It's Sid, isn't it?

Serafíne

Days and weeks and months; even close to a pair of seasons, all have passed since the last time Sera showed up in the weedy parking lot of a certain nameless motel somewhere on the ringed outskirts of Denver. Beyond the first blush of the city's growth, near some crossroads that has become - not obsolete, but different - since the structure was first built. Sometime in the 1950s, maybe. Back when a cross-county trip meant 55 MPH on two lane roads dotted with diners and truck-stops and two-story motels with concrete pools sunk into the tarmac, surrounded by chainlink fences. The remnants of the chainlink fence are still there but the pool has been infilled and now the place is filled not with tourists and truckers, but mostly with families of low-wage workers either too transient or too poor to invest in an actual goddamned lease.

Those folks and Jim.

The sun's out and in March the weather swings wildly and today there is a certain biting chill in the air, but still the neighbor's kids are out in the parking lot, kicking a soccer ball back and forth as a certain tattooed man turns a certain non-descript Econoline van into a certain parking spot near the door to a certain room. Which still tastes like Jim: his stoic and addled and psychedelic resonance is soaked into the bones of the place. The drywall and the lathe, the metal girders and concrete footers, the threadbare carpet and the grout and tile. Sera slides out of the passenger's door of the van and for a long moment, she just stands there. Looking around the parking lot, watching the slant of light across the blacktop, the way the children's lengthening shadows tangle as they play.

--

If he is awake and his senses are open, he has to know who's there. There's no mistaking her resonance, that tangle of base instinct and fascination. There is also a new note: some sense of doors; of passageways; of thresholds: between, see? Liminal.

She's here.

It's been a while.

She's here and she can feel him right? And she can taste the remnants of whatever dream she had this night last in the back of her throat. Tangled up with sleep and her own memories and a certain subdural something she refuses to consider or name.

She lights a cigarette, Sera. The paper is deep blue, the tobacco spiked with cloves. The smoke sweet and crackling and a little bit noxious. She doesn't inhale as deeply as she would a joint. Holds the smoke in her mouth more than her lungs and mostly lets it go, though sometimes she breathes it all the way in, then exhales through her nostrils. Like a dragon.

She's out there for five minutes or so. Eight maybe. Just standing in the parking lot smoking and watching the smoke curl and drift in the afternoon light.

Not long after she arrives, though, there's a knock at his door.

Jim

It would be hard to call Jim a dreamer or pin him down as a pessimist or optimist. An idealist? Surely. But he's the type to be mindful and contemplative when awake. The last time she had seen him it had been in the depths of stupor. That hasn't set in an he's not so sure it will.

But laid out on that bed in the silence of his hermitage, unsure if he's awake or asleep, his mind wanders. It remembers things. People. Places. It journeys your time and when he senses the aura that accompanies Serafine's presence it takes a few minutes to realize it's not imagined. Not one of many memories he's drifting through and considering in a how-did-I-get-here sort of haze.

The needles didn't break off in his arm. That's a good sign. As he staggers toward the present it's the pain of the rubber tube still tying off his arm that serves as lighthouse toward temporal shores. By the time he's sat up and pulled it free he hears the knocking. Pulls down the long sleeves of that chunky bird's eye sweater and squints to see if the door is even locked.

Of course it is.

Stand.

He wills it and though his body protests as much as his will does to fuel it he finds his footing and makes his way. Hand on the door handle and he pulls it open.

Jim doesn't look like he wants to stay inside. He looks like he's going to come through that door and maybe take up space on the lawn furniture pulled up in front of his room. But he doesn't. He doesn't look up at Serafine to greet her, but he does look sideways at the children through the man-sized crack he'd created in the doorway.

Jim decides not to subject them to his appearance. Infectious human waste is how he looks and he looks at the van next where Dan is waiting.

“He knows he can come inside, right?”

Jim's eyes look raw from saline and the bags under them are hobo sized. Otherwise his face looks despondent.

"Long time no see, sweet cheeks," turning around before she can answer his question.

"Fuck. Deja vu. Was all that a dream?" A dry chuckle and an honest-to-God smile.

Serafíne

"'Course he does," Sera assures him. Half visible through the slice of light between the door and the frame, or not precisely visible at all, as he glances past her to find the tracer trails of the kids bouncing hte soccer ball back and forth. Her voice is low; there's a sort of living affection stitched into the words themselves and she throws a glance back over her shoulder at the van and the consor who has nursed her through a helluva lot. Catches sight of him as she catches the edge of the door to the motel room and pulls it open wide enough to slip inside behind him. "He's just circumspect. Plus he probably wants to play some fucking football."

Sera pulls the door closed and there goes that slice of daylight. Jim's already turned around and looks like hell but she's behind him, and she doesn't seem to care how he looks or what he smells like or any of it, because she wraps her arms around him from behind and presses her face against his shoulder blade and inhales it all. The sour ache and the stale salt and everything in and around and beneath it.

Smiles and he can feel that when she hears the honest-to-God smile in his voice.

"Fuck if I know," she returns, smoke in her hair and in her voice. The bridge of her nose braced against the collar of his sweater. "All I know is the fucking finale scared me and you look like hell and I have missed the fuck out of you. All what?"

Then she lets him go at last; lifts her eyes from some nebulous, out of focus view of his cheated profile to take in the state of the room.

Jim

The room looks clean. The sheets are a rumple with a slight swirl of a fit where he fell upon them, but he hadn't crawled under the comforter and the pillows are sitting in neat little stacks where two people can rest their heads. There's no ash tray. There aren't any empty bottles. There are two stacks of books, and judging by the spines they're Read and Unread. The ones in the latter are weathered with stains and rumples from rain but otherwise well taken care of.

Then there's the tube on the floor at the foot of the bed. There're the syringes and the works open and that's where he's aiming to walk as soon as he notices them. Zipping the little mouth of a bag closed with the retrieved needles.

Or at least that's what he was aiming to do before she hugs him. He takes it like he's an inanimate object at first and then eases back like at least he's a tree in the wind and then lets go and truly melts into it like a pet might at getting scratched or pet.

And then she lets go and he moves on, answering as he sets about his task.

"Everything working. It's like I closed my eyes after the last time I saw you, and a wonderful dream happened, and then I woke up and the world was worse for none of it being real," chewing his lip at the end of it, like he's thinking, like he's really trying to figure out if he can make it all that.

But dreams are more easily forgotten.

"Don't worry about it. What did you see?" Suddenly curious. Looking half-over his shoulder at her, but then focusing on his hands, putting them to work finding the bottle of water he's mixed the heroin with and this time using it to refresh himself rather than help as a medium for narcotics.

Serafíne

Really, when Jim melts into the hug Sera holds him and holds him and holds him as long as she can or as long as he requires. The moment hangs; gets caught against itself, hooked in place, not precisely repeated but held and held and held and doesn't it feel like the magic of holding your breath, that suspension, except time does not fucking matter, and so no one turns blue.

The the moment changes. Jim continues his path through the room. Sera sort of half-flings herself on the edge of one of the beds, tucking a her left leg beneath her body, shrugging off her jacket. She's wearing something ridiculous beneath it, a cropped white t-shirt (THE RAINCOATS) over a crimson bra, cut-offs nevermind the weather, seamed, thigh-high fishnets (naturally a bit torn here and there) held up with garters. Heels that make her sway a bit when she walks, which she kicks off as she settles on the edge of the bed.

Taking in the needles and the tubing with a look that is remarkably thoughtful for a Sera before her gaze is back on him. Lifting to trace the motion of his shoulder joint as he reaches for the water bottle before settling on his face again.

She listens to him, Sera. Tastes his words in the back of her throat. Everything working, he says and there's a shadow or something across her eyes. The dream between the last time she saw him, and this one. There's blood in it for her, in the back of her throat. Something soft, for him, in her eyes.

Perhaps it is sorrow; maybe it is love. Maybe it is everything, all tangled up together. Isn't that the way it always is?

"I don't know - " The t-shirt is a bit oversized, the collar all stretched out, the V-neck torn. "A different ending to this visit maybe. Or a half-dozen different slices of possibilities. You, in a room with a half-dozen doors, not all of which led back here.

"The choice you had to make; in a place where it was hard to make one."

Her eyes, dark in the shadows of the motel room, drop from his countenance to the paraphanalia he is gathering up. Linger there, as she tongues the roof of her mouth.

Thinks of the tracks on a certain priest's arms.

"I didn't know you were into narcotics." Quietly. "I'm glad you came back to us."

Jim

[ Perception + Awareness ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Jim

“Everyone is into narcotics. Anyone who isn't just hasn't tried them yet,” continuing down a more humorous line of dialogue because it's preferable to anything contemplative and topical and contemporaneous.

The little case gets tucked away in a slid open then shut drawer. He hooks his forefingers into the belt loops of his jeans, not so crisp as they usually are (very much lived in), and then he tugs them up around his waist as if he's tidying himself up. Tussled what there is of his hair and then...

“You're different.” Yes. Make it about her. That's easy. And he doesn't have to be ingenuous to do so. He opens himself up to feel it. To soak it up. For a moment she seems both in focus and sharp. A blur of movement and both existent here and elsewhere. His eyes open a bit wider and it's only then he actually turns around to look where she has perched herself on tufted bed corner. Finds a seat in one of the easy chairs and keeps looking at her.

For an explanation.

Serafíne

Her eyes are on him; always in that quick way that she has - the place where the skin comes alive; the place where the nails start to bleed - and there's light behind. Last afternoon sun cutting in between the curtains, illuminating these drifting motes of dust in the air, and the three-quarters halo she has of dyed blond curls in a way that only emphasizes the dark roots, the shaved fringe over her right ear.

He makes it about her. That's easy and she's watching him, see and she turns her face a bit so that her features are not entirely in shadow. The light catches the apex of her cheekbone and cuts aslant down to the delicate line of her jaw. She has a large spike and a whole colony of studs, chains, pins and the like skewered through the lobe and cartilage of her right ear. The tattoo of a small black triangle tucked just behind.

She's watching him and there's something in her expression that is a kind of assent. He can change the subject. She'll allow it, if that's what he needs. But she hasn't forgotten about him, and she never will.

"A few weeks ago, yeah. I went seeking. Apparently I also had a fucking seizure and cracked open my head which fucked up his night," a wry gesture of her head outside. Indicating, of course, Dan. " - but he survived."

"So did I. She kinda tricked me into it." This quick and supple curve of her shoulder. "My avatar, you know? I guess she thought it was time."

Jim

"If you found something on the other side she must have been right," and Jim says this with a bit of reverence. He's not talking about Serafine. He's talking about that piece of the Eternal Moment inside her. The well that nourished the bud that sat opening in front of him.

Jim's stubble and mustache look like they'd grown into a beard long ago. The colors are patchwork. Lighter and darker blonds and browns though they're symmetric to the sides of his face and it gives him the look of a young billy goat. A satyr if he were a bit more enlivened in this moment. There's not much exuberance. None at all. None of the yearning for life.

Though he'd wanted it enough to stay here. To come back to them, as she'd said, and put his suffering somewhere he could contend with it instead of running from it.

"I'm sure it did more than fuck up his night. You know how much he cares," nodding like he knows she knows, it wasn't worth saying, but he'd seen it in every interaction he'd had with Dan. When she'd been gone especially.

"I thought I was almost there," his own toss of his head, as if he's going back to her mention of a walkabout that had taken her to another echelon of understanding. A better point of view. Epiphany and enlightenment continued. "But sometimes you slip. Sometimes you get to the peak and there's just a hundred more waiting in your way," a very un-Jim way to think about it.

"Stuck."

Serafíne

Sera should have a drink or something in hand. Bottles fit naturally into the lacing of her fingers. A drink or a cigarette or a joint. But nothing, so she sits with her hands folded sort of in her lap, laced together, and gives him another strange, one-shouldered shrug, that is oddly abashed. Breathes out a laugh a moment later, murmurs a quiet, "He takes care of me," as Jim mentions Dan, without really interrupting his pattern of thought.

She's rather sober, all things considered.

It feels quietly strange, in its own sometimes lovely way.

There feels like something beneath her tongue, something stange, a stone or a secret, the sort that could lodge like a lump in the back of her throat, or be swallowed down and metamorphasize into something else. A seed. An egg. A bolder. A sun.

Her mouth is closed around that idea; her lips pressed together and she is breathing quietly through her nose but then she sort of holds her breath, still see. Drawn in on the cusp of an inhale and -

oh. Oh.

Stuck is the strangest word to hear on Jim's lips. From Jim's mouth.

"I don't think about it. You know? Or much of anything, sometimes. Maybe that's my fucking problem. I don't think of it as a climb. Or work at all.

"I just am, I guess. For better or worse, and maybe sometimes a whole lot worse." Her eyes have drifted from his, to the edge of the mirror affixed to the wall above the sink, at the far end of the room. The window and the curtains reflected there; a slice of light surrounded by vaguely moving darkness.

"Worse is okay, too, you know?" And there's a kind of tightness in her chest, then. For herself, see. For him, too. For so many nameless others. Her breath feels clipped and her throat a bit raw and the sting of tears in the back of her eyes, but they don't spill. They just linger there. "When I got out," a pause, then a rather comme-ci, comme-ca correction of the phrase, "when they got me out, I was worse for a long fucking time. Should've come to see you, maybe. I didn't. I just think, worse is okay, too."

The sparest of smiles.

"It's Sid, isn't it?"

He knows, somehow, from her voice or her manner, that he doesn't have to say anything he doesn't want to say. That he doesn't have to say a goddamned word.

Jim

"It's always Sid. It's always been Sid. But it won't be anymore and it won't be ever again," a finality to what he's said. Not a book end. A book slammed shut out of frustration and sadness. It wells up inside him without any precursor that it's coming other than Serafine's utterance of a name. The only thing that's not there is anger.

Alright, it's barely there, but no more so than one would expect. It's not overwhelming. It doesn't twist into anything ugly. No, his lips only twist in sadness and his head only hangs because there's no life in it. A cut flower drooping. A tired dog's head lolling. All that was there is drained out of him.

Jim has given a lot. Jim hasn't taken anything. And it has left him in this state. Undone. A doll without any stuffing. He melts into the upholstery of that cheap recliner the same way he'd eventually melted back into her moment earlier, but it's easier because it's inanimate. Just him and it and Serafine to look at over there. Over there on the other side of the space between them.

“It wasn't ever going to work. I wish I'd known that going in. But,” a beat, “but,” repeated, “whatever. It's whatever,” and it's another one of those words that doesn't sound right coming out of Jim's mouth. Not from those lips that cared so much, even if it was about a dozen things at once. Even his stoicism came with a purpose. It gave his addled mind purpose. Made sense out of the menagerie of ideas and strange directions it could race in from one moment to the next.

“I use to feel like I had balance. Now I just feel like I'm getting pulled in every direction. My head feels so cluttered with thoughts I can't finish,” looking to her for an answer to a question he hasn't asked.

Serafíne

There is a very strange clarity to Sera in these moments; a distilled compassion, a compressed understanding. She is still and her eyes are on him and there's no warning except one word, a name and there's Jim and god, and by the gods, some part of her is briefly, incandescently ferocious when she sees him drooping like that; melting into the goddamned armchair, emptied out.

She's on her feet a moment later. Stockinged feet on the threadbare carpet and he knows without needing to read the branching paths of the near-future that she is going to come over to him. That she is going to put her arms around him. That she is going to give him whatever she can give him even if she does not know what that is; or what he requires; or how to make him - or herself - or fucking anyone whole.

They've done this before, haven't they? No wonder, she thinks - and this is absurd, the way the thought floats to the surface of her mind, an echo loosed or a promise kept as she pauses to yank open the minifridge in search of something to drink. Maybe a bottle of whiskey; maybe a bottle of cans of beer. - no wonder, she thinks, he said, Dejavu.

Barefoot, Sera has even more of a swagger about her, without the heels to get in the way, to foreshorten her stride. It is masculine, really, that gait: she means to take up space the world itself did not see fit to give her. Her gleanings, whatever they may be, she sets down on the sidetable beside Jim's armchair, circles around to plant a kiss on the crown of Jim's head, then finishes her circuit to settle her own ass on the other arm of the chair. Loops her own arm up and around his shoulders, hand open to brace herself against the cushion as she bends down to press her mouth against his temple,

and that kiss lingers. Thoughtful, warm. Infusing.

Aching, too. Aching, probably, but steady within the frame of that ache, and fierce, in her way.

"It's not whatever, Jim. Maybe it's what was, but it's not whatever."

If she could tear all that sorrow and misdirection out of his body with her teeth, just bloody rend it, she would.

She would.

But she can't.

So she kisses him. Hums against his skin in a way that feels like magic, though it isn't. Not now, not yet, but soon, perhaps.

"I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. Sorry it didn't work. Sorry it wasn't ever going to work. Sorry you didn't fucking know. I'm sorry that you're hurting. Sorry that your head's cluttered and your balance is gone. All that shit.

"I don't fucking know. Maybe you shouldn't even be in your goddamned head right now. Maybe you should just be in your heart.

"It's okay to hurt.

"I'll be here as long as you need."

Jim

Jim is quiet as she speaks. As she consoles him. She doens't only try to, but succeeds, at least in demonstrating that she cares and giving him something to focus on other than himself and his own feelings in this moment. Like most traumas, talking about it can only help, especially when it's to an open and receptive ear. It doesn't mend anything, but a few moments' respite is better than nothing.

What Serafine had found was a bottle of wine with a seal on it and a bottle of whiskey with the cork in it and she most likely goes for the latter.

Serafine most definitely goes for the latter.

And then Serafine's lips are bunched together and still manage to breath fire onto his temple. It washes over him and feels almost too familiar. He doesn't squirm, though, because the contact is as hard to resist as any addiction.

She says she'll be there and, “Thank you,” is what he can offer back. That and another smile, one that isn't at his own expense, and that's something she's actually given him.

Jim is the one that reaches for the bottle from the chair and opens it. The cork makes a thin thud of a noise and then sloshes as he tips it back without a glass.

ShockDrop

Going Hollywood

[[Rules! (These will be clean and easy 'cause it's not like AHHHHHH movie madness)

1. No posting order, just post once for one-a mine.

2. Be as timely as you can. I'm not gonna set a hard limit for this one because it's not AHHH movie madness kind, but try to not take too terribly long.

3. I do not anticipate physical risk. It could happen, but that is entirely dependent on y'all. Any other risk/ramifications are on the table.

4. PM flaws/personal triggers/phobias/all the usual because I can barely remember my own, much less anyone else's!

5. First post coming!]]

Going Hollywood

ShockDrop Films' main offices, the trio learn when Serafine sets up the meeting, are not located in Denver proper but in Littleton. The directions that they get the studio offices are nice and easy to follow and take them into the commercial zone of the city, nestled near Littleton Children's Hospital and just down the street from a shopping center.

As they pull up to the building, they see the building sitting back behind a gate in the middle of the parking lot, with a white parking garage on one side and an unrelated office building on the left. The trio have to buzz in from the gate, where a woman's voice ith a vaguely nasal tone asks them their name and their business. Once that is provided the door buzzes and clicks unlocked, granting them access to the courtyard from which the various buildings--business offices, soundstage and a small DVD production building--can be accessed.

The front of the main office building seems an odd fit for the rest of the buildings in here; it's older than the rest and doesn't look like it was originally a commercial building but rather perhaps some old government offices, probably abandoned a good twenty years ago or more. The main entrance is obvious and easy to find and when they walk inside, they are treated to an interior that--compared to the outside--is ultra-modern. It's all glass and cool colors, with some standard (fairly uncomfortable-looking) padded chairs and a large desk behind which a young woman sits in front of the ShockDrop logo. The woman is attractive but certainly not to the point of being a looker; she is the sort that is perfect for a secretary gig in that she is pleasing to look at and charming (at least in the way she looks up and smiles), but not distracting in her comeliness.

That smile is turned on the trio when they walk in. "Welcome to ShockDrop Studios. You have an appointment?"

Jim Thompson

They would both notice the difference in Jim's carriage and demeanor when they transition from inside the car to walking up and inside the building the production company is located at. After a final squeeze of Sid's hand, the other withdrawing from where it's draped on Serafine's shoulder, the warmth melts away. Or it might be more apt to say it solidifies to stone. Cold and uncaring. The kind of look that gets you through years behind bars. The kind of look you learn if you're lucky to survive those years. No smile. No frown. Nothing that could be misconstrued as a show of weakness.

(Read: Emotion.)

Holding the eyes of those they pass. Just long enough to acknowledge them and force them to acknowledge him. Not sitting because it's a prone position. Stalking behind the two women he accompanies because he wouldn't give anyone his back if it isn't in the line from the yard or to get a tray of slop.

And casual about it because to look too cautious might make you look scared. No, he doesn't look scared.

He might be. There are real reasons for the ruse. Real reasons he doesn't want to make either of them look important to him. Because both of them are and that could be used against him and them.

So his legs, encased in crisp jeans, part when he sets his stance in the middle of that office lobby. And his blue short-sleeve shirt buttoned up to his neck strains when he folds his arms over his chest. And his jaw, now dripping with stubble turning quickly into a beard, ripples along his temple when he sets it, his lips a flat line under his bristling mustache and his baby blue eyes no longer so inviting.

[ Manipulation + Subterfuge. Specialty: Criminal Mind. ]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Sid Rhodes

Somewhere between that afternoon drinking alcoholic root beer floats and eating red velvet cake and now, Sid changed her mind about not going with the Cultists to the ShockDrop Studios office in Littleton. She worries, see, is paranoid. And they are hers, her people, both of them, and all she could think of were all the ways that something could go wrong tonight, when they went to set a meeting that should be ordinary in everywhere. She didn't change her mind because she thought she would be particularly useful. Strangers still make her go all quiet and close in on herself, and she's not particularly adept and warping reality with her will (yet). But at least she'll be there, at least she'll be with them, at least she'll know if something goes wrong.

And who knows, perhaps a pair of keen, bespectacled eyes will come in useful.

So, right after work she drove to pick up Jim or go straight to Sera's however it worked out. She climbed into Sera's vehicle. And during the drive she reached out to touch them. Hold a hand, brush an elbow, be comforted by their physical proximity, because soon

they step out of the car and she pulls away. Let's Jim's carriage shift, let's Sera take the lead. Straight from work, she's dressed in a green, low cut t-shirt that cuts a little low (but not as low as it feels) that reads ROSEWOOD TAVERN with a lot of decorative scrollwork in purposely faded white, a brown pleated skirt that falls just above her knees and brown boots that rise up just below her kneecaps. Her hair is twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck, some length left to fall between her shoulder blades. Her glasses are small and cats-eyed. She looks pretty. She looks like someone's assistant.

Because she is. Just not Sera's. Not really.

She walks ahead of Jim and a little behind Sera. She looks a little nervous, because it's rare that Sid doesn't look a little nervous, but she tries not to look like a skittish, timid, terrified animal.

And, as usual, her mind is open to the workings of the world around her.

[because of course: percept (paranoid: because of course) + awareness]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

It is daylight, right? That's when you have meetings in offices with people who have official corporate-speak gibberish titles like CFO. Serafíne, quite literally, does not know what those titles mean. Does not really care either and probably has not thought about it as much as you'd prefer that she think about it before they arrive at the offices in Littleton. Pull up outside in that old Jeep she bought way-back-when to drive back and forth to the cabin in the woods where they stashed Leah, which she has kept in the old garage behind Dee's big old house and brings out only occasionally.

Sera isn't driving. It's Sid or Jim behind the wheel because Sera started the day with just enough hashish to get her high and get her mellow and get her charming and get her to the point where the borders between her skin and her mind and the stream-of-life were sliding-bright, porous, real-and-unreal.

"Yeah," that Sera, with the quick edge of her razor-grin as she saunters right up to the receptionist's desk and braces her arms on the counter-height ledge. If there is one.

If not she might well sit her ass on the edge of the secretary's desk. "An appointment or something, though fuck me if I can remember who with. Thought it was going to be Keller but I hear he's gone all incommunicado or whatever. So whoever, yeah."

She is difficult to ignore and hard to forget, Sera, though the sudden onset of fall-fuck-it's-actually-winter means that she has put on a coat. So: miniscule black dress covered in a white floral pattern, a loose cardigan or something in a snakeskin print, beneath a sherpa-lined leather jacket, which is in turn covered with spikes and zippers and finished off by a pin that promises that ROLLER KING IS COMING.

Accessorized by fishnets and peep-toed silver-heeled booties, with spike-covered bracelets and a leather choker and a longer necklance with a rather-large skeleton crystal-eyed skull that falls, wrists stacked with bracelets that disappear beneath the cuffs of the coat. And on and on.

Looks a little high because she is. Smells like cloves and tobacco and maybe just a bit like whiskey, and sandalwood and patchouli. Because that's the way Seras smell.

Serafíne

Perception + Awareness

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

Serafíne

Reroll that 10!

Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (1, 10) ( success x 1 ) Re-rolls: 1

Going Hollywood

[[Sera, of course, senses Jim and Sid and their Resonance, but that goes without saying. But she is also incredibly tuned in at the moment, and she is actually able to pick up on something else...residual magic. There is a sense of something...insidious, perhaps, long since gone though. Or not powerful and more recent. There is another Resonance that is a bit stronger...it whirls manically in her brain, explodes like a firework. But it's also faint, more like a cap gun now. And one last one, recent, it's the deatlhly pallor of Jhor.]]

Going Hollywood

The secretary, whose name according to the placard on the dest the way is Melissa, is brisk and polite, even friendly as she looks the trio over. Jim's sullen, jaw-set attitude doesn't phase her; Sera's...shall we say, chemical enhancement odor doesn't cause a single twitch of the eye or wrinkle of the nose and Sid's inherant nervousness and shyness doesn't make her narrow her eyes in suspicion or put her heart out there for the Orphan, for that matter. After all, she's a receptionist at a film studio (albeit one that, before all the news hit, few people had ever heard of); that means she deals with artists. And Sera gives off that attitude, and the others seem like other professionals and hanger-ons, or perhaps security.

"No problem," she says, and you can almost (but not quite) hear an exclamation point at the end in the slight elongation of the No, the quick finish of the problem and the rise and fall of her tone in just those two words. She starts to type away on her computer, the clickety-clack of sharply-manicured fingernails on keys as she speaks.

"Mister Keller is unfortunately not available at the moment, he's taking a bit of a leave of absence. Mister Gilbert and Miss Carole are taking all of his meetings at the moment together, so just let me seeeee heeeere..."

Clickety-clickety-clickety-clack as she keeps her eyes peeled to the screen. Melissa is a good secretary and she is quite efficient at her job; it doesn't take long before she nods.

"Miss Davies, yes?" She looks at Sera and smiles. "Mister Gilbert and Miss Carole will be right with you. If you just have a seat, I'll let them know you're here."

Jim Thompson

Jim still doesn't sit. Instead he lets himself unfurl into the space. Mentally and inwardly rather than outwardly. A moment of mindfulness. Of the colors and decoration, ultra-modern stuffed into a building that definitely wasn't. Of his own breathing, Serafine and Sid's, even of Melissa. The click clack of her keys on the keyboard, paying attention to the way her voice rises and falls at her answer of Serafine's questions.

They're given names of more people that are going to be coming and going from the place and if she hadn't been perturbed at his presence or any of their appearances, she might not notice this. Planting his ass into one of the chairs he takes out a flask and takes a long pull out of it. If he's security there's nothing professional about that, but there's nothing professional about the man he seems to be either way. Another sip, quick as that, and then another pull and he has downed more than half of the hefty aluminum container so that no longer full it sloshes as he slips it back into his back pocket.

Social lubricant. And when he can't have a tab of acid on his tongue or the dulling effects of something rolled and smoked, oh, it will do in a punch. The working of a spirit-lightened will will come later, when it has others to carouse with or try to pluck information from, for now he just repeats the names, "Gilbert and Carole. I guess it is going to be a fuckin' musical," teeth grit and a hiss of whiskey-scented air as he exhales.

"You told me we were workin' with Keller, Essie," like it's a nickname for the woman who brought him here and had been doing most of the talking up until now. "Now I got to meet more suits?"

And rounding on Melissa a moment later, because who knows how many more moments they'll have before the other two show up.

"Leave of absence? Where to and until when? If you don't mind me asking," emphasis on the you don't. Or at least ought not to.

Going Hollywood

Mellissa smiles politely and oh-so-charmingly to Jim, with just a little hint of apology in her tone and her expression. True story: she wanted to be an artist at some point herself. She has a script that she's sent around to all the majors and it got rejected by every one of them, but she is hoping it can find a place here.

Even if it's not their usual stuff. It's a love story. Just...a love story about a Pharoah raised from the dead in 1910 England and a archeologist who slips backward in time. Why wouldn't anyone want to read that?

"I'm sorry, sir, but I honestly haven't been told the answer to that. Mister Gilbert and Miss Carole will know more than me."

Going Hollywood

[[See that. Not read that. I know ze words and what zey mean.]]

Sid Rhodes

Jim unfurls into the space. Sid seems to be trying to take up as little as possible. In the time it takes him to get around to planting his ass, she's already sitting, spine straight, hands resting on her knees. Looking around. Tight-lipped and silent. Maybe she's a writer or maybe she's something else. A groupie-friend of Sera's to keep an eye on her, make sure that she doesn't get herself into too much trouble. Something.

The man across from her - because she does not sit close to him, makes it clear she thinks they're separate - pulls out a flask and she pulls a face. Disgusted and disturbed. Wrinkling her nose, Sid looks away.

And looks around. Seems like an ordinary office space, or like it's supposed to be.

"Ah," she starts quietly, leaning forward a little and lifting her chin to look at that receptionist. Pitching her voice a little louder, which puts it riiiiiiight at about conversation level, "Excuse me. What, um. What was this place? Before. The outside's all...different."

Serafíne

"That's me. Bitchin' - " Sera returns. Yes, she said bitchin. Said it with a grin as sure and immediate and incandescant as a signal fire and flashes the secretary a quick, wry peace sign. With her right hand rather than her left, so Melissa is not treated to the sight of Sera's sharkscissors tattoo in all its full glory.

Slides - no, wait, sliiiiiides - off the desk and climbs to her feet and circles the room, wandering in a widening circle that eventually brings her back to the other two, the spiky heels of her peep-toe booties clattering on the industrial flooring.

Parks herself close to Jim and Sid on those uncomfortable chairs and tips her head back against the wall and slides her gaze back to them.

"Shit," to Jim, the quick flare of her mouth, laughing and the flash of her white teeth. "I told you already it was going to be a musical. A fucking punk-rock musical." Lifts her chin to invite Melissa into that portion of the conversation. "Bet you don't have one of those in the works, right? I'm sorry, it's fucking brilliant. You can handle the suits,"

" - bet you haven't seen Keller since - what the fuck - " lifting her chin to Melissa. "That riot-thing. Like fucking the Rite of Spring except with a silly old horror movie. Bet it was fucking Italian. That shit drives me bonkers, too. Fellini and whatnot."

Sera falls silent as Sid inquires about the history of the building, slides her little crossbody clutch around her frame and clicks it open like she wants a goddamned cigarette. Closes it again because you know, no smoking.

Shoots a slicing, sidelong look at Melissa, waits until the secretary is still type-type-typing so efficiently, or perhaps calling back to the big bosses upstairs. Then tells Jim and Sid, both - quietly and lazily -

"Three old perfumes," A lingering look at Sid. Sera does not include Jim precisely in the look; she doesn't have the knack he has of concealing things and avoidance seems the safest course, if he is to maintain that facade. "lingering in the air. Feel 'em? The oldest, powerful, insidious. Faded though, just a tang at the back of the throat. Then another, like a manic bright burst, now just an afterburn. You know how fireworks fade in the sky but you can still see them, etched against the dark?

"The last one, though. It's an October scent. Death-tainted."

Going Hollywood

Melissa smiles at Sid--lots of smiling, this one, but then that's the job--when she asks after the building's history. "The building used to be an administration building for the city years back. They shut it down at the end of the '80s, I believe to consolidate. Or just funding problems, I'm not totally sure on that. It went through several owners after and Mister Gilbert and Mister Keller managed to pick it up at a low price about four years ago."

And in response to Sera's opining about the time of Joshua's leave, she nods. "From what I understand it was a rough experience for him and he's just taking some time off, pursuing some other interests for a couple of months until he returns."

"Excuse me," she says politely as she picks up the phone and hits a few buttons. See, she's a good secretary; she works the phones like a pro. "Mister Keller, Miss Davies and her associates are here to see you..." She listens, then nods. "Of course." The phone is set down and she miles.

"They'll be right here."

Perhaps Sid, Serafine and Jim are concerned they're going to be kept waiting forever. This is the entertainment business after all, and no one can do anything on a proper schedule. It's always good to make someone wait longer; then you project the point that you're in control of the situation and they're the ones who need something from you. If it were otherwise, they'd just leave. Ahh, the joys of assholes in positions of far more power than they deserve.

However, in this case the trio aren't kept waiting long and it's only a few minute before the glass doors open and two people step out. The first is a young man, in his late twenties at the oldest but with that look of professionalism and keen intellect that belies his age. A short-cut, professional haircut and a clean-shaven face don't help the youthful look...but then, that look is often cultivated because in entertainment youth is king. He has a warm, easy smile to his face and charm (though not as much as the incredibly-efficient and probably overqualified Melissa) in the sparkling blue eyes. He has a pure business casual look; a button-down dress shirt of dark blue and slate grey dockers that end in a part of sneakers.

The other person is a woman--older, far more professional-looking and a bit more severe. She's perhaps in her late thirties, dark hair pulled back from her face and equally-dark eyes looking at the three of them discerningly. She looks a bit less comfortable than the man or Melissa at the (affected) brusqueness of Jim and the (completely authentic) stonedness of Sera, and she crosses her suit jacket (charcoal, for the record)-covered arms over her chest as she looks the trio over.

It's the man who speaks up, stepping forward to extend his hand. "Hi, Serafine? I'm Matt Gilbert. This is our legal counsel, Jane Carole." Indicating the woman with a sweep of his hand. She nods slightly to them. "Joshua's indisposed at the moment, we're taking his meetings. If you'd like to come this way, we'll be happy to discuss the business you had with him."

He gestures for the doors, and Jane starts walking in that direction. Matt waits until the three start moving, so he can start walking with them. Melissa picks up the phone as they depart into that modern hallway and the conference room just beyond.

Sid Rhodes

[awarepathy (paranoid!)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1

Jim Thompson

And away they go. Jim hangs back, though, last one through the door and turns to hear what he can catch of whatever Melissa is going to be saying to whoever is on the other end of that telephone. Whatever it may be, it may be something worth listening in on while the other two are caught up with a force of nature like Serafine, and maybe even something to do with the people that just came in to have an appointment with Keller.

[ Perception + Alertness... Maybe? ]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Going Hollywood

[[Cha+Subt: YOU DON'T KNOW ME SID!]]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Going Hollywood

[[Cha+Subt: ME EITHER]]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5) ( fail )

Sid Rhodes

[HAH! GOT SOMEONE!]

Serafíne

"Hey!" Sera pops up from whereever she's sprawled and reaches out to take Matt Gilbert's hand. The clutch slides down, hits her hip. Tiny skulls wink from the black leather. The chain is tucked beneath her leather coat though so the bag doesn't slide far. Right hand to right hand, the flash of a quicksilver grin, all running-bright and sparkling (blood-shot) eyes as she looks past him to Jane Carole as the woman is introduced. Sera does not reach out to shake Jane Carole's hand. Just flashes her a peace sign and another grin that might be on the edge of needling.

"Matt, that's fucking awesome but I'm'a tell you the truth," leaning into him a bit as they walk, all faux-conspiracy. "I really wanted to get this in front of Keller. Can't he make a fucking exception? I mean, I need him - " a jerking glance back over her shoulder at Jim as they walk " - to make it work, and he's not happy about all the names involved and - " dropping her voice, tipping a bit drunkenly into him. "Sorry but you lady-friend looks like a fucking buzzkill.

"I mean, like a fucking awesome hall monitor."

Serafíne

Perception + Awareness-as-empathy Mr. Gilbert

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 5) ( success x 3 )

Going Hollywood

[[Matthew comes off as genial and friendly, but there's a deep, deep level of nervousness underneath. It doesn't seem to be specifically directed at the trio; Sid gets the feeling that his good mood and friendly demeanor is him keeping up appearances while internally he's losing his shit.]]

Jim Thompson

"Let me guess," Jim kicks off when that door finishes swinging shut and he can come on up from behind the group. Throwing them off balance, which may or may not help, but it does reintegrate him into what's playing out. The walking and talking (and stumbling) discussion that Serafine is starting up so easily.

"You've got your lawyers sitting in on every meeting since whatever happened at that movie theater? That's what I liked about Keller. Really knowed," not knew, "how to stir shit up," seeming calloused to any loss of life that might have occurred. "You're a money guy, though? Right? Yeah," like he doesn't need to answer. "I mean, someone with vision, that's what I'm thinking. But you gotta start somewhere," as if to put the brakes on what Serafine has to say and give them a chance.

All before any of them can come up with excuses.

There's a cadence to his words. One that comes with steady breathing and the way that alcohol leeching into his blood stream effects his heart beat. Effects all of him. Trying to crack it all open. Make them more receptive to this all. Make them more forthcoming.

No, not Serafine and Sid. The other two. Though this should help in drawing answers forth.

"But really, if he's retired and ain't gonna be coming back, if he's letting you take the reigns, I think you oughta let us know now. Then we can establish," like he's trying to remember a word, he pauses.

"Rapport. Yeah, rapport. Learned that in a business class they gave us in the pen," nodding.

[ Coincidental Mind 2 effect. Trying to open them up to questioning. Make them more receptive and forthcoming about what is really going on. Double up the effect to allow him to read surface thoughts as well. Definitely going to need to extend to get the successes. ]

Jim Thompson

[ Arete @ difficulty 4. Blowing a WP. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Sera: Mind 2 - joining Jim's affect: 1. Make them more receptive and forthcoming; 2. Reading surface thoughts. Also blowing WP. Difficulty 5 -1 for enthralling resonance.

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

(effect. can spell.)

Sid Rhodes

Sid's head snaps up when the duo appear, and she's rising a second later, dark eyes passing over one, then the other as she quietly takes their hands and then, not even pretending to hide it, slides her palm along her skirt.

She's not surprised by what she sees when she meets Matthew's eyes, not from what she learned from Grace. Nor that she can't see past the stonewall demeanor of Jane Carole. Sid's...acquaintances...start working in on Matthew and Sid, brows tightening a little, shoots the legal counsel an apologetic glance. Moves so that she sits a little closer to the woman.

"Sorry," she says, because she's not like them, right? They're loud, drunk, high, obnoxious. Sid is quiet and put together and let's face it, a little sweet. A little more professional. "They can get a little, well," she finishes, lifting her shoulder in a shrug as she reaches into her messenger bag and pulls out a pen and a pad of paper. For notes.

"It, ah," she says, looking from Gilbert to Carole, her eyes lingering there. Building that rapport. "Must be tough. After what happened. Keller gone."

[i am nice, let's be friends: -1WP FOR STRENGTH AND HONOR: charisma+ uh, subterfuge I guess]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Going Hollywood

The conference room they walk into is not overly adorned, but there is that kind of hip, modern style to it that you might expect at a conference room from a tech company...except film-related, of course. The walls contain a poster (or rather, what is probably the promo picture from the DVD art; only theatrical releases merit an actual poster) from one of their more successful direct-to-video genre films, The Hangman Returns (a sequel to a low-budget but cult-favorite franchise that ran in the late 1970s and lay dormant until ShockDrop picked it up). The rest of the art is from their old films that they've snapped up rights to over the last few years in business; Italian giallo, existantial Japanese horror, some of the more obscure "video nasties" that were banned in the UK in the '80s. L'Ultimo Giorno is notably not among them.

Aside from the posters, a large conference table is in the center with eight chairs around it. The walls are panelled; a cheap solution that looks stylish if you do it right (and they did).

Matthew smiles a little when Sera calls Jane a fucking awesome hall monitor and keeps walking with her; he seems a little bit uncomfortable with the woman leaning up against him but not in any sort of repulsed way. In fact, it's the opposite; he gives that impression of being the sort of guy who was smart and straight-laced but isn't used to enjoying his success.

"I wish I could, but Joshua..."

And that is when, right on queue, Jane cuts in to interrupt, walking past them into the room.

"Joshua really needs the time off right now. Things are hectic and we just felt this was a good time after that terrible incident to get some distance for now." She smiles, not entirely warmly. "I'm sure you understand."

While Jane is cutting him off, Matthew looks at Jim, the Effect from the two starting to weave around but not having taken hold yet. "Jane's a full partner, but yeah, while we handle situations right now we felt it was best that, at least for Joshua's clients, we both sit in." He spares a quick glance to Jane, who looks back. There's clearly a bit of tension between them.

"As far as we know, he's coming back," he says in response to that last question from Jim. "He just...needs time. He was very close to that project...L'Ultimo Giorno was a passion of his. He felt that he needed to take some time to himself, you know?"

Jane, for her part, actually relaxes a tiny bit when Sid apologizes for her associates. The smile given to her is a touch warmer than the one given to Jim and Sera. "It's fine." The cadence is still short, but not chilly. "It's...been hectic. But we're handling it all right. Working with the police of course, and we're setting up a small fund for the victims. Anything we can do to weather the storm, you know?"

Jim Thompson

"Yeah, well maybe I'll head over his place, see if a little chemical-induced relaxation therapy knocks him out of it," Jim presses when the suit says he needs time, though he leaves it off with an off-color wink and finds a seat at the table. Sits down and looks like he might even kick up his feet, though he only leans the chair back in an altogether relaxed sort of position. Keeps pushing. Drawing himself out and into the moment at the same time, focusing more on the people they're speaking with than his surroundings. Less on what they're saying than how they're saying it and trying to get at why.

"Maybe that'll give him a little passion for our project," like he's still a bit insulted that Keller isn't there, but staying on point in that he moves along and doesn't seem to be dwelling on it.

"You two keeping in contact with him, at least? Making sure he's not thinking about committing hari-kari," mispronouncing it, or more pronouncing it in an altogether common sort of way. Like he's heard it in films and comedies and that's all he really understands of the euphemism for suicide.

"L'Ulteemo Jorno," again a butchering, this time of the Italian. Then he throws up his hands, after he has thrown the word out to them to see what rise it gets. "Yeah, yeah, I get it, I know the deal, needs to take a break. We don't all got the luxury, though, right? You got a lot of money in this place, I'm sure, and I've put my life into this story. Maybe we'll both be able to get a couple bucks out of it?"

[ Extending. Blowing Quintessence to maintain difficulty. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 4, 9) ( success x 2 )

Sid Rhodes

Sid looks around and maybe she notes the absence of a L'Ultimo Giorno picture on the walls, and maybe she doesn't. They're not here for that, at least not on the surface.

And don't think she doesn't notice the slight warming of the woman to her side. Sid offers her a slight smile of her own that contains a bit of her own warmth that is, for a moment, wrapped up in a warm glow of happiness threaded through with a touch of something frantice, seeking, desperate.

"I do," she says with sincerity, and she considers that storm. Sid thinks about the things that could go wrong here, right now. She thinks about the monster that came out of that screen, the effect that brought it there. A tiny, tiny shiver of true fear starts at the small of her back and works its way up and up. Sid latches onto it, bends it, uses it to see the threads of Destiny that weave throughout this room. Her eyes slant down and, oh so idly, she touches pen to the inside of her wrist, just below the curve of words inked into her skin. The littlest of little figures appears, circle and sticks for arms and legs. Sid's dark eyes slant a moment to Jane.

Looking up, she glances over at Jim, and she makes that frown again, finding his words distasteful. His demeanor, too. She's here for Sera, of course, and Sera brought that guy. A look shot to Carole, brief, a flash.

"Did he at least go into the mountains?" asks Sid. "The aspens, they're, ah. They're turning. I hear it's. Nice. Relaxing."

[human lie detector: Entropy 1 + Life 1, diff 4 (coincidental) +1 diff (fast casting), dropping a WP because the dice don't like Sid tonight]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Sera shoots a lilting glance from Matthew to Jane and back again. Let Matthew be mildly uncomfortable with Sera's lack of personal boundaries. She doesn't seem to care. In fact, as Jane slips in and cuts him off, Sera shoots him a direct look, meets his eyes and holds them, steady and draw. He's losing his shit, underneath that glib but mildly uncomfortable exterior. She already traced that in the faint, physical signs. And now -

Jim makes an off-color joke about getting him high to get him over it. Sera tucks herself into Gilbert's space, tucks her arm into his, with that intimate, mildly conspiratorial body language, as if she required an old-fashioned escort around the conference room to pick up the very best chest. But, - that joke has her throwing back her head, a soundless laugh but open-mouthed, that sobers quickly though there's a lingering brightness in her eyes.

"He gets the best shit, let me tell you," Sera assures Gilbert, leaving the lawyer entirely to Sid. "And it's fucking therapeutic, you know? But yeah, you are in touch, right? I mean, I'm sure you're fucking awesome, but Keller could get this done.

"Like, you have to be willing to take risks, and sometimes you have to fucking seize the goddamned moment, and that's what we need right now to get this going. That fucking vision.

"Because it's not like some cheesy-ass biopic. It's like Dr. Horrible meets Grease and gets trapped in a what-the-fuck-do-you-call-it in sci-fi movies? DNA all mixed up. That one where the guy turns into something else - like fucking Kafka but on the screen -

"And you seem great and all - " let other people takes seats. Sera releases Gilbert's arm at last and swings herself up to sit on the table. Lifts her eyes past Gilbert to Carole and Sid, then drops them back down. " - but I don't know. You look a little shaky around the edges. Like you're not sure you can fill his shoes."

(Annnnd, extending too. + Quint to keep difficulty low, don't blow it sera!)

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 6) ( success x 2 )

Going Hollywood

The Effect woven together from the conjoined efforts of the two Ecstatics spreads over both ShockDrop executives and settle in their brains; the Lakashim beats as Jim's efforts addle them and opens their minds up while Sera's slips right into that opening and spreads her enthralling Passion, making them open to the trio and--more importantly--their questions. Matthew moves to take a seat and, for the moment, Sera has his complete attention which allows Jim's questions to slip past his guard.

As for Jane...she just relaxes. It's like a weight is taken off her...these three, they're okay to open up to. You have to let loose to someone, right? What do they know, and what harm can they really do, after all?

"We..." Jane looks at Matthew, and then back at Jim. "We don't know where he is, to be honest. While we were doing damage control, he called us from his car. He said that he had to get out of the city, get away from here for now, but that he'd be close and that he'd be back." She snorts a little then. "He basically made a mess, and left us to clean it up."

And in her mind, Sera and Jim both sense it. She's being truthful but there's more to it than that. Her surface thoughts flot up like petals going over a waterfall and plunged into the water, then rising back to the surface. Fucking idiot. 'I've got the film, everything's fine. I'm taking it somewhere safe.' All it is with him is that movie. I bet he probably sabotaged the screening for noteriety, the little psycho. It wouldn't surprise me.

Matthew, for his part, scowls at the last sentence from Jane, but it's brief because--well, there's a Sera on the table in front of him, so captivating. They don't need ecstasy to get him high and distracted, and thus susceptible to their questions; they are Ecstasy. "It's not like that," he explains. "I've known Joshua for years. He's an ass sometimes, but he's just...he's very passionate about these movies. This company was his idea, I was the money guy." Like Jim said. "I am. And Jane's a good lawyer because she's the voice of reason. It's just that...this film, he's always been obsessed with. And so when he got the ability to get his hands on it he jumped, and then it wasn't a good time for him to be here."

Matthew's thoughts run, at the moment, to the Serafine-minded variety. They're shockingly non-shocking, because he really doesn't have any experience in that arena. It's almost sweet. Underneath that, though, is that panic and that worry. He doesn't know where Joshua is, and they're very close friends. He is barely holding it together and Jane's suspicions are only making it worse because he's SURE he didn't do any of this on purpose. (Yes, they've had that conversation already.)

Jane looks at Sid when she asks about where he might have gone. "He has a cabin up there, yeah. Listen, if you really need to deal with him, whatever. Talent is all his thing, I'm lost at this part of it anyway until contracts come into play. You can feel free to go up there. I'll get you the address. We don't know that he's there, but...it's probable."

Jim Thompson

"And we didn't hear it from you," Jim says, and he's practically continuing Jane's sentence in the most reassuring way he can say it to the two of them. "Fuck if he'd even remember what he did or didn't tell us the last time we were talking shop," leaning in.

It's almost conspiratorial. That hardness is loosening up, shoulders moving more while he talks and they begin to enter the ebb and flow. Rock becomes water and gets stirred and shaken with color. With emotion. With openness. Like it had been waiting there in a vessel to be opened at any moment. There the whole time. "And maybe a few eggs got broke, but you both know this is going to leave ShockDrop a place in film history. A place we're hoping our story can be the next chapter of," leaning back.

"Good lawyers. Wish I had one of those back in the day," he ventures to Jane next, but he moves back along to Matthew.

"Any clue where he heard about the film? Who he got it from? Yeah, he said it dropped off the map for a while, but where'd it end up... Popping back up? I mean, we want to know who we oughta be working with as much as who we shouldn't be, you know? And it sounds like they got some bad mojo. Kind you can't scrub off," sounding a bit superstitious for it. Like it's a curse he doesn't want following him or to follow...

"One of the reasons I was a little put off coming in here and talking to new people. But maybe new's good." He's a fast talker. A bit of a hustler the way he hurries those words out, tagging emotion to the back and forth to build familiarity. Agreeing just enough to jump to the next point, like it wasn't even his idea to go there.

Sid Rhodes

Effects drop and flow like a pile of warm blankets around the pair, so soft and comfortable and comforting. They make them relax, trust, open up. Sid makes sure that they're being honest. She doesn't have the abilities Jim and Sera have to tap into someone's mind and sift through the top layer of thoughts, so she does the next best thing she can.

"Why was it so important to him?" she asks, relaxing herself. Not because she's affected by Sera and Jim's Working, but because they're there and they're working and she feels better because of that. The question is posed to Matthew, her pen now poised over her little pad of paper on which she's scribbled a few notes already. But he's the friend, the chummy one, he's known Keller for ages. "Do you know?" Like she's just curious, confused that anyone would be so obsessed with a movie, let alone an obscure horror one.

Jim picks up the line of questioning and runs away with it, though, so she returns to Jane, who is offering her an address. Sid smiles a little.

"That would be helpful, thanks. Can we get his cell number, too? He called you from the road?" but it's less a question and more a gentle chide, how could he? "While you were still cleaning up?" Even gives a slight shake of her head, eyes drooping closed, Unbelievable.

Serafíne

"I think that might be best. The address would be fucking great," a flash of her smile cast over her shoulder at Jane. It is not precisely steady or reassuring, though it is perahps incisive. The woman's superficial thoughts run like water across the surface of her mind; or rather like oil-on-water. A sheen of memory, tinged with contempt, resentment. Sera breathes out sharply as they bubble up, then glance back at Matthew.

Sensory fucking overload. The magic and resonance and work drifting in the air. The two strangers. The lingering skin of that Jhor-taint at the back of her throat.

"I bet you guys have been swarmed with folks looking for him. I mean, not just the media you know. Like you said, he is the talent guy. You sent anyone else up there looking for him yet?"

Otherwise, though, Sera's pretty quiet. Leaning forward be close to Matthew without invading his space quiet so thoroughly. Letting her attention drop back every so slowly, into the threads of her high. The memory of that resonance in the back of her throat and her mind.

Jim Thompson

[ Perception + Awareness ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4) ( fail )

Jim Thompson

[ WP ]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 1, 3, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Going Hollywood

The trio's honeyed word (made as slick as they are sweet thanks to the judicious application of Mind) coat the bitterness in the taste of the two film studio executives' mouths, wash it away. They're relaxed now, at ease. This is okay...the three aren't freaking out and they're not pulling a potential project. They're curious about what happened and they want some gossip, so why not give them some? Matthew knows the bills need to be paid and Jane knows it too; they're the business end that ShockDrop probably would have floundered without.

And thus Jane relaxes with Jim and Sid, and Sera practically owns Matthew at this point. A little magic, nudged in just the right way. This is the Traditions at work, when they do it right.

Jane shakes her head when Jim asks about where the film came from. "No, we don't. He was very secretive about it...he didn't want us to know anything." She snorts a little bit at that; her surface memories of the massive amounts of tension that caused, arguments between them with Matthew playing peacekeeper, roll up to the top of her consciousness. "I knew he got it in Italy somewhere. He said that he had some kind of source who'd gained direct access, but that's all he would say. He said it was better if we didn't know, whatever the fuck that meant."

And she smiles a little when he assures her that he's looking at their little business venture positively. That's comforting...maybe they won't get buried by the lawsuits that are already starting to come in.

"It was just...a passion to him," Matthew says to Sid with a shrug (to Sera). "It's horror legend, you know? He knew about it for years and wanted it. Joshua...he's one of those guys who always wants to be the one who's seen the thing you haven't seen, and done the one thing you haven't. And The Last Day...well, to a horror fan that's the ultimate. It's like finding a copy of that Jerry Lewis Nazi clown film. It's the stuff of legend."

Jane nods when the address is asked for. "Yeah, here." And with that she's walking over to the side table, grabbing a pen to write it down.

"No, no one's been to see him," Matthew says to Sera. "He's my friend. I'm not throwing him to the wolves, whatever some people want." They don't even have to see the way Jane's hands clench around the pen to know who he means; they've sensed it."

Going Hollywood

As Sera focuses on that Jhor, that sensation that's been lingering in the back of her mind and the roof of her mouth...she feels herself start to drift. And in a moment, she's there in the hallway of ShockDrop Studios alone, where they had just walked through. It's dark, and cold, like the heat's been cut off. And as she stands there, she sees someone walk into the studios.

It's Joshua. He fits the description and the picture in the newspaper. He's walking along, but he's dragging something. She can't tell what; there's a cloud of shadow that starts to coalesce around him. It seems...heavy, whatever it is he's dragging along. The film cannister is in one hand.

Joshua walks by Sera, and in the moment he draws close, she gets a feeling like a liquified corpse has just been poured down the back of her shirt. She looks in Joshua's face and she knows, instinctively that whatever it is...it's not Joshua. It's a Joshua mask, and she swears that she sees something cold and slithering behind those eyes...which blink and then blink again like a nictating membrane.

Jim is so keyed into Sera that, while he isn't there in the hallway with her, he feels all of this, and when the the not-Joshua blinks and blinks, he feels something pass from it through Sera, not touching her and directly into him. He feels cold, pallid like a corpse though his body hasn't changed temperature or color. Sera feels it pass to him as well, though it doesn't touch him. For now, he's suffused with Jhor, though it is already starting to fade.

[[Jim has Jhor resonance of 1 for the next day.]]

Going Hollywood

And then they're right back in this office with Sid and the two, as if nothing had happened.

Jim Thompson

It comes and it tries to supplant himself and that is enough. Even as it fades he's trying to shake it off as if it can, somehow, anyhow, expedite the process. Outwardly he goes silent and only nods, forefinger and thumb on his chin like he's listening to what they're saying, but he's not, and it shows a second later when he stands up from the table.

He has to. He has to move from that spot, like he want to get away from whatever's lingering there, but it just comes along with him like an odor clenched to his clothes (being) and form (self).

He seems unsettled. No longer just erratic, but unsure of himself or this place, and he's thankful that his work on Jane and Matthew is done, because whilst that will continues to get drips and drabs of his attention - for the sake of his two companions - he's turning inward.

Sits back down. Gets quiet. Tries to find his focus and push back. Realizes pushing might not be the answer. Instead he tries to find his center and contend with it more directly.

[ Intelligence + Meditation. Specialty: Transcendental. Mental floss and scrubbing commencing soon. ]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 7 )

Jim Thompson

[ Arete. Coincidental Prime 2 Mind 1 effect. Difficulty of 5 - 1 for taking his time and -1 for Stoic resonance because hopefully that stuff will roll off of him when he finds his center. If the resonance doesn't count he's spending Quintessence. And a WP (down to 5). ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 3, 5) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Sid Rhodes

[per+aware: what is Jhor]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Sid Rhodes

[WP]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

ACTUALLY ALSO WP FOR SERA FOR REASONS OTHER THAN THAT. (get it together)

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

"My songwriting partner's like that, man," pulled briefly out of the thoughtless background into which she was allowing herself to drift. Alpha Hipster, she means. The woven threads that bind together and peel apart, become particles and waves and everything and you breathe them in like starfall and out like water and - but see, rousing, the flash of her dark eyes all silvered in the fluorescent light, the reflective surfaces. Swings out one of her faux-long-legs, touching Matthew on the thigh with the toe of her leather bootie and if the gesture feels affectionate. Well, it rather is. " - except with obscure post-punk bands and their old vinyl."

Thus far, that's only led them to some weird old flea markets and the related bins of old records tucked away in old milk crates.

Then she's back in focus, tongue against the roof of her mouth, tracing the way that feeling opens in the back of her throat and letting it drift beneath her skin and she's breathing in and breathing out, remembering how it works and forgetting the rest of them, pulling threads in the tapestry in to her so she can just start to ravel them out again when -

- her breath stops. Her blood chills. Her heart stops beating and Sera's staring up past the crown of Matthew's head, eyes open and unseeing, turning to follow the movement of someone not in the room. The truth is that it is a staccato beat of a moment that drags itself open in the back of her mind and has her breathing again, audibly and all at once. Shivering too, this long, resonant shudder that plays itself open up and down her spine.

Her hand comes up to her mouth and her eyes dart to Jim and there's no hiding Sera feeling what she's feeling when she's feeling it. The stark and resonant chill of fear; the sick slide of something else, turning over in the pit of her stomach, which she cannot quite name. A sharpening edge of worry with a glance at Jim.

Which she pulls back when he gives that fucking gesture, dropping her gaze to Matthew. Doesn't know whether to vomit or cry.

So: she does neither.

Slips from the edge of the table and onto her feet. Bends over to kiss Matthew on the temple. Tenderly, really, cupping the crown of his head as she does so.

"Don't worry about it. You've been a great friend to him. You guys are going to be okay. Okay? Give me your number so I can check up on you."

Serafíne

Charisma + Expression

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

Rerolling 10s!

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 3) ( fail )

Sid Rhodes

No one's been to see him, so there's actually a possibility he's still up there, holed out in his bunker, clutching his precious oh so tight, that Josh Keller. Sid makes another note, then looks up, watching as Jane goes over to write down that address.

That's when it happens, whatever it is. It swoops down on Jim like a shadow, dark and terrible, that "scent" Sera said she noticed. Makes him rise and push away from that dark space at the table. More a musk than a perfume, dark and, well. Sid knows death, has a different relationship with it than most people. Jim's seen the scars, he's heard the story.

A touch of death sweeps through Jim and Sid can't help it, her body tenses for a moment when she feels it, her grip on her own pen going a little tighter. It passes, though, that tension, because it's gone. It brushed him and Jim flung it off him, wiped it away in a matter of moments like he might wipe sweat from his brow. Sid's shoulders relax, just a little.

And then hopefully Jane has a slip of paper for her, something to distract her from the sight of her loved ones in distress or concentration, so she can try to pull back over herself that quietness that comes so easily and that detachment that does not.

"Thanks," she says, and she closes her notebook before anyone has a chance to see what Sid's written there - not that they could understand it at a glance. And then she's rising, sliding that paper with an address and hopefully at least one phone number as well, slips it between the pages of her notebook and drops that all into her bag again before she pushes herself upward. And she pauses. Looks over at Jane, and she offers her hand, genuinely this time, so it has more warmth than what radiates from those digits and that palm naturally. And if she takes it, Sid holds her hand a moment, not to shake, just to hold. "It'll be okay."

Going Hollywood

Everything seems fine and the executives are being soothed and then it's not fine. Suddenly Sera is staring breathlessly at nothing and Jim feels like death and everything's horribly wrong for a moment...but it's just a moment. Still, Jane and Matthew notice and they tense as the two artists (at least they can blame it on them being the artsy ones and the high ones) have freak out moments. Even Sid tenses, almost flips but she's made of stronger stuff than that; she's proven it over the last month.

And then it's fine again. Jim relaxes focuses inward and Sera kisses Matthew on the temple and tells him in soothing tones that everything will be okay, because it will.

Except she knows it won't.

But it will be for them, those in this room. Hopefully. And that's enough for him to believe, because Serafine is hope at the moment and Matthew needs some hope. Even Jane, skeptical and older and more cynical Jane, is more relaxed now.

"Yeah, sure," says Matthew, and he gives Sera a phone number. "That's my personal line here at the office; it forwards to my cell when I'm out.

And Jane takes the offered hand from Sid. She's more put off than Matthew but she started off that way anyway, and she's made of stronger stuff too. "Yeah, here's hoping," she says with a sigh. "Best of luck on finding him. I honestly hope everything's okay. He's a jackass but a good guy underneath. He's just..."

She shrugs, as if not knowing how to say it. Her mind knows, though. and Jim and Sera here it.

A vaguely sociopathic misogynist dick. Hey, we can't all be honest with our words.

Serafíne

"You guys," Sera says, "have been awesome. Seriously. You've been so fucking helpful. We've gotten everything we need. Time to track down Keller." Straightening, she gives him a thoughtless little caress, sliding her fingers through his hair before finally letting him go.

"I'll call you soon, okay?" Then, with a brief, haunted glance toward Jim, then Sid, "- let's go."

And so they do.

Gravity and other unnatural laws.

Serafíne

That first night, see, when the call to Jim does not go through, Serafíne is so very spent and scattered and exhausted and frightened and and and -

- that the failure of the call barely registers. Or no: she thinks that there is something wrong with the phone, some failure of technology, some misplaced number some downed - circuit, or whatever, perhaps some parabolic bowl somewhere catching the invisible waves of whatever that carry cell calls from ear to ear and the point is she has no idea how these things work.

They're fucking magic to her.

And she just assumes: the magic has failed.

--

And then she sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and works up the courage to visit the hospital and is both reassured and rebuffed and the days slip forward.

She tries Jim's number again.

And then again, and it is the third fuck-up, whatever that fuck-up is at the other end of the line: voice mail or disconnection or silence or a phone that just rings. Rings and rings and fucking rings, and if it is ringing Sera she leaves it ringing and ringing and ringing until one of her housemates is all, "Enough, Christ, Sera," and -

- that is when she starts searching.

Because she's fucking worried.

--

So: a white conversion van, still with North Carolina plates and now with a speeding ticket from some nameless white bread little town in Utah and if you want to know how a conversion van gets a speeding ticket it is called: speedtrap. Anyway: a white conversion van pulls into the parking lot of a third-rate motel that rents rooms by the week and/or day and maybe to select clientele by the hour. Dan in the driver's seat, tall and bearded and tattooed and hipster-lean and he gives Sera a glance as they pull up, but he doesn't get out of the van. He's just here as chauffeur and friend and confidant and everything else he is. He's here because Sera is a little bit high probably and shouldn't be driving.

Near sunset: the sun glinting off the windows of the motel make it seem ablaze. She slips out: not quite as skinny as she was when they last say each other, the fast, the party, Byron et al, but still, skinnier than she was when the whole thing started. Dressed like a Sera in tiny denim cutoffs and fishnets a white The Raincoats t-shirt over a black push-up bra and her platformed and silver-heeled boots.

Sera knows the room as well as she knows anyplace in Denver. Glances up at the bulk of the motel against the skyline then traces the outline against the darkness, her attention falling falling falling until she finds the room.

She starts with a knock, Sera, quiet, in the center of the door to that hotel room. But even if there is no answer, that is not where she stops.

Jim

When she pulls up Serafine may notice that the motel is not as run down as it had been when a van full of Awakened had first come there all those months ago.

It would still struggle to get even half a star if it were listed anywhere but the most broad of Google searches or the most targeted, but there's a fresh coat of mint green paint and that must mean the cracks underneath have been plastered over or otherwise mended. The doors are all painted white and broken windows have been repaired. The railings are also a crisp white and the parking lot's spaces are repainted. There's a new patina on the place and it's a layer of care from someone who didn't only do it for the lower rent, but because he took pride in doing it and keeping the place nice.

As usual there are children in the parking lot and they're dribbling a soccer ball back and forth and up and down its length under the dying Colorado sun, kicking it between two parking cones they have dragged from the somewhere or other.

Serafine knocks and she doesn't get an answer from the other side of the door. The blinds are drawn and it's nothing but silence. She can no doubt sense that addling magic muddled in the room's very resonance, the strength of its walls containing it in stoic custodianship, and the paint practically shimmers in the twilight game light plays, going from a darker green to a grey to a silver as shadows stretch longer before their death. That's Jim, it is, still in the place. But whether it means he's in that room or not is another question.

A question that gets answered. One of the kids runs up and looks up at her.

"He only opens up for the delivery guy," and then the kid sniffs the air and pipes up again. "Oh, you're that delivery lady," laughing as he runs off to his sister and starts kicking the ball again.

Serafíne

The changes in the motel make her hum beneath her breath. Make her exhale, see, beneath this curling smile that is balanced but faintly sad. Sera is standing in the shadow of the second-level balcony of that nameless motel, her half-shaved head tucked into the cool surface of the door to his room. Feeling, yes, feeling his resonance. Allowing it to layer itself beneath her skin, breathing it in as she takes in the long shadows, the shifting, shimmering patina of that paint. Ear to the door, listening but hey, it is a motel in summer. She's surrounded by the wheezing exhalations of a half-hundred old a/c units tucked beneath the curtained windows, set into that freshly painted mint-green facade.

That kid comes over and she lifts him her sharp chin, favors him with the remnants of her curling smile. Flashes him a peace-sign with her left (tattooed) hand when he pipes up, favoring him with an open-mouthed but rather quiet laugh. Clever kid.

Oh yes, she's that delivery lady.

"Hey - " to the laughing kid, running off dribbling the soccer ball between his feet. " - when was the last time you saw him, anyway?"

--

She waits for an answer, then turns back to the door. Knocks again and this time, with an open palm - more resonant, and her mouth close to the edges of the door frame and her forehead against the metal of the jam.

"Jim. Jim." No magic to it. Sera imagines her own magic would never penetrate Jim's wards. Doubts that she could see or taste or sense anything beyond the boundaries of that motel room she knew very, very well for a very long few days some months ago. But her voice see: it's an instrument too, of a sort. She knows how to make herself heard. "Open up.

"It's me. Sera. I wanna see you.

"I'm worried about you."

And she is. That worry is all wrapped around the column of her throat, coiled around the base of her spine. Opens itself beneath her skin and behind her eyes. Coalesces at the base of her lungs, and tightens like a belt with every breath she takes.

"Please let me in."

Jim

"Breakfast," the little boy calls out as he keeps on running, though in a loop, like he's excited the woman has deigned to talk with him, but more excited by the game he's running back to.

At least it sounds like Jim is eating. He undoubtedly is because that piney and earthy scent of what the child had assumed she was delivering wafts through the cracks and crevices of his door. An odor like a skunk. The kind that awakens the senses its so distinct and heavy when it crawls into the sinuses.

Serafine sounds like she is going to persist. But Jim has always had a soft spot for the woman. Even softer than for every other living being and maybe that is why he finally answers.

"Go 'way. I'm fine. Don't want to talk about it, don't want to see anyone, I'm fine," and then, not so much as afterthought as the only way he can answer her vocalization of that worry...

"Thank you," for coming, for caring, for whatever. Genuine, though he sounds a bit despondent, forcing his voice to a level its unaccustomed to in order to get it past the door and wall and window that stands between hem.

Serafíne

The faintest thump radiates through the metal door. It's not another knock, the resonant, open-palmed sort. And he's on the other side. Even if he looks out through the spyglass all he might have is a fisheyed view of the world that includes no more than a few stray, windblown blond curls. The other side of the door, the other side of the world, Sera pivots on the stacked heels of her boots and leans back, letting the back of her skull thump against the door. That, see, half-way between I'm fine and the second I'm fine and I'm fine never sounds fine, really, does it. Ever.

--

And Sera's quiet. Doesn't say anything back right away. Bites back sharply and then swallows the bullshit she would otherwise assert after an I'm fine so forceful she is constitutionally required by law not to believe, entirely.

Her eyes half-close against the setting sun.

Then her resonance recedes from his front door. Back across the parking lot to the space Dan found large enough to maneuver and park the unmaneuverable and sometimes un-parkable conversion van. Heads for the driver's side and thumps on the dirty paint and he rolls down the window -

hey, Jim sees none of this. Not unless he Looks.

Or looks, maybe. Like a shut-in through the curtains of his window onto the parking lot.

- and they chat. Quiet.

He hands her something through the window and she takes it and Jim cannot have imagined that it was that easy to get rid of Sera but if he did, if he thought that the ebb of her resonance meant that she was fucking leaving he was entirely wrong, because here she is sauntering back to the door of the motel room with this long stride in those high heels and that physical confidence she wears so openly. Winking to the kids when she skirts the territory staked out for their makeshift goal. Her shadow long and lanky in hte twilight as she returns to Jim's door.

And knocks, again, open-palmed.

Just once this time. It's a hey-are-you-still-there knock. Not a peremptory answer-this-door-knock.

"Sooooooo - " long and drawn out, her forehead in the interspace between door and frame, curved against the hard right angle with the door jam. " - here's the deal. I don't think you're fine, 'cos if you were fine you'd be all, come and smoke a bowl with me Serafíne, instead of all I'm fucking fine. But it's cool to be not-fine, too. I mean, I'm not-fine like forty-nine percent of the time and you've never fucking minded.

"So yeah. You don't have to talk about anything. And if you don't wanna see me you could open the door and close your eyes. Or leave the door shut, 'cos I can wait. Sent Dan to grab some dinner. I told him cheese steaks or barbecue or what the fuck ever so he might come back with Indian-Irish fusion if he finds a decent food truck.

"But I told him to get enough for two.

"When you feel like it, you can open the door. I'll be here."

Jim

The door opens.

It's as easy as that.

Jim simply isn't the kind of person to leave a friend - especially not one as close as Serafine, but indeed the sentiment could be applied to every living being - sitting outside of his door. She's here because she's worried and he can only guess what leaving her out there will end up doing to that worry. Magnify it? Twist it? Turn it to resentment? The last is the least likely, but either way he refuses to find out.

But that doesn't mean Jim is standing there with a smile on his face. He's not even standing there when the door swings open. If she turns around from where she's sitting all she'll see is his back retreating into the darkness. Swallowed by the flickering light of an television.

Not the old television that had been there when they first found the place. It's a larger television and it's nicer. Not new. But definitely an upgrade.

Chopping down a kingpin's empire has its perks.

The television is playing a game show. Jeopardy. Dings and sounds and questions and answers come and then stop as the betwix round smalltalk begins. He looks like he's headed for the recliner in the corner. Settling into it silently.

She had said he wouldn't have to talk.

Serafíne

He doesn't have to talk. Sera can talk enough for seventeen people when so inspired, though it is not her familiar tumble of her eager voice that follows Jim as he retreats through the dark motel room, in the cool dull glaze of that new(er) television set. Canned voices chattering back and forth over pre-screened anecdotes about distant, half-contained lives. She's a few steps behind him, glances back out the door at the glow of the dying sun on the clouds, clotted on the horizon over the parking lot, which bleeds into another lot and then another.

A strip mall, a used car dealer, a half-dozen cheap fast food restaurants, and so on, and so on, so spare and concretized and anonymous that they could be anywhere except: they belong here. Off a particular anonymous intersection, on the fringe of a city in the shadow of the mountains.

And those kids, intent on their game in the parking lot.

Sera pulls the door to the room closed behind her and that's enough of a headstart that Jim is three quarters of the way to his recliner before her eyes have oriented to the darkness. Which hardly matters to her: Sera runs, right. Or maybe: jogs really because there's not enough space to get the momentum to flat-out run. In the dark, in her high heeled boots, the handful of steps between them and wraps her arms around Jim from behind, before he has turned to settle into that recliner.

If he allows her.
If he doesn't hear her coming and try to dodge, see.

Sera has a bad in her right hand and he can feel the swinging weight of it against his right ribs as she hugs him. Rests her forehead against the curve of his skull and kisses him twice, at least twice, once at the point of attachment between his head and his neck, and then again, an inch-or-so behind his left ear. Then her head slips down until her chin is resting on the apex of his shoulder and he can feel the shadow of her smile in the curve of her cheek against his neck and he cannot see that it is a little bit wistful and a little bit sad. Just, maybe, he can feel the way she holds on to him.

She gives him an extra squeeze at the end before she releases him to retreat to that recliner in the corner and Sera herself settles cross-legged on the closest bed, as close to Jim as she can without being on the floor.

Wants to turn that fucking television off but she doesn't because it is: his place, his space, and he had it on in the first place.

"Thanks for letting me in," Sera tells him, quiet, oh, eyes on him but if he looks uncomfortable with her gaze she looks away. " - even if you didn't wanna. I brought whiskey." Because of course she did. She's fishing the bottle out of the plastic bag now, though it wasn't the only thing in there.

"Stranahan's. You want a drink?"

Jim

He is almost there. Jim had almost escaped it.

But she is Serafine and few distances and differences are enough to stand between her and the affection she wants to share with Jim. And maybe she knows what's good for him more than the other cultist does, because when those arms wrap around him and maybe pin his arms to his side or maybe snake around his ribs beneath to lovingly crush him she can feel him swell at the contact. His chest grows in a relaxed breath as he accepts and enjoys it. And then the kisses come like a cascade on his neck and behind his ear and in that expanse between his neck and his shoulder because it may be a smile but it just feels like another kiss and that one she can feel him shrug a bit from. Just not away from. Into.

It's almost too much.

Almost.

That means it's just enough.

Jim turns around and kisses the crown of her head in return. His arm finally shrugs again. This time up and around her head when he does so, the other one forced over her back. But once it is there muscle memory is roused and and he is returning that final squeeze. And he pulls himself away to sit down. She starts talking whiskey and he has got that bag in his hand quick enough, looking into it and reaching into it and pulling out the bottle.

Familiar in his hands the way most bottles are for a man like Jim or a woman like Serafine. He is wordless in his opening of it. He leans forward in the recliner, farther forward than he had already been to look into that bag after taking it from where she's sitting, and picking up a pair of upside down tumblers where they're sitting clean atop a folded white towel. Drying with the lightest gossamer fog of dewy condensation inside.

She's probably been focusing on him and not what his being is cocooned in. That's probably for the best. Tattered slim and straight jeans that look worn in. On the verge of needing a wash. He's barefoot and he has a stretched out v-neck on, stretched out like from tumultuous sleep and living in the thing for too long. He's unshaven, his mustache more vague in a growing beard, and his hair is longer than usual, messy and pushed about. His eyes are only three-quarters open. Just open enough. The pile of clothes in front of his yoga mat, propped up in the corner, are a hint as to the last time the thing has been moved.

The clean glasses has been sitting near an unclean ashtray stacked with roaches. Spliffs and blunts and cigarette butts, but Jim doesn't smoke, does he? Not cigarettes. But they're there too. The small trash bin is full of folded up pizza boxes, plastic food containers and soda cans and beer cans crushed flat underfoot.

He pours. Three excessive, three gluttonous, three fingers that might as well be a middle finger to propriety, in each glass. One for her and one for him and he stays leaning forward, his eyes drifting to the game show for a second, but the commercials come on and his despondency isn't enough to bear even that, so he brings his eyes back onto Serafine. Looks down at the glass held in hands, arms resting on his knees, and then taking it in one to toast her. A lackluster toast to anything. But if it's to her presence, that's something, or even if it's just to the makers of Stranahan's.

Serafíne

She had: one of his arms trapped against his torso and the other free, her own arm, yes, wormed beneath his ribs. Her hair smells like strawberries and cloves and her skin smells like outside as much as it smells like the joint she smoked earlier, in her garden, under the sky and other than the musk-and-ash stink of the room and the piles of take-out trash and the occasional, bracing lungful of car exhaust and diesel fumes from the hotel parking lot when the delivery guy comes and given the state of the room she is clearly the first thing he has smelled besides the narrowing detritus of life-in-the-motel-room in some time.

When he turns around, her grip on him shifts but - see? Sera doesn't let go. Her smile sharpens and sweetens and there's a lump in the back of her throat when he kisses the crown of her head. Then her forehead drops to his shoulder as that muscle memory kicks in and he returns the final squeeze. She's a little breathless when it's all done but she's also a little bit high and a little bit sad and she offers him whiskey all familiar and he pours too much but too much is what she wants, always, isn't it?

While he's pouring, Sera takes in the room. The trash can piled full, the overflowing ashtray. The file of clothes and his rolled up yoga mat.

Seated cross-legged on the bed in her stupid platform and high heeled boots and she leans over the intervening space to accept the glass and he gives her or the whiskey a lackluster toast and she does him one better, leaning again to clink glasses with him and the whole time her dark eyes are fast on his face nevermind the distraction of the television its humid blue glow bathing the room with banked light. There are a few stitches still in her left arm. The skin beneath them new and angry but the wounds mostly closed now. Healing well.

For a few seconds or a few minutes or some span of time marked by heartbeats and daily doubles and backwards questions, Sera just watches him, right? Affection and compassion and concern and uncertainty written easily and thoughtlessly across her face, though despondent as he is he's unlikely to see anything beyond the wall of his own pain.

So that first swig is more-or-less a shot because that is how Sera drinks, but then she puts the drink aside and starts unlacing her insane boots. Here's a secret: the heels start hurting Sera's feet sooner than you'd think but she won't stop fucking wearing them. So: she unlaces and the boots come off one by one.

"We went on this tour, right?" Sera's talking, talking around whatever it is that has him holed up in his motel room because she doesn't fucking know how to approach it yet and she's bent over her boots, her blond hair sweeping forward over her left shoulder, spilling down her torso as she works. Her voice is low and there's music in it. Jim's never seen the band play but: Dan and Sera and that fucking guitar against the wall in here, not so many months ago. He knows how she sounds. " - for a couple weeks. All these shit places, middle-of-nowhere dives. It was so fucking awesome. Played a bowling alley. A flea market. More dives than you can count. Sometimes twice a day, can't even start to figure how many miles we put on the van.

"I started buying shit. You know, the shit you find in truck stops? Those cheap souvenirs? Got you and Pan snowglobes. His is like, this cowboy black against a midnight sky?"

By now the boots are off. Sera tucks them aside and picks up the plastic bag the whiskey came in. Hands it to Jim by the handles as she slips off the bed and circles the recliner to pick up the overflowing ashtray. Picks over the remnant roaches - at least those not drowning in ashes - with a degree of expertise preserving any that look like they still have a hit or two remaining but from the scent of the room she doubts he's left anything behind. Still: if he has, they're preserved.

"Yours is in there. Got you a t-shirt, too."

Leaves him to open the bag - or not - while disappears into the bathroom to empty the ashtray into a likely looking plastic bag and then scrub it clean.

If he opens the bag, he'll find: a Dudley's BOWL-A-RAMA t-shirt, all 1950s iconography with the slogan (COME INTO DUDLEY'S AND SCORE) in smaller letters along the bottom of the design; and - a cheap plastic snowglobe. A brilliantly colored plastic version of one of the iconic views of the Painted Desert, the colors themselves gone wonky and psychedelic, indigos and violets and vivid greens layered in with the customary rust-and-gold of the place. Shake it and snow - or maybe sand - falls in glycerine layers over the view. Printed just at the bottom of the plastic dome: PAINTED DESERT, AZ.

Jim

"Sounds like a blast," halfheartedly as she gives a glossing over of the route that had taken them from one back road bastion to the next exquisitely quaint exit. What's halfhearted is maybe Jim looks like he is longing for that open road. Like maybe the room is getting smaller by the day. A tinge of wistful jealousy to his words.

Jim shakes up the snow globe his hand produces out of the bag, setting it down in a kaleidoscopic bauble of color as he pulls the shirt he is wearing off. Dudley's graphics and slogans are soon emblazoned over his chest as he pulls on the gift, like Christmas morning when you try on that new sweater. It's proof you really like it if you don't need prodding to do so, don't need to be asked, 'does it fit?' or 'do you like it?' but instead already have it on by the time the giver is emerging from the bathroom with your newly cleaned ashtray.

When his head pops out from the ringer neck of the t-shirt he is looking at the snow globe's tempest of color dieing down. And then over to her, glass back in his hand for his own sip at the amber fiery liquid, setting it down next to the glass with glass-on-compressed-wood thump.

Maybe he had noticed that stitched together flesh before, but probably not, the way his hand goes to it when she's putting that ashtray back on the bedside table. Fingers as close to the surrounding skin as they can get without prodding tender red and purple. He looks up inquisitively at her. Concerned. It has broke him from that dead-nerved thousand-yard-stare revery.

"What happened?" Here? How? When? Who? Why? A thousand questions wrapped up in the one.

Serafíne

Sera emerges from the bathroom with the clean ashtray to find Jim whipping off the old, stretched-out V-neck that probably smells like a roach that has been rolling around in the bottom of the ashtray and looks like the half-forgotten tee rolled up at the back-and-bottom of the dresser in favorite of the new one. She gives him this sidelong look as she reappears, which is not wary so much as aware, assessing. She's never seen him like this; but more than that never imagined this dead-eyed retreat into despair was a possibility for Jim.

Like Pan, he's always seemed both somehow inviolate and invulnerable to her.

Like the fucking Colossus at Rhodes, standing astride - Christ. The metaphor fails there: hard to tell what he might be standing astride. Just that she never thought to see him vulnerable. And the uncertainty that engenders in her slides over her skin like oil over water, leaves behind this sheen of care and worry that darkens her eyes and perhaps her countenance.

--

He takes her arm in hand. She was in motion but the gesture belays her and Sera stops, mid-step. He looks up at her, she looks down at him, loose curls sliding forward over her left shoulder. There is this steady though provisional weight to her eyes now and she wants to bend over and kiss him on the forehead and so she does, because it is not in her to resist or subvert her impulses or desires.

There, the center of his forehead, reaching out to cradle the back of his head as she does so. Thinks to herself that he needs a haircut.

"Dogs. I'm okay, though. Justin stitched me up. Pan was pretty badly hurt?" A sharp breath out, like a valve opening. If there are holes in the story, lacunae, well - in this precise moment she's far more concerned with him than with herself. "He - he should recover, though."

Gently, she tugs her arm and picks up her own tumbler of whiskey. This time, though, instead of sitting cross-legged on the bed she takes up a perch on one of the arms of that recliner.

"Jim, I know I said you don't have to talk about anything if you don't want to. And that's still true, so you can tell me to shut the fuck up if I need to shut the fuck up, but maybe it'll - maybe it'll help if you tell me what the fuck is going on. How many times have you been there for me when I needed you?

"I wanna be here for you."

Jim

No anger rises as she hits upon whatever is at the heart of his despondency. What has spawned with shadowy version of Jim lacking in all the luster she had come to expect from him. He is still looking at her mending wound and digesting the fact that Pan had also been hurt, but that he would be okay. That he should recover.

And when her lively eyes are turned with concern back upon him, after that kiss and that news, and it finally sinks in what she is saying and why she is asking and he's gulping at that rocks glass of whiskey like he'll find an answer worth saying at the bottom. He sets down the empty glass as he sucks in air through gritted teeth with a sound like a hiss. He pours himself some more.

"You are being here for me, Serafine," the look in his eyes like simply her presence is enough. He hadn't actively avoided it or her or the others. He'd avoided the world outside entirely, and they were the bystanders of that avoidance.

"I don't know if talking about it is going to help," it's the most he has said this whole time, and his voice is rasped and raw, a quality less discernible when he'd asked (shouted) to be left alone. Smoking and drinking will do that to you. He has been indulging in both and it is plain in that tonality.

"But I understand why you want to know and I'm not going to hide it from you. Things fell apart between me and Sid and I fell apart along with it," shaking his head slowly and deliberately before it nods back into the upholstery of the recliner. He looks up at her and puts his free arm - one is set aside for whiskey-retrieval - around her waist so that his hand rests lazily on her thigh. He slumps into her, like the contact has set off a magnetic chain reaction, forehead nodding forward now to rest on her other leg.

His face is suddenly hidden and there's only the sound of his shallow breathing as his back rises and falls with each inhalation. That and Jeopardy is back on. More questions being answered.

Serafíne

The only real light in the motel room is the blue glow of the television set and a thin line of sunlight from outside, where it cuts in through the break in the curtains ruffled and moving like laundry in a breeze by the a/c unit fitted until the big window. Still, there's enough light, from enough sources, that Sera casts a diffuse shadow over Jim.

When he tells her with his eyes as much as language that her presence is enough, she favors him with this smile, which is quietly pleased and humming somehow for it. The compassion in her gaze is enough to banish the shadows that have lingered there since the attack and the priest's hospitalization, at least in the here and now. No matter how raw Jim's voice is or how close the walls, she feels safe here, too. Wrapped in the resonance of the wards he worked into the walls so many months ago.

He doesn't know if talking about it will help and she's on the point of interrupting to tell him that he doesn't have to say anything, but it is brief and to the point and exactly what she was expecting. She read the strange mixture of hurt and heartbreak bright beneath Sid's skin the way some people read their morning papers.

By then her expression is sober, quiet. There's no particular reassurance, false or otherwise, not yet. Just the solidity and warmth of her presence, the way she turns to keep her eyes on him, bracing herself with the palm of her hand on the back of the reliner. The way she curves into the warmth of his circling arm, loose and familiar, breathing steadily.

Letting him hurt.

Because sometimes we have to hurt. Then he slumps forward, his forehead against her leg, and she makes a quiet noise somewhere deep in her lungs, which might be Oh, Jim, and might be something else entirely.

She reaches down, slides her fingers through the short nap of his hair, her fingers curving around his head, her palm cradling his skull, her thumb moving in a lazy, soothing sweep through his hair. Each breath he takes is warm against her thigh. Behind her, someone gets the laser-swooping sound-effect signaling a Daily Double! and bets conservatively, and wins more money but not enough, for an easy trivia question to which Serafíne would never know the answer.

No matter, she knows this.

Leans forward until she is bent over him where is slumped against her, her hair a waterfall around them. Someone else might smell the curl of marjuana in the strands, the distinctive sweet numbness of her clove cigarettes but Jim has been smoking and drinking for days and the air in here smells like an ashtray so mostly he might smell the clean sweet undergone of her shampoo.

"Things fell apart. Doesn't mean you can't try to put them back together, if they're important enough."

Fade