful path.

There are not many words after that. He undresses himself while kissing her and she herself does not require any undressing and she won't see his golden fucking underwear until some later time, but of course she will be immoderately pleased by it, whether or not she is high. He mutters something into her mouth them and she hardly understands it, just nods her agreement back to him, her hands cupping his skull, her mouth on his or close to it, holding the fuck on to him as she takes him, with nothing close to hesitation.

--

They roll, and his eyes are open and he's looking down at her and her eyes are mostly open in those moments, but unseeing because she is just so close to all the many things she cannot name, and they're leaking tears that smear down her cheeks in salt-laden little trails, but she can't help that, can she? Can't help it anymore than she can help any of the rest of it. The way she cries and the way she comes and the way she wraps herself up in him and around him as he kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her, all the oxygen from her lungs.

'ana 'sef. 'ana 'sef, serafíne. he tells her, and she has no fucking idea what he's saying, but that hardly even begins to matter.

He cannot move anymore. She wraps her long, lean arms around him, elbows bent all akimbo, and pulls him down and down, onto her, over her.

And tells him, quite simply, "I know."

Hawksley

Well, he is a coward and he insists he's not a liar just because he says something in a language that he knows she can't understand. It's not his fault she chose to learn Spanish instead of Egyptian Arabic. She made her bed and she can lie in it.

He can lie in it, and does, and has often, and he does not know that she hasn't been sleeping around or that she was going to kiss Pan beneath the mistletoe and he doesn't have the faintest idea that she has such a crush on the priest, all he knows is that Pan looked at her with almost paternal affection and that Sera looked at him the way, well, the way Hawksley sees her look at almost everything in the universe, with boundless and incredible love.

ah

He ends up kicking off what is left of his clothing. This is later: he also peels off the rest of that little elfin dress and doesn't ask about her other Awakened guests, where they are or were. He knows he is sleeping here. Entitled little fuck that he is; he doesn't even question it. So he makes her naked and he makes himself naked and sighs and licks, softly, at the tears on her temples and cheeks, daubing them wet and tender off her skin like a large and lazy cat, like a lion or something, but he's not a lion.

He's a hawk. He's an eagle.

He doesn't really know why he kisses and cleans the tears off her face like that, but he does, thinks he can, since this is the woman who bites his bones, scrapes her teeth over his pulse. He can do these things, she can, and he can stay here tonight, and forget about London -- Jesus, forget about London -- and Paris, too. And all his lies of omission, which are many, because they are the only lies he knows he can get away with.

And he is a selfish, cowardly man.

--

"No you don't," he whispers, falling to one side in the dark, curving his face to her neck, covering her with his arm, mutering softly: "You don't know anything,"

which they both know is a lie.

The Christmas Party, Day X

Serafíne

The hosted at 719 Corona Street in Capitol Hill has been going on for the better part of three days and people have come and people have gone and alcohol has been consumed and replenished. Some people have been here and home three nights in a row and a few stalwarts have merely been here, crashing in odd atriums and guest rooms, oversized reading chairs and one might imagine that an endless party would begin to tail off, to shift and change and go strange and wrong but one that begins at Christmas and ends sometime after New Year's with interval flares of Boxing Day and Someone Brought Us Mead day and Who Is that Person in My Bed Day He's Pretty Cute But I Don't Remember Him is materially different from the desperate-to-hold-on-to-the-weekend bullshit that happens at frat houses Sundays after a three-day binge when hey, everything starts to fall apart and you remember you have to go back to the real world.

This is Sera's real world.

So it is hard to say what day it is or night it is or how much booze and pot and molly and yes even cocaine have been consumed on premises in the last ever-how-long but still somehow the house looks great, festooned in Christmas lights strung along its solid bones, wound through its shrubbery, evergreens on the iron gates. The front door is unlocked and there's always someone coming in and going out, a warm blast of sound that varies with the day and hour but includes the peculiarly lovely din of a half-dozen conversations carried out in various stages of inebriation. Sera has essentially hired a cabbie to be on-call for exiting guests so there won't be any driving to go along with the drinking which also means it is hard to get a parking place anywhere close, what with all the vehicles people will have to retrieve once their hangovers let up.

There are fires in every hearth and lights in every room and a changing buffet of goodies set up in the dining room and kitchen and a changing array of drinks at the bar and a changing array of art: on the walls and stacked against the floorboards, stuffed haphazardly on the elegant old shelves, tucked into every niche and nook and cranny. Pictures of Amelia Earhart framed in black and white on the landing leading upstairs and a spiderplant tumbling a solid dozen baby spiderplants down toward the runner on the stairs.

Sera's resonance is everywhere in this place. It belongs to her as thoroughly and wholly as the rectory once belonged to plan. Dee's place but Dee is Sera's, don't you know? Strongest in the kitchen, though. That's where he guests will find her just now if they go looking. Though they may want to avail themselves of the many pleasures of the house first. Pick out one of the wrapped gifts from beneath the Christmas tree in the living room. Argue with three hipster dudes about which Arcade Fire album was the best, and whether they've sold out. Kiss the drunk boy lingering beneath the mistletoe, waiting for magic to strike a seventeenth time. The usual.

Grace

[Nightmares!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace

The word 'Christmas' strikes up a ton of negative connotations in Grace's brain. It's less like people are celebrating a holy day, and more like they are worshiping at the altar of Wal-Mart. Hell, with the tramplings that happen every year, there's even human sacrifice to go along with. A regular feast-day of Mamon.

So maybe that's why the holly and the Christmas lights and yes, even the tree and mistletoe (though they were borrowed from older traditions long enough ago that nobody minds) grate against her.

The word 'Party' strikes up a few negative connotations as well. All those people, a crowd of them? Likely, when we're talking Sera. The woman seems to thrive on people, where Grace does not.

But that would be why she's here, right? To not shy away from people, and learn to be in public again without looking around constantly wondering where the next threat's going to be. Also, because it's Sera's party. And that makes everything cool.

Even Christmas.

So, she's at the door, ringing the bell as though she has to (chances are that this is not the case, but you know...) dressed in jeans and the ubiquitous grey turtleneck that's become her winter attire... nearly every day. On top of that is a black peacoat, but it's open to the chill air.

Pan

On any other day this wouldn't be the priest's scene but when Sera came by their shooting lesson several days ago he'd promised he would at least make an appearance. Grace might have said the same thing. They take his truck from the Chantry up to the city. He doesn't drive like someone who isn't comfortable driving in cities but he also has faith in something other than fate.

They would have gotten here half an hour ago but someone ended up waiting for the other person and the other person thought she was waiting for someone and it was just a big misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are usually pretty entertaining in hindsight.

But they make it. It's a Christmas miracle.

Pan has a good-sized rectangular box wrapped in plain brown paper tucked football-like in the crook of his arm when they come in the front door. It jingles. Glass. He comes up the sidewalk behind her and just opens it before anyone can come answer the doorbell.

In they go. The party can start now.

Serafíne

Someone is coming to answer the door but it's not Sera and it's not any of her housemates. It's the boy who has been hanging out beneath the mistletoe. He has a handmade mug of something in hand and neither Grace nor Pan are likely to get close enough to catch even a whiff of the contents but it is probably alcohol. Of some sort.

Inside, warmth everywhere. Coats piled on coats in the foyer, so Grace and Pan can shed their winter coats or keep them tucked over their respective arms, if they prefer. Grace has been here before and Pan as at least seen the front porch, Sera stumbling up the steps in the arms of her housemates and consor and it is rather as Grace remembers it, an old family home full of solid furnishings and a handful of genuine antiques, with the lives of a handful of artsy twenty-something layered over that history like a layer of tulle over a repurposed party dress. Books and knicks and knacks and treasures and taunts in every corner. Downstairs a living room and a front parlor and a formal dining room with a fire layed in each and some sort of Christmas, New Year's, or Yule decoration scheme that varies between "straight out of that twee boutique in Cherry Cheek" and pretty near authentic midcentury modern, authentic enough that you can almost hear the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack to Charlie Brown's Christmas.

Wait, you can hear that from the front parlor, though deeper in the house the vibe is a little less holidy and a little more indie and the music permeates the air, interspaced with the sparkling sounds of conversation. Grace knows to follow the hallway straight through to the kitchen, which is white and bright and big and modern, redone sometime in the past ten years, with wide windows overlooking the winterquiet backyard.

Fewer people here and really fewer people than they might've found at three a.m. last night anywhere but Pan and Grace aren't exactly three a.m. people, are they?

--

They find Sera in the kitchen, sitting up on the granite breakfast bar, legs swinging a cup of something in hand, and it must be warm from the way she holds it, and the scent in the air is cinnamon and ginger, vanilla and figs, is marijuana and rumchata and the spike of cloves. Is the close, humid scent of strangers' bodies and on and on and on.

She's smiling for them, Sera, before they have turned the corner into the kitchen and her eyes are on the door and her hands are cupped around her mug and she's dressed in the most ridiculous get-up imaginable. A skintight green velvet dress belted by a wide black patent leather belt. The bodice is laced all the way down to the navel and would show the most delicious cleavage if Sera were especially well-endowed. As it is she has paired it with a black-leather push-up bra so they are still treated to a view of the most delicious cleavage, the spikes and rivets of the bra counterpoint to the velvet dress - whose cuffs and collars are trimmed in a heavenly soft white rabbit fur.

Oh, smiling Sera opens up her arms (and, honestly, her legs) when she spots them, Pan looming above Grace.

She wants a hug.

Of course she does.

Grace

[Perception + Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Grace

Grace slides her way in, sliding around that guy with the mug who looks a bit leery and more than a bit drunken. But still, she's got this smile plastered on her face at... well, at everybody. "She's really done up the place, huh?" Grace says to Pan. In all likelyhood, Sera had little to do with it, and the decorations just happened. But, you know, it's Sera's place.

She leads the priest into the kitchen, where the press of Sera's raw resonance is strongest. Along the way, she smiles at those she passes, though it's an empty thing. She smiles only because smiling is expected at a party, you see, and she knows none of these people.

But when she enters the kitchen, that smile becomes genuine, it finally manages to reach her eyes. It's not in appreciation for what she's wearing, but for who Sera is. And, because it is Sera, Grace marches up, and steps into her arms, giving her that same, stiff, awkward hug she got the last time, complete with robotic pats on the back. Hugs aren't Grace's thing, but she does at least try.

Pan

At least one of them is smiling. The priest stands nearly a foot taller than the woman leading them through the house and the only time he seems anything other than simply present is when Grace comments on the state of the place.

"Yeah," he says in the dubious tone of one who isn't quite sure what he's walked into.

It's just a little light fornication and mild overindulgence. Nothing he hasn't been exposed to before. Wasn't like he came out the womb a priest. Priests start out human and most of them die that way. Humans being flesh and all.

The kitchen is the most logical place to go if one is looking for the party's host. Irony of ironies in his life is that light doesn't do his complexion any favors. Pan looks drawn in fluorescence or caught in the sun's rays. He doesn't look tired or sick. He just looks like he's wearing all the years of his life in his skin.

Pan glances around and gives perfunctory greetings to those who are gathered around Sera. Gets that out of the way while the women hug. He doesn't go to her right away. Just stands there with his coat still on leaning against the archway.

"What'd you do?" he asks. "Lose a fight? Where's the rest of your dress?"

Serafíne

Sera wraps her arms around Grace and doesn't seem to notice the robotic awkwardness of the Apprentice's hug. Slides her nose through the short riot of Grace's hair and inhales, just feeling the way the world shifts and slides beneath her as Grace comes close. Grace receives a kiss on the temple, and Sera's breath smells like smoke and red wine and cinnamon, while Sera looks over Grace's shoulder at Pan, still in his coat, leaning against the frame of a door.

Mouth still in Grace's hair, Sera smiles and holds Pan's eyes. There's a sort-of-sorrow threaded through the welcome, which is then eclipsed by the edge of a quiet, rather self-aware little smirk.

"The rest of my dress?" Sera tosses back, lifting her mouth at last from Grace's temple, a few locks of Grace's hair clinging to her red lipstick. Letting Grace go. "You're kidding, right? It has been scientifically determined that this dress covers 78% more Sera than any of my usual outfits. Which makes it, when you think about it, quiet nearly modest."

"You guys want a drink? We have Italian sodas for the designated drivers."

Grace

A drink might just make the rest of this party easier to deal with. Besides, Pan's driving. "Sure," she says, stands up straighter, pulls her errant hair away from her face.

"She makes a good point, Pan. I mean, it's got sleeves," she says, smiling up at him, like 'no you are not going to win this argument'. The two women will band together, even though nearly every bit of Grace's skin is covered. You might expect her to be on Pan's side, but...

"I think it looks great."

More like, Sera here in her element looks fantastic. Not skeletal. Not nearly as sad and lonely. More like Sera. The fact that she can dress like a sexy elf and throw a party again? Superb.

Hawksley

Hawksley has not been at Sera's party for three days, five days, however long it's been. Hawksley has been in Denver at nightclubs and libraries and one jaunt out under the stars, then Connecticut and New York and was going to spend the night in Paris but in the middle of the night he was overcome with an ennui one doesn't usually associate with the City of Lights in the middle of a festival of light. He went somewhere warm where people don't really think or care much about Christmas, because it falls in a season where you don't really need to be reminded that the cold and the dark will end because it's never really cold even when it's very dark. He felt better then, because it takes a special talent to feel miserable when lounging on a beach drinking something that tastes of coconut and has an umbrella in it. Hawksley does not have that rare and special talent. He snuck a girl away from the rest of the girls she was having a girls' vacation with and when that was over he thought that he would either leave the resort or stay for a few months, and decided on the former.

He went to London. He is not popular in London. He was less popular at a particular witch's doorstep, but she didn't stick him with a knife or anything, so it went better than it could have.

Hawksley is at Sera's party now, though. He is in the United States, in Denver, and he doesn't know what day it is and isn't interested in finding out. He shows up driven there by a tall, lean man with a neatly trimmed beard. They are not in the 911 but a low, long, car in British racing green. Go get Dee; this is the Jag, even if she wouldn't recognize the 1961 XK-140 as one. Before her time. The rearview mirrors are closer to the headlights than the windshield, the convertible top is in place instead of stored in the trunk, and more wind gets through this top but as Hawksley put it, the green is more festive. So they drive the Jaguar.

Since it's not his usual, no one at the doorway or porch instantly recognizes the Porsche that came and went regularly, often, during Serafine's recovery. Sera will recognize the sense of the man inside as soon as that car takes its sharklike turn into their block. Grace and Pan might, but they aren't as familiar with that soaring, sun-drenched soul. They have never peeled away the mortal layers of his appearance and seen something else entirely. But that feeling of power that looks down on the world rather than inhabiting it, that invincible summer in the midst of winter -- that brings to mind the man, and the man's face looking at you like an eagle might examine... well. Anything at all.

The car slides to a stop, and Hawksley gets out. He is wearing white. White jeans, white belt, white shoes. Accents of gold here and there, sharp contrasts of cloudy grey at the edges of the belt and the stitching of his clothes. He wears a v-necked shirt, and that is white, too. Tailored, of course. He gets out, coatless, and walks to the door as Collins drives elsewhere, parks somewhere, starts unloading the parcels from the trunk.

Of course when Hawksley gets to the door he just walks in. Who wouldn't want him there, after all?

Pan

No. He is not going to win this argument. Not if the argument is that more surface area is covered than usual and she looks great. Pan smiles a more genuine smile than the one he gave Sera's friends on the way in here and then he moves in behind Grace to properly greet the Cultist.

He hasn't checked for rogue mistletoe sprigs hung up overhead but he doesn't need to look up. The perks of being tall.

Before he joins her at the counter Pan places the jangling package down on the counter. It is above freezing but he isn't wearing a hat or gloves or anything other than a black peacoat to keep out the cold. Tromping a distance through the cold gave him some color in his cheeks at least.

He hesitates while pondering the logistics of hugging a young woman whose skirt ends less than an inch past her ass. The logistics involve inwardly shrugging before embracing her.

"Happy Christmas," he tells her. "I don't know what Italian soda is but I'll take one."

Serafíne

This is the first party Serafíne has thrown in months. Two and a half months. Grace and Pan do not know this and Hawksley does though he does not know what day it is and therefore cannot take the measure of time down to the decimal point. Most of the other people in the house - all of whom are strangers to Grace and Pan except for a handful who are Sera's housemates or more regular hangers-on - know this in varying ways, with varying levels of precision and intelligence and it is by now rather well known among a certain subset of the hipster/indie/intelligentsia of Sera's particular part of Denver that she probably went away to recover from an accidental overdose. Or a bad trip. Or something to do with drugs.

Now she is fine; more than fine, it seems. Wrapped in green velvet and white rabbit fur, welcoming a constant parade of strangers to her well-decorated home and getting them drunk and stoned and beautifully fucked in really every way imaginable.

Grace is replaced by Pan and Sera hugs him too. Firmly, her arms wrapping around his solid shoulders, her brow tipping forward to meet his. She does not kiss him. Not his temple, not just cheek. Just this brief and solid communion as he the exterior chill dissipates from his skin, against hers, which is flushed and warm with drink.

"I'm glad you came." Sera murmurs to the priest when they are still close. Her voice is quiet and a bit rough with smoke and alcohol and she's been awake for maybe two hours, presentable for less than half that, and her expression goes rather far away and her head cants as if she were listening to a signal being broadcast from the other side of the horizon, which is slowly resolving itself into something more immediate, intelligible.

"Hawksley's here." Sera tells both Grace and Pan with a hum and a private smile as she slips down from the counter at last, landing carelessly on her high-heeled patent leather boots and saunters further into the kitchen to make them drinks. Though she is glancing over her shoulder for the first glimpse she might have of Hawksley. Sunlight drenching the horizon.

"Italian soda's club soda with flavored syrup. Blood orange. Hazelnut. Almond fucking roca," Sera's explaining to Pan and as she gets ahead of them pair of them it is clear that her dress does not come an inch past her ass. It does not even really quite cover her ass. Sera does not care.

"There's gingerbread and egg-nog syrup, too - " a complete fucking stranger interjects, helpfully. Because of course there is.

"Grace, we have mulled wine, cider, mead, beer, red wine, champagne, white wine, punch. Grog. Glog, which is like Grog except someone fucked it up and no one wants to drink it. Any kind of mixed drink you want. Oh, or you could do a Christmas bomb. Celebration ale with a shot of rumchata. Have to drink it quick though 'cos the rumchata gets all clotted and gross if you don't.

"It's delicious, though. Fucking genius. You gotta try it."

Grace

Delicious, fucking genius, she's gotta try it... Sounds like the choice has been made, and Grace isn't going to argue. "I'll have the Christmas bomb then. Sounds festive." Heh. Christmas bomb. Blowing up Christmas. Festive, indeed.

And she says Hawksley is here. And that must be the warm brightness filtering in. Like Pan, only... not like Pan at all. The only thing they share is the light.

She sheds her peacoat, draping it on the back of a chair at the kitchen table, which she then slips into -- it's a claiming of space. This here's mine, so shoo.

Hawksley

They know him here. The housemates, and plenty of the hangers-on, the hipsters and hippies alike, the people who know Sera often know of Hawksley or know him. Many, many of them know him as Davie. He has a good word preceding him. The first person he finds inside past the entryway is Dan, and since he isn't sure now if Dan is still with Jer and since he most likely does not care either way, he flicks his eyes at some mistletoe, winks at the lanky musician, and tells someone near the door that Collins is coming in with gifts, open the door for him like this person should know who Collins is and should be obliged to help this Collins person bring in presents.

They will be. Hawksley is rather charming. Also: presents.

He makes his way toward the kitchen after putting thoughts in Dan's head, reaches through a cloud of 3 people to pinch Dee, and finds the knot of Awakened energy both intimately known, briefly known, and sort of familiar. He is smiling when Sera glances back and sees him, and when he sees her, and she's an elf and he's an angel even though neither of them are in church for this, one of the holiest of holy days. If it's Christmas. He is pretty sure they're past Christmas by now.

No matter. She's an elf and he's an angel.

He comes up to her, to them, like he was invited. Never the sort to hang on the fringes and wait to be told they have permission to exist, Hawksley. No: he gets behind Sera and wraps his arms around her waist and very nearly lifts her up an inch or two when he squeezes her, inhaling her scent from scalp to throat, which is rather intimate and rather sensual and an odd thing to do to someone in front of other someones, but this is Sera's place and such things are permitted. Welcomed. Encouraged. He looks at Pan and Grace from across a tiny shoulder clad in bright green.

"Happy Christmas," he tells Grace first, since he's met her more times. He looks at Pan, too, smiling, because last he knew this guy was like half-dead or something and he knows the man is powerful and he knows that he matters to Sera. "Happy Christmas." One for each. None for Sera. Poor Sera.

"I want one," he says to Sera, when Grace says she wants a Christmas bomb. He missed the description. No matter.

Pan

For someone who was half-dead or something a few months ago Pan looks alright. At least like he's recovering if he isn't all the way there. He's quite a bit slimmer than he was over the summer but like all of them who went through the hassle of losing so much of it he's packing it back on. Helps that every time he walks into the Chantry kitchen someone shoves a spoon or a plate at him and tells him to try this try that eat Padre eat.

He leaves whatever he brought into the house with him on the counter and turns to watch as Hawksley comes in and swoops up Sera.

"Happy Christmas," he says.

Christmas bombs. The kids want Christmas bombs.

Pan draws the same silent Okay Fuck It conclusion about taking off his jacket as he did about hugging Sera the Elf. Underneath the peacoat he's wearing a suit. The entire thing is black which makes it hard to tell if he's just wearing his usual outfit with a suit jacket on top of it. That's kind of the point. His stupid tie is black too. He doesn't usually wear ties.

He finds a place to stash his coat that someone won't throw up on it and puts his hands into his pockets.

Serafíne

Grace is claiming space in the kitchen, her peacoat over the back of the chair, and consents to a Christmas bomb. Which makes Sera smile a Sera-smile in profile over the curve of her shoulder as she continues on. Her eyes are dark, perhaps darker, in the brightness of the white kitchen, with its sleek white cabinets and gray granite and double-oven and chef's stainless steel gas range. While this is going on, Rick is peeling himself away from where he was lounging, shoulder against the edge of the pantry, immersed in one of those complex and very specific discussions about reverb and wax and other hipster things to come over and help Sera navigate the complex specifics of the kitchen. Of course one of the housemates is close by, a more genuine host than Sera. Someone who knows where the extra paper towels and shot glasses can be found, and how to fill the dishwasher and how to make the oven work and while Sera reaching for one of the cabinets to find not glasses but triscuits and spices, Rick is opening another, pulling down the pint glasses, getting the glassware ready for the drinks.

"Pint glasses are up here," Rick is telling Sera, low-voiced, with a huff of bemusement beneath his breath because they've lived here how long and she drinks like a fish with a drinking problem and she still does not know where to find the barware except of course she doesn't know. Someone is always there when she needs them, aren't they?

And he's there now, searching out pint-and-shot glasses for Grace's Christmas bomb and a highball for Pan's Italian soda and he doesn't ask Sera if she wants more mulled wine, just refills it from the heavy pot on the back burner of the gas stove.

Then Hawksley, behind her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her up from the ground. She leans back into his embrace, her shoulderblades sharp points against his chest. Leans back into that inhale and her arms fold over his at her waist and she just - savors him. Allows the radiant heat of his presence to soak into her elfen bones for a long moment. Breathes him in and says nothing to him at all until he tells her that he wants one, a Christmas bomb. "Then you'll have one."

She has to break away though. There are drinks to be made and a bit of a bustle and cross-talk as she ascertains what sort of syrup Pan wants in his soda, and whether he wants cream, and would he prefer cider, and Rick heads off to the keg to draw three pints of the Celebration while Sera fills the shot glasses with rumchata and sets one down for Grace and one for Hawklsey and one for herself and Pan has his soda before Rick returns with the beers and they are a lovely amber, rich and deep and fragrant, and Sera is giving Grace the instruction more than Hawksley because even though he missed the description, she is one hundred and eleven percent sure that he will know what to do.

Which is: take the shot of rumchata.

Drop it glass and all into the pint of Celebration ale.

Down it all like a bastard, quick as you can.

Oh hey! Like a good hostess, laughing, Sera will demonstrate.

The rumchata hits the beer and immediately starts fizzing and curdling and clotting but drink it fast and it smells like Christmas and is insanely, ridiculously delicious. Leaves behind maybe a milk-like rumchata mustache, at least for someone as enthusiastic as Sera.

When she comes up for air she's swaying pleasantly into Hawksley and beaming at Pan over Grace's head and ready to swoop in if necessary to assist Grace however she can but her eyes are on Pan. At his neck.

She's noticed something.

"Are you wearing a tie? Is it black! Like fucking Johnny Cash."

Hawksley

"Rick, you gentleman," Hawksley tells the housemate who does not want to fuck him, grinning.

In the front room, the door is opening and Collins is coming in, carrying parcels wrapped in white and silver with gold bows and everything is metallic and shiny and light-catching and people are very curious who all those gifts are for but they're for everyone, aren't they? And Collins is a black-clad, expressionless, skinny Santa. Surely there's a tree somewhere, and he goes to it, unloading gifts that really, truly are for whoever wants to open them and find the cashmere, the leather, the silver, the gold, the party favors of the privileged. It's terribly gauche and greedy and it makes Hawksley happy.

Hawksley is happy anyway, at least right now. He's giving a quiet noise, something like a snarl, when Sera starts to peel away from him, but it's all play: he lets go of her as easily as he lets go of most things, most people, or at least he pretends to. He wants; he shall have. God help the two of them, for if they really put their minds to it, they could be the most codependent, enabling people on earth. Good thing they each have plenty of other people falling over themselves to be depended on, to enable.

He lifts his shot of rumchata to Grace, taps the glasses together, drops it into his ale, and chugs like a fucking dudebro. Sera's faith is not misplaced.

The pint glass gets thumped down on the counter, rolls of moisture dripping down the side, and Sera sways into him and he smiles, to solid to be swayed but warm enough to sway into yes that's nice all right hello. He sniffs Sera's hair again while she notices Pan's tie. He looks at Pan's tie too. His eyes get wide, excited, ridiculous.

"Do you play the guitar?"

Grace

"Woo, Sera, that looks interesting," she says as Sera slides the Christmas bomb in front of her. "Thanks!"

Okay, so this thing is some deep chemistry. Grace is thinking about how it must be the acidity of the ale that makes the cream liqueur clot like that, and she just kind of wants to watch it work its way through its reactions because... Well, it's fun. But Sera downs hers fast, and says it'll turn gross if she doesn't, so...

She lifts her shot of rumchata to Hawksley in return, a little jagged smile there too, and follows their lead. The rumchata goes for a swim, and the ale turns into a chaotic mess of fizz and fuss, which she tries to drink fast.

It tastes like Christmas. Which, in this case, isn't too bad.

It's hard for her to finish the whole thing, cause Grace isn't much of the 'CHUG CHUG CHUG' kind of college student. But she manages.

"Dude," is all she says after it's gone, when the glass drops back down to the table.

Pan

Is he wearing a tie? Is it black!

Pan looks down without changing his expression like he's only just realized. Would you look at that. He did put on a tie this morning. When he looks back up at her he takes hold of the tie in his unadorned left hand and flaps it. Yes. Good. It's still there.

And then she says it's like fucking Johnny Cash and he laughs that unguarded laugh of his and lifts his eyebrows with the same careless quickness with which he'd lifted the tie.

As to whether he plays the guitar:

"Not often. When I do, people cover their ears and beg me to stop."

Serafíne

There is indeed a tree and beneath the tree are a handful of wrapped presents, nothing like the gleaming ones Collins brings in, full of cashmere, leather, gold. The tree is covered in a mixture of handmade artisan ornaments and handmade family ornaments with pictures of five year olds circa 1971 framed in the belly of origami Santas and it is wrapped in a garland made of brightly colored balls of felted, organic, hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn, strung on undyed fair trade cotton, of course it is, and beneath it go the bright silver and gold boxes ferried by Collins who looks more like Charon than Santa but never-you-mind. Once people begin to figure it out, they will begin opening. There will be a frenzy. It will be lovely.

Rick, called gentleman, gives Hawksley a lofted brow and an ironic smirk and another beer. Everyone who had the Christmas bombs is so treated: to another, clean pint of the Celebration ale, which is local and draught and delicious, too. He does it without show, slides it into their periphery and then kind of retreats, because like most mortals, perhaps more than most mortals, he can sense with a brief inhale just how little he belongs here.

Sera licks away the remnants of her rumchata mustache and takes up her mulled wine again and leans into/against Hawksley and watches Grace go. Beams, this solid, gleaming smile as Grace downs that drink and the smile deepens and Sera leans forward, drapes both hands over Grace's shoulders and bends down to give the crown of Grace's head a solid little kiss, like a saint's blessing. Pulls back and tells Grace, quietly - "You're so gorgeous. That was awesome."

Then lofts her gaze up over the crown of Grace's head, back to Pan. Pan, laughing in front of her. Hawksley solid against her spine.

"I'll teach you," says the sexy elf to the priest. "If you let me do it with something more interesting than Kumbaya."

Hawksley

Hawksley did reasonably well at college before he was cordially asked not to return. He does very well at parties, though. He has no spouse, no significant other, no parents, no children, no pets, no plants to worry about. Whatever he has, Collins takes care of. If he misses an appointment early one morning it is rescheduled for him. If he runs out of food, more is purchased. He does not get arrested and he does not fret his pretty head about the things that obsess the daily lives of people who are less privileged. He could not be able to comprehend a vow of poverty. He does not really grasp the sort of life that many of Pan's former-current flock have to face.

He wants. So he shall have. That is what he knows, and that is the reality that in part defines his use of the power to adjust the universe. Many magi fret themselves away from hubris. Hawksley is not one. He does not ask himself if he dares disturb the universe. He just disturbs it.

And chugs his goddamn beer like pro in celebration of himself.

--

His little face just lights up. Those sky-colored eyes, sharp and piercing and predatory at their darkest, ethereal and alien at their prettiest. Pan looks like a Latino Johnny Cash and plays the guitar. He is very excited.

"You have to play," he says instantly, even as Pan is saying that people cover their ears. He is reaching for the glass of beer like he knows it's going to be there, and it is, cold and sliding into his hand without his eyes ever going to Rick. Rick probably thinks to himself sometimes that Hawksley is an asshole. Rick probably also feels the same way so many people do around him: that they are lucky to serve, lucky to be near, lucky to be allowed in the corona of his billion-year burning, the eons that he is enthroned in the heavens.

Or if not, at least this is how Hawksley thinks, in part, of people like Rick.

He takes a drink while Sera wipes her mouth, his palm sliding over her belly as she leans away from him, towards Grace. He flicks his eyes at them, the blessing kiss, then back to Pan, pretty illuminating powerful shiny Pan who plays the guitar, and there's a bit of that predatory gleam in his eyes. But that's usually there.

"You seriously have to play. You can even do carols. Sera will sing." Because if he wants it, he shall have it,

isn't that right?

Grace

Sera is Sera. And she touches and kisses and tells people that they're gorgeous. Grace is used to none of that, and it's always a little uncomfortable when it happens to her. But every time it does, she gets a little more used to it. This is just who Sera is. "I'm gorgeous? For downing ale. Okay," she shrugs, like whatever.

Grace laughs at Pan's little joke at his expense. He plays guitar, and Grace isn't surprised. He looks the type to have at least picked up an instrument at one time or another, and maybe there's a story beyond how he got bored one day behind that. But whatever. He says he doesn't play well.

"Hawksley, honestly, don't make him if he doesn't want to," she says, but it's with a smile, not an admonishment. "You might end up having to beg him to stop."

Pan

Sera is willing and offering to teach him to play the guitar in a manner that will not cause people to wonder if he's testing out a new means of torturing his audience into paying attention. This is no shock to anyone. Of course she would come up with a reason to spend more time with him. Of course she lays it down with a condition.

"I don't know what is Kumbaya," he says.

This could be one of his old-man jokes but his truths have more weight to them than his jokes. That air of his finding himself amusing isn't there.

But he has to play. Hawksley is all excited and not used to people telling him no and Pan doesn't know him well enough to know if he ought to tell him no or not. It's a party. People are supposed to have fun at parties.

He laughs a more subdued laugh when Grace tells Hawksley not to make Pan play if he doesn't want to. Like anybody can make Pan do anything he doesn't want to do. The man intimidates people for a reason and it isn't just because he looks like a Latino Johnny Cash.

"You find a guitar," he says to Hawksley, "I'll play the thing."

Find a guitar. In this house it's more like try to walk into the next room without tripping over a guitar.

Hawksley

"Pff," Hawksley scoffs at Grace. "I wouldn't beg. I'd just set the guitar on fire."

He has this in common with Pan, though -- just like the light they both seem to emit without trying -- it's different in tone, in flavor: it's a bit difficult to tell if he's kidding or not. He drinks his beer and the priest tells him to find a guitar, and Hawksley

points to one that is currently sitting in a chair at the dining table. It even has a place setting and a glass of mulled wine (long since cooled) in front of it, and someone put sunglasses on the neck and draped a Christmas scarf around its curves.

Serafíne

"Everyone is." Sera is telling Grace, rather quietly but with a sort of alcohol-glossed seriousness to her voice. She has settled back against the Hermetic and is twisting reaching for the wine she set down on the counter with one hand, but the second is still sort of trailing all affection in the short, twisting fringe of hair framing the back of Grace's neck. "Absolutely everyone."

And Sera, who is legitimately, traffic-stoppingly, shows-her-everything without concern or consequence gorgeous means that as entirely as she means anything. She would probably bend over to kiss Grace again in seal of that pronouncement except she has her wine in hand. It is lovely and rich and warm and also cool enough that it won't burn her mouth and the Christmas bomb and Hawksley and also whatever she's had already are warming her bones and making the moments come a but undone before they slipslide together and she loves these moments, when the buzz is first really starting to hit her and the world is all haloed and golden and fine.

This is where she was meant to live, and she hasn't been here for so long.

It feels like coming home.

Sera does not get a chance to educate Pan about Kumbaya because he's agreeing to play if Hawksley finds a guitar. And Sera's tipping her head backwards against his chest and is about to tell Hawksley that there are two in her bedroom when it turns out that there's one at the table.

"Can you play God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen?" Sera's asking Pan, since hey, she's supposed to sing isn't she? "Or the one with all the flalalalalalaing. I like that one too."

Grace

Grace laughs at Hawksley then, whether he's joking or not. It doesn't matter. The ale and rumchata hit her like she doesn't actually have that high of an alcohol tolerance, and everything's cool even if it isn't.

"I can see that. Pan playing a flaming guitar. Scowling at you 'cause you made him play and then set it on fire." She's grinning, like she actually wants to see that too.

So, she gets up, and takes Mr. Guitar with the glasses and scarf, and hands it over to Pan, trying to keep the accouterments on because it's more fun that way.

Pan

Why go into the bedroom when you can just get the guitar up from the table?

Well that makes things a lot easier. Pan sticks out his lower lip like to say Oh alright and then rights his expression and lets his gaze wander over to the table. Takes in the guitar with its sunglasses and its scarf like it's a shame to have to disrobe it just so he can prove to everyone in the room he can't play worth a damn.

Grace brings it over with everything still clinging on and he snorts.

Can he play God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

Pan holds the guitar in one inexpert hand while he removes the sunglasses and scarf from its neck. Puts the scarf around his shoulders and figures fuck it, he's not going to impress nobody anyway. Sunglasses go over his eyes.

Try to contain yourselves.

"How you feel about Los Peces en el Río?" he asks as he slings the strap across his shoulders and acts like he's tuning the thing.

[liz talked me into this.

entropy 2 - BEGINNER'S LUCK YO. base diff 5, -1 because he's got all this quintessence he's not using, spending WP because we ain't got time for botches today.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Hawksley

Everyone is gorgeous. On this, Hawksley mostly agrees with Sera. Grace is beautiful when she is brand new in a bookstore on Broadway and beautiful in the chantry library and beautiful chugging a Christmas Bomb. He thinks her eyes are spectacular, that they look like far-off galaxies and the bits of light that reflect in them must be distant stars supporting life unimaginable to him and the rest of the poor and earth-bound.

Pan is beautiful and dark and intense and like looking into a light that has no source, no heat, not burning core but simply is: the metaphor for that moment of euphoria when one discovers, when one knows what was not known before, when one sees and realizes only then that they were once blind. Pan's presence is reminiscent of the Platonic ideal of an Awakening, and even if he has not thought this through completely himself yet, Hawksley senses it and adores it.

Sera is beautiful. Sera is Beauty. He has other thoughts about that, and he doesn't think to speak of them any more than he thinks to tell Grace what he has always thought of her eyes or Pan what being around him feels like, reminds him of. It might bring them comfort and joy, and Hawksley is great at spending money to give gifts but Hawksley forgets to think of what would actually bring such tidings to these certain poor shepherds.

So he's sort of a shitty angel, whatever his costume.

--

"Deck the Halls," he fills in for Sera, tipping his head down and kissing her cheek and it would be chaste except it's the two of them and it's so obvious that neither of them are chaste about anything.

Grace is imagining Pan playing a flaming guitar. "That would be the most badass thing he could do," he says. He smiles. He doesn't know that he just barely missed a chance to 'go get a guitar' from Sera's bedroom. With Sera. It might have taken a while. He doesn't know so he doesn't mind: Pan is going to play them carols, and Sera is going to sing.

"Come on," he says to Grace, after the guitar has changed hands and after he has let go of Sera to sing. He grabs his beer in one hand and the gorgeous half-drunk computer nerd in the other and drags her over somewhere to sit down

AS PAN PUTS ON THE SCARF AND SUNGLASSES AND MAKES HAWKSLEY'S YEAR.

He looks so happy.

Serafíne

"Are you really going to make me sing Los Peces en el Río?" Sera is asking Pan as he starts pretending that he knows how to tune a fucking guitar. And something is happening out there in the living room, the ripple of a rumor is spreading out and opening out, and it has a life of its own, because Pan dresses like Johnny Cash and has disturbed the totemic wine-drinking guitar of the evening and is now wearing all black plus sunglasses and a Christmas scarf, with reindeer including one that is very clearly Rudolph, woven into the pattern.

And Sera is asking Pan that with a bit of petulance and she is asking Pan that is a Spanish that feels, well, quite nearly native, just as natural asPan's choice of carol-that-none-of-the-others in the room are likely to know, so perhaps just Sera and Pan understand what Sera is saying, except Sera's player does not speak Spanish is is too lazy to try Google translate at just this moment.

"It's a kid's song!" And maybe they hear ninos, right? Most people know what ninos are. Sera tips her head upward as Hawksley kisses her cheek and half closes her eyes and half-nuzzles him in response and then they are rearranging themselves, Hawksley and Grace to take the prime seats andSera, shoving the kitchen chairs out of the way so she can perch on the table right in front of Pan, gleaming all-bright up at him and seeing herself reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses and dropping her pleasantly-tipsy gaze to his hands on the frets to get a sense for the tuning and the key and the opening chords and there's no planning, really, is there.

Pan's going to play something.

Sera smiles up at him, and tells him. STILL IN SPANISH, all liquid and redolent, "I'll sing whatever you play."

Grace

Hawksley grabs Grace and tries to drag her off somewhere, and suddenly she turns a bit chilly. Sera might be able to do something like that, but she doesn't extend that right to Hawksley, and so, tries to worm out of his grasp. Politely. At least, politely for Grace, which may or may not end up being insulting.

"I ah... I have a chair over there," she gestures to her coat-laden, claimed spot. It's like she's planted her flag, right?

But she still follows Hawksley, trying to figure out what to do. Maybe there's a reason he tried to drag her off? And when he sits, she sits beside him. Not touching. Just, there.

Pan

[i think he still has to roll the skill he doesn't have even if he got 4 auto successes with the rote.

dex + perf, untz untz untz]

Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Pan

So Sera and Pan start bickering at each other in Spanish. Technically she started it but if you really want to split hairs he's the one who countered her suggestion that they knock out a well-known carol with one that only she appears to know.

Es una canción de niños.

He answers her in Spanish. Grace grew up in Arizona. Maybe she recognizes some of the words. Pero. Everybody knows pero. That's dog, right?

"Right, but it's a kid's song I know how to play."

He says, as he's strumming the thing like he has any idea what he's doing. They don't know he can't even carry a tune half the time. All anybody really knows is the room gets a little brighter. It feels a little more intense than it did a minute ago. But the young folks have been doing fucking Christmas bombs and they goaded the old man into playing the guitar.

She'll sing whatever you play.

"Claro," he says, "yo sé."

So he starts playing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. And it sounds pretty god damn good. Total beginner's luck.

Hawksley

Hawksley does not know Spanish. As a result, he just rolls his eyes when they bicker in Spanish, barely even taking notice when Grace wiggles her hand from his grasp and says she has a chair already. She has a chair and he ignores that as well because he's going to go sit in the lower chairs where they can lean back a bit and watch the show. The show that is in another language that he doesn't know, and is annoying to him for reasons not immediately obvious even if the flicker of annoyance is definitely obvious and most likely misconstrued.

They sit. Pan plays. And Grace is being all squirrely all of a sudden so he just leaves that where it is and sits like a kid at storytime for the music.

Serafíne

And Serafíne the sexy elf in her green velvet rabbit-fur trimmed dress with the lacing down to her navel and the fucking black patent leather belt following the spare curve of her hips (we confess she does not quite fill out it as well as the model in the picture) perches her barely-covered ass on the kitchen table and swings her patent-leather-clad boots beneath her and bickers with Pan in familiar, liquid Spanish and is a bit absorbed in that so does not quite comprehend the frission of tension between Grace and Hawksley as Hawksley drags Grace to spectate and Grace does not want to be dragged and and and -

She tips her head back, canted, listening as he begins. The first chords of this carol are minor that why she's loves it. The bright and sprightly dissonance that soars but is underscored with the inevitable darkness of human existance. The way the notes acknowledge and underscore sorrow, not merely joy.

Sera lets Pan go through verse and chorus once entirely unaccompanied. She's still listening, and as she is her gaze flickers out to touch on Grace and Hawksley and the strange vibe from Grace and the flicker of annoyance from Hawksley which she just - inhales. And then, Sera takes another sip of her wine, and as Pan - who cannot play, beginner's luck - comes around to the verse again, Sera takes up the song. Sings it all, right through the going astray and Satan's power to the tidings of comfort and joy and back again.

Sera feels her heart beating in her chest.

She does not know why.

Really, she never does.

Serafíne

Charisma + Performance since Pan was rolling dice. PLUS WP cos the dude with two dice is probably going to outplay her.

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]

Grace

Grace sighs when Hawksley is obviously annoyed. She thinks it's her. Of course she would. But okay, if Hawksley is going to consider her annoying when she doesn't like being dragged around like she's his or something...

But then, Pan brightens even more, and even the people who she's spent a good deal of effort in ignoring notice how the Christmas lights glow, or the room just grows bright, even though there's no warmth in this light. She knows what must be going on.

In her seat next to Hawksley, down where she landed of her own free will, mind you, she says, "So, you gonna set the guitar on fire then?" and smiles at him. If he's annoyed at her, she doesn't care much -- will cover it up with humor.

Pan's not going to run anyone off or have his guitar spontaneously combust at this rate. And Sera...

The only other time Grace has heard Sera sing, it was beautiful, sad, and lovely and magic, driving nightmares away. And now Grace realizes that every time she hears Sera sing, it will bring back that memory. "She's so... perfect..."

Pan

For the sake of not drawing too much attention to himself Pan takes the sunglasses off his face between the verse and the chorus. It makes the instrument squawk but even with the scratching of his fingers off the strings it doesn't sound terrible.

So maybe he was actually just joking earlier. Working on his comedic timing or something.

The sunglasses click down onto the table behind him and he stutters his way into the chorus but it doesn't do much of anything to cover his tracks. Grace has been living at the Chantry. She knows his resonance as well as she knows anyone else's by now. It's there all the time. It thrums in the wards and it beats back the darkness that would come in after whatever it is that happened last month that so riled Callisto.

With Sera standing there all euphoric and centripetal it's easier to ignore the fact that he's Working. That he prayed or communed with the guitar or whatever it is he does that lets him do the things he does. If anyone asks he'll just say he'd learned the chords once. That a girl he was sweet on in high school used to play the thing and that was almost thirty years ago but some things stick with you.

He can't remember where he put his keys half the time. He'll spend a good minute or two trying to remember whether he left his jacket slung over a chair or hung it up in the closet before he goes outside to smoke in a few minutes. But oh yeah sure. He remembers the chords now.

Even when he takes his eyes off the strings because his eyes are drawn to the Cultist he doesn't squawk the strings again though. Nothing wanton in his gaze. She's getting to be like a daughter to him.

Like all things do the song ends. Scattered applause or whooping from anyone who was wandering by and thought those in the room needed to hear their opinion. Pan lets the silence rest a few moments before banging out the first several bars of Los Peces en el Río. He's just screwing around. Whether Sera protests or not he slings the strap off his shoulders again and winds the scarf back around its neck and puts it back down in its chair.

Then he pats his pockets like he can't remember where he put his cigarettes.

Hawksley

No one really notices the tension between Hawksley and Grace, including Hawksley. Asked about it later, and he might be, he will have no comprehension of what the hell is being talked about. Hawksley cannot hide that flash of irritation any more than he can tell that Grace instantly assumes IT'S ALL HER FAULT and spins out from there into other conclusions. He is leaning back in his seat, cavorting easily from excitement and anticipation to a lightning strike of annoyance to a sort of starting-to-get-buzzed pleasant warmth spreading from the ale into his chest. There is also the undercurrent of attraction and arousal that comes both with simply being in this house as with that warm beginning of a buzz and isn't so much related to the scandalously short green velvet as something else which would be written all over his face if he understood it.

Only the things that Hawksley does not know he knows are things he can conceal.

He rests his elbow on the dining table to his side, closing his eyes slowly and opening them even slower as Pan plays alone, and then as Sera begins to sing. He hears Grace beside him ask if he's going to set the guitar on fire and he just huffs a small laugh through his nostrils, half-smiling. "Nah," is all he says, so as not to interrupt.

she's so perfect.

That gets an answer, too. Just a small shake of her head, a moment where his attention is more on Sera than on Pan-and-Sera. He looks at her for a while, breathing in and exhaling, and his fair eyebrows tug slightly together, the briefest expression of an ache that is as uncommon to his features as consideration for others. "No she's not," he murmurs, quiet enough that it's like he isn't really talking to Grace at all.

His gaze on Sera is different from Pan's. But it would be.

--

By the time the song winds to its ending, to those last chords, people have gathered. People still carrying half-opened silver-white-gold presents, people with cocktails and just coming in for mulled wine or a snack. One couple that leans in a doorway, and no one is humming because there is something special in the room between and all around the musician-magicians. Some heads are bobbing when they find the beat, and Sera of all people will feel the increase in that magic, the power in captivating the Sleepers, the strength in the dreams that they can't seem to acces on their own.

Pan probably knows that sensation, too.

At the end, there is clapping. There are requests, instantly, for more, for this or that or something else. Hawksley is clapping, too, his mouth a lazy grin, his second beer empty. He calls: "DAN. Hey. Rick. Somebody play something," while Pan is patting his pockets, obviously done performing for these louts. For his part, Hawksley bumps Grace lightly with the outside of his elbow. "I'm switching to wine. You want some?" And if she does he'll tell someone she wants some, because it doesn't occur to him to go get it for her himself, even if he's perfectly fine with ladeling a glass of his own.

Serafíne

Sera can feel Pan's resonance, assuredly. Sera feels everything, keenly. Sometimes it seems like she is nothing more than a singular, really rather raw, nerve. Tonight though she's lovely, bright and absorbed and shining and a little bit mournful because the song is a little bit mournful and a little bit golden because the song is a little bit golden and she gets rather lost in it even though the myth embedded in the bones of the song is not her myth and the frame around that myth is one that she rejects, wholly and entirely, except when she doesn't.

She tips her head back when she feels the priest's eyes on her rather than the strings, and her blond curls swing freely down the back of her little velvet dress with the motion and she catches the edge of that look, the paternal affection framed in his body and gaze.

Pan does not remember where he put his cigarettes but Sera always remembers where she put hers. Or well: Sera actually often forgets that but her body remembers it, or perhaps her housemates or at least her consor just sort of secrete packs of cloves cigarettes in likely places near the entrances and exits of the house since mostly Sera and her crew do not allow themselves to smoke inside. That might make it a habit rather than an indulgence, an addiction rather than a vice.

Also: it ruins the art and makes your clothes smell.

--

Their part in the performance is done for the nonce but Hawksley knows the names to summon and Dan is among those who has gathered in the hallway and crowded into the kitchen, and he knows Sera's voice as well as and better than any of them and the magic in her body and blood and bones as much as her voice. Can't compete with that but he's a different sort of genius and Hawksley's shouting for someone to play something and this is after all a house of musicians. They haven't played out much recently and it feels good, doesn't it, the possiblity that it opens up. They all need an audience.

--

Sera slips from the table neatly, slides up behind Hawksley as he goes for the mulled wine and nuzzles his shoulder as she reaches for her pack of Djarums-and-lighter kept in a cannister on the granite countertop and asks him, quietly, if he's spending the night. And also, asks him quietly to spend the night, with the same words and the same breath, before she flashes cigarettes-and-lighter to Pan and a smile to Hawksley and Grace and tells all of them that she and Pan are going out back to smoke.

There's a fire in the chiminea. It won't be as cold as you imagine.

--

Dan is starting to re-tune the decorated guitar, going for a drop-d, capoed up and as a sort of antidote to the caroling he's probably going to play the Clash. Merry fucking Christmas. Happy New Year.

Someone hands Sera a half-opened silver-wrapped present and she takes it with her as she heads out back. Someone else drapes a chenille throw around her shoulders. Someone else opens the back door. That's how things work for people like her, in places like this.

That's just how they move.

Hawksley

Hawksley is standing at the stove and Dan is looping a different guitar over his shoulder and he drinks one full glass of mulled wine where he stands, ladle still in hand before he pours more. He is going to get drunk and possibly stoned while he's here, among other things. He feels Sera coming up to him before he feels her arms around him, and his spine straightens a bit and he glances back over his shoulder at Pan, at Grace, then Dan and then Sera again.

He smiles at her, low and lazy and surprisingly soft for someone whose features are sharp and hungry and inhuman.

And he kisses her temple, and nods her away, and she goes to smoke with Pan.

He looks at Grace. "I'm gonna go get unbelievably fucked up and watch people open presents," he tells her, grinning. It's as much of an invitation to join him as she's going to get, but by golly, it sure promises to be fun.

Tell me -

Serafíne

"No." said Sera, sniffling and not-quite-crying for reasons both abundant and not-quite-clear as his mouth finds her temple and her pulse beneath, fierce and firm. And also: smiling, thoroughly enough that he can feel the tension of it beneath her skin, which is beneath his mouth. An edge to that smile and a flash of brilliant light across the surface of her gaze. "It was the fucking airplane outside the window."

--

Her make-up is a little smeared but sometimes that is how she wears it anyway. So today and now, well that is how she wears it anyway, grabbing her hat and holding on to it because there's no natural wind but jet engines create their own and she doesn't know what he's thinking as he looks at her with her hair swirling out behind her and her skirt - fuller than many she wears - also dancing around her thighs but she leans into the wind and catches that glance and gives him a smile that is a little bit distant and warmer than you might ever begin to believe, unless you saw it. And if you saw it, the underlying heat might just make you

melt.

--

"Jesus fucking Christ - " Sera is marveling in her way which is not a [i]Pretty Woman[/i] way and is not a [i]Disney Princess[/i] way and is not even a return to cookie mountain sort of way but has an edge; a clear edge that is not quite a blade but is still gleaming because the marvel in her tone supercedes the irony in the curve of her mouth. Maybe it's just admiration: the way he makes her feel, like all of his wealth is natural, essential, necessary, his fucking due. Like silver spoons were made just to fit into his goddamned mouth, and for no other reason. Her hand in his as they wander through the front cabin to the back cabin with its armchairs and its couches and its wet bar and its windows and its view of the tarmac and - and - and

"You do this all the time, don't you? All the fucking time."

He does. She just knows it. Of course he does. And oh, how it makes her smile.

--

In the cabin Sera wants a drink wants two drinks thinks that they should open a bottle of champagne. Doesn't Hawksley think that they should have champagne? This is way fucking better than coach, Sera remarks, probably more than once and with a quiet snort of amusement. It is also way fucking better than first class and that has a glint of awareness, too. It is, she tells him, nearly as good as a band-van and a fortnight and truck-stop showers and coconut cream pie and a waitress named - actually named Flo - but she's teasing him and he's fairly certain that she didn't eat much of the pie since she's put on a bit of the weight she lost while fasting but: not that much. Not enough really.

She doesn't care what the champagne is. Does not fucking care if it is Cristal or Korbel she just wants bubbles and she might not even demand it until after he has poured them each a Scotch, which she will also drink. Because Sera will drink two of anything you put in front of her and then slash you a grin and ask for more.Sera has tossed her fedora on one of the fixed tables and kicked off her goddamned heels (which gave her a bit of trouble on the metal steps leading up to the jet) and set aside her champagne and is kissing him with a sudden and drowning thoroughness that feels like being pulled underwater and then emerging, gasping for air before punging deeper and deeper and deeper and welcoming the burning hunger for air in your lungs when someone nips back to politely interrupt and suggest that they take their seats and fasten their seatbelts they are cleared for take-off there's a window of opportunity is there anything else they need?

--

Which, no. Not Sera. Nothing else she needs other than privacy. Which makes her feel a strange and sudden twinge for the so-proper Mr. Collins as she surrenders to procedure and surrenders Hawksley for the moment and takes her seat. While they are buckling in Sera is telling Hawksley about the champagne glasses that Dee's aunt owned which now Dee owns which are not flutes at all but old-fashioned wide-mouthed shallow-bowled glasses which make it feel like you should be attending a garden party, the sort where you might wear white lace gloves and a crown of flowers in your hair.

She tells him this story in such a bright patter that he might well miss at first the fact that as the plane begins to taxi she's also taking off her clothes. Specifically: her underthings. Leaning forward and reaching back beneath her t-shirt to unhook her bra, then shimmying out of it, sliding first her left arm and then her right back beneath the tee to slip out of the straps. When she's free of it she hands it off to Hawksley with the prim, poised note of a society wife asking her husband to hold her purse while she tries on this mink and Sera does, in fact, ask him to

hold this for me.

The plane is wheeling around. The crackle of static as the captain comes on the intercom to tell them their order for the runway, their ETA, their path over the mountains. In case of a water landing - oh that's rich. Sera's stomach lurches a bit as the jet engines gun and the plane swings to a brief, moving stop. That's when she unlatches her seatbelt and arches up in her seat, just enough to shimmy her bikini briefs over her hips and down her thighs.

She retakes her seat and re-latches her seatbelt and again, there is something deliberate and prim about the way she does this. Some contained pleasure in the curve of her mouth as she flips up the hem of her skirt and stretches out first her left leg and then her right, carefully and precisely unbuttoning her garters, front and back, sliding her briefs down past then, then tugging her stockings back up her thighs and refastening the garters with the same precision. Until she can kick off her panties, too. Reach down and scoop them up and toss them to him, see? All

hold this for me,

as they lurch back into motion and the engines start to rev and the plane starts to rise.

Sera is watching him then, while the plane starts to climb. His profile, against the windows and so intently see. Not because she wants to see his reaction to her little show, but because she wants to see the way he looks against the sky as

they

take

flight.

Hawksley

Jesus Christ.

Hawksley's mouth curls at the corner, a dry smirk as Sera is surveying the cabin: the couch, the big screen, the wet bar, the armchairs, all the leather and polished chrome. There is a bowl of fruit on a small table, strawberries like Dee's lipstick and round green grapes, small as marbles. Hawksley lets her hand slip from his and walks to it, plucking a berry from the bowl as she's asking him if he does this all the time. He does, doesn't he?

He turns to look at her over his shoulder, lips around the strawberry, teeth sinking in. He smiles as his lips close together after the bite, but again: it's more of a smirk. He doesn't answer.

--

Of course champagne. Of course champagne and calling someone back to open it for them, pour it for them, in flutes not plastic cups. Hawksley sprawls on the couch while the plane is being prepped, arm slung over the back, knees apart, back slouched like a bastard. He watches her toss her fedora and her heels aside, they'll knock about during takeoff. The champagne is set down and there is then a Sera on his lap.

And Sera's lower back under his hand. And her mouth on his mouth, tasting strawberries and champagne on his tongue and there's an elegance and luxury to not just these flavors or this environment but him, but she has seen him most clearly and she knows there are reasons.

Hawksley is a sky god, and all sky gods are kings.

--

There are traceries of her lipstick on his mouth, reddening it slightly when Collins comes to the door. Collins who knocks, and Collins who sees Hawksley holding champagne with one hand and pressing Sera closer to him with the other, and Collins who takes and secures their glasses, corks the champagne, takes care of the fruit only so it can come back out again when they are floating in the air.

Hawksley has no grin for him, just a Jesus Christ! when they're interrupted, an annoyed snap at the consor, who takes it in stride. Who always takes it in stride. He lets her go while she's telling him about champagne glasses, old-timey ones.

"You would look lovely with a flower crown, if a bit on-the-nose for the hipster set," he says, hiding no admiration and pulling no punches, because he so rarely does either of those things.

He does not miss her undressing while she tells her story. He listens but he watches, their armchairs facing each other, which will make Hawksley feel a bit as though he is being grabbed by the shoulderblades and lifted into the sky, an uncomfortable, surrendering feeilng that he is nonetheless choosing to throw himself into. He leans on the arm of his chair and stares at her while she folds her arms back like wings themselves, the tiny sounds of the bra being unhooked hidden by the engines. He reaches out one arm slowly, takes the bra she hands off between two fingers, rubs those fingers idly on the fabric and the lace, a mindless stroke of his fingers, though his eyes never leave her.

The panties next. The delicate way she smooths her skirt over her legs and sits primly upon its hem on the leather, and the thoughtless way she undoes her garters just to get those panties off and then keeps them on, which stays the words that were about to leave Hawksley's open lips. Instead he takes a deep drink of air, as they are being pulled forward, faster and faster.

It's in his thoughts but not on his lips: Jesus Christ, Sera.

Hawksley does not try to catch her underwear. They land on his lap, draped over his knee, and he glances down at them with a soft huff of laughter before looking back over to her, pressing the tip of his tongue to one of his incisors. His breathing has elevated. There has been no suggestion that it is safe to remove their seatbelts. And he very much wants to, for a moment, open his belt and grab the ceiling and let himself topple to her, grab the back of her chair and the back of her head and kiss her til it bites, but

in that moment he wants a thousand things, and he -- being born to such privilege -- just chooses one.

--

The plane lifts. He is not looking at the sky, she might notice, but he would make a different argument. Hawksley never says a word until they're held cradled in midair, suspended by their own rapid propulsion and miracles that somehow the masses allow themselves to believe in. There is a soft chime, not the familiar ding of any less wonderous aircraft, and he unclasps his seatbelt.

He stands, letting her bra dangle and then drop from his hand, letting her underwear fall from where it hung on his jeans. He looks at her for a long moment, then

walks away.

To the wetbar, where he grabs the champagne, uncorks it again with his teeth, and pours their emptied glasses anew. Downs his in two swallows, refills it, and then carries it back

to the couch, where he sets the champagne flutes on the little table,

sits down,

sprawls,

and finds her with his eyes again, wherever she may be. He doesn't tell her come here. Surely he doesn't need to.

Serafíne

Sera has never been on a private jet. Or, if she has, it was too long ago in wholly different circumstances, filtered through the vague drift of a half-remembered, half-known childhood and whatever lies between then-and-now. Doesn't know what the discrete little noise signifies until Hawksley unlatches his belt and - hey, they're flying. She has been watching him watching her and as he rises she remains seated moment or two or three, watching him still, and watching her panties slip from his thigh to his knee to the floor.

A small, rather private little smirk curves her mouth. She laughs, unlatches her own belt, and rises to drift in an eccentric orbit around the cabin, bending over by the porthole windows to watch the city of Denver curve away far below. The Rockies look like a map in relief shot through with glittering reflections of water, the winding blacktop roads, curving sinuously through the mountains, cutting straight through the valleys. Her toes curl in the carpet. The interior thrums with the muted noise from the engines and they are still rising.

Hearing that pop, Sera glances back over her shoulder and finds Hawksley standing at the bar, the cork between his teeth, champagne flutes unearthed from where Collins - Collins at whom Hawksley cursed and snapped when the consor interrupted the pair of them to ready the cabin for takeoff; Collins at whom Sera flashed a mild, apologetic smile for his reception, that was nevertheless nothing close to self conscious - hid them away, cradled in some clever cabinet and closure.Her eyes are dark. The little window behind her is so bright with the smear of the sun against the insulating layers of glass that it casts her features even more in shadow. And that posture, bent over to peer out of the window - the white t-shirt and the arch of her lower back, the curve of her ass draped by the loose lines of the black cotton skirt, the dark line of the garters peeking down the backs of her thighs, the neat little buttons holding up her fishnets - christ, she makes the most inviting sort of picture. Fuck it, so does he.See the way she watches him over her shoulder, her eyes dark, her mouth ever-so-slightly parted. Catching her lower lip with her incisors, her eyes on his mouth, the cork between his teeth, the easy elegance and unstinting arrogance of his posture as he drops the cork, pours them both a flute of champagne, tosses his own back and pours himself another, which makes her so damnedhungryfor him. For his mouth and his arrogance and his hands, the beating of his heart, in time with and against her own. Her eyes drop from his to his shadow on the carpet and she's smiling then, a delicious coil of anticipation all whirl-i-gig up her spine. These are the moments when everything feels new, all over again, and old as time or sin or any other lie humans tell themselves: the creeping flush of her arousal beneath her skin, and the punctuate feel of it deep in the core of her body.

Sera's private little smile just widens he finds the couch and his eyes find hers, tug them up from her quiet little focus on the floor somehow, call it fucking magic, and there he is, all elegant bastard sprawl, just waiting for her.

She comes to him. Of course she comes to him - where the fuck else would she go? - pushes herself away from curving wall of the fuselage and saunters across the intervening distance. Stops at the table and picks up her champagne flute and tosses it back as easily as he. Drinks it the fuck down - such a gluttonous girl, see? Her champagne goes all-at-once and she wants another but she wants him more.

Her mouth and her spine and her head are full of bright, dry bubbles and the plane is moving now in a long, elegant, arcing sort of bank, which they can both feel as a rising curve invested in the angle and motion of the plane, but which does nothing to displace them. Sera sets her now-empty flute aside and holds his gaze as she just climbs over him, straddling his lap, her fishnet-clad knees knees flanking his thighs, her posture all upright so that she can look down on him.

She reaches to cup the back of his head with her right hand and maybe he's reaching to pull her closer with both arms or maybe he's just sprawling still, arms wide open, letting her take whatever she wants from him. Well: this is what she wants, right now. She reaches for his right hand with her left, settles his palm over her t-shirt, over her left breast. Her own hand is cool over his - the dry, pressurized air of the plane - and she pushes until the soft curve of her small breast is distorted by the pressure of his hand. He can feel her heartbeat through her skin, strong and sure and rapid. He can feel every breath she takes, and they are coming faster and faster still. He can feel her nipple tighten from a neat little bud to a hard little button, beneath the cotton, beneath the rough pressure of his palm.

Oh,she is smiling. Tipping her head lower and lower, forehead against the crown of his skull, her hair a loose blondish curtain around them. Dropping her mouth not to his mouth but to his ear, scraping and then closing her teeth over the cartilage, then kissing him, pressing her tongue to his skin, all yielding-soft, to sooth away any sting of injury."Believe it or not," she tells him, "I've never done this before." Her nose in his hair, the playful curve of her cheek against his temple. "But I can't wait."Of course not.

She never can.

Hawksley

Let's make no mistake about it: Hawksley Rothschild -- whether you call him by his name or by that appellation of his birth, David Davie Livingston -- is a man born to such wealth, such privilege, that his approach to life is not one of sheer gratitude at all the glorious sensations the human body is capable of experiencing or the sincerity of passions that the mind and soul can be uplifted and destroyed by or even the awe-inspiring regularity and occasional madness of nature. These things, both pleasure and pain, chaos and clarity, awe and derision, are. His. Due. He sees no reason that he does not deserve these things, that he should not walk among these wonders as their equal or even their superior. What else, he might say, was he or anyone else born for if not to receive these gifts?

Perhaps he is right. He certainly seems to be doing just fine psychologically as a result of this outlook. He does not question when good things happen to him because of course good things happen to him, and he does not despair when bad things happen to him because really, bad things rather rarely happen to him.

So there you have him, in his chartered private jet, feeling like chartering a jet and not owning one is actually a bit sub-par and even slightly embarrassing and maybe he should be a bit nicer to his father so his father will buy one and then he can just take that out occasionally. This is what he's thinking, abstractly, as he pours and downs champagne, dropping the cork from his mouth into the little steel sink in the wet bar.

Much more immediately, he is thinking that they have been in the air all of thirty seconds and Sera is wearing nothing at all under her t-shirt and skirt and he is thinking of her skin and her body and the last time he felt her breast in his mouth and he is thinking about fucking her. These thoughts naturally outclass and outpace any others. But we mention them all because this applies to Sera, too: a good thing that is happening to him. He does not question it, or doubt it. He does not tread warily. He is reckless and arrogant not because he sees Sera and sex with Sera as something he is owed or something he is due, but because it is something that is happening. The way he feels about her is something that is happening to him.

And he is not being careful.

He does not think he has to be.

He is immortal.

He is a god.

--

What is she?

--

Hawksley watches her drink and tips his head back, the alcohol comforting and soothing his mind, deadening parts of him so other pieces can awake. His hands are at her knees when she presses them into the cushion; they run up her thighs to her hips as she straddles him, his eyes flicking down at the rucked-up fabric as he lets out a sigh. "I want you," he mutters, quietly and unnecessarily, while her fingers search into his hair.

Sera puts his hand on her breast. Hawksley huffs a laugh and takes his hand back, sliding it under her shirt. She can guide him from there if she likes; she doesn't need to. He touches her anyway like that, feels her, unhesitating and eager, like he's been waiting for this all day,

or perhaps the last few weeks. His thumb passes over her nipple when she kisses his ear like that, bites and licks him, making him shudder. Without even meaning to he pulls her against him more firmly, lifting his hips from the couch to grind into her while she's talking.

And he laughs. Like a bastard or just a rich boy he laughs, his hands hidden under all that clothing she's wearing, which is obviously far too much. "Done what?" he mutters, which is exactly the same as We'll see. He never assumes. Or maybe he just likes pretending not to know.

Serafíne

I want you he tells her and this makes her laugh; her laughter is low and it is rich and it is dark and it is sweet. Warm against his ear.

"I know," she says back to him, her voice caught in the curve of her throat, thown back into the curve of his ear, vibrant and immediate and intimate. She bites him again, then lifts her mouth from his skin, tossing back her head as he grinds his hips until into her and she catches her breath and she makes this noise and she tells him, "I know."

He takes his hand back: wants her skin not the impression of her skin beneath cotton. Well, he knows where he's going and she doesn't guide him again, just reaches back for him with her left hand too, bracing her weight against his shoulder as she responds to the movement of his body against hers.

Done what?

"Had sex while flying," and the silly is subsumed as she tucks her head down to him, forehead to forehead. "in anything, let alone a private fucking jet, Christ. With a sky god in the sky."

Hawksley

Hawksley grins at her, at the implied silly. He's a little drunk. He grins, he mutters

"I'm always flying when I have sex,"

which is truer than he even means it to be. The words stumble over her own, though, and he closes his eyes a moment, reels, opens them again, still cupping her breast and squeezing her skin in his palm as though to reassure himself she's real.

"I'm not a god," he whispers, like this -- being called one, not admitting it's false -- hurts him somehow. But he doesn't want to hurt. He pulls her down to kiss her mouth --

Jesus, he loves her mouth, every smile and laugh like a knife opening up the sky.

"Take off your shirt," he says, his lips barely parting from hers.

Serafíne

"You're always Hawksley," see, she remembers that. When did he say that to her? It doesn't matter, the worlds crawled under the sky like the words and here she is, bending over him, close close close close, breathing and warm and flushed and half-laughing but also muttering that kind of agreement.

Then he's pulling her down and she is kissing him again, eyes closed, hungry for him, her mouth driving, seeking, her hands splayed in his hair and lifting his face back up to hers.

"I like it on," she mutters back, pulling away from his mouth just enough that he can feel the flash of her teeth over his lips, her breath like a tattoo. "Take it off me yourself."

Then she's pulling his head back, right? Following his mouth with her own but not quick, keeping him just out of reach before she laughs and moves, all spine-curling, releases him and reaches for the hem of the t-shirt, arms criss-crossed, peeling it off her body and throwing it -

- throwing it fucking somewhere. With all the many other pieces of her garments littering the cabin. Shoes and hat, panties and bra. T-shirt.

She's leaning back, watching him as she undresses, and reaches behind her waist next. Reaching for the zipper of her skirt.

Hawksley

Something makes it hard for him to stop smiling, even after that bump, that strange little hurdle that had some hidden scar tissue tightening up, tensing for a moment before he could relax again. Before she kissed him again, or moved just so on him again.

"Well, if you like it on --" he is saying, and then forgetting to say, because he fully intends to at least shove it up so he can get his mouth on her, but Sera must have been kidding or Sera is being kind because she folds and unfurls her arms, drops the fabric somewhere else, and she's all bare skin and tattoos.

Hungrily then, with a groan, Hawksley spreads his hands on her back and puts his mouth on her breast, engulfing her without teasing, without flirtation of his tongue to her breast or her nipple, just... devouring her. Someone up front, Collins perhaps, hears a gasp over the sound of the engines, and he simply keeps working on the tablet he brought with him to catch up on some financials.

In the back, his employer is grabbing Sera's skirt, grabbing the zipper she's pulling down, growing impatient and all but yanking it down her hips like that's going to help them at all. To slide it off she'll have to leave his lap and he doesn't want that. So he gives up. He yanks his head back, eyes fevered, lips parted. He removes his shirt far more quickly and with fewer complaints than Miss Sera, pulling her towards his chest. He wants to feel her skin on his skin.

Serafíne

The gasp that poor Mr. Collins hears is undoubtedly Sera's own: the moment that Hawksley's mouth engulfs her breast. Her spine arches in offering or invitation or it is perhaps a sheer autonomic response. His mouth on her breast and some electrical charge up the column of her spine that pulls her shoulders back and has her crying out and gasping for another breath, and then another,

and it is no wonder that Hawksley gets impatient with Sera's undressing because as soon as he takes her in his mouth her fingers go a little bit nerveless and the tab of the zipper just sits there and then his hands are there and - fuck it - the skirt's wedged further down on her hips now.

It's staying the fuck on.

Her breath is reddened from his mouth and her eyes are bright and her mouth is not bruised, not yet, but her lipstick is smeared over her mouth and his own. Christ the way he looks, all those fucking muscles she cannot begin to name.

He pulls her down onto his chest and she goes except her hands are between them so it is skin to skin interrupted by skin, because she's laughing, eager, unbuckling his belt as she smiles down at him, meets his fevered eyes with her own, soaks him in, all breathless.

Hawksley

At this point, Hawksley can't remember the last time he was with her. It was weeks. And one could say they made up for waiting then or had enough of each other to last but it never lasts. It doesn't really last forever, and he forgets how she tastes even though sometimes a memory from years ago will stir unbidden and sudden to the surface, erupting and overpowering all his other thoughts with things he thought he had lost.

Not the way Sera has lost them, though.

Hawksley just turns her over. Her hands are on his belt and he knows that if he just gets out of her way she'll pull his jeans down or off and pull him inside of her but all the same: he rolls her to the side, her back hitting the leather of the couch, his arms under her, holding her to him. The ends of his hair brush over her clavicles when he kisses her other breast -- mustn't neglect either of them, that would be ungentlemanly -- a groan rising, vibrating up from his throat.

"Tell me you have a condom this time," he says, the first words like a curse and a prayer, even though -- to be perfectly fair -- she did have condoms that time they were just in that clutch and that clutch was on the bar and they weren't in the bar anymore. And to be even more fair, there were condoms in his nightstand drawer in that palatial bed of his back at his wizarding castle of a house but he wasn't thinking about that or anything at all and she wasn't asking for anything but for him to fuck her again.

His mouth is on hers. And her breast and her neck, kissing behind her jaw, kissing her pulse, panting against her skin. "Tell me you don't care again," he says, quieter, rougher, before his teeth set in her neck.