wonders. wants.

Hawksley

The plan was to get to Denver far earlier. Even with a chartered jet, though, a sudden and overpowering blizzard will put a cramp in anyone's plans for the day. By the time Hawksley and Collins and their snow-chain-wearing Uber Black get to the house, nearly a foot and a half of snow has fallen, it is dark, and what little melted on the roads in the hour or so before sunset is already freezing into slick ice.

He is in a foul mood. Circling in that goddamn jet, sitting in that goddamn jet, eating everything that was on that goddamn jet. Collins has been snapped at more than a few times, even when he wisely had their driver stop somewhere to pick up takeout so they could eat upon arrival at the house. Nevermind that plenty of people had their flights cancelled or turned back to their orginating locations. Or that if they were stuck, they were stuck with hundreds of other passengers, crammed in and unable to move. Nevermind that if they were hungry, they had peanuts. Or no drivers, even if they got to Denver successfully.

It isn't that Hawksley is unaware that other people suffer more greatly than he does. It isn't that he lacks all compassion entirely. It's that right now, he is hungry. He is tired. He is impatient, and angry, and other people's shitty lives are not his fucking problem.

The driver pulls up right to the door for them. It is paid from Collins's expense account, not that of D. Livingston. They keep his name off of many things. Most of his belongings will be coming later, driving cross-country, but the driver and Collins and Hawksley grab a few suitcases and bags from the back of the SUV. The driver is given a trip for this, and then he departs. Collins opens the front door with his keys and holds it for Hawksley, who tromps in, neglecting to stomp snow from his boots. He is dressed in a warm woolen coat and a heavy scarf, and his hair is untouched by snow since it stopped falling before he was even allowed to land.

It is dark inside, but not cold; when Hawksley lived here they had Nest installed. They turned it on from the airport and it is a comfortable seventy inside already. Hawksley breathes in deeply, scanning the house with those piercing eyes of his. Drops one suitcase in the entryway, then a messenger bag atop that, taking off leather gloves. Collins, behind him, turns on a light, flooding the foyer. Much of the furniture was left behind, covered with drop-cloths. Linens were stored in cedar-lined closets and so forth. Things like dishes and cookware were put away but left here. More expensive art and sculpture, silver, crystal -- these were all put in storage. Books and anything magical in nature, anything Hawksley would use, was brought with them to New England.

And Sera had keys, and was told she could come and go as she pleased. If anything had happened here he needed to know, he'd know.

"Let's eat," Hawksley says, after settling himself back in this place, reaching up to shed his coat. Collins has already hung his own up, and dutifully trades Hawksley a bag of takeout -- Thai -- for his coat, to hang that up as well. Hawksley opens the bag and peers in, sniffing, looking for the styrofoam package marked Pad Thai - 5.

Serafíne

Awareness?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

Hawksley

[*throws up hands*]

Serafíne

All of this is a little bit hallucinatory. Collins takes Hawksley's coat and Collins turns on the lights and there is the foyer, quite as it was left and Collins has the pad thai and Hawksley is settling himself back into the space. The shrouded furniture, the deeper shadows beyond the front hall. The swimming gray light that seeps in through the curtains, which are still mostly drawn. This house is old enough and huge enough that there is sometimes noise even when it is otherwise empty - something somewhere settling, or rattling - and now there is a storm outside, and they full of noise themselves. Stomping the snow from boots, peeling off layers, shaking off the irritation of the many, many, affronts and delays of the day so there is no reason, no reason at all for either Hawksley or Collins to hear the soft slap of bare feet on parquet floors, but -

- there she is. Sera: one hand on the frame of the archway that leads deeper into the grand public spaces of the mansion. Her hair is loose, her eyes a little too dark and remarkably wide and her mouth is seamed and she has a puzzled, fraught little expression incised with especial neat-ness between her straight blond brows.

She is looking at them as if they are very strange things indeed. Or: no.

Fuck that. She isn't looking at them at all.

All she sees is him but she sees him as she saw him once, some years ago, outlined against the sky, surrounded by strangers, and she doesn't really understand whether he's an hallucination or a real thing in front of her because drugs and dreams and absence: you know?

So she just stares.

And kinda forgets to breathe.

Hawksley

You'd think he'd check to see if they were alone. You'd think maybe with things in the world like Technocrats and Nephandi and so forth that he'd be constantly aware, paranoid, have everything on fucking lockdown all the fucking time like so many other mages who like to talk about The War, the sorts of mages who fling themselves dramatically into oncoming danger To Protect The Ones They Love on, like, a weekly basis.

Hawksley has never. Likely will never. Hawksley doesn't seem to be afraid of anything, and yes, to a fault. It is not his only flaw, but it is perhaps his least immediately annoying one.

So: he doesn't know that Sera is here when Collins floods the foyer with light. Maybe she came here before the blizzard began or just after it ended, before the sun set. Maybe she's been here all this time and noticed when the heat kicked on, activated by some far-away app on some far-away phone. (He has the Galaxy 7 now, because that is the newest, and Collins always gets him the newest and transfers all his contacts and apps and everything so that Hawksley barely notices he has a new phone. This is how it's been for years.)

But: he does know that Sera is here now when he lowers the plastic bag in his hands, rustling as he takes out the styrofoam with the Pad Thai in it, hands the bag back to Collins. Collins also has Pad Thai, but it is not a level 5 spicy. It is, despite the man's rather European features and tastes, actually far hotter than Hawksley's serving. And Hawksley just knows the motherfucker is still going to add hot sauce to it like he always fucking does.

He is looking up, and Sera is standing there, and his reaction is to wrinkle his brow a bit, eyebrows tugging together. He's still wearing that big scarf wrapped -- draped -- around his neck and shoulders, even though his coat was hung up. He hasn't even bothered taking off his boots. He didn't even kick the snow off, because he doesn't think to do these things. These tidy, respectful things.

Hawksley glances over at Collins, who is also looking at Sera now. Confirming that Collins also sees her, Hawksley turns his head back, blinking once. That little wrinkle remains between his eyebrows. And she stares. And he watches her, and after maybe four or five protracted seconds of silence he lifts his eyebrows instead, looks at her like um, hello? and says, like a goddamn asshole:

"You just gonna stand there?"

Serafíne

He says, you just gonna stand there, like a goddamned asshole and it is that: his voice and maybe the squeak of the styrofoam that cause her to blink. Once, really: and she closes her eyes on Horus and she opens her eyes on Hawksley.

"Fuck you." Ragged breath out, the edge of a laugh, maybe it's a laugh, maybe it's something else. The quick slash of her smile. Hard to know how to take it but she's already in motion then. In motion? She's running, actually, and she's quicker than you'd think a girl like that could be.

Hawksley may or may not be able to read the body language: but that is a headlong run. The creature is clearly about to hug the fuck outta him: styrofoam container of pad thai or no.

Hawksley

Fuck you she says and he grins, smirks really, and then, um

she's coming over. Running, actually. Which surprises him, somewhat. She runs, barefoot, and he has about a second to pass his Pad Thai to Collins, who caught Sera's running before Hawksley did and is ready to take it. So this is how it goes: Hawksley has dinner, then Hawksley has nothing, and then Hawksley has Sera. Make whatever metaphors of this that you want to. He catches her -- of course he fucking catches her, he's not one hundred percent asshole after all.

He is hugged. He is hugging, tightly.

For a while.

They stop hugging at some point. Collins has exited the foyer with dinner; on cat's feet he left them be and is somewhere else, plating the Pad Thai and saving some for Sera too in case she wants it. Hawksley is setting Sera on her feet again, but not quite letting her go as quickly. Takes a look at her. Thinks of pushing her hair out of her face but does not.

"You living here?" he asks, curious.

Serafíne

Sera hugs him for just as long as she can, contained and sharp and she still has that warm-sleep-smell about her and something else, some combination of smoke and Darjeeling and whiskey and sandalwood or maybe patchouli that is: Sera in the wintertime. Snow a bit: because it is snowing. Because she might adore winter but unlike sungods she usually likes winter just fine too. The magick of it, you know? The descending hush, the stillness, the snow angels. Well: she smells of all of those things and also of magick which he may or may not smell. Can't help it.

She loves magick, too.

--

So: she hugs him and they stop hugging and it is silly. He is has given away his coat but he is scarf and she is much, much closer to bare and now she is on her bare feet again, look how the world has returned to her. He thinks about pushing her hair out of her face. It's grown or something? He can't really see the side-fringe, mostly because she's parting it on the other side, so that the bulk of the curls fall to the right not the left.

Is she living here?

"Nah." She tells him, and if he has not let her go, she does break away here. Returns herself to her/self quite the way he returned the world to her when he put her back down on her feet. Doesn't go far though and she's also watching him; watching his face, attentively, searchingly. "Came - sometime last night? Dan said something about the weather but I said fuck the weather." And she's about to go on and say something else, but there's a moment of arrest.

Then: a neat shake of her head, this return of lilting inquiry, and an embedded awareness, concern.

"Hawksley. Is everything okay? What are you doing here?"

Hawksley

Does he smell her, when he hugs her?

He has never not done so. Hawksley has enough care and refinement and defense mechanisms to do so subtly, inhaling deeply rather than sniffing at her like a dog, but that doesn't change what he is at his core. Of everyone, Sera has always sensed that core, understood it clearly from the start. This does not make him special; she is like that with everyone. She cannot help what she knows, and what she understands. What she loves. Even if she could, he doubts that she would stop herself.

Under coat and scarf there is a black cashmere sweater -- charcoal, really -- and a faint hint of a blue shirt beneath that. His jeans are dark and his boots waterproof. Snow is melting off his feet and the puddle extends to her toes. His arm is around her waist. He has not broken that contact.

"Fuck the weather," he agrees, though more adamantly, more angrily, because he just spent far too much time locked in a flying machine that he couldn't get out of.

His eyebrows flick upward again as she asks. He thinks a moment, frowns, and nods. "Everything's okay," he confirms, and his arm slips away from her waist, but only so that his hand can come to rest on the small of her back. "Come on. I'm starving. I'll explain."

Serafíne

Sera is still Coming Down from something, though she is far enough away from the acute effects that only traces of the drug linger in her system. The very last threads of last night's high. Strangely firing synapses; bright little bursts of movement, awareness, sensation, a kind of strange ache in the very back of her head, and these fragmentary hallucinations at the periphery of her senses which dovetail very precisely with her revelatory awareness of him. Of the space around him and the shadows between and last time she saw him and the deep, abiding hush of the world after a storm. Of his hand on her spine.

Her eyes are on his profile as he first considers, and then answers, her question. And he is so radiant and alien and human and present in her layered vision and she is so attentive, and he's okay, and he's starving, and says "Okay," but something about the moment has her leaning forward to plant a kiss at approximately the midpoint of his collarbone before she turns to walk with him deeper into the house.

Sera reaches for Hawksley's hand as they walk. Her left, his right, if he'll give it. And if he does, then she will have the persistent sense that she is someone is grasping both of her hands and pulling her quite insistently up into the sky. She's quiet as they walk, though she does tell him that Dan's here, which he must have assumed. How else does Sera get anywhere? It's Dan or Uber or her own two feet because she knows herself quite well enough and also knows that she doesn't want to murder anyone by driving-while-Sera.

Hawksley

So familiar is he with Sera being on something -- a drug, a bottle of whiskey, an orgasm -- that he has always found her occasional sobriety to be unsettling and unnatural, skin-crawlingly so, as though someone else's opinions have taken over her limbs and made her parrot out bullshit about discipline or blah-blah-blah. This, these coming-down moments, are far more comfortable.

They are moving. She is pausing, and kissing his collarbone. Or rather: the layered fabric above his collarbone. All the same, he takes a breath at the contact,

and then they move on. Their hands fall together and she's the one who reached for him but in his memory it will be simply that their hands fell and found each other and connected like magnets. She says Dan is here, and he wasn't really thinking about Sera came to be here but sure, it's nice to know. He doesn't ask about Dan. He has no idea that Dan is angry. It is debatable whether Hawksley would give a fuck about the opinion a Sleeper has of him, even if that Sleeper is a Consort, a friend, what-have-you. He doesn't really comment on Dan being here, at all.

In the kitchen, the Pad Thai has been unwrapped and plated. Collins is nowhere to be seen, but there are two plates, and a bottle of white wine poured into two glasses already, and a single light above the stove is turned on, the room still dim but for the moonlight bouncing off freshly-fallen snow and into the windows.

Hawksley unwinds his scarf and tosses it across a barstool, pulling up another one and sitting down. He digs in immediately, and only after he has slaked the immediate pangs of his hunger does he finally get into what is going on.

Which is to say, he says:

"So. I'm moving back. The truck is on its way with everything else."

Serafíne

Sera perches on another one of the barstools. Legs dangling in way that is very much her own; that edge of abandon, which can be read as childlike, or something entirely else. Only lets go of his hand because he needs to take off that scarf and eat and kitchen! means that they've arrived, and she takes in the perfectly present absence of Collins with a brief but thoughtful wonder that would never enter Hawksley's mind in the first place, let alone occupy it along with the wonder of the moonlight and the surreality of Hawksley's sudden appearance in the midst of a blizzard, after so long an absence.

Hawksley eats. Sera... doesn't really, but hey there's wine and that sounds like a very civilized way to handle an acid hangover. She watches the moonlight on snow and the light grazing through the white wine and she watches Hawksley eat with such unabashed tenderness that it hurts when she thinks about it.

So, she doesn't. Think about it.

He tells her that he's moving back. She's quiet, but by now her eyes are fixed on him.

A beat. And then, "Is that a good thing?"

(He said: everything's okay, and she believes him. But - )

Serafíne

Per + Empathy

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

Hawksley

He eats like a man in his twenties, and drinks like it, too. Pours himself more wine and refills her glass when he does so. Eats the milder Pad Thai because he cannot handle the gut-immolating shit that Collins eats. She asks if that's a good think and he blinks, eyebrows drawing together, looking over at her.

Hawksley

Perception + Empathy

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Hawksley

[Hawksley is hungry, and thirsty, and tired from traveling and still annoyed by the blizzard and its effects on his traveling. He's not unhappy to see Sera, but he wasn't really expecting this right off the bat. He's wary that she's going to pry and sort of (unfairly) gearing up to be irritated with her if she seems to be going that direction. He wants to just be here, and be with her, and not Get Into Anything.]

Serafíne

[It is strange to see Sera so oddly: restrained, but she is balanced on a strange fulcrum: she is so very happy to see him. Some part of her is ridiculously happy that he is back. Another part of her is quite: wary. But it feels strange and selfish to her to be that happy when she knows some of the circumstances that sent him away, and nothing of their resolution. So, she's asking him again: if this is good for him, and if he's okay.]

Hawksley

He looks at her for a moment like that, half-frowning, and then it smooths. His features ease. He nods. "Yes," Hawksley says, and firmly. He lays down his fork.

"My mother is... fine," he tells her. It's a hard word to say about a woman who has lost her mind, lost son, husband, everything. What he means is to reassure Sera that his mother has not died, she has not banished him. "The fuckhead's lawyers finally settled, and she's going to be very well taken care of. But... I'm no real help to her," he adds, more quietly. "Now that all that is over and done with, this is where I want to be."

Serafíne

Sera listens, and she watches him, and that strange and tender carefulness implicit. Closes her eyes near the end and nods.

"I missed you." Like, duh. He probably figured that out when she flung herself across the entrance hall at him, nevermind her bare feet and the melting snow on the marbled floors, the bite of chill in the air. "Missed seeing your head buried in some boring old-ass book, too. When's the truck supposed to show up with your library?"

Hawksley

His nostrils flare slightly as he breathes in. Exhales more slowly. "Soon," is all he says of the stupid truck. Watches her for a bit, and then he sighs, and smiles. "I am so tired," he confesses. "My eyes are burning."

Serafíne

"Finish your dinner." she tells him. There is another quick skim of her mouth over the mouth of her wineglass. She drinks the wine as quickly as he pours it. Of course she does. Not quite a smile, but - " - then come to bed."

Hawksley

"So bossy," he chastises her, teasingly, as though a moment a go he wasn't just whining about needing to sleep. He kicks her barstool, lightly, with the toe of his boot. "'Come to bed', she says, in my own goddamn house."

Serafíne

"About your own goddamned bed, too." Sera rolls her eyes; quite neatly. The world around her spins, just so and she rather likes that though she does close her eyes to bring her back to herself. Opens them again and he's still there, in the flesh with a mouth full of pad thai.

Sera pours out the rest of the wine. Empties the bottle into his glass and her own. If it isn't enough to make him tipsy, too, half-a-bottle is at least enough to ensure a decent night's sleep after the long day of traveling and travel-delays he has had. She tells him that she's just thinking about his own health and welfare: if he falls off the barstool from exhaustion, he'll sleep on the kitchen floor. She'd never be able to drag his muscle-y self up the stars. And she does say: stars, then corrects herself stairs. While he eats, she tells him that she's having an Easter party, and well: of course. It'll start some time and maybe it'll end. She has new dress! that is black and see-through and looks like a flower-shoppe exploded and she wanted the party to be in the garden, but: Denver, and: winter.

Dan will come down at some point. He's not just hiding away, and anyway, he wants gatorade or tea or food or whatever. Wants to tell Sera that he texted Tre and asked him to go check on the roof and make sure the tarps are holding. Sera doesn't really know what Dan is talking about but she smiles at him. Dan says hey man, or something like it, to Hawksley, while he gets a drink or forages. He's not really all that happy about the strange series of events tonight, but he doesn't make a show of it. Maybe a glance from Sera to Hawksley and back again but when a Sleeper - an aware Sleeper -
is in the room with them: where else would he look?

---

After dinner: bed. Sleep. Well, sleep for Hawksley. Sera has only just woken from a long, fitful, dreaming-LSD-in-her-system nap and curls up to cuddle, and be close to him, and drift for a while.

And wonder, the whole time, whether any of this is real.

She doesn't trust her head. And her heart: wants what it wants.

Which is very good reason not to trust it, too.

Hawksley

Hawksley does finish his dinner. He doesn't drink a half-bottle, just two glasses, because otherwise he'll wake in the middle of the night, fitful and dry and with a pounding head. He is listening while she talks, though he is eating through it. Stars and stairs. Easter party. New dress. He does chime in: "It will be warm. It's Denver," which is the same argument but for a different point: tomorrow they will wake to a blazing sun, a warm breeze, melting the blizzard away with shocking speed.

When Dan comes down Hawksley does glance at him, and doesn't know (or care) what Dan is talking about. He gives Dan a nod, but otherwise ignores him. His house has over a dozen rooms; he doesn't ask where Dan is sleeping. He doesn't ask where Sera is sleeping; he just assumes she has a made-up bed somewhere, and he'll sleep there, regardless of whether it is the master suite or not.

--

They go upstairs. Hawksley undresses and washes up, water on his face and toothpaste in his mouth. He doesn't usually bother with pajamas but he does tonight, a loose pair of pajama pants that are a nod to the weather, or something. He hits the bed hard, looking at the ceiling, exhaling. Neither of them have questioned whether she will be in bed with him; both of them assumed he would go to bed, to whatever bed she is occupying, and perhaps he'll pretend in his mind that it's because that's the one with sheets on it but a call to Collins and he could fix that.

Doesn't.

His arm to one side pillows her head. His eyes, watching the ceiling fall closed. His breath soon steadies. He sleeps; she drifts. Wonders.

Wants.

I'm glad you came.

Hawksley

It's been weeks -- longer -- since he's heard from Sera. He's heard from Dan at least, those few terse texts exchanged where some of his WHAT. THE. FUCK. got answered. There's nothing he can do. That was made clear. And truth be told, right this moment, he is not thinking about Sera's state of being. He's sitting on his enormous sectional couch, feet propped up on the glass coffee table, watching Netflix emptily. He is wearing lounge pants.

Serafíne

What happens is: she walks. Up the goddamned steps because the elevator call button does not work and she cannot choose a floor even if she wants to. Even if she is standing close as you please to a stranger, some dowager maybe, rising-rising-rising. Sid-the-dog beside her, and there are breaks, because penthouse means: some height, some kind of view.

And she stands in the hallway for - some time, really.

The front door opens. And he is not thinking about Sera or about Sera's state of being but: there it is. Sera walks - in.

Hawksley

It's a tall building. And of course he lives in the fucking penthouse. Always loves a view, this one. It's late enough that no one bumps into her. Or the dog. She cannot hear the television through the door; thick walls.

But Hawksley hears the door open, alert, eyes sharp as the bird he is named for and calls to mind. Looks at the door and sees Sera and his brow furrows deeply. He doesn't note the dog. He doesn't turn off the television. He's moving, remote thrown down, crossing the room over to her immediately.

Serafíne

The dog at her heels, threading between her legs, calls to mind one of the old goddesses, Some virgin huntress. But he doesn't notice Sid, just Sera. That wildness to her that feels somehow more savage in this precise moment. She is: watching him, right? Sharp, but not the way he is sharp.

Wants to say something, but her throat -

- it's so fucking strange to be seen. She has no idea what she wants to say.

Hawksley

So she doesn't say anything, and he puts his hands on her jaw. Both hands, like he's about to start mauling her mouth with one of those savage kisses that they haven't shared in -- well. Not for a long time. Even the way they kissed at his birthday party wasn't like that.

But he is not kissing her. He just cups her face in his hands like that, frowning down at her, staring at her. Saying nothing. Just staring. His eyes flick: take in her features, glance down between them, like he's checking her over. He notices the dog; he doesn't mention it. He looks into her eyes.

For a while.

He is frowning deeply all that while.

And then he wraps his arms around her, bare because Hawksley is always fucking walking around without his shirt on, and tucks her head underneath his head. Says roughly, finally: "Dan told me what happened."

Serafíne

She goes stiff when he touches her, when he cups her jaw. Right through the shoulders and the spine and she is caught between the desire to - her need to be touched - and the part of her that has built up this strange and shocking carapace of singularity.

- well, stiff. Rigid muscles framing that spare frame. Looks the way she does when she is peeling away each and every one of her reserves, shedding all her skins to find some made, molten care. Thin and sharp and hungry.

Doesn't really sink into him even when he wraps his arms around her and tucks her head beneath his, but she does breath out - once. This diaphragm hitch as if she were on the verge of letting go.

Then she starts to pull herself away from him. "I'm sorry - I don't - " She's shaking, you know? "I don't think I want to be touched right now."

Hawksley

Doesn't want her to sink into him. Really doesn't. (Liar.)

But at least: he doesn't blame her for it. For going stiff. For not sinking. For pulling away. And when she does, he unfolds. Takes his jaw from off her head and releases her face from his hands and lets his arms fall to her sides. She starts to say she's sorry and he shakes his head, talking at the same time:

"Don't -- you don't have to --"

She's shaking. He is not. She says she doesn't want to be touched and he just nods, once. Steps to the side and makes sure the dog won't get its tail stuck, then closes his door. It has a soft click-thud to it. He still doesn't lock it. On the television is an old episode of Arrested Development. It's still playing, a weird backdrop. Hawksley glances at the dog and thinks only: it had better not shit on his carpet. He walks away from her, picks up the remote, turns off the television. The room goes silent and he looks at her again.

"Do you want a drink?"

Serafíne

Quick little flash of her dark eyes: up when he asks that question. Sidelong only because of their relative positions in the room and there is something alive and strange and aware and chasing-through about the look and she drops one hand to the crown of the dog's head, right between the ears.

Does she want a drink?

"Yeah."

Sera does that weird thing people do somethings: frowns and kinda nods after she answers, like hey, she's agreeing with herself. Or asking the question again in her head and answering. It's weird to talk, and have someone talk-back. It's really, really hard for her to hold herself together. But hey - she does.

Hawksley

Hawksley goes to the kitchen. Big, open penthouse this is. Few walls. Few barriers. Makes sense. He goes, and opens a couple of cupboards until he comes out with a stout bottle full of crystal-clear liquid. Sets that on the counter. Sets out a couple of shot glasses.

Then he gets a lime out of the basket and slices it into wedges, watching her.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but... what are you doing here?"

Serafíne

Sera, she follows him through. Trailing, and the dog trailing with her. Where the carpets are plush their footsteps are soundless, but then they give way to expensive hardwoods, or marbles, maybe, and Sid's nails click-clack-click on the foor.

The tequila makes her smile. This brief, chasing thing as she sidles up to the counter and pulls out a stool. He tells her not to take this the wrong way, but - and there's a flash; her eyes on his profile. The smallest flinch, just her shoulders, really, easy to overlook. It's hard not to take that question the wrong way.

She tries, though. Wants to tell him that she doesn't know but he is the only one who ever calls her on that shit so she doesn't try it (much) with him anymore.

"I was - close. Ish? And I was lonely. And I wanted to see you."

Hawksley

Make no mistake: Hawksley knows, and has known for a long time before he ever met Sera, that he is an asshole. And that he is selfish. And that he is self-centered, self-involved, and that his self-interest has the capacity to be ruthless. Being in the Order has only doubled down on that intrinsic trait. He is, among all these other things, self-aware.

So he knows that when she says she wanted to see him and it causes a momentary spreading warmth in his chest, it's sort of a douchebag thing to feel. She's not okay; he doesn't even ask if she's okay because he knows she isn't. Of course she's fucking lonely: she can't talk to people or dance with people or see her friends or be Sera. She's miserable, and here he is getting happy that she wanted to see him.

Hawksley doesn't think to offer the dog a treat, or a bowl of water. He just ignores it. He slides the cutting board of wedged limes across the bar counter to her, and a shot glass, and pours hers full: a double. Gives himself the same. Taps his glass to hers, taps it on the counter, and downs it, follows it with a harsh bite of lime.

Breathes out through pursed lips.

"I'm sorry," he says, not looking at her but at the counter.

Serafíne

This slash of a smile from her, unbidden. Something about the shot glass or the way he taps them. Whatever. Maybe it's the limes or the reflection of the lights in the viscous liquid. She takes her with a neat care, fingertips stippled over the glass, and breathes out sharp and does the shot. Then lime, yeah. Doesn't bother with salt, not even the salt from her skin.

And he tells her he's sorry and she gives him this sharp shake of her head. No.

"It's not your fault," all matter-of-fact or as close as she can come to it. Then a hitch, more shoulders than diaphragm but a little of both and her brows together and, yeah: miserable. Miserable. "I just - I just fuck everything up."

Hawksley

Neither of them bother with salt. Hell: in a pinch, neither of them bother with lime.

She shakes her head, she tells him it's not his fault, and he quirks a brow at her. She says she fucks everything up.

"Wasn't saying sorry about your... situation," he clarifies, nodding at her as though she really were invisible. Even to him. "I'm sorry that it took me nearly a month to even find out why I wasn't hearing from you."

A moment. He's silent. Takes a breath and refills their glasses. Hers; his own. Heat from the first double shot is already spreading through his body. It helps.

Sets the bottle down again. Picks up his shotglass; offers it to her to clink.

Serafíne

That's pretty much the only thing he could say in that moment to startle her from her brooding self-pity. She looks up at him, mouth open, brows narrowed. Eyes damp but you know. She's shaking, just a little bit, but she's not crying. More like this irregular shiver. Every now and then. Like her body hasn't adjusted to the temperature in the room.

"I don't - I don't know what to fucking say to that."

Hawksley

So he shrugs. She isn't tapping her glass to his. So he doesn't wait. He takes his second shot. Bites lime. Sucks the juices down and looks at her as he swallows, licks his lips.

"Whatever you want to say," he says, and perhaps it should come off as glib, or cheeky, meaningless. It doesn't. Looking at her steadily, despite the booze trickling into his bloodstream. Whatever she's got: say it. There is the sense that it will be okay. Or at least: he will accept it.

Serafíne

Oh, god. He says that and she: looks up and now she starts to cry. This expression on her face: open, raw and vulnerable and for several: whatever they are, seconds, minutes, neither, all, she cannot really say anything. She just cries and looks at him with this strange mixture of pain and wonder and whatever so plain on her features.

Sniffs, finally. Her throat is opening and she can speak again. "You're always in my head, you know?"

Hawksley

He is grateful for tequila. And he weathers the way she cries and the way she looks at him because he decided when he heard what was happening that whatever it was, he would take it. Had to.

Hawksley blinks. Slow. Really: he closes his eyes for a moment, and nods as he opens them. "I know."

It isn't arrogance. It's understanding. It's I get that.

And it's still an apology.

If they go too far down this path, though, who knows what else he'll say. He reaches over the counter and touches her hand with his. His fingertips cover the back of her hand; one fingertip rests over the ring he gave her, which answers to his touch with a flare of soaring, sundrenched warmth. He thinks he should ask her if she wants it disenchanted, if it hurts her. But he thinks she could do that herself, or get someone else to, if she wanted. He thinks that even if it hurts her, she chooses to let it. Really not his place to question that.

Beyond that: well. Other thoughts. Other reasons.

"I want you to stay," he says, and then, because he is a coward and an asshole: "tonight."

Serafíne

Some part of her cannot handle that apology. It makes it real. Right? What he's done. The way he's left her. The way he left her. The way everyone always leaves her. So she looks at him and she lets herself feel that pain, all of it, somehow brightest on her scapulae. You know: where her burning wings should be rooted. Feels the rest of it, too.

He says I know and she doesn't think it's arrogant. She: gets that he gets it and she is reaching for her shot then, throwing it back, grateful for it. The warmth, the rush. The sudden flush beneath her skin.

His hand on hers and she's still not sure she wants to be touched. Makes it harder to be not/touched for so long, after. But fuck she also wants to be touched and makes this raw noise in the back of her throat and turns her hand over beneath his. The crawl of her tattoos on her dusky skin. Over her pulse at her wrist, framing her palm and fingers, yeah, though not on her palm. Sharkscissors covers her left palm. She wears his ring on her right index finger.

And yes: she's still wearing it. Even now. Sometimes it hurts her. Sometimes it makes her ridiculously happy, silly girl.

--

He tells her he wants her to stay. Tonight. And she cannot respond to that, really: so she tells him she wants another shot. God that's quick: she's eaten nothing. It makes her giddy, it makes her blood sing. It makes the room spin, just the way she likes.

She does stay: one night. She's still sleeping when he leaves for his day,

and she is also: gone when he returns.

Hawksley

Christ. She touches his hand and he grips hers, firm but not sudden, not grasping. Still: it's immediate. He holds her and thinks that if he lets the tequila have its way he's going to --

So he squeezes her hand and he lets her go.

--

They do another shot. They are drunk. The room spins for her and she feeds the dog and maybe she takes a bath. He goes to bed; he doesn't tell her to take the spare room. He doesn't tell her to do anything. So when she comes to his bed and he is still sort of drunk and actually quite sleepy he just opens one eye and looks at her. Smiles a little. Goes to sleep. Her fucking dog sleeps on the floor, or on top of Sera's feet. Whatever.

When he wakes up, his hand is on her waist, his forearm crossing her stomach. He leaves her a note: eat whatever she wants. He'd tell her Collins is downstairs but Collins can't interact with her anyway. He tells her, on the note,

I'm glad you came.

It is signed - H.

--

She is gone when he comes back. He knew she might be. It is why he didn't tell her that he'd see her later. It is why he didn't leave in the note a question about getting dinner. He is relieved that she is gone, and he is aching because she is gone.

Empty,

because she is gone.

br />

consecrated

Serafíne

Some wintry night, some uncertain time - after dusk, before dawn. Hell, after dusk, before the bars in Denver have closed for the night: a text.

Or: two, to be precise.

Going out tonight.

A stutterstep later:

Come see me.

Maybe he gets them. Maybe he ignores them. Maybe he doesn't reply for weeks. These days, she never really knows.

Hawksley

Winter cannot get its head on straight. Sunny, warm days -- warm enough that even Hawksley's bitterness against the cold fades a bit -- and then snowstorms. Fickle, capricious winter. He should like it better, given everything he has in common with it.

Like coming and going without warning or notice. Like being changeable and unsteady and unreliable. Like being unconcerned with the damage it does.

Like being cold.

--

He is awake when his phone goes off. Looks at it, and ignores it, and goes on with what he's doing. In that big house of his. In that lonesome mansion-dotted neighborhood. It's quiet enough that one can hear the clock down the hall tick, tick, tick, and --

his phone vibrates again, insistently.

Hawksley's brows tug. He picks it up and flicks his finger across the screen. Two messages from Sera, a multitude of messages from someone else, five missed calls from that someone else, and a message and a voicemail he is not ignoring but not sure yet how to answer.

He reads.

She hasn't asked him to come see her in a while. Sometimes when she has, he hasn't seen it. Or at least: hasn't answered it. Sometimes for weeks.

He rubs his thumb across the insides of his fingers, a book heavy in his lap, staring, frowning. Slides his finger hither and yon, words appearing like magic. Or, well: as magic. Eventually you can define everything that way, he thinks. It annoys him, these days.

No. Come here.

Serafíne

Going out was a term of convenience. When she sent the text, she was already out, a drink in hand and maybe another one and music throbbing in the background, sitting on a barstool or maybe on the bar already, legs swinging, everything bright and warm, a bottle against her left hip so - you know - she doesn't have to bloody move, in order to refresh her drink. The evening a warm glow all around her, the rush and hum as the doors swing open and then closed and the crowd deepens and sharpens and the night moves all around, bright and dark, lovely and chaotic.

She didn't expect him to respond.

She didn't expect him to respond but he does and he doesn't say okay, he says come here and she inhales in the middle of the bar, tastes whiskey, lime and ginger, wants a cigarette, wants -

Hogwarts?

The truth is, she doesn't want to go there. She wants to be out, she wants this lovely chaos all around her, wants to feel it all pounding against her ribcage and the back of her skull, but she wants to see him more.

--

Dan might talk her out of it but he's not here or if he's here he's wrapped up with Jer (back together, ironically since Thanksgiving) and -

Okay. See you soon.

Not as soon as you'd think, mind. Takes her a little while to get a cab or maybe an Uber, takes a while to get from the wilds of Lodo to the rarified air of Cherry Hills. Takes a while for Sera to finish up her drink and settle up her tab and grab her little clutch, which is large enough to hold one credit card, her iPhone, two tabs of acid, a joint, three cigarettes, a lighter, two little blue pills and three condoms and pick up her leather jacket from the coat check and stumble out into the bright, cold air, and watch her breath steam and coalesce and duck into the yellow cab and -

well, it takes awhile.

Soon enough, though, there's a ring-through on the intercom that surely Collins answers, and authorizes the entry, and notifies his master that Miss Sera has arrived.

Hell, maybe Collins announces her.

She might like it if he did.

Hawksley

No one announces her. She calls it Hogwarts but it has no grand gates. Just the usual. She's been here before. The long drive, the garage, the normal-seeming door. A vintage-styled updated mansion, with all its dozen or so rooms and a single occupant with his ever-faithful manservant.

It's late by the time she arrives. No one talks her out of going to see Hawksley, where once no one would have thought to do so. It's not like he's dangerous, whether he has the ability to summon fire from the sky or not. It's not like he could really hurt her. Or would.

Not intentionally, one could presume.

--

She knocks or rings and Collins does not answer. The door opens and Hawksley stands there in grey slacks and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled and the collar undone and no tie, no belt, no socks, no shoes. It's cold outside. He looks the way he always does, with only stylish levels of scruff on his jaw and a cleanshaven throat, with fierce blue eyes and strong hands. He opens the door to her, and watches her as she comes in.

Serafíne

Sera in a little black dress that is sleek and sophisticated and leaning sharply against the edge of modesty seen from the front. The right flank, though, is not fabric but tapestry of open-worked metal rings, which shows - well, everything. The curve where her thigh meets her ass, the supple arc of her hipbone cut across by something black and lace. More, probably, to be revealed when she slides off her leather jacket.

Which she doesn't, not yet.

One hand, two fingers, folded through her studded silver clutch. The brass knuckle clasp worked cleverly enough that when she crosses her two fingers - as she is doing now - the effect is like that of the crow's skull tattoo on her right forearm.

She's a little bit high and a little bit drunk and a little bit something else that makes her vision haze about the edges, makes the lights wrap themselves 'round with a glowing haze. Makes every streetlight sliding past the window of the cab look like a shooting star. A little bit everything.

"Hey," she's expecting Collins, glancing away, moving her head to make the lights streak 'round her when the door opens and its Hawksley, not Collins afterall. This quick breath, her eyes on his eyes, then on his mouth. That's when she leans in, and up, to kiss him, if he lets her. Eyes closing, mouth opening, if only for a moment.

A little bit everything.

Even a little bit awkward, as the kiss ends, and she walks inside, heels clicking on his expensive parquet floors, cheeks bright from the cold, eyes bright from other things, looking around the foyer the way you do reentering a familiar place after absence. The last time she was here he carried her in, then left her alone. She took his tuxedo jacket home with her. Wore it as a fashion statement until his scent faded from the fabric, then it joined the rest of her things strewn on the big velveteen armchair beneath the huge picture windows in her room.

"I didn't know you opened your own door. Keep doing shit like that and pretty soon Collins'll be out of a fucking job. Then where would he be."

Hawksley

When has he met her, seen her, where she hasn't been a little high, a lot drunk? More often than not she's off the deep end one way or another. It's how she is what she is. Telling her she needs to cut back on any of it would be about as horrifying and small as suggesting that Hawksley set fire to his library.

He knows that.

He breathes in, deeply, his nostrils flaring as she says that off-kilter little greeting. He's surprised when she tips herself upward to kiss him, and his eyes close, and he lets her, and his lips catch her lower one for a moment, only just. Somehow, thought not in real life and only where the heart and mind intersect with magic, she can taste something bitter in that.

His eyes open when she stops, and she walks inside with her heels clicking, and he closes the door behind her, thuds the deadbolt into place.

Hawksley is quiet. And the house is quiet, and dark.

"Collins isn't here," he says. Is quiet, a moment. "Hungry?"

Serafíne

Sera does not turn to watch him as he steps behind her to shut the door, to throw the deadbolt. Her eyes are drifting through the foyer, its exits and their long shadows and she's tasting that bitterness, which is just as real as if it were real life, she's breathing around it, her shoulders back, braced.

He asks if she's hungry. Sera shakes her head: no. She's not hungry.

"You could fix me a drink, though," she responds, shifting her clutch from hand to hand as she strips off her battered leather jacket. Leaves it - somewhere.

It's an entrance hall. There's bound to be a coat tree around here.

"Where's Collins?"

Hawksley

Hawksley shrugs. "Vacation. For all I know he's in Disney World."

Serafíne

That makes her smile, quick and unbidden and strangely private, the expression. It lingers, as her gaze flicks back to him. "Don't be silly. Collins wouldn't go to Disney World. Fuck, I think he might go to butler school on vacation. To brush up on his correctness, yeah?

"Or maybe he's taking a tour of the sites of Great Naval Battles of the World."

That last bit she manages to pronounce as if all the words were capitalized.

"I didn't know you were back in town. It's good to see you."

Hawksley

Sera smiles but Hawksley doesn't join her. They're standing in the foyer: the doors to the grand ballroom, the stairs sweeping upwards.

He decides against telling her he's been here for a month. More.

"Why'd you want to see me?" he asks, after a silence.

Serafíne

That makes her stop, that just arrests her. She's not really moving because this is his home and he hasn't really moved. To invite her in or -

- and she's just becoming aware of that, just allowing it to come to the surface and it brings a flush of blood beneath her skin that isn't really visible because she's not that pale. Her pulse in her throat, though.

"What?" The first thread of disbelief - or maybe something else - flashes in her eyes. "What kind of question is that? Because we're friends. Or maybe we were friends. Because I missed you. Because I wanted you.

"What the actual fuck, Hawksley. Why'd you tell me to come?"

Hawksley

"Whoa," he says, his brow furrowing, his hands coming up, palms out towards her. He even rears back, his head if not his steps. "Jesus, Sera."

His hands lower. "I'm not jumping down your throat asking that. Calm the fuck down. You asked me to come out, I said to come over. I asked why you wanted to see me. It wasn't a fucking attack, all right?"

And his shoulders square, his brow still dark. "Unless that is why you wanted to see me. Because if you're pissed, you don't need to wait for a trigger. You can just say so."

Serafíne

Her heart's racing. Not the good kind of racing but still its racing and she can feel the way it expands and contracts in her chest. The way she breathes, sharply and suddenly, wheeling back, not precisely listening to him but watching him, the darkening brows, the bulk of his shoulders, the evening spinning out from her, pulled to its thinnest subtance.

"Shit." Sera closes her eyes. Puts a hand through her hair. Her nails are painted dark, dark red - Vampsterdam, one of her favorites - and the manicure is recent enough that there are only two or three chips. The fringe is starting to grow in and she's letting it. It has the soft, fuzzy texture of a cocker spaniel's coat, groomed for the summer heat. There's a little pincurl in front of her ear, which is stuck through with a safety pin, an oversized pewter rosebud, crossed with a bar studded with diamonds.

"I just thought you'd know. I just thought - " Sera presses her mouth together then, shakes her golden head as if to clear her throughts.

"Fuck it. Can we start over? I've got a joint. It's killer shit. We'll go out back - I'll get you high and you can tell me something.

"Anything. I don't care what."

Hawksley

"Thought I'd know what," he begins, but she's troubled, she's spiraling, and cold as he can be -- is -- he can see that. He frowns, and then he just nods. "I don't want to get high," he says, but it's quieter. He holds out his hand. "Come to the library. We'll talk. I think I owe you that much."

Serafíne

Why does that make her throat close? What the fuck doesn't she ever listen to Dan when he's bloody right?

But he offers her his hand and she takes it without thought and without question, because that's what they're supposed to do, goddamnit.

"I don't want you to owe me anything."

Hawksley

His hand still feels as warm as ever. That doesn't go away. The touch of him is still sunshine and flight, no matter what months of near-total silence and darkness have done. He can't help that. Can't turn it on and off at will, or chooses not to. But he walks with her, in his bare feet and her tottering heels, toward the library, with its eastern and western altars, its vast windows, its endless books.

When they get there, she finds candles lit here and there, and lights dimmed. A heavy book on an ottoman. A tray with two plates, both with a sandwich, neither one touched. No bottle of wine or bourbon or vodka to go with it, no glasses of chocolate milk.

He leaves the door open. And goes to sit on one of those large ottomans. She could curl up in a ball on them and sleep if she wanted. Maybe she has. Looks over at her, watching to see if she sits. Or has a sandwich.

Serafíne

They're nearly of a height as they walk, that's how ridiculously she dresses, and no matter how much the heels foreshorten her stride she still somehow contrives to make it seem masculine, at the sheer edge of badass, nothing mincing. Not even tonight, when the world feels both strange and strained and she doesn't -

she doesn't -

Just inside the door she steps out of the heels. Lucky they are Vaccarellos to match her dress, then she'd have to unbuckle her ankles. But not: just another pair of Alexander McQueens. These have dragons on the heels, and spikes all over the body, why the fuck not?

Instantly, Sera's six inches shorter.

She looks around the room. Remembers it: the altars, east and west. The way the light cuts in from the banked windows. The walls of books,

and other things.

She doesn't sit right away. They unlink hands and he goes to sit and she makes not quite a half-circuit of the room. Perhaps a quarter-circuit, inhabiting it again, familiarizing herself with its bredth and depth. Soaking in his resonance, which has permeated the walls here so that it begins to feel, somehow, emanant.

When she comes back around, she puts down her clutch and takes both a seat and half-a-sandwich

She doesn't know why.

Hawksley

Hawksley watches her. She takes off her shoes and he doesn't know what to read into that. Or why he needs to read anything into anything.

She doesn't speak when she sits. He doesn't know what she wants from him. And he doesn't know what she expects, though he guesses she'd say she doesn't expect anything.

But she does. He knows that much.

--

"My father is divorcing my mother," he says. It's not a beginning. But it is, really. It's the one he has. "She's not doing well. Getting much worse, in fact."

It occurs to him that, unless he did it and blocked it out, he's never told her what's wrong with his mother. He doesn't now. Enough that it's implied: she isn't well. She hasn't been for some time, one can easily guess.

"For a while I was looking for Alicia. Gave up when every trail seemed to end in a suicide mission."

He shrugs, shakes his head aimlessly.

"I'm..." his eyes go down, his brow furrowing, "not... good with people." Lifts his eyes again, finds hers. "I fake it fine. Believe it myself. But it never lasts."

Serafíne

She would say she doesn't expect anything.

It isn't true.

She doesn't understand that, but he's right: it isn't true. She expects something. She -

---

- puts that fucking sandwich down. She doesn't want it anyway. Why is Hawksley eating sandiwiches. Why is Collins on vacation when Hawksley needs him. Why isn't there whiskey or chocolate milk or whiskey laced chocolate milk or some medium of all of the above.

Sera takes a bite of the sandwich and then puts it down. She doesn't want a goddamned sandwich. She puts it down and she stands up then and she inhales and she crosses the space between them and she sits down: on his ottoman or maybe on his lap. If he has lap available.

"Your father's a shithead. So's mine."

Which is true. Her mother's worse, though.

Sera's mother isn't sick. She's just horrid.

"You told me once that she was in a - " Sera pauses, she doesn't know the words, she doesn't know the right words, the words themselves don't matter but some of them make her heart pause - stutter - stop - " facility. But you never told me why.

"I didn't ask, either. You don't have to tell me - "

She's so intense. The lit candles are such brilliant, liquid squiggles at the edge of her plain of vision she wants to squirm in time with them. And she thinks, absurdly and perhaps wrongly, to herself that she is so goddamned selfish -

Hawksley

His father is a shithead. Hawksley just shrugs. He's the first to say it. He's not about to disagree.

He watches her. Remembering what he has and has not told her about his mother. She says he never told her, says she didn't ask, says he doesn't have to tell, but these are ciphers for Serafine wanting to know. And he knows that. Can't tell what she thinks of herself for it.

"I know," is what he says, quietly. And he doesn't tell her.

May as well go on disappointing her, since he's already on such a roll.

Hawksley's hands press together slightly, at the fingertips. It manages to look neither academic nor prayerful. "Sera... I can't stay here."

Serafíne

The room is so familiar, but the edges are dark now in a way that only makes them emptier. Sera has slept on these ottomans, curled up. Has half-slept on these ottomans, winding up to or down from some brighter high, dark eyes half-open, forehead against the inside of her wrist, wrapped up in the colorful pattern of her bracelets, seeing world, after world, after world inside.

Once, she brought a pair oversized glasses with plain lenses and sat her silly ass rather primly down in one of the big leather armchairs. She wore a collared shirt beneath a sweater, both pastel, over a pleated madras mini-skirt: as if dressing in study-drag might make her better at the work of combing through dry-dust treatises of Hermetic scholars.

It didn't.

She took two tabs of acid. Half-an-hour later she was curled up on the ottoman again, a blanket over her face, the glasses on top of the blanket, still perched on her nose: absurd, lovely, smiling, hallucinating: intensely, intently, this great chorus of words rising from the books all around. Romantics bickering with revolutionaries. Poets and the prosaic tattooing their songs beneath her skin, and she, listening. Blissful, sad, restless, hungry, curious each by turn. When she came down, when she came back, when she complained that she couldn't understand he took her instead to his private theater and showed her I ? Huckabees. She was still tripping, but oh oh oh, she breathed in. And in and in and in. Felt her skin sliced open and the world crawling inside her, filling up her lungs, wrapping itself right-round the column of her spine and then, then, she kissed his heavy shoulder and told him that she was starting to understand, she could feel everything, everything, everything and all of it right inside her.

That was a long time ago.

--

This is now. She's come closer to him, but not as close as she'd like, and it is terrible and awkward because she wants -

she wants -

she always wants to be close, and to touch, and to be touched.

But, no. She is perched on the edge of his ottoman. Her slight weight barely depresses it. Inhales as he tells her that I know, and he tells her that quietly, and he doesn't tell her anything more.

She isn't looking at him then. She's looking away. She is in profile to him and her profile is as sharp as ever. The prominent nose. The delicate jaw, spare beneath her skin. Everything not essential burned away. The fine little mouth, quick and sure, half-open, inhaling.

Breathing in. Out.

Glances back a moment later, this heavily lashed look that snags on his hands, lingers on the press of his fingers, together, whorls and whorls. Then higher: this darting look at his raptor's gaze.

Then away.

Somewhere off in the wings. In the shadows of the room, beyond the uncertain smear of the candlelight. Her mouth closes, and then her eyes. She drops her chin to her chest. Turned away like this, he has only the view of her fringe, her rather elfin ear bristling with hardware, all the adornments pierced through her skin. The slope of her cheekbone, the faint depression at her temple and the pulse, beating there.

The hint of her black triangle tattoo, just visible beneath and behind her left ear.

Doesn't say anything, then, Sera.

Not a goddamned word.

Hawksley

To Hawksley's eyes, everything here is lit up. Every corner. Every nook and cranny. Every book could be read by candlelight as easily as in the height of a summer's day. This is how he sees things, most times. He does not forget to turn on lights, doing so by habit, but he believes so much in the sun he feels that perhaps, for him, shadows are banished.

He remembers Sera in her little studying getup. Turned him on. Distracted him, even from his insatiable hunger for the books themselves. He still hasn't read them all. No wonder he spends so much time in here. Stroked her hair when she got high. Listened to complaints and shrugged and suggested maybe it wasn't solely about understanding it all. Asked her if she wanted to watch a movie instead.

Good little movie. And she felt like she understood, and it seemed to make her happy, and that made him happy, and he could still feel these interconnected things

and they only made him withdraw from her more.

--

Hawksley does know her. And understands her, at least: enough. Knows it must hurt when he gives her no more. Trusts her with no more, or however it seems to her. It's a burden, though. It's a weight he shares with one other person, and with Collins, he didn't really have a choice. Collins just saw, and knew, and there was no avoiding it. With Sera, he has the option. He doesn't have to tell her. He can keep her -- who is so sensitive, who is so softhearted, so gentle no matter how many spikes she wears or how bladelike her grins can be -- from some other thing, sad and unassailable.

And truth be told, he can keep it for himself. He knows if shared, it would diminish. It would be easier to bear, perhaps. Sympathy, understanding, et cetera. And maybe he has ready too many books from ages that don't belong to this world anymore, but he rather thinks that would be a copout.

Still: his brow tugs a bit, because he knows he hurts her.

--

It isn't just the silence. Or the withholding. It's the way he's been gone for months now. Not gone, but -- not with her. Not the way they were, so close that people didn't expect to see one of them without the other. So close that all the light in him seemed to hit her and shatter into facets, prisms, not as concentrated but far-flung and colorful. So close that she forgave him, and kept forgiving him, and perhaps would go right on forgiving him if he gave her just enough to survive on. Crumbs. Drip-feeding.

He thinks, looking at her, how stupid it is to be what they are. How lonesome. Every path to Ascension so singular, every Seeking undertaken alone. They still try these things: councils and coteries, covens and cabals. They keep up the pretense of Traditions but that's really just about style and occasionally a half-ignored code of ethics when in the end, they are all individuals. Would never have awakened if they weren't.

They still try to have lovers, and love, and family. They make pets of their loved ones, trying to be accepted by those who can never really understand. Those who, once they do understand, will break off onto their own path, just as narrow, just as isolated.

Sometimes he thinks that past a certain horizon, all these paths return to one another, but by then, it doesn't matter if you have a name like Sera or Hawksley or what you were in this life. There is something beyond these limitations. There is no question of rejection because everything is one, and everything is love, and he would never write such a hippy-dippy thing down in any of his journals but sometimes he lets himself think it, even though

thinking about it doesn't mean much when it still gives him a migraine every time he fucking levitates or sets something in fire. He's still physical. Still Hawksley. Still bound by the ideas of an entity who looks like the god Horus and calls to mind creatures who were once terrible lizards and now are tiny and have wings and live in domed cages and sing little songs. He's still got sensation, and lusts, and appetites, and is sad when the girl he loves is sad because of him and thinks he can do something decent by never telling her that he loves her and, quite decidedly, removing himself.

Given what he knows of his ability to compromise, commit, and care for others, and given what he thinks of his eventual destiny, maybe he is.

Or maybe he's just a coward.

--

Sera doesn't speak, but Hawksley does.

"I tried to make my mother a consor," he says. It is the simplest, shortest form of the story. "She went insane. And now my father is cutting her off."

All short, brutal wounds, these sentences.

"I have to take care of her, Sera," Hawksley says, less brutal, less simple. Quieter, too. He wasn't going to tell her a god damn thing. His brows are tight together. "She can't come here. She has a routine. She has... friends, at least, who visit her. And most of the time, she's perfectly lucid. But if he's abandoning her, I need to be there.

"I owe a lot to a lot of people. But no one more than her."

Almost, he reaches for her. Thinks better of it.

"Nothing's forever, Sera," he tells her. He says: to the Disciple of Time.

Serafíne

Rather a long time ago, not long after they met, Hawksley saw something in Sera that few others have seen: this capacity to work as much from pain as from the pleasure she seeks so thoroughly and so assiduously. That is part of what she does in that moment of silence, when she drops her chin and looks away. Just: gives herself over to it. Lives within that which she usually ignores, defers, turns away from, forgets. Even when she has: remembered. And she has, though he doesn't know it, done all the work of memory, found herself in a mirror, pulled herself right through, not precisely like Alice but -

Her left hand trembles, once. She tucks her right thumb into her fist. She doesn't know what he is thinking, what he has resolved, the flights of fancy he would never write in his journal.

--

And he tells her what he does and her dark eyes open and there is a quiet set to her jaw - evident from the spasm of some tendon across her cheek - that eases, yes, but does not pass.

Nothing's forever, he tells her, which is true. Everything's forever: she might say, is also true, and both are false, in equal measure. What the hell. They're magick: certainly their minds are capable of expanding to confront these smaller paradoxes.

"That tells me a helluva lot about why you have to go," tight-voiced, this. "and about why you've been so damn far away, and not a goddamned thing about why you're acting like we're never going to see each other again. Like you never wanna see me again.

"Contrary to what is apparently a popular fucking opinion, I am completely capable of buying a ticket and getting on a flight and to my destination without packing a hatbox full of pharmaceuticals and waving it front of the drug-sniffing dogs and getting my ass arrested. You'll go, I'll come see you sometimes.

"Fuck. Maybe I'll learn to teleport. Though probably a flight would take less time than the ritual to do it right. I don't understand what's wrong - "

Hawksley

Hawksley's already frowning when she speaks, though it's for his own reasons. Worry for his mother. Shame. The way his life is changing, and not in a way he would have chosen. But as Sera speaks to him, clearly upset, his frown changes.

"I'm not," he says, a bit flat. "Where are you even getting that?" he asks, baffled. "No one's stopping you from visiting, Sera, and I certainly didn't imply -- any of the things you're so upset about."

That frown of his, nearly a scowl, doesn't abate. Voice quiets a bit, though. "I'd love it if you visited, Sera. I just want you to know what to expect. My life isn't going to be same as it is now. I'm not going to be able to be the same. I can't take off around the world or go on a head-trip at a moment's notice anymore. That routine of hers I talked about? I need to be a part of that now. I can't even --"

Frustration blooms in his features, makes him look away, his eyes fierce. "Do you get what this means for my own path? How much it's going to slow me down? My life just took a swan dive and your first thought is that I don't want to ever see you again? Jesus, Sera! Where do you even get that?"

Serafíne

Sera is still wearing the bronze ring he gave her a year ago, along with an armful of so-bright paste-and-mirror bracelets from Morocco and enough golden Tahitian pearls from a shop on the Rue de Rivoli that she could wrap them twice, maybe three times around her neck. The pearls rarely come out, the Moroccan bracelets have started to peel apart. Lose bits of their mirrors, the tiny little beads embedded between the metal curlicues and cheap enameling. She still mixes them in with her spikes and bicycle chains, her leather and lace, here and there. Not tonight but: often.

The bronze ring though, she is rarely without. She wears it on her right index finger and rubs it with the meat of her right thumb when she feels anxious, or upset and doesn't really understand what she's doing. It's just a little habit, the movement and the metal, warm from her skin.

She's doing that now.

Because: oh -

oh - a low flush beneath her skin, hardly visible though she feels it the way she feels her first drink of the night, except right now she's abashed rather than celebratory. Listens and watches him in profile and then brings her right hand to her mouth, knuckles against her lips, still rubbing the band of that little ring.

"Fuck. I'm sorry - I just thought - I'm sorry. I guess I took that space between us and filled it with my own shit instead of remembering it was yours, too. I shouldn't have - I should've -

"Realized that it wasn't all about me."

Hawksley

Still frowning. Has been frowning for minutes on end now. Softens, though. The color in her skin. Sees the ring she's wearing when she puts her hand up by her mouth.

"I'm sorry, too," he says, quietly. He who seldom, rarely, pretty much never apologizes for anything, to anyone. "I'm sorry for -- the space between us." His voice is low. Naturally, normally, as warm as anything else about him. First time he's really truly acknowledged that the space is there. That it isn't just that he's been going to and from New England, that he's been shutting her out.

He holds out his hand. "Hand me that ring."

Serafíne

Hawklsey apologizes and Sera nods, mute, mouth rocking neatly over her still fist. She is: rather immediately teary-eyed, though not a tear is actually shed. Just the gleam of them amongst her dark lashes, this bright counterpoint to her heavy eye liner.

Her expression is so spare and her mind is both everywhere and also: here, contemplating the half-hidden mysteries of the human heart. The deep strangeness of separation, and also the way we tunnel through it. He was out there the whole time he was gone from her, individual and singular, which - in turn - makes her want to cry, though somehow the want matters far more than the tears.

He asks for her ring. She is wearing others but she knows the one he means, tucks her arms against her body and drops her hand from her mouth. Remembers, suddenly, the insight she had about him the night he first came to her in her garden.

"I know someone in London," her eyes drop from his profile to her own hand, "Who has keys to the British Museum, and the Victoria & Albert. Well," halt, correction, the fleeting edge of a small smile. "access, after hours. Could probably set you up with access, too. All that shit the Brits stole from Egypt and Greece.

"London's only six hours from the East Coast. I'll put you in touch with him. Wouldn't be the same as Egypt, but - whenever you had a day or two, you could go."

Leave at noon. Spend all night with the Rosetta stone. Be back in time for afternoon tea. Nothing close to the freedom he has enjoyed, until now. But something. Something.

Her short nails are painted a deep red-black, already starting to chip. She is honestly kinda reluctant to give it up even for a minute but: Hand me that ring says Hawksley, and Sera: Sera puts the ring in the palm of his hand.

Hawksley

She knows someone in London. Hawksley looks at her when she says that, touched and strangely aching. It's about the kindness, really. The way she forgives everyone so easily. He doesn't always like that about her. It's not something he does, or is capable of doing, or particularly wants to do. But turned on him, given to him, it breaks him a little.

This is, of course, part of why he has stayed away from her.

He allows the corner of his mouth to tug outward as she amends herself: not keys. but access. Truthfully, he could get in if he wanted to. There are things he can do, things they can all do. But he has no intention of stealing from the British Museum, which is what would prompt him to use his own talents and versions of access.

Still: this is what his life is becoming. And Sera, indomitable as ever, is thinking of ways that it doesn't have to derail him. Shatter him. Ruin him. Truthfully, though Collins serves and Collins is loyal, Sera is the only person who is doing this. And Hawksley wants to thank her, but... seems paltry, to him, to put into words.

Not often he feels that way about words. Usually they elevate.

--

Sera takes the ring he gave her, that little bronze thing that is older than one would imagine, and she sets it in his palm.

Hawksley closes his hand around it, protectively, and looks at her. He does not say anything. He looks into her eyes, and he considers her mouth, and really, he just... stares at her. It is not memorizing or studying. It is basking. And as he does, there seems to be -- to her eyes, at least, her ever-attuned eyes -- a faint glow to his aura, a thin ribbon of golden light. It is warm and soft and familiar, and it is for a moment an expression of emotion that he is not saying aloud.

A few moments pass this way. And he open his palm again. The ring carries that self-same aura for a moment, before it all fades, as the magic in him returns to him, as the working -- whatever it was -- hides behind the veil of mundanity again.

When she takes the ring back, it is warm. Not from her flesh, where she wears it. Nor from his, though his hands are always warm. It isn't until she puts it back on that it becomes clear what sort of warmth that is, what sort of feeling. It lifts. It makes that hand feel somehow lighter than the other. It's filled with resonance, consecrated to Hawksley himself. A piece of him, of his soul, given to the object.

Given to her.

Sun-drenched. Soaring.

He watches her as she dons the ring again. He knows her: he knows she can feel it, knows she will know what he's done.

"You may need to remove it," he says quietly, "if you're trying to perform a spell that goes contrary to its..."

his

"resonance." His brow furrows. "And if it pains you, I'll undo it now. I just thought..."

He doesn't know what he thought.

Serafíne

She knows someone in London.

Later, perhaps much later, maybe weeks maybe months maybe hours, she'll tell him about Claire. Claire who loved the Victoria and Albert and snuck her in, after hours, and Sera stoned - literally tripping, her senses so far flung, hallucinations creeping through every edge and every fiber. The marble statues of naked dudes lifting columns and throwing frisbees ("I know they called them fucking discuses but they're so serious and naked about those fucking frisbees.") the sarcophagi laid out in rooms. The way the space both deepened and softened the echo of their laughter. Marble chill beneath her fingertips, all the plaster casts of the great courts of the world, each new room like a new waystation in some strange journey to the underworld and back, making out in the dark hallways in between until they were breathless. All the lovely, lovely pieces of her life that she allowed herself to forget for so long, because of what came before,

and what came after.

The truth is: she forgives him, she forgives everyone so thoroughly, so entirely, so that she can learn, somehow, to forgive herself.

--

She is aware of him as he studies her. Suddenly, sharply in a way that makes her feel strange: exposed and adored, seen - briefly and entirely - and therefore somehow human, aching, vulnerable. She remembers his thumb against her cheek, his hand in her hand, his breath hot against her ear. Closes her mouth.

Lifts her sharp little chin.

Looks at him.

Sees -

- so very much, really. It pulls the fibers of the muscle of her heart right apart when he starts to Work. Which means, you know: a few tears. She sniffs, once. She can't fucking help it and she reaches up to dash them away and she sees that light, and realizes, just knows - its weird this, really - that god she loves magic. The world made strange, vulnerable, malleable, plastic. The world reshaped by their hands.

When she takes the ring back, she does know what he has done. Of course, of course. Feels it when she takes it back and slides it on to her right index finger - the soaring warmth, the endless uplift. God it takes her breath away. She makes a pleased little fist as that sensation shivers up her arm.

He doesn't really have to trail off because she kind of interrupts: stands up and comes around the edge of the ottoman, her small frame blocked against his - paralleled. "You thought right."

Drops her mouth to his temple, her nose in his hair and her hands too, splayed open. Sera just - inhales him.

Somehow that gesture feels more intimate than sex.

--

"You know that movie Cinderella?" Sera fucking non-sequiturs, just then, her mouth moving warm against his temple because she hasn't really let go. He can feel her though: the curve of her supple, threading and yes-maybe-sad little smile.

Hawksley

And then there she is. He leans back, spine straightening, looking up at her. His mouth tugs at the corner at what she says. And his eyes close when she leans over him, breathes him in.

Like this, for a moment.

Cinderella?

"The cartoon?" he asks, and she can hear his bewilderment echoing in his skull where she holds him.

Serafíne

"Feels like one of those pervy bluebirds who are always flying around and picking up her shit, getting her dressed and undressed is just tugging my hand - up, up, up." Sera lifts her chin, just high enough to cut a slantward glance down at him, her eyes hooded, the pinpoint glossiness of her unshed tears hidden from him by the angle.

She's smiling, Sera. This faint, crescent curve. "Bet it'll feel fucking amazing when I play the guitar."

Even if it pains her sometimes, too.

Quiet, forward then, her voice a rough hewn jewel of a thing:

"Am I invited to stay the night?"

Hawksley

To this, all Hawksley can do is choke a small laugh. He huffs it out, muttering: "Pervy?" but he's standing up, putting his hands on her waist even as he says so. Rises until he is looking down at her, head tipped.

His brow wrinkles at her question, though. "You're always welcome here, Sera," he tells her. "I'm keeping the house for now. Don't see why you shouldn't drop by even if I'm not here."

Serafíne

"Pervy," she affirms, mouth quirking - pleased - when he laughs, that he laughs. "I mean I'm pretty much up for anything but I'd get fucking weirded out if songbirds started taking that much interest in what the fuck I'm wearing."

That quirk sharpens as he stands and she's tipping her head back back back to following the elegant unfolding of his rather remarkable frame. Mostly, her eyes are on his eyes, but he reaches for her waist and her eyes tick downward: his mouth, his shoulder, his shadow over her. He has: cool silk jersey beneath one hand, cool metal rings beneath the other, fine and finer. She gives the band of that bronze ring a thoughtless little rub with the edge of her right thumb and raises both her arms to settle them around his shoulders.

"That's not really what I mean, but thank you. You gonna leave the Porsche too? Give Dan the keys so he can drive me around in the style to which I've become accustomed."

Her breathing has sharpened with his proximity. There are still tears in her eyes but what the hell: she cries so easily, so wantonly. Quite the same way she does everything else.

Hawksley

Hawksley just shakes his head. Pervy birds. He thinks she's a liar: she'd love being attended by little birds putting her clothes on for her. She'd think she was high as a kite, of course, but secretly: he thinks she'd adore it.

His mouth twists in a wry smirk though. "The Porsche is being sold," he says. "Though: I know the owner. I'm sure I could get you a discount if you wanted to make an offer. Don't even ask about the Jaguar, though; that's going to New England with me."

Hawksley lifts a hand, cradling the back of her head. "Let's go eat some dinner. I'll get delivery from that Thai place you like. We'll talk about things other than my impending abandonment."

awake.

Serafíne

Late late late late late Friday night into Saturday morning, god knows the hour but the bars are long-since closed and the sun has not yet given much consideration to rising and the city is quiet as it is in those hours and a text shows up on Hawksley's phone.

Maybe he won't see it until the 'morrow.

you awake?

Hawksley

In coming days or weeks, whenever the whim happens to strike him at sunset in the library, Hawksley is going to be out of the country. He is going to turn to the apprentice using one of his altars and reading one of his books and ask her if she wants to go to England.

That hasn't happened yet. Perhaps it has already occurred to him, though. Hawksley's spontaneity is only genuine about half the time.

--

When Sera's text hits his phone, Hawksley is not asleep. Nor is he at home. He is somewhere else, and the bow tie on his tux is undone and so is his belt and he is not alone and there are other things happening. But he looks at his phone anyway, like a dick, and his mouth quirks in a lopsided, lazy smile. He is drunk and he is relaxed and

yeah

he texts back: he is awake.

Serafíne

She is, by contrast, entirely alone. And quiet, in a quiet room, with a blanket wound around her hips and a mug of cooling tea on a chipped, worn, stained coffee table. There is a bottle of whiskey on the floor by the arm of the couch, but for all that she is not drunk. Not the way he is drunk, and she is not loose, not the way he is loose, and she is not pleasured, not the way he is pleasured -

but for all that a smile, when his response comes through. Lopsided like his yeah but not lazy. Some other inflection. Some other infection.

He doesn't know that, though.

Just like: she doesn't know where he is, or how he is. Just that he is,

yeah,

awake now. Awake still.

Awake.

can i come over?

she asks, without context. Just text.

Hawksley

Sitting alone with a cup of tea and a blanket over her legs is hardly the image anyone, ever has of Serafine whatshername. It is an image that exists, though, even with the bottle of whiskey nearby.

Sitting not-alone with someone bent over his lap and his tie undone and his mouth tasting of vodka is exactly the image most people might have of Hawksley's extracurriculars. Then again, most people don't know that Hawksley has curriculars to begin with. Most people don't know Hawksley at all.

All he says is yeah and what she says back is a request.

And that's really what gets his attention, when he picks up his phone again and looks through half-lidded eyes at what she says. It sends a thread of anxiety through his spine: wouldn't she just show up, wouldn't she just call him out to meet him at X, wouldn't this person with whom he has traded at least a piece of his name just create the reality she wants, rather than asking for it?

There is no answer on Sera's phone for a little while. When it comes, minutes later, it says:

not home. i'll come to you. where?

Serafíne

Sera is trying very hard not to think. No, wait, that's wrong. She is trying very hard not to feel, which is a very difficult thing to do in an otherwise empty room in a dark and silent house when you are awake and everyone else in the world is: elsewhere. But there she is, taking a pull from her whiskey bottle, reading old messages. Everything, whatever.

Pan's. she returns, not long after. the rectory?? ill be out front.

--

Which is where she'll be, however much later. Her shoes off and tucked neatly beside her on the front stoop, her arms wrapped around her thighs, and she's not wearing pants but who the hell needs pants when the shirt-tail of the men's button-down you are wearing as a dress and have been all day more-or-less covers your ass. Opaque stockings, thigh-high and trimmed in vintage lace buttoned neatly to the thin straps of her garters and a somewhat oversized baby-blue sweatshirt finish off the look and she is resting her chin on her knees and smoking a cigarette and drinking now and then from her bottle of whiskey, as she is wont to do, exhaling the smoke and looking up at the dark stippling of sky visible from her perch on the porch of the priest who loves her the way a father loves a daughter, whom she loves the way she loves everything: which is to say, the way fire loves oxygen.

Loose-haired, loose-jointed, loose-jawed, somehow. Resonance strong enough tonight that it feels like it is bleeding into the air around her. Visceral - first and foremost tonight. Wrenching, gut-wrenching, for all she looks so composed, like some scene from a John Hughes movie. The preacher's errant daughter sneaking out for a well-past-midnight rendenvous.

Hawksley

There is the matter of dismissing the person he rudely interrupted not so long ago. There's the matter of apologies, of insistence, of a rather harshly snapped set of words that catches that poor person well off their guard. There's Collins, doing as Collins does, taking over, smoothing over.

It turns out Hawksley has no fucking clue where Pan's rectory is, what the hell is Sera talking about. He knows what a fucking rectory is. He knows very little about Pan other than that he was a rather luminous, shining figure that Hawksley met maybe once. Sera draped herself all over him. Sera draped herself all over everyone; Sera draping herself over someone is no signal of particular affection.

There is an exchange, perhaps less terse than well where the fuck is that? but perhaps exactly that terse.

And however much later, there is a gleaming car the color of gold-flecked coffee sliding in front of Pan's rectory. And there is a window rolling down, and a beautiful young man with hair askew and wearing a half-undone tux looking out at her.

He is not a priest.

He does not love Sera the way a father loves a daughter. One could surmise, at least from how he speaks and sometimes how he behaves, that he does not love her at all. That he loves nothing, really, the way he loves knowledge, and power.

That he has loved nothing since the one he did admit -- to Sera, some time ago -- that he loved with all his heart.

But she loves him. God knows how. Maybe even knows why.

--

Hawksley cocks his head towards the passenger seat. "Get in, loser, we're going shopping."

Serafíne

Listen to him. Probably even God doesn't know how, or why.

Which may be okay with her. Sera's never much liked God anyway.

And yet, here she is on the porch of a shabby little clapboard two-story where the front door is always unlocked, on a shabby sort of street full of dingy rental housing and third-rate retailers that would be a dangerous street were it not for the inhabitant of that shabby little clapboard house behind her. Across from the darkened bulk of a silent church old enough that it has the full complement of a belltower and dingy stained glass windows, all surrounded by weedy apron of asphalt. A basketball court. A small playground for the daycare. Signage more in Spanish than English, and so damned ordinary, the whole scene, except for her, him, them.

His goddamned Porsche.

--

Sera is feeling him from some distance. All that sundrenched and soaring and Pan's fucking illumination at her back which makes it seem like high fucking noon and strange to feel all that light, rising right, when inside she's just -

- no, wait. Not strange at all. Someone she is always shredding herself open. Somehow she is always whole.

Like now, swaying to her feet as he pulls up to the curb, unsteady in that way that seems deliberate, picking up her bottle with her right hand, scooping up her shoes with the left, padding down the walk in her stockinged feet. And she wants to reach out and slide her hand through his disordered hair but her hands are full and she wants to bend down and kiss him but her heart is full of this kind of worming darkness, the sort that burrows more than it breaches the surface, and she isn't really sure she could do either of these things without staining him, somehow.

One desire trumps the other. She doesn't reach for him, doesn't bend to kiss him, just smirks, this native bravado, when he calls her loser, and circles the car, and sinks or maybe pours herself into the passenger's seat. Drops her shoes onto the floor and settles the bottle between her knees and tips her head back, long hair sliding down her spine. Vivid in the darkness.

Stark, visceral.

"What. You don't like my fucking outfit?" Slanting gaze fixed on his profile, hunting-sharp in the swimming half-light thrown back from the dash. Takes in his undone tux and shows off a bit of leg. Well, given the length of her clothing, more than a bit of leg and breathes in, and breathes out, and -

"Little late, isn't it? There's no place open."

Hawksley

Sera likes one god very much. Of the sky, of the sun. Not entirely human but far from entirely avian. With that god or version-of-a-god before her and all the might of Pan's god behind her she must feel surrounded by light, all of it suffusing and blanketing and buffeting

that coil of terrible darkness she took into herself earlier.

When he lowers his window and she sways over, anyone who might be up or peering out a window at this hour would think whore and think john. Neither of them belong here. Hawksley, for all the languages he speaks, knows only a basic smattering of Spanish -- enough to survive for a few hours in Mexico if he really had to, and perhaps has had to. No more. The Porsche doesn't belong here and his tux doesn't and she doesn't but at least some people know she knows the priest.

Think she's a whore, perhaps, all the same.

The passenger door is opened from within for her, so she doesn't have to lower shoes nor bottle to grasp the handle. She doesn't buckle in and Hawksley doesn't go tearing off; he can't heal her. He doesn't think she can heal herself from decapitation if someone were to throw their SUV into the side of his little sportscar.

"I usually don't even notice what you're wearing, tell the truth," Hawksley informs her. "It was a joke." There's a beat. He looks at her inner thigh, then her face. "Put your seatbelt on and we'll drive around. Tell me what's up."

Serafíne

It's a joke he tells her and "Oh," she says. Oh. Quietly, you understand, though not - never retiringly, and there's a note of surprise in there, still the quiet sort of surprise, this hanging sense of it, like the leading edge of disappointment. The moment he said that they were going shopping she believed him and - moreover - wanted to go shopping at three a.m. with a sky god in a half-undone tux, anywhere, everywhere, where the fuck ever, something strange and absurd and surreal.

Something lovely.

Something - anything - beyond the boundaries of her mind and her body.

"I spend so much time on what I wear. How is it that you don't notice? Sometimes my shoes are so fucking sexy I figure they should be on the table instead of under it and almost want to take them off and put them on my plate instead of the meal."

She breathes out and it is half a breath and half a laugh and there's no mirth to it. Reaches for the seatbelt because he told her too and pulls it across her body. Snaps it home. Have they moved yet? She doesn't know.

Her hands are shaking. Suddenly she doesn't know what to do with them. Or even why they are attached to her damned arms.

"I killed someone tonight."

Hawksley

There's a mental note being made to deposit Sera in the cinema in his home -- perhaps she stumbled across it on her own one day, and knows of its existence, or perhaps she'll be as delighted and surprised as anyone else who didn't think to look behind that particular door -- and have her watch Mean Girls until it is as firmly ensconced in her mind as his own. Don't ask Hawksley why he likes Mean Girls. Don't ask him why he got so pissed off at that Frick prick at Adam's bookshop. Don't ask him why he and Kate, Katie, Katherine, Kat, his ex-wife, broke up. This is how things are now. This is who he is. He has a mansion with a movie theater in it. Go with the flow.

Hawksley is driving as soon as she is securely fastened in. He's not a maniac, even now. He's not driving like one, either, though he does like to drive fast, especially when he gets on a long dark stretch of road and when it curls into his thoughts that he can probably get away with almost anything if he puts his mind to it.

Dangerous thoughts, those. He dismisses them, brushes them aside like so much dust from a book discovered in a dying man's forgotten library, and listens. He shrugs. "I don't see why shoes being sexy would make them appetizing enough to serve for dinner," he informs her. "I don't notice much what you wear because I'm noticing you instead." A glance, to the side, at her. "Would've thought you knew that."

Eyes forward, driving, driving, not noticing her hands shaking in the dark. Even Hawksley has limits.

I killed someone tonight.

Hawksley is very quiet. For several seconds. He is still driving: fast, controlled, lazy in this paradoxical way.

"Are you being metaphorical?"

He would not put it past her.

Serafíne

Some other night she might come back with a riposte about sexy shoes or anything being good enough to eat (or at least display on the table) and some other night she might go still when he tells her that he doesn't notice what she's wearing because he is instead noticing her. Might smile, a kind of half-smile that hints at something deeper and something stranger and something anchored and something aware: because she does know that. And the knowing-of-that makes her aware-of-him in ways that she is aware of few others.

Not tonight.

They're driving. He makes a turn and then another and finds a road that is empty enough and long enough and dark enough and straight enough that he can go as fast as he likes. Perhaps he doesn't need any of the caveats. Perhaps he just goes as fast as he likes.

The city gleams by, an impressionist blur. Radiant lines of light streaking through not-quite-darkness.

She tucks her hands beneath her thighs. Thinks that is a good place to keep them, then changes her mind and draws her knees up instead, heels on the edge of the seat, arms wrapped 'round. Whiskey bottle dangling from her hands which are: still shaking. But not as much, and it's easier to pass this off as vibration from the road.

--

Those several quiet seconds: she is breathless, gaze shunted away, mouth on bony knob of her right knee, watching the white line at the street's edge.

Is she being metaphorical?

"No."

--

A beat. Two. Three. Four.

There is a rhythm to the universe. A pulse, invisible, that punches through skin, through the base of the skull, seizes itself in the basal ganglia or what the fuck ever. She doesn't know. She's listening to it and it is: beating. Or maybe that's her heart.

"He was Fallen. I didn't even know he was Awake. I looked into his mind. He had some kind of shield or effect, but it wasn't meant to keep someone like me out.

"It was meant to pull me in.

"I don't remember - ever - feeling anything that horrible. Filthy." (Of course, there are things she does not remember.) "I used that. And I killed him."

Her voice is choked, thready. But she hasn't started to weep, not yet.

Hawksley

He is a selfish, self-absorbed, self-involved, self-seeking young man. He is concerned with a singular higher ideal that is, in the end, about no one but himself. It advances no one but himself. Had Hawksley been alive during the Ascension War he would have simply fucking abstained, being disinterested entirely in the Ascension of the human race. There's more than one reason why he was dismissed from the Order; no code, no law, no oath would restrain him from what he wants for himself. He's a bastard.

He does take particular notice of a few things outside of his main pursuit. He does care here and there, he does concern himself with a few things beyond his own power. There is, for example, his trust in Collins. There is, for a more immediately present example, his attention to Serafine.

Of course he doesn't care, or even notice most of the time, what she does or doesn't wear. Only as much as it titillates him, perhaps, or gets in his way, or amuses him, or gives him something witty to say at her expense. But he does always notice her. Even when she is drinking alcoholic slushies and he is jumping rope in the park; he is aware of her. She knows that. After all, she is aware of him, too.

--

She is not being metaphorical.

The road is long and dark and, after a while, lit almost entirely by his headlights alone.

Hawksley says nothing, and keeps his eyes forward.

--

Someone who knows more about empathy, psychology, or compassion would not ask what Hawksley does, after she explains to him what happened.

He's not one of those people though.

"How exactly did you do it?" he asks, and perhaps it isn't mere curiosity but it sure sounds like it.

Serafíne

Sera does not answer him immediately. She drags in a breath, harsh. Another one.

She watches the road as it passes by. As it slides sinuous from the sharp beam of his headlights to darkness behind. She takes a sip from her whiskey bottle, which she holds more out of habit than intention. More to make sure that she has something in her stomach when the urge to throw up overwhelms her.

It hasn't come in a while, but she knows it will return.

"I don't - "

This sharp shake before she resettles her head, mouth open, teeth set against her skin.

"Life." Quiet. "And Prime?" The query is as much for herself as for him. The moment was plosive and surreal and wrenching and she can hardly remember what it was that she did, because she did not do it with her mind, but with her body and her soul. "I attacked his pattern. His consciousness. I wanted to knock him out.

"And I did. And he fell in the water and he drowned."

She's crying now, silently, head turned away from him.

His eyes on the road.

"I don't really know what was happening. Half the time I thought I was hallucinating. But I wasn't."

Serafíne

A beat, some downstroke. The first of a full measure.

Then - in a smaller voice, just a bit choked, she adds,

"Don't stop driving, okay?"

Hawksley

Legally there should not be an open container of alcohol in the front seat. Legally Hawksley should not be going as fast as he is.

Logically he should not be asking the woman he knows to be more than a little tender-hearted how, precisely, she killed a man so recently. Perhaps this night. Could have been years ago. Hawksley has not tried to place it in time. He does, however, want to know the magic she used. She used Life to rend his body, Prime to twist his soul. And even then, she confesses, she only meant to knock him out.

At which she was successful.

--

Hawksley, being as he is, huffs a breath outward when she says he drowned. He is not mocking her tears, as much as he is uncomfortable with them. He drives, and she sniffs and asks him not to stop driving, and his brows furrow. He does not say anything for a while, until:

"You didn't kill him, Sera. The water killed him. As the water has a right to."

Whatever that means, Hawksley does not pause to explain to her. He glances at her. "You took from him the ability to deny the water its due, among other things. What do you think he would have done to you, and whomever was with you? What was he trying to do to you when you reached into his mind to begin with?" Hawksley is frowning, ever deeper. "He was Fallen, Sera. They aren't even human anymore. You're lucky you could recognize what was left of him as a mind to begin with, as a soul. You're lucky you even survived it."

His frown has only furrowed. Rather out of nowhere, or everywhere, he slams his hand against the wheel.

"What the fuck, Sera? What the fucking.... fuck!"

That last one isn't a question. And regardless of what she just asked him, he somewhat forcefully flashes lights, pulls to the shoulder, stops the car. It takes him a moment, sitting there gripping the wheel and staring forward, before he remembers to turn on his flashers. Before he puts the emergency break on. Before he can unwind his fingers from the steering wheel and look at her.

A beat, then two, pass. And then his belt is off and he is all but kicking the driver's side door open, getting out, slamming it behind him. Outside the car he paces a moment. One way. Another, each direction aborted. Stops, because there's really no place to go, and then stops beside his door, turning his back on it, leaning against the porsche. She can't see this part, but he presses the heels of his hands to his brow, fuming.

The car is still on, and at least for a while, it dings about the driver's side seatbelt. That sound fades, soon enough.

Serafíne

Sera cries very quietly in the passenger's seat of Hawksley's Porsche. It comes and goes. Her tears are not harsh or stormy, just present, leaking from the corners of her eyes and funneling down her cheeks. Sometimes she takes a breath that gets all interrupted, right, some huff-huff-huff that is entirely unintentional, these little spasms of her diaphragm. And she sits there, curled up, arms around her legs, teeth set into her kneecap, then just her mouth, then instead her cheekbone, sounding really rather almost-normal until (huff huff huff) another one of those little spasms digs into her body or she sniffs because, you know, her nose gets a bit snotty when she cries. Isn't it that way for everyone?

They drive.

She finds that oddly soothing, because you see right now she cannot really bear to be still and she's a bit too tired and spent to move. So: driving, hurtling through the dark, his hand between them when he has to reach to change gears. The engine's ordered chaos, its quietly controlled crescendos and decrescendos as he accelerates on the flats and slows just enough to take the curves with flippant grace.

The silence lasts long enough that when he starts to speak again she is almost grateful. Steals this glance at him - her stark eyes, her sharp little profile and the three a.m. tangle of her hair like a halo, glowing in the dashboard lights. And he tells her that she didn't kill him, and she opens her mouth (again around her knee) to maybe say something but Hawksley does not pause. She can see the frame of another purposeful breath in the air all around him and he goes on and she returns that glance briefly, then drops her gaze to the shadows where her stupid shoes are rattling around on the floormats and she is sort-of nodding, the motion arrested because her mouth is open again, because her teeth are once more set in her skin, and it could be assent or acknowledgment or agreement or apology, right? Maybe all four, wrapped up into one.

I know. I know. I know. this litany punctuate at the end of each damn question. What on earth would he have done to her. What was he trying to do to them. She is lucky she even survived it. Yes, she knows that too.

Then his hand slams against the wheel and she just kind of draws this arrested breath and she's in his periphery so he probably can't see her bracing her shoulders for whatever is to come, but she does, this thoughtless tension in her spine and he's steering the little sports car onto the shoulder, Jesus Christ where the hell are they, even? The headlights forward, bright down the shoulder. The flashers tick-tocking when he remembers to shove them on.

Then he storms out of the Porsche and she starts crying again, this time in earnest near-silence, her head down, her arms so tightly wrapped around her legs that her knuckles go white with the strain. Cries - as she does so many things - without reservation.

Cries until she starts hiccoughing like mad. Cries - honestly - until she pukes.

Which she does, cracking open the passenger's door, leaning out over the verge while her body rids itself of the whiskey she ingested. She doesn't really stop crying while she's throwing up. Somehow they have the same rhythm, don't they?

Sera pulls the car door closed again when she is sure the spell has passed. Not a slam: just enough force for it to click home.

She's calmer, after. Wipes the sourness off her mouth with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Wipes her nose. Then peels the sweatshirt off because you know, it's gross now. She just used it as a big dumb hanky.

Hawksley

There's a damn good reason that Hawksley is out of that car as quickly as he is. It's certainly not that his rage is threatening to overtake him, certainly not that he's about to start smacking Sera in the face. He's angry, but he isn't violent. And it isn't that he wants to cool night air to clear his head and calm him down, though he knows that helps, he's seeking it without even realizing it, wanting the wind on his face because it makes him feel more whole. The real reason, when you get down to it, is that Sera is crying and Hawksley has been as expertly trained as any young man in the western world -- perhaps the world, full stop. He can't bear it. He couldn't bear it when Alicia started crying after his workout, he couldn't bear it when he broke up with his first girlfriend, and he couldn't bear it any of the times he's seen his mother weep. He would rather Sera do what his first boyfriend did when they broke up and just bloody his fucking nose already.

Outside the Porsche he puts his hands in his hair while he works on wrapping his mind around what Sera has told him. He feels like a Sleeper. He knows next to nothing about Mind magic. He does know that, as with many spheres, the ability to act upon another pattern comes only with rather significant power, but prior to that, one can enact small changes. But one can almost always chart a path or create a shield early, early on. They teach apprentices that. He knows that plenty of magi who can reach into your thoughts can also fucking block off their own mind.

And this is why he is so angry that he is out of the car, so that he does not get in Sera's face and just scream at her. And this is why he is waiting for the wind on his face to ease him. And this is why he is out of the car, on the driver's side, when he hears the other door open. Hawksley looks sharply past his right shoulder, listening more than looking, wondering if she's getting out.

Nope.

She's throwing up.

Hawksley exhales heavily and circles the car, arms unfolded, grasping the edge of his car door and reaching over, taking her hair on either side of her head and drawing it upward. He's had way too much practice at this. He does it by the light of the moon and the car interior, holding it all back while Sera sobs and Sera vomits. He's not the sort to feel a lurch of his own in the presence of puke; he just notices that it's mostly liquid. So he's there, and pulling the door closed is only going to close it on his arm, so that doesn't happen. She folds herself back in, and he comes around, avoiding the puddle, while she pulls off her sweatshirt and wipes at her face.

Good friends give you mouthwash or a real hanky or something. Rub your back. Hawksley at least looks sympathetic when he says:

"You'd better not be crying because I'm angry, Sera."

Looks sympathetic. Sounds like he's making a request.

Serafíne

She doesn't expect him to come 'round the Porsche and she doesn't expect him after to stay but there's not much room for expectations inside her, just that flood of emotion, so some piece of her startled when gathers up her hair and that part of her very much wants to get hold of herself but the rest of her does not pause for much of anything.

The purging helps, though. With everything, and afterwards she feels both shaky and clarified and not at all like she needs to cry except in the seconds between the seconds where other seconds live and she's looking up at him, strangely abashed, when her golden head emerges from beneath the bulk of the sweatshirt as she shrugs it off, and she cannot quite meet his eyes except sometimes, when it feels so direct as to be startling, and talking about why she's crying just makes Sera - quite suddenly - want to cry again and he can see her tearing again but he can also see her bracing her shoulders and willing herself not to cry, and the effort that requires for her.

Sera shakes her head no. No, she's not crying because he's angry but she's not looking at him because she doesn't really know if it is true and doesn't know if he wants the truth or if that was just a please and doesn't know an awful lot of things right now, foremost of them is: whether she will ever feel clean again.

So: thinking thinking thinking, which is hard when everything inside you is wrong and bad and gross, but thinking and then she looks up at him, just kind of steals this glance and takes a deep deep breath and says very quietly, "Maybe a little bit. Not 'cos you're mad but because I made you mad. I'm sorry I won't - " breathbreathbreath " - cry anymore." Promising not to cry makes her want to cry but again she holds it back.

"You don't - you can just drop me off at home, okay? I'm sorry."

[-1 WP to not cry!]

Hawksley

That request was, in all sincerity, both a please stop crying, since he cannot handle it, but it was also a plea for his anger -- of all things -- to not be the thing that makes her weep so hard she pukes. That anger, given what she's told him, should be little more than a footnote.

The air outside is cool. This time of year, the sun sets and heat vanishes from the city and its outskirts. Perhaps it feels comforting on her face and her throat, perhaps it soothes. Perhaps it just tightens, chills, makes the ache worse. Hawksley, in shirt and jacket and his own everpresent warmth, doesn't feel it.

She looks abashed, and teary, and determined, and it all just makes him feel more shitty.

--

Hawksley's brow furrows a little deeper. He listens, because she always tells him the truth when she doesn't try to skip over thinking at all, and shakes his head. His hand reaches out, stroking a palm over the top of her head.

"Don't be dumb," he says, softer, though verbally more a direct order than his expressed hope that he wasn't the reason she was bawling. There's tenderness in those three words, murmured as they are. "I don't care if you cry, Sera." LIE. LIE. LIE. A neon sign appears in her magician's vision above his head, three arrows flashing as they point at his head, yelling LIE LIE LIE. It's okay, though. The truth is: he cares very much that she cries. Which is why he doesn't like it. Not one bit. Not at all.

"I just don't think me being mad or you making me mad is the thing worth crying over," he says, still quiet, still palming her head, stroking her thick bleached hair, scritching mildly at her scalp with his fingertips. He leans over, careful, and kisses her where her third eye should be, would be, is.

"Besides, I'm not even mad anymore."

Neon signs flash around his face again.

--

He doesn't tell her yes he'll take her home or stop saying sorry to me, jesus, what the fuck. He does help her fold back into the Porsche, and closes the door, and walks back around to the driver's side. Hawksley gets in. He looks over at her. There's no need to settle into those seats: they fold around him as close and supple as a lover. There's just the dome light fading off after the door closes, and his eyes maintaining some light even after they are back in darkness.

"I'm gonna take you to my place," he says quietly. "We'll wash up." He pauses a moment, thinking of what she's been through, how she looks right now. "You can be alone, if you want," he also says, just as quiet. "There's a million rooms." Or fifteen, minus the rooms Collins and Alicia and Hawksley sleep in. His eyebrows lift. "Maybe you can sweat it out, too. I've got the sauna and the steam room," which are different, of course. "Or swimming. Or we could dance or fence or sit outside. Or you can be alone," he says again, because he is not sure what she needs when the inside of her psyche is crawling with such filth. He is suddenly doubting that it was okay to touch her, earlier.

"Just don't cry because I'm angry," he asks her, again a plea more than an order. "Don't... apologize for crying, or for calling me. It just makes me think that you're not going to tell me what you really need right now."

Serafíne

Hawksley is right, later, when he is doubting whether it was okay to touch her. She didn't touch him when he pulled up in front of Pan's little house. Didn't kiss him. Didn't curl her hands through his hair. Didn't initiate any contact with him whatsoever and there was no conscious thought behind it, just this thread of a kind of dark, acquired certainty that she might be a carrier somehow. That she might spread this disease, whatever it is. That she might infect the people she touches, loves, admires, adores, with something that cannot be scrubbed away.

But she's too tired to flinch when reaches out and strokes the crown of her head or maybe she doesn't quite remember too and anyway she also needs that contact because, like most people in the goddamned world who fuck things up and live through loss and hurt themselves and the people they love and come back from those things, too, with new wisdom or new knowledge or new platitudes or new resentments or whatever gets them through, she's dumb sometimes.

He instructs her not to be, and does so with a quiet tenderness that makes her want to cry and he says that he doesn't care of she cries, which is a lie, and that he's not even angry anymore, which is also a lie, and both lies are so carefully and thoughtfully meant that now she looks teary and wretched and adoring rather than abashed and lifts her chin minutely when he bends to care-full-y kiss her over her third eye without even thinking about it. Closes her eyes as he comes close and kisses her brow, carefully, carefully.

And starts to cry again.

--

She's sorry, she's sorry, she doesn't tell him that she's sorry but she is and she can't stop him and what he may know or may not know, what he may sense or may not sense is that these tears are different, right. Clear, serous, not cloudy. Cleansing rather than infected, infectious.

Because he is so warm and so bright and so searing and so soaring and he burns so damned bright, the gesture and the kiss feel like a blessing from a sun-born, sun-burnt, sun-bright god and he comes away from without a trace of taint.

And by the time he has folded her back in to the Porsche and closed her door and circled the ar on that dark, deserted road, and sunk into the lover's embrace of his driver's seat she has dashed those last few leaking tears away and manages, you know, not to apologize to him again even though the urge is there, beneath her skin and kind of wraps itself around her spine, not urgent but present, because she's dumb, at least until he tells her what it does to him, when she says it.

Which does not excise the urge but gives her the space to understand why the fuck it isn't really okay (which explanation: also makes her want to cry)

"Drive the long way. Okay?"

A deep breath. She is telling him what he needs right now. Which is harder to do than most people know or understand.

"If I fall asleep in the car, let me sleep. Don't wake me up. Don't carry me in." He could, and she might never know it, she sleeps that deeply. "Just let me sleep. I'll come in when I wake up."

And she reaches out for his right hand with her left, which is also harder than most people can understand.

"And tell me why you're mad. Okay?"

Hawksley

Hawksley can't tell the difference between infected tears and cleansing tears. He really can't. What he can tell is that she isn't fighting the crying as much, doesn't look quite as lonely and miserable, and that changes his ability to tolerate it. He does kiss her, not knowing what sort of tears she's bringing, not realizing that she is terrified she will taint him with something, not knowing that when he straightens his back she can see that he is still fine. He is just as clean and just as bright and untouched and unassailable by the filth of this world as he was before he came near her.

So that must mean something, right?

--

There is this: a little shallow on empathy he may be, but Hawksley is more in tune with himself, on many levels, than a number of young men of his age and upbringing. He knows what he feels and he is so articulate, in so many languages, that it is little trouble for him to explain why he doesn't want her to be saying sorry, why he doesn't want her crying to be due to his frustration. Whether that means that her crying or saying sorry is or isn't okay, he doesn't hasten to judge. He just tells her the context:

when you X it makes me feel Y and I would like you to Z.

"Sure," he says, and puts on his seatbelt, and makes sure she has hers on, and he turns his eyes from her and starts to drive. As he starts to drive, she starts to speak. And what she asks for instantly makes him want to argue: that's totally dumb. She doesn't need to sleep in the car. But Hawksley doesn't argue. He just decides not to let her fall asleep in the first place. "Okay," he says, and it's not really a lie.

Her hand rests atop his, atop the gear shift. He opens his fingers so hers can rest between them. Her request makes his brow furrow. He thinks for a while, watching headlights on the dark roads.

"You should have shielded your mind before you tried to touch someone else's." There's a rising intensity, in the next few words, like he's forestalling argument: "I know you didn't know, okay? What he was. But that's all the more reason to protect yourself. Jesus. It's like us and condoms."

Saying that makes him think of fucking her. Vaguely, not even erotically, but it's there. "Which is also a little fucking stupid," he points out, not for the first or twentieth time. "But you know me. You trust me. But everyone else? Especially the people you don't know from Adam? You fucking protect yourself. So why the shit wouldn't you do that with your own mind?"

He breathes out through his nose. "That's why I'm angry. Because you're smarter than that, you're more powerful than that, you know better. There's a difference between experiencing life or trusting the universe or whatever and not having some self-preservation. And I'm just... pissed because it could have been a lot worse.

"And I don't care," he says, insistent, halfway, turning to glance at her for a second, "I don't care that there's one less fucking Fallen alive right now. I still don't think that Nephandus dying was even your fault, just a happy goddamn coincidence. Fucking karma, you know? But as bad as you feel now, it could have been so much worse. And thinking about that makes me want to... fucking throw up, I don't know."

His left hand grips the wheel, but he hasn't moved his right. He is staring ahead.

"So it fucking pisses me off."

Serafíne

The analogy is perfect. Bloody perfect, and he is ready for the argument that she didn't know and goes on and his voice rises and she says nothing, watching the road and the strangers' headlights hurtling toward them through the dark, then fading away in the rearview.

She listens and steals a glance at his profile and frowns a bit in a way that could easily be read as thoughtful rather than miserable except that she is miserable and that infects everything she does but he: has his hands on the wheel and his eyes where they belong on the road so he probably cannot see it and he cannot tell the difference between one kind of tears and another but he can read her body language, her presence in the space, and this time she seems wholly capable of bearing his anger. Of living beside it.

She doesn't break down into tears at all.

"I never - " a pause, a breath, she's looking for words and they are both limited and limiting, "thought about it like that, it makes perfect sense. You know? Like. I never even thought of it at all. A mindshield like safe sex."

This note of breathy humor that is not really humored, just a noise she makes,

"I can apologize for that right?" And she really is asking him, and she really does want to and thinks that this is a perfectly valid and reasonable request. A little while later, a little further down the road:

"Thank you for telling me."

Hawksley

Now that's awesome. He came up with an analogy on the fly and it's totally perfect. He flicks his eyes over at her, noting the humor, or the pretense of it, and hoping.

"Apologize to yourself," he says, and it isn't mean to be as flippant or as dismissive as it sounds. Just a turning around, not a deflection but a reflection: ultimately that's what he thinks. "You're the one you owe it to."

Not him.

His fingers sqeeze hers on the gear shift. He exhales, more slowly. "Me getting mad is like you crying. It's just fucking coping with something completely fucked up."

Serafíne

Sera doesn't know what to do with it when Hawksley tells her to apologize to herself. It makes something else that has nothing to do with any of this catch inside her and she closes her eyes and feels it, strange and nameless and unsettled and knows she has to do something about it, perhaps as soon as she recovers from this.

I might cry a lot, you know?" Which, naturally, makes her want to cry and she kinda holds it in and it kinda shows in her eyes but he's kinda driving so Hawksley better have his eyes on the road.

She squeezes his hand back. You know, just a little, because she is still suck beside and within and around the conviction that she might taint him somehow. "For a little while. I know it's dumb but I feel like there's something wrong with me. Something tainted. Infected, or infectious, or something. And it scares me, and it feels like it's never going to go away.

"Even if it probably will."

Hawksley

That makes his brow furrow, deeply. He doesn't take his eyes off the road, turning as he is in the dark, but he shakes his head a little. "Feels are real but they aren't reality. Reality isn't even real. Will is reality. Even subconscious will. The more time and energy you give this feeling that there's something wrong with you, the more power it will have. You'll imbue it."

He does glance at her, so brief, as the road straightens on ahead. "I know this all just happened and you're just having feelings and you just said you know it'll probably go away, but... make sure it does. Exorcise it. It doesn't belong to you. It isn't of you. It was summoned," he doesn't point out that this is because she didn't ceremonially encircle herself with protection again, because she gets that, "and it left a mark. But it did not come from you and it is not part of you. It isn't a cancer. It isn't alive,"

like cancer is alive, devouring, demanding,

"and that feeling, or that mark, or that taint, isn't natural to you and won't become so." He pauses a moment, a stillness in that car as it moves so very, very fast. "Exorcise it. Ritually or however you do it. Do it in a way you believe in, but do it. Just ignoring it or pretending it's already gone won't do any more good than wallowing in it." Hawksley shakes his head. "Just do something that makes you feel clean. Even if that feeling only lasts a little while after the ritual. Then do it again. However much you need to. Imbue that with your time and attention and energy. Give that cleansing, whatever form it takes, your power. And it will be as real, and as strong, as the feeling you have now. Realer. Stronger."

Serafíne

Sera does not do ritual. She does: feelings. That's it, full stop. She doesn't even bother with yoga like Jim or what the fuck ever other strangers do, she just feels things and wills them and hey, we're done.

But she must know better than to argue about ritual with a Hermetic, so she doesn't, not really. Just listens to him with her hand over his as he grips the gearshift to change gears and his tendons are all flexing with the motion. Listens to the engine and the subtle thread of road noise and night outside and the hum of traffic somewhere close, around the curve, down the flats.

"It's not the same for me," she tells him, rather gently, though being so deliberately gentle with him makes her want to cry again and there it is.

"I kind of have to suffer through it. Feel it rise, and feel it ebb, and feel it leave. And I will probably cry alot, so I want you to be prepared.

Hawksley

"I know," he says, interruptive, when she says it's not the same. He knows it isn't. They don't always speak the same language. Or rather: the same dialect.

There is a kneejerk reaction to what she says next that he doesn't voice. He just looks forward, driving. "Do what you need to do," he says eventually, quietly. And that is all.

--

Hawksley drives until they reach his house. It isn't downtown. It isn't in Aurora. It's in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the entire country. It's a house -- a mansion -- that is unreasonably large, unnecessarily large. God only knows why Hawksley has such a house, with all its rooms. Why he has so much that he can surely never enjoy entirely on his own. No one asks him. He doesn't feel the need to explain himself to anyone. It doesn't occur to him to consider how he appears to others; certainly not people who don't matter.

Which is most people.

He doesn't stop her, as he had sort of promised himself, if she falls asleep. He just drives inward, into the garage off to the side, til the engine cuts. Til the lights go out.

Serafíne

He doesn't say anything else. Neither does she.

Maybe she cries a little bit more which sucks but these are also a different sort of tears. Not cleansing, and not clarified, but not wretched, wracking sobs either. Sera can cry a thousand different ways. There are as many nuances to her tears at there are nuances to her kisses and she gives herself over to them all, so very easily.

The tears stop. Her breathing shifts. They are on: some street that is not quite his own, but is not far from it, when her hand goes slack on his and slips downward and her head lolls to the side until her shaved brow comes to rest on the passenger's window. Breath fogging the cool glass. It's good. It's better. She doesn't even need to attempt small magicks to soothe herself when her will is at its low ebb. She just needs to be there. The car moves. Moves her from place to place, takes them from here way back over to there and allows her to be many places at the same time, which is another kind of miracle.

The rhythm and the movement and the engine hum and her teary-eyed exhaustion and her ridiculous get-up and on and on conspire to lull her into that sleep that she might not otherwise have achieved tonight.

And she doesn't wake up when he turns onto his street, or pulls through his gate, or eases the Porsche into its garage. Doesn't wake when he kills the engine, or when the headlights fade.

This is what she wanted. To sleep, maybe even to dream, not surrounded by death.

And maybe - just maybe - he lets her.

Hawksley

There are tears. And lots of them. And Hawksley has gone so quiet, and is looking forward more than he looks at her, and he notices when her hand relaxes. He looks at her then, as she drifts off. He frowns, because the truth is: the glass is cold and the world outside is cold, too. It's autumn. It's nightfall. He sighs.

He reassures himself that he never promised her shit. Not to let her have whatever she wants, and not even to be there, caring for her, when she cries

and cries

and cries,

and lets something awful work its way through her like an illness she can't fight but can only get over. He makes her few promises. Come to think of it, he can't think of a single one he's made her off the top of his head. Not explicitly.

--

The car stops, and he looks at her, and then he gets out. He comes around to the passenger side and opens the door, and reaches in, unbuckling her. Perhaps she wakes. But he ends up lifting her, arm under her knees and around her, under her arms. She is not the heaviest weight he's lifted. He leaves her grotesque sweater where it is and bumps the door closed with his heel.

She is going to be taken inside. And taken to some room, it hardly matters what room, because it is not his but not far from his. Some dark room with a bed that is unmade and only a little furniture that is dustcovered, including a settee that is softer than it needs to be. Hawksley will set her down, in this cool but not cold room, dark and mostly empty but clean. On a settee that is softer than it needs to be. With his tuxedo jacket laid over her.

With Collins, summoned in the dead of night to get the sweater and have it cleaned, set out toiletries in the adjoining bathroom for Miss Sera, and arrange breakfast for her the following morning.

It is Collins who does these things. Collins who brings a real blanket to Sera, without removing Hawksley's jacket. Collins who puts a small wastebin near the settee, a small table with a bottle of water. Collins who ensures, since Hawksley forgot, that the vents in the room will let warm air in.

Hawksley leaves her alone, then. to sleep. To cry. To vomit. Whatever it is she needs. He is relatively convinced that what she needs is not necessarily him.