Already wearing clothes.

Danny

(Musician at work - hangs up sign)

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Danny

*The sun was out, the sky was blue-ish, the weather was good enough for him to be sat with his guitar on his lap on a bench in the park. Today he was dressed in a pair of blue jeans; faded though and ending with the same pair of black shabby combat boots he always wore. Over the back of the bench hung a long black trencher. A green t'shirt that had in red writing. "See? Not a Red Shirt!" over that but open was a padded and thicker checkered shirt for when the weather broke or the temperature decided to drop through the floor as it was beginning to do at night. His hair was over his shoulder on the fingering side of the guitar, on the belly of the beast. But on the fret side he couldn't help but have it hang slightly. Musician at work it would appear.

To one side he had a notepad, to the other he had a laptop. He was working a riff, fingers running down the strings as he studied something playing on the laptop with a frown on his face, then his fingers began to run faster and faster on the strings.*

Danny

(awareness)

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Awareness.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

"Come on."

Dan knows better to question Sera when she tells him that she feels something. She is always feeling something and sometimes he even picks up on those sensations, though it rarely seems that he picks up on anything before she does. Just now - a fucking Wednesday afternoon, second most boring day of the week, he has blown off any professional engagements to mourn over the state of the goddamned country and he is pretty fucking sure (absolutely fucking sure) that Sera has no idea why that is but he did take her to vote yesterday. She was pretty goddamned high. He has no idea what she did in the ballot box but he knows she had to sign her real name to register and she grumbled at him about that for days and then she had to sign her real name to get her ballot and grumble grumble grumble.

So Wednesday and she has forgotten her grumbling and she has an Icee from 7-11 and he's carrying a coffee (not a coffee-drink: just a coffee from a local shop and they are in Washington Park because Sera wants to feed the ducks croissants and then she's redirecting him, tugging him a down a different path and the afternoon feels bright and simple and - yeah - alright, all things considered.

That's the effect of sunlight on skin.

So, curving around walking path toward Danny and his laptop and Danny and his guitar and Danny and his notepad: Dan (tall, blond, bearded, covered in tattoos and dressed in his usual uniform of skinny jeans and an old band t-shirt. The Pixies, because okay yes you have heard of them but that might be when all real music started) and Sera (and we will describe her outfit in the next post. Bet you can't wait.)

If Danny looks up from his work, Sera lifts her free hand (which is also holding her Icee) and waves it, see? All HI! HI! HELLO!

Danny

*As it happens, the opening riff for Here Comes Your Man is suitable for most occasions, and it would fit in here. He looked up when he sensed that something different coming closer which would herald the arrival of another mage. His fingers picked out the opening bars of the song as soon as he saw Dan, and he grinned even more when he saw Sera.* Well now...

*then he had to go start with those words.*

Outside there's a box car waiting, Outside the family stew. Out by the fire breathing, Outside we wait 'til face turns blue.

Serafíne

Sera has her other arm tucked into Dan's. They're so close. They're always so close. She's always so close to everyone, and she kinda inhales see and flashes her confidant / friend / keeper / lover this sly upswept look as Danny starts playing that opening riff, and then singing the opening bars. Takes a sip of her Icee and adds on the next lines -

"I know the nervous walking -

"I know the dirty beard hangs.

"Take me away to nowhere plains."

Usually Sera gets to be Kim Deal. Today that's Dan's job so he throws in her line in this attempt at breathy falsetto that might work better if he weren't on the verge of laughter because Sera's sticking out a blue tongue at him.

No sign between them of what went down a week or more ago, and Sera and Dan kinda tap out, you know. Let Danny finish his riff or surge into the chorus or whatever he's going to do, wait until he's finished before Sera enthuses, "Hey man, that was awesome." Why the hell not? It's how she feels. Then she tips her Icee toward Danny. It is a giant extra enormous big gulp and it is blue. "What the fuck are you doing out here. Want some?"

Danny

*He just shook his head and started laughter.* You're gonna be pissing blue ice if you're not careful drinking that shit. *But there was no harm in it, he didn't continue the riff, just broke away with a wolf whistle at the pair of them from the strings.

Then he settled his fingers on the strings to end the notes.* I'm outside? When the fuck did that happen? *He looks around and chuckles again.* Nah, it's a good day, I'm making the most of the colours and air before it turns into the arctic wasteland Kalen's warned me about. How are you guys anyhow?

*The strings didn't stay still long, soon enough his fingers were finding the notes for Under the Bridge.*

Serafíne

"God, gross - " Sera complains, wrinkling her sharp little nose as Danny declares that she will be pissing blue ice. She may have misheard that as blue eyes though she doesn't mention the near-homonym which she hears mostly because, well, she is wearing her usual tiny little denim cut-offs with fishnets and well-worn Doc Martens (not the heels she often sports) and a bra of some sort beneath her unzipped hoodie and, you know, nothing else.

This flash of pink sequins from her torso, between the teeth of the hoodie's zipper as she turns and climbs up onto the picnic table or - you know - whatever Danny has chosen as his perch of the day. In a bit he might be able to make out the sequined eyes that make up the cups of the bra. Or maybe not. It depends on how she sits and how she turns and how she reaches to tug Dan after her.

"Careful isn't really in Sera's vocabulary - " Dan, with an affectionate smirk, allows himself to be tugged closer. "We're good." - with a flash of a look at Sera, who just smiles back at him, not precisely serene but, you know, whole the way some people always seem to be.

"Wait, you moved to Denver without understanding, you know, winter?" That's Sera, sipping her Icee. It is liberally spiked with vodka, because why the fuck not. "You know they'll make you put on a shirt and shit, right?"

Danny

*He laughs again at that.* I get to wear my boardies during the summer, I get to work on my tv tan in the winter... what's not to like? That and the snowing here's got to be fucking cool right?

*His fingers kept on playing. He turned his head and looked at Dan then Sera.* So, what's new and groovy? You guys are okay?

Kalen spent the night at mine Saturday night. He was pretty drained, so.... Yeah just checking. *He didn't add that he was hyper and wired before he'd crashed.*

Serafíne

Sera's head - that shorn undercut, those dark roots and perfectly blown out golden curls - cocks and there's something careful about the shape of that expression on her. Something lingering. Something aware and she glances at Danny and then her dark eyes slide back to Dan, who has not taken a seat but has come close enough to rest a familiar hand high on her thigh.

"You mean - " he glances at Sera, gauging her expression, then back to Danny. Voice quiet. " - after the thing at Victoria's?"

Danny

*With a subtle nod and still working those fingers he shifts on the bench a bit more to be facing them. For all intents and purposes, he could just be serenading the pair of them.*

Serafíne

There's this moment, see. Danny turns to face the pair of them and Dan is glancing at Sera once more. His mouth is quick beneath his beard but right now it is still.

"We're okay," so, yeah. Quiet. The hint of a smile on his face now, though that expression is subtle enough to contain this edge of ache. "Sera's tougher than she looks."

Sera is not looking at either of them, focused instead on the lid of her Icee. Where she punched down all of the plastic bubbles meant to indicate what sort of drink it contains: DIET or SPRITE or COKE or whatever, punched down all of them, the stiff plastic gone opaque from the fracturing of its structure. She glances up at Dan when he tells them both that she is tougher than she looks and her expression is - complicated. Wry. Pained. Private.

But she doesn't shy from pain, and now she glances up at Danny, this sheen to her eyes that she doesn't shy from, either. "How much do you wanna know?"

Danny

As much as you want to tell me. Kalen was pretty cut up about it. But he didn't want to relive any of it. So.... Just tell me what ever you think I need to know.

*There's compassion there in his eyes, there's sympathy at her pain, there's understanding there as well at the ache she feels.* Or don't tell me a thing, just enjoy the music and let it unravel a few things.

Serafíne

"I don't mind talking," Sera tells Danny, and her focus in that moment is mostly internal. See, she is figuring that out. She is learning this about herself right now, listening to the fibers of her muscular heart. Her mouth seams, and the expression is precise but not compressed. " - but I don't need to talk."

She glances up then, "I really am okay," all earnest, more to Dan than to Danny.

"But if you really wanna hear about it - " Another brief pause. "Is Kalen okay now?"

Danny

He will be. *He nods in affirmation to that.* So will Elijah. So will you.

*His fingers restless on the strings pull the song from the air, filling the sounds around them with notes, a measured pace, a gentle calm, nothing aggressive.* He just needed to get away from spooking people.

Serafíne

There is this strange and lovely line between truth and platitude. Danny assures Sera that Kalen will be fine, that Elijah will be fine, that she will be fine, and her eyes have dropped from his, back to the plastic lid of her Icee, and she gives him this hitch-shouldered little half-shrug that makes the hanging zip of her unzipped hoodie jingle, just a little bit, like a bell and she is sort of half-smiling but her expression is contained. Banked and she doesn't agree with him, verbally or non-verbally, that they will be fine, any of them, any of them.

Even if she knows in the marrow of her bones that they will.

"Spooking people?"

Danny

Yeah... He was kinda.... *He frowned a bit, recalling that moment.* Pounced on me... soon as I got out of my car. Called me, asked me to get to him and then pretty much pounced... The jangles I guess you could call em.

Serafíne

Oh, she glances up then. Lovely creature, this sharp profile framed by the wild cast of her loose hair, her eyes dark, her make-up dark, that absurb pink-eyed-bra catching the sunlight as she turns and sending spangles dancing across Danny's frame as she sort of sits up. Sits upright.

"I'm glad you were there for him." Then, this slantward look down that again feels so very private. The edge sharpening. "I take it you guys did go on that date, then?"

Look what someone's avoided chatting about, after all.

Danny

*The corner of his mouth lifts into a twitch of a smile.* We've been up to a mountain a few times, we've spent time together.

*His fingers just kept touching strings, his fretting hand working the notes and chords in unison. A deft slide of a finger to slant and bend the note, then another plucked out stream of notes.* I'll be there for him until he doesn't want me to be anymore. It's that simple. I promised I'd stay. I don't break promises.

Serafíne

Oh, a brightness to her gaze. An awareness. She's magic, you see.

"That sounds pretty serious."

Her quick little mouth curving in a self-contained half-smile.

Danny

*At that he chuckles again, grinning and even shrugs one shoulder.* It is what it is. So, are you still going to officiate?

Kalen Holliday

[How awake are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday

[And how distracted by Resonance are we?]

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

Serafíne

"'Course I am. I'll be out of town for a little while, though. Don't elope before I get back."

Danny

Going off anywhere nice? *he asks, the music changed again, a series of chords just being strummed before he began to pick out the notes once more, a mimic to the chords, slowly working the chords themselves into it, a gently repetitive sound, then changing down, before coming back up to the same.*

And I don't think we'll elope just yet. *Now he was looking at Serafine when she said the next part. Tilting his head a little as he hunched over the guitar.*

Kalen Holliday

Kalen's had an interesting week. Month? Year? Year. And so of course he's come here, to the edge of a lake even though he is terrified of water. There is not a scarecrow today. There almost never is. Still, he lingers for a second, looking at the space where there has been.

After a moment he turns away from where he sometimes encounters The Message, toward where he can sense Danny and Serafine. He's dressed in jeans and a long gray coat, carrying coffee because he so rarely goes more than an hour or two without it. And there are shadows under his pale eyes, yes.

He does not rush to meet them. Just follows paths and slips off the path to where they are.

Serafíne

Danny asks if Sera is going anywhere nice and once again she favors him with this remarkably complex expression, the sort with so many edges it seems faceted, which both enhances and contextualizes and contains its brilliance.

Her eyes are soft, though. Even her mouth is soft, and Dan's gaze is on her profile and there is this moment where Serafíne seems so absolutely lost that he reaches for her and cups the frame of her head - his tattooed fingers tender against the short fringe of her undercut - and drops his mouth to her golden crown.

This line between her brows, which crests but does not break, and then she's smiling, smiling, reaching for Dan's forearm where it is wrapped around her, tucking her left hand so that her first knuckles are just bent, the chipped polish on her nails visible, dropping her mouth to his skin. This moment of communion between them.

"London," she tells Danny, then. "I'm going to London."

She doesn't say: back to, but that is also true.

"The party's the best part of a wedding anyway," Sera murmurs, like she knows what the fuck she's talking about, glancing up at Dan all in inquiry. " - have I ever even been to a wedding?"

"Yes. Janine and Hayley from roller derby a month and a half ago."

"That was a wedding. Fuck."

Danny

*He was staring at the cascade of thoughts across her face, the complexity of the human mind and the mirrors it provides to those watching, those who pay attention gives a small insight perhaps. So he nods, at her comment regarding London, then smiles and chuckles at the comment regarding the wedding she'd been to.* I take it, it wasn't your standard lets all dance party. A roller derby one perhaps?

Kalen Holliday

"Hey," Kalen says quietly as he reaches them. Danny gets a quick smile before his eyes settle on Serafine. And he knows, if not what that something horrible happened. He saw that well enough in the way Elijah and Alexander came back to him. And he may not know what exactly, but he knows what those nights are like. He's had them.

And so there is something soft in his tone, even softer than the usual toe he has for Serafine, when he asks, "How are you?" He reaches out to touch her shoulder, less because he's worried and more because he is saying hello. He can't exactly pull her to his side while she's perched up on a bench and she is tangled up with Dan. And you can tell that he is calm because he starts to reach out like Dan will get the same greeting because when Kalen isn't busy acting aloof or biting anyone foolish enough to come near him he is ridiculously into contact. And he sees Dan often enough. But then somewhere at the beginning of that movement he stops and gives Dan a little nod instead.

Serafíne

"It was a pretty conventional wedding, actually," Dan has taken up the thread of the conversation and he is speaking over the crown of Sera's head and his voice is this rich, low baritone. A bit of a rumble, that Sera really rather likes. "Outdoors, but both brides wore white dresses. They had a bonfire afterwards. Tried to get the wedding party to skate in but the ground was too uneven, so Janine said they just all wore vans with the fancy wedding shit."

"Did we give them a good present?" Sera wants to know and Dan,

laughs, breathes out with it, forceful, from-the-diaphragm. "'Course we did. They loved it. You had a great time."

--

Then Kalen's there. Sera's sharp little chin rises when she catches the leading edge of his stormy resonance which is just as he says Hi and he's reaching for her shoulder and may be ready to pull her close but Dan's already, you know, holding her. Sera's dark gaze is all on Kalen in that moment, banked but - you know - aware.

"I'm okay." This rallying little smile, these damp and lovely eyes, as Dan untangles himself, see. Lets her go.

What she says is also absolutely objectively true, right now. Sera is pretty okay. She's so goddamned magick how could she be otherwise?

Danny

*He turned his head looking when he could feel Kalen approaching, giving him a broad smile as he took him in. He even shifted a bit on the bench to let Kalen grab a seat if he wanted to. His fingers slowed to a gentle pace, sliding those long fingers of his along the strings to let it twang and break out, his hand moving to sing the strings, bringing the vibrato into play, yes he was in that place again. The place where you have to get the music out of you, or its going to consume you like some kind of inner pulsing flame. That urge couldn't be contained, it woke him up during his sleep sometimes, dreaming music, hearing the tones and notes in his sleep was nothing new. So he'd brought his guitar out to the park to make the most of the good weather before it all went Snowmageddon on them. The music was turning bluesie, a rich sound with a twang to it, a cowboy lick perhaps? Who knew, perhaps the mile high city was rubbing off on him.*

Ian

Ian ran by this lake most weekday evenings. Tonight was no exception. He'd already been running for a good hour or so, winding trails through the city streets and around the park as the sun set with a dusky glow on the horizon. It was dark by the time he got to the place where Danny, Kalen, Dan and Sera were, but the park had lights to illuminate the path so they'd likely see him coming: running at a smooth, agile pace. The weather was cold enough now that he actually had a shirt on (black with a little silver UA logo,) though it was thin and short-sleeved so it couldn't have done much to keep out the breeze.

It didn't matter. The running kept him warm. (And he had ways of dealing with the cold that Sleepers didn't.)

There was a band on his arm where he kept his cell phone, and bluetooth earbuds that blocked out the sound of Danny's own music. As Ian approached the group, he pulled them out so they hung loosely around his neck. His pace slowed, until he finally came to stop beside Kalen.

"Hey." He addressed the group at large with a familiar little nod, breathing deeply as his heart rate began to slow and the vital need for oxygen gradually grew less immediate. He let his hands rest on his hips for a moment.

Kalen Holliday

Dan untangles from Serafine and so Kalen does reach out for her again, for all he hadn't meant for that. He remembers the last time he tried to pull her to him, her hesitation before she'd relaxed. Not because it stung him, but because it was out of place in all of their other interactions. Otherwise he might have tugged her down from the bench to hug her, but instead he reaches out and offers her a hand. She can come down if she wants.

"You might have been right," he says to her, barely audible, really, over Danny playing.

And then there is Ian, and Kalen smiles at him. Warm. Calm. "Hey."

Serafíne

Kalen offers Sera a hand and she doesn't know that he's remembering her resistance, the last time he reached for her. She doesn't remember her resistance, whatever it was has slipped from her like water or perhaps it was worked its way right through her. She is as she is and she is right now accepting his hand this odd little dance, kind of reading the unspoken braille of his body language and remembering what Danny said about him, after, and sort of rising from the picnic table or park bench or what the fuck ever while Danny plays like that and Dan's eyes have slid briefly from Sera's profile to Danny's fingers on the fretboard and lifted to appreciate, you know, Ian, because Dan appreciates both Danny and Ian aesthetically and perhaps more than Sera really does because she kinda doesn't seem to notice how spectacular they look except peripherally, and then it will always take her by surprise.

So, she rises and wraps her arms around him, hoodie swinging open, pink-eye bra all sequined in the light, smelling like clove cigarettes and vodka and blue raspberry Icee, too, and holds him just so long but never long enough to threaten his damned dignity. Lifts her sharp little chin to plant a kiss on his temple, then draws herself back, tips her alcoholic Icee toward Kalen and Ian in invitation (DO THEY WANT SOME) and gives Kalen a wry kind of look.

"Kalen's been scaring the fuck out of Danny over the winter weather in Denver," this is what she says to Ian. "This is gonna be your first winter here too, isn't it? Look at you. Already wearing clothes."

Danny

You make it sound like I'm specting there to be twenty foot drifts or something.... *He laughs, his fingers still doing what they did. He even paused long enough to pick up the bottle he had beside him of coke, using it as a slide bar instead to bring something new to the mix, now shit was getting really bluesie as he played. The smile was still there though, content as he was to keep playing til his fingers bled again, or he heaven forbid broke a string. But that was covered too in it's own way. He always kept a spare set on him somewhere. As he played, he took his eyes away from Kalen, tapping his foot idly while he played complex mix of notes, some picked, some strummed, but all played where they needed to be. His eyes half closed, the smile remained on his face and he even nodded slowly in time to the beat only could hear in his head.*

Ian

Three of the four people in this particular gathering had seen Ian naked before, though Sera may very well not remember. (She'd been high at the time.) Dan... probably did remember. And Kalen most assuredly would. So it was not entirely without point that Sera made that little crack about Ian being fully dressed. And he actually laughed. This brief, winded moment of amusement.

"I was here last winter."

Here, yes. He just hadn't done much mixing with the locals.

"Anyway, I'm from Chicago. I'm used to the cold."

Danny was playing something on his guitar, bluesy and improvised and Ian glanced over for a long moment to watch him. It wasn't healthy to sit still after a long run, so he paced through the grass a bit, keeping his legs loose. His eyes shifted from Danny to the other (less magically inclined) Dan, and there was this small, almost knowing smile shot his way. Flirting with no particular intent. Because he could. Because Dan liked to watch him and he'd noticed.

"You play pretty well," he commented to Danny. Then, to Kalen again. "How've you been?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen...it would be a lie to say he does not care at all about his dignity. But, he is not terribly concerned about now. He does not demonstrate this by trying to keep Serafine, she gets to come and go at whatever whims take her. He does, despite the cold, accept the offer of a sip of vodka and blue dye-laced Icee. Without any regard for the colors it might turn his tongue.

"I've been searching for the ice demon this city must have offended at some point. So we can defeat it or apologize to it, or whatever we have to do. Melt its snowy heart. I don't even know. But so far, it seems that there is nothing unnatural about the weather here. I can only conclude this means the inciting incident predates recorded history."

Danny's attention is drifting to his guitar, and Kalen does at least glance at him before he lets his attention settle on Ian. "Good, I think. Puzzled?" He smiles. "I don't know. You've met me. Better, I think. You?"

Serafíne

"There could be twenty-foot drifts," Dan informs Danny, this supple half-smirk breaking through the frame of his blond beard. "I mean, probably not but we are fucking close to the mountains. Or it could be sixty degrees all February long. Sera doesn't seem to notice - "

"I fucking notice!" Sera exclaims, while Kalen drinks some Icee, without caring what color it turns his tongue. Well, he'll need more than a sip before his tongue turns blue. Maybe as much as Sera's had, as her tongue has already made the change.

She doesn't climb back on to the park bench / picnic table. Just leans back against Dan who meets that look Ian shoots him over the crown of Sera's head. Catches that glance and keeps it a moment longer, the surface of his smirk edging upward through his beard, then disappearing again as he glances at Kalen.

The way he holds Sera, though, arm loose around her torso. Hand flat on her bare stomach, loving and loose, protective and familiar.

Another glance at Danny. "You do play well." Echoing Ian, conscious or otherwise. "Any gigs soon?"

Danny

*You play pretty well. Was that a compliment from Ian? He didn't change the pace, he kept on playing, lifting his head and looking at the group that had clustered around him and his guitar. The smile remaining in place.* Thanks. It's good to hear you like it.

*Kalen got his attention, his eyes moving to check on him as he did, then moved on to Sera, and finally to Dan, the corner of his mouth twitching again into a smile, but his fingers never stopped moving, his head didn't stop bobbing. Soon his attention was back on Kalen and Sera and Ian again. The pace changed, a raunchy sound, something sulty even, at times his fingers found the time and space some how to tap on the body of the guitar to give a little pace to himself. But all the while he kept on playing rises of notes, lofty airs that soared, then cascaded down again. All through out was that pace that he picked as a foundation.

Could he feel that slightly numb fault on his finger tip that meant something was about to turn into a blood blister? Sort of, when you're in that moment, you don't really feel anything, just the music as it tears itself away from your blood and bones to make itself an ethereal being, lost to the void beyond once it'd stopped being heard.

But did it really? I mean, if one person remembers hearing a song at that moment in time, does it really ever fade away? Or does it become a ghost, or does it become another part of forces? Or even entropy? Sound being energy?

The frown increased again as he considered those thoughts, His eyes going slightly distant with a slight pout to go with it mulling it all over in his head.

Sometimes, Danny you have far too much going on in your pretty little head there sunshine.

He was paying attention to the conversation around him, his head lifted and he watched as they all spoke, discussing how they were with each other, that gave him another reason to nod, satisfied he was now. He even snorted at the comment about the cold and the ice demon.* Grinch, it has to be a Grinch.

You'll be okay Kalen. *He adds to it quietly, but it's with an assured confidence and well there it was, the pearl of wisdom you'd all been on tenterhooks for.

He blushed as if he suddenly realised he'd interrupted their conversation.* Huh?

*Shit, he was being spoken to and for a moment he looked like he had to replay the last three seconds of his life to figure out what was said to him. Music did that to him when he was like this. It was like being on the wind itself. It left him shaking and exhausted every time it did it to him. That and ravenously hungry.* Oh. band shit... don't get me started on that... Everyone thinks they're a fucking guitar hero or they've got some mad skills on the skins. Just.... Another round of auditions to go through tomorrow, but... *Here he smirked at Kalen.* Got the rehearsal space figured out, finally.

Ian

Kalen turned the question back on him, and he shrugged once, lightly. "I'm alive. My dance company's doing well. And last I checked I was still pretty okay-looking, so I suppose I can't complain."

It wasn't really a serious answer, but then, Danny was sitting next to them playing the blues on his guitar and Sera was offering everyone alcohol-spiked blue slush (which Ian passed on.) One could only expect so much disclosure from Ian even in less distracting circumstances.

Danny kept playing, and the music shifted, becoming something more sultry. Ian took advantage of the moment by reaching out to grasp Kalen's hand. "Someone should be dancing to this." He tilted his head and grinned along one side of his mouth, giving Kalen a gentle tug forward (closer into his field of gravity.) But he was watching, too. And there was a casualness about the act that did not seem to imply any insistence. If Kalen wasn't in the mood, he could just as easily pull away.

Kalen Holliday

"Yeah. I'll be fine, I know," he's says to Danny, but that is just warm and a bit amused.

He laughs when Ian tugs at him, invites him into his space the way only a few moments before he'd invited Serafine into his. Well...something like. There was no possession or expectation or insistence in his invitation to Serafine, but it can't really be defined as casual. "You just know I dance probably well enough not to trip you, but not nearly well enough to actually compete with you."

But even as he laughs he's moving, falling easily enough into Ian's gravity. It's all gravity in the end right? All of them. Energy and the force that binds that energy? Echoes of Words spoken before memory.

He isn't in the mood to fight with that tonight. To fight with anything, really.

Serafíne

Dan is murmuring something to Sera that sounds like we've got that thing or you still wanna do that thing and she's smiling at Kalen and even Ian a wee little bit and her kind of swimming awareness has turned inward again. It feels banked and framed and internal and she's sipping her Icee meditatively and she nods to Dan which could mean anything but he takes it as a yes to whatever he was asking and pulls back from her and tugs her a bit after and says, more to Danny than anyone,

"Hey man we're gonna get outta here. Good luck with the auditions. Tell them we'll see them around."

Sera waves her slushie and tucks herself against Dan's flank. She's humming. She's magick. Sometimes the world just seems to open itself for her.

Serafíne

(Thank you all! I gotta sleep. I am exhausted. :D night!)

Murder and the choices we make.

Elijah

He'd cleaned the blood off of his phone, but he could still see it. Like Lady MacBeth, insistent on a spot that no one else saw, but he knew it was there. He knew it was there, and all he wanted to do was throw the damned phone away but then he would have to explain what happened to it. he would have to lie and say it got stolen or lost and he would have to talk to his parents and they would sigh and just buy him another one because that's what they did. They spent a small fortune sending him to a school he wanted to go to. Funded a lifestyle that supported two people instead of one, even if he didn't actually live in that apartment anymore, and he wasn't sure why he was thinking about his parents or his phone and he wanted to throw up but there wasn't any food in his stomach and there wasn't anything that seemed like it wouldn't taste like raw meat-

And there was a morbid curiosity. Something that crept in slow and sickly and wondered what about the sensations as so addictive. If it was the power, if it was the fact that you could consume and take another person's being into your own. That you gain strength from someone else's heart, and he couldn't help but want to get sick thinking about it but he didn't have anything in his stomach to vacate and he wanted to drink but even tequila was going to taste like blood and-and-and

Exhale.

Exhale again.

Exhale until there was no air left in your lungs and his mind wandered. It wandered often, but there he was in the kitchen of the chantry, making sandwiches and going on autopilot, making food that he knew he wasn't going to eat. Peanut butter with apricot jelly because grape and strawberry had the wrong texture and he knew he needed to eat something. Eat something. Eat something or else…

Inhale.

Serafíne

The day after, perhaps two days after the denouement at Victoria's compound and there is still a white conversion van parked in the graveled drive, snug up against the garage. The tangled confluence of resonance from the rituals Serafíne and Ian and Jae-Shin and even Alexander and perhaps even Elijah performed before leaving the chantry are still threaded about the roots of the place, and though the distinctions are fading Sera's is perhaps the brightest of the remnant notes. Liminal here, that between-feeling, that sense of becoming, of will-be, of would-have-been.

She has been here a day or perhaps too, sleeping more than you can imagine, letting her body heal and her spent self gradually return. It is who-knows-when, and there is a line of sun against the horizon which reflects like a blooded sickle against the kitchen windows. Something about the time of year, something about the mountains.

He can hear footsteps behind him, or maybe he can't. Sera is wearing fuzzy pink sock-slippers and an oversized flannel robe, left open, over a Breeders t-shirt (white cotton, black print), which is in turn short enough to show off glimpses of her underwear - little cotton hipsters, black with multi-colored polka dots and she kinda shuffles into the kitchen with a cooling mug of Darjeeling spiked with whiskey in one hand and a cooling pot of Darjeeling not-yet-spiked-with-whiskey in the other. The former she keeps in hand. The latter she sets down on a counter, watching Elijah as he works.

There are fading bruises beneath her eyes, though at this point her injuries are more theoretical than actual. Just the remainder - and the reminder - of the blood where it pooled beneath her skin. A bit of a lingering headache. A specific sort of carefulness with herself.

"Elijah." Her voice is quiet. His name is quiet. It is not without feeling. "What are you doing?"

Serafíne

Per + awareness-as-empathy: you okay?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Elijah

There are idle gestures one makes, things one does to keep their hands busy and their mind occupied. Things that one does when they aren't really home, but they are there just enough to get through the day. He's functional, yes. He's functional enough to make sandwiches and go about his morning routine, but his mind if elsewhere. His thoughts are elsewhere, and in those quiet moments when there aren't people and sounds and sensations and he's left with that moment of solitude and self- no. No, he isn't okay.

There's a pile of sandwiches. He probably doesn't know how many he's made- truthfully, he doesn't seem to care, just until the loaf of bread is done and over with, and there's already four of them, cut into diamond shaped halves with the crust lopped off until they're just perfect little right triangles on a plate. Like he's making lunch for an army of finicky first graders and he hasn't touched a damned thing. He doesn't hear her at first. Doesn't hear her approach, but might be envious of those socks because they seemed comfortable and he longed for the day that it was socially acceptable for men to wear things that were fuzzy and comfortable because traditional masculinity insisted upon so many things.

He's dressed like he'd come in from church. Not that Elijah went to church, but sometimes he dressed nicely. Sometimes, sometimes he did because sometimes he ran out of clothes and didn't feel like doing laundry.

He didn't feel like doing a lot of things. He certainly wasn't okay, not at that juncture.

What was he doing? She asked. The last thing he ate was a salad with Grace. Only half of that. His stomach was insistent that he eat something, but his mind had other plans.

"Making sandwiches," he replied, "do you want one?"

Serafíne

Sera has not had a shower yet today. Elijah is making sandwiches like it is morning and perhaps it is. She does not know whether the sun is coming or going but that line is from the west so: so, the sun is going. Elijah is making something-like-breakfast-or-lunch and Sera smells all warm and feels a little bit sour, as you do when you first wake-up, hung over, and discover that the whole of the day is gone.

He is making sandwiches. Does she want one?

"Sure." Sera's voice is quiet. It feels like morning. She has already set aside the teapot she brought in and now as she crosses the kitchen she sets aside the mug too so that by the time she's close enough to reach for Elijah she has both hands with which to do so. "I was gonna make eggs, but I could eat a sandwich."

Slides her arms around him from behind, see. Drops her brow to his spine. Elijah is a solid nine inches taller than she is so when she follows that moment of communion - brow to spine - with a firm, quiet kiss, her mouth is set between his shoulder blades, her arms wrapped around his flanks.

And she must spy the sandwiches now over his shoulder because,

"You cut off all the crusts."

She smells like whiskey, Sera. Nevermind that she just got up.

Elijah

The sun is going to do what the sun damned well pleases, because the sun does what it wants and does not wait for no man or woman. It has a schedule to keep, doesn't negotiate and doesn't bargain. the sun is constant like that.

He stops his movement when he feels her lips between his shoulder blades, inhales like he wasn't expecting it, but not like it was unwelcome. no, it's as though some part of him is reminded that barriers, that separateness is bullshit, something he'd heard her scream at Sid, though he'd taken it out of context, built a world around the idea and mused over it in the moments when he'd been dancing with Hawksley or making out with someone he'd just met or staring at the ceiling while he waited to go to sleep, when sleep still terrified him and he needed something to do to please, please let tonight be different.

He cut off all the crusts.

"Do you want one with crust?" he asked. What he had done with the crust was anyone's guess, because he hadn't eaten it, but it was nowhere to be found. Odd, because it was one of his favorite parts. Odd, because he just needed an extra step. He inhaled and smelled whiskey, felt warmth. Felt reminded of something, of the vitality of the world around him. Commas, not periods.

Serafíne

"Mmm." Sera hums beneath her breath, voice thoughtful. She may be considering something. There may be something solid beneath her tongue. Like a stone. And if Elijah is aware of things he may be aware of the way her arms have wrapped themselves around his torso, made bulkier by the plaid flannel robe she found who-knows-where, left cuff pushed up more than the right, showing off the the sharp angles of her ink, there. The beginnings of the crow's skull tattooed on her outer forearm. "I do want one with a crust.

"And I want it toasted, unless it is sourdough. If it's sourdough I want a different kind of bread."

Just like that. She doesn't really move, though. She doesn't really move until he seems like he wants to move, wants her to move. Wants to be given over to his own agency again. Until then she just holds him.

Why the hell not?

Elijah

"Toasted in the oven or toasted from a toaster?"

Serafíne

"I didn't even know you could toast in the oven. 'Cept for toaster-ovens, but that's because they're both things at the same time."

Elijah

"Jenn and I don't own a toaster, we do pretty much everything in the oven," they don't own a television, either. They don't live together anymore, either either. He still talks about her like she's his housemate, though, because he did still pay for the apartment. It was, technically, still a place that he lived. If only on paper. If only, if only.

He doesn't move, though, doesn't go to pick up the loaf of bread and, instead, he just stands there with Sera's arms around his flanks and his hands move to lay on top of hers. He closes his eyes. takes in warmth and draws in a ragged breath. He doesn't want to be given over to his own agency, instead content to be held and to take long, deep, shaky breaths. A second passed.

"I was really worried for you," he admits, though it's not the least bit shameful to admit. Why should he be ashamed?

Serafíne

That makes her laugh, a bit, and they're quiet, see, in the warmth of the kitchen, with too-many sandwiches missing all their crusts piled in front of Elijah. So Sera's laughter is not vocalized, it is all hummed, less amusement than acknowledgment of something that is not quite so cynical as irony, but still somehow self-aware. Because see,

"I don't ever make my own toast," Sera confesses. "It has a dial but the dial doesn't work right. You have to wait until the scent changes or something. I never get it right."

(She doesn't know that Elijah doesn't live with Jenn anymore. Or if she does, it isn't something she remembers. Or if it is something she remembers, she does not perhaps understand that this troubles him.)

Elijah wants to be held, and so, Sera holds him, her cheek against his back. "Why were you worried for me?"

Elijah

"The dial never works right," he confides, "it goes bread-bread-toastashes. And that's how all toasters work."

The mysteries of the universe, there. The truth of toasters.

There was the question of why he was worried for her. Hands stay over hers and he tries to keep his breathing steady, but it's hard. It's really hard, but he tries anyway. Perhaps, of course, because it was hard. Perhaps difficult things were worthy of being done sometimes just because they were difficult. Why was he worried for her.

"You did a lot a few days ago," he said, "and you really got hurt and… you're my friend, and I want you to be okay. I know bad things can happen, but I want you to come back from them."

Serafíne

Oh, she can feel that rhythm in his breathing, the hitch of it that wants to turn into something else, something wilder, and the will that keeps it under control. She is smiling, but again he cannot see the expression, at most he can feel it perhaps in the winsome lift of her cheek against his scapula. Some responsive ache in her when she feels him both tremor and resist that tremor, reach for the difficult things that might be worth doing, like breathe deeply and confess his fear.

His fears.

"I'm okay, though." Sera says - very simply and very solidly. He hasn't turned around to look at her yet, has he? That's for the best. Her fading black eyes are turning quite ugly colors. Somehow, sometimes, healing wounds look worse than the first response to the blow. There is empathy wound into her tone too, and this quiet, inexorable logic. "I'm right here. You are, too.

"You're not worried anymore, are you?"

Elijah

She's okay, though. He can't see her face, so he doesn't have the ammunition to not believe her, but he can't argue with her logic. She's there. He's here. They're both present and alive and she wonders, asks, if he's worried now.

If he's not worried then why isn't he eating? He's made a pile of sandwiches and he hasn't moved just yet but he's hungry, feels hungry, knows he's hungry, but can't bring himself to actually eat because the texture just doesn't settle well with him. She asks if he's worried anymore, and he doesn't move. Stillness doesn't suit him.

"I'm worried about different things… I talked to Kalen about Victoria, about… whatever's going to happen to her now. I want to believe that… that the fact that she's dead and gone is actually going to help her, that she can start over now," but, because there's a but in his voice. Things he wants to believe with conviction but doesn't.

"I've never seen anybody die before," he admits. And he actually does sound ashamed of that.

Elijah

She's okay, though. He can't see her face, so he doesn't have the ammunition to not believe her, but he can't argue with her logic. She's there. He's here. They're both present and alive and she wonders, asks, if he's worried now.

If he's not worried then why isn't he eating? He's made a pile of sandwiches and he hasn't moved just yet but he's hungry, feels hungry, knows he's hungry, but can't bring himself to actually eat because the texture just doesn't settle well with him. She asks if he's worried anymore, and he doesn't move. Stillness doesn't suit him.

"I'm worried about different things… I talked to Kalen about Victoria, about… whatever's going to happen to her now. I want to believe that… that the fact that she's dead and gone is actually going to help her, that she can start over now," but, because there's a but in his voice. Things he wants to believe with conviction but doesn't.

"I've never seen anybody die before," he admits. And he actually does sound ashamed of that.

Serafíne

"Come on," Elijah is still. Sera moves first. Breaks the spell of contact but only long enough to pull back and turn Elijah around and redirect him from the countertop where he is making: sandwich after sandwich after sandwich. The fading bruises on her face might look worse now than they did the last time he saw her, but she's moving normally, not the contracted, painful shuffle she managed up the stairs and out of Victoria's house.

Reality is painful.

It is also: passing.

"Let's go sit. I'm too tired to keep standing up and we don't really need any more sandwiches."

Elijah

That's the thing with now. Now being everything, now being what we consider the past and now being the future and all of it being the present when you really look at it. Moments are fleeting. One can be present in them, but inevitably that time does pass and the focus will shift to a different now, a now where there aren't dead bodies or blood and Sera's face isn't bruised up, but she's healing. His thoughts move quicksilver fast, to the point of dizzying. To the point where he can't stay on one thing for too long lest he dwell.

He turned around; Sera saved a load of bread from massacre and a death of slow and inevitable withering because despite the surprising number of sandwiches there, he probably wasn't actually going to eat any of them.

"I owe you something with crusts," he says, perhaps protests, but she says they are going to go sit down. He offers an arm, because she said she was tired. She might be moving normally but the bruises make him wince. Make him nostalgic- a reminder for when he was young and clueless and had no idea that it was difficult as fuck to give yourself a black eye by running into a door but he'd bought it anyway because-

We digress.

Serafíne

Well, Sera pays precisely no attention to Elijah's protest that he owes her a sandwich with crusts. She is hungry but she also doesn't fucking care if she gets a sandwich with crusts or a sandwich without or no goddamned sandwich at all. She's used to hunger: good hunger, see. Clean hunger. Want, bright and driving and powerful and it isn't something that she will allow to be tainted by a woman who was mad for power and hungry enough to kill.

And he offers her his arm and she takes it because she is a Sera and she is always taking someone's arm and she notices the wince, she has to notice it. She doesn't reassure him that it is nothing because it isn't nothing. It still aches and yesterday it shredded her but there is so much that she is learning that she can bear.

So, she tucks herself against Elijah's flank and together they head back to her room. Sera in her t-shirt and underwear and pink fuzzy sock-slippers and Elijah in his usual finery. Climb the steps to the space she has claimed for the few days she needs to recover, to recall herself to herself. The bed is still unmade, a tangle of sheets and the comforter sort of piled/nested in the middle and the room smelling entirely of Sera. A little bit like sex, but only a little. She masterbated when she awoke this morning, to a small, shuddering climax, more for comfort than anything else.

And maybe Elijah sits and Sera crawls across him to lean against the headboard and whatever is happening here there is this: he's not holding her. She's holding him.

"Are you really worried about Victoria?"

Elijah

He'd never actually been concerned about one's place in traditional masculinity, things that people deign to be weaknesses. Showing that you had emotions, showing that you felt something, being afraid- openly afraid of something. He'd not found strength in the denial of truth, because the truth always came back. It was persistent like that. It was insistent like that, sure of itself and sure of its place in the world, because there was always a place for the truth. Sera doesn't tell him that this is nothing, that what happened was nothing because it wasn't nothing. H knows nothing, or Nothing with a capital N. Is aware of it in ways he shouldn't be aware of things, and nowadays he dreams of nothing, lowercase N instead of the capitalized one. He isn't afraid of his dreams anymore, not that they do not have the capacity to be terrible but there came an acceptance.

They were what they were.

He sits with his back free and open, with his legs over the side of the bed and his knees occasionally brushing the night stand. He doesn't know her room at her house is covered in art- low art, high art, middling art, all kinds of art. In truth, he'd never been to her room there. Would have probably been fascinated by the little things there and fallen asleep on the bed marveling at how the sheets felt because he'd been turned on to a world of texture. The room smells like her, this one does, and he likes that. She has a way of making a place her own, even if she was there just for a moment.

Was he really worried about Victoria?

"Yeah," he said, he nods, "I guess… in a way I'm worried about her. And I'm… I'm kinda… I don't know," he doesn't say fucked up but he wants to, it lingers in his tone, "when people die, and they stick around, it's because they have unfinished business, and the place they stay is fucking horrible, but once it's done it's done. You move on."

Then, to the heart of the matter. He exhales a shuddering breath, "Sh did some fucked up things, but I didn't think she was hopeless."

Serafíne

Sera listens. God she listens. And Elijah can sit at the edge of the bed or curl up with his head on her lap. She just, drapes an arm over the breadth of the young man's shoulders and listens in a way that is serious and strange and thoughtful without being measured, that is physical rather than intellectual, that lives in her body and her blood and her skin as much as it ever does in her mind.

"How do you know what happens to people when they die?"

Elijah

Eventually, he does lay back, put his head in her lap because it feels nice and he likes looking up at her and he likes the closeness and he likes the fact that there is a person there. He takes sensation because he needs it, because he does live in his head sometimes, thinking simultaneously too much and not enough about the right things. It gets him into trouble.

"Because I hear them," he told her.

Serafíne

Well,

Elijah lays back and settles his head in his lap and there is Sera, with her sort-of-still-kinda blackened eyes and her sleep-tangled hair and her Breeders t-shirt and her fine, calloused fingers smoothing themselves over his brow, his temples, finding their way into his hair.

He tells her that he hears the dead and she absorbs that, maybe. Doesn't really think about what it is or what it means. She doesn't think about them at all: people who have gone, except that they are: gone.

But she's searching his face, her own rather tender.

"Do you want to know what I think?"

Elijah

Does he want to know what she thinks?

He looks up at her, from that different angle and he considers closing his eyes, close close his eyes because he is instinctive sometimes. When one is comfortable the mind drifts, the body drifts, insists that one should rest even though he doesn't need to rest. He's comfortable, and maybe he does think about it.

It troubles him. His brows were knit for a second, jaw set before he'd relaxed, but does he want to know what she thinks?

"Of course," he tells her.

Serafíne

"Victoria made her choices. She always had autonomy in this, you know? Nothing was riding her. No one forced her to become a person who tore other people apart - who enslaved others in order to use them to tear other people apart.

"If she was serious about changing that; and changing the life she lived, and finding a way to atone for that, then I might worry about her. The darkness of the path she walks. The way that guilt, the legacy of pain and loss might wear on her, and how easy it would be for her to fall.

"But that's not the choice she made. I don't - "

This brief frown, cresting the edge of her expression.

"I'm not happy that she's dead. But I'm happy that she's not going to lure more young men into darkness, that she's not going to destroy more lives in her quest for whatever the fuck she was looking for.

"I worry about people - who don't have choices, or who don't know that they can make them, or who think that they are bound by all the darkness in their past to only darkness in the future, or who cannot remember to look for the paths that are open to them, rather than the ones that are closed.

"So I hope she finds another path, and a better path, but I'm not worried about her. That's what I think."

Elijah

He looked up at her from his current position, took his words in for what it was and inhaled slow and deep and perhaps he could find comfort in these sorts of things. Perhaps he could find solace in her wisdom because one couldn't argue with the fact that Serafíne had a point.

"That's… that I am worried about, I guess… it makes more sense to worry about the people who can't help themselves- people who don't have choices," he sighed, "it's easy to feel like you don't have any options."

It was a strange, bitter thought. It was a strange, pained thought. It was something that passed through his mind.

"There's… a lot more people out there like that."

Serafíne

"It's easy to feel a lot of things," murmurs Sera, wry. Her face is all enshadowed and it only makes the bruises on her face darker, the evidence of her exhaustion more prominent. There is something so sharp and fine about her, seen from below, her blond hair haloed by the warm glow of the bedside table, her fingertips stippled through his hair. And beneath the wryness she means that and she seems both here and very very far away, and there's nothing much more to say, is there. Elijah was worried about Victoria. Perhaps he is still worried about Victoria, about what her soul will encounter on the other side of the veil.

Maybe he will always be worried about her.

It is, as Sera says, easy to feel a lot of things.

All too often, she herself feels everything.

And she's aching tonight, and that ache is both old and young, and it beats inside her body with each downstroke of the pulse visible in her throat. But that's okay.

She leans back against the headboard, still sitting up, Elijah's head in her lap, her fingers threaded through his hair. Hums some threaded version of a song he can hear but only just, beneath her breath, under her skin, both within and without, until Elijah falls asleep.

There's no magic in it.

Or perhaps there is.

When morning comes around again, she's gone.

Left, not right.

Arionna de la Babin

[Do I feels you?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Danny

(Awareness)

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Arionna de la Babin

It might be the end of the weekend, but that doesn't keep people from celebrating. There are gallery shows, cafes, restaurants, and general parties happening because...some people don't see Monday as the beginning of work, or at least see no reason to cry over Sunday coming to a close.

Arionna had slipped to the bookstore earlier, happily (inwardly, not outwardly) walking away with a new book to read in her off time. But now she wanders, pausing at the opening of some art gallery, filled with people who wear black...not because they're part of the goth crowd, but because 'they were doing it before it was cool.' Probably sipping wine too. Losers.

She has a short skirt on, with black stockings and a pair of boots. A black long sleeve keeps her from the cold, and a black jacket to go with it. She wears a black cinch at her waist and a studded collar at her neck, with a black crystal hanging from it. Despite her clothing, she doesn't fit. There are no square glasses on her face, or the indication of art snobbery. Her darklips and eyes denote that she is, indeed, sporting black for the most appropriate reason, and not to make a statement; she likes the color.

Ian

[Awareness ftw]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Danny

*He had gotten dressed, he had. Being dressed was good, it was black cargo trousers tucked in around the ankles into those shabby combat boots he liked so much. Well lets face it, we all have our favorite things, his was his boots. A hoodie, black with a white motif on the front. It looked like a white triangle cut in half.

His leather biker jacket completed the look done up slightly along with the collar to keep the crappy weather at bay.*

Elijah

Jenn was making him interface with the rest of humanity.

Not that he didn't want to interface with the rest of humanity, it was just that it was incredibly early to be interfacing with people, and she had looked at Elijah with a quiet bit of desperation that came with please please please be my wingman because there was nothing that got him out and about more than the need to be a wingman at an art gallery. It was going well. Jenn was with a girl with dreadlocks and a septum piercing. A girl who smiled too brightly who could probably count as an amazon of some sort, but Jenn seemed to really like her so, maybe he wasn't so much there as a wingman as he was an escape route. Who knew, really. Jenn had just been specific that she had wanted Elijah to come out with her.

Maybe she just wanted his company and needed an excuse.

Whatever the case, there was an abundance of Halloween-themed and death-centric and rebirth-focused artwork at this particular event, and more things that tasted like pumpkin spice than you could shake a stick at. And an abundance of vegetarian tiny food thingies. There was a word for them. A word that was incredibly difficult to spell, so the author of this particular post just avoided using said word instead of noting that the food thingies actually existed.

Also: there was always time for vegetarian sambousa. it wasn't even an Ethiopian-flavored event, but goddamnit the young man with his trousers and his button up shirt and his vest (because pocket watch) was going to eat whatever was available so long as it wasn't meat-flavored. He could tell what the texture was. He'd had someone else clean off his phone.

Arionna de la Babin

She felt cold, as she always did. As winter approaches, it might even be harder to notice her presence, but not yet. The fingers of winter caressed clothing, sunk its nails into the flesh and burrowed far beneath it until bones were exposed to the reminder that winter was approaching, and despite the snow and glamorous glittering sun, it was not kind.

Night was hers. She never felt particularly strong or capable when the sun was up, but once it sunk beneath the horizon, Arionna felt the strength of her own blood. The darkness was her own, and with it, her magic flourished. But that was neither here nor there, as she stood outside of the gallery, contemplating crashing it, or at least showing the 'artists' what real black was meant for.

She adjusted the bag at her side, inhaled slowly, and made her way slowly past the threshold. Like a cold wind she stepped in, dark boots clunking on the floor. Pumpkin spice was the calling of every white girl in the great USA, and even Ari felt a calling for it. Maybe later.

Danny

*He made his way into the gallery just for the shits and giggles of it. Perhaps if he saw something interesting, he might buy. Maybe. He thrust his hands into his pockets as he slowed his pace. Walking past the desk, one hand moved to pick up a pamphlet on top of it. Then began to make his way around it slowly.*

Serafíne

Awareness.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

Ian

Ian was already inside the art gallery, though for the moment it didn't appear that he was with anyone. Less than a week and a half ago he'd been covered in a dead woman's blood, and now he was walking through a fucking art gallery in downtown Denver in one of his better suits like everything was life-as-usual.

That was a lie, of course. But not everyone wore their emotional state on their sleeves.

The suit was a black burberry creation. Tailored and very slim-cut. Beneath the jacket he had on a deep teal shirt and a black silk tie. He probably looked a little overdressed for this type of gallery exhibit, but then, art shows tended to draw a pretty eclectic crowd.

There was a painting of a man trapped in some kind of nightmare. He was sitting in what looked like a pool of blood. The piece was crudely effective, if not precisely nuanced. Ian hovered in front of it for a long time, the glass of wine in his hand momentarily forgotten.

Danny

(Scrub me from this. I'm knackered, sorry. Got to be up early tomorrow)

Kiara Woolfe

[Spidy Senses Roll, yo.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

This is a kind of close encounter and this is her neighborhood and these are her people and she's not tonight at the particular gallery where so many of her sort are converging, no. She's down the street, in a little bar so narrow that even the skinniest chicks are all "scuse me, scuse me" and sidewinding past the strangers tucked into the bartstools. The place specializes in non-traditional whiskeys, whatever the hell that means. Sera doesn't know but at least three of the people in the extended group she is with tonight think they know.

They are probably wrong, but you've probably never heard of these things, either.

Halloween was several days ago but today is All Soul's and anyway Sera is a celebrant, she is still celebrating, she is dressed up in a black bustier beneath her black leather jacket, wearing these boots that look like hooves and an antlered crown, and she feels them and she is unwinding herself from girl beside her considering following the pull of resonance both strange and known, but the girl does not wish to be unwound-from and someone buys her another shot of what was that? and it is golden sliding amber, warming her all the way down, and she wants another.

So. So - ships, passing. Another shot. This heady laughter tattooed against her skin as the golden moment splits itself into fractal edges, each with its own shade of flame. Strangers come and new-friends go and her phone keeps buzzing with texts and soon enough that pulse, that beat, that awareness-of-others has settled into the background hum of her Sunday.

They'll leave that hole in the wall soon.

They'll turn: left, rather than right.

Serafíne

[heh. quite literally a drive-by from me since it is my bedtime. later, y'all!]

Halloween.

Serafíne

The hallways are packed and there are those half-affected, half-assured girlish sort of screams coming from the mini-haunted house, drowned in turn by the thumping bass. The crowd is intense, packed tight on the dance floor, this horseshoe shaped bar besieged by drunk, sweaty mermaids, pirates, sexy cthulus and every iteration of be something else tonight someone might imagine. Zombie acrobats in stylized Victorian corsets with tiny tophats and light-up tutus swing high above the crowd on trapezes rigged to the ceiling and on the main stage, a pair of stunt performers play with fire.

Serafíne is out there somewhere in the crowd and in a place like this, on a night like this where every single guest is intent on letting loose, on shaking themselves free of every single ordinary thing in their day to day lives, she has a particular sort of centripetal gravity about her - though otherwise isn't she just another girl in a revealing costume, throwing back shots and making out with strangers, because they aren't really strangers, because she loves to feel them as their strange little shells start to crack open.

Fuck, everyone's half-naked here. Her bodysuit is absolutely sheer, except where the golden skeleton skims her body. Her hair is threaded with gold too, piled high, twisted through with chains and braids even actual gold leaf to match the couture piece she wears and she came tonight wearing a pair of golden-caged platform heels you see but she has traded them for the amazing lighted hula hoop she is holding onehanded above her head because her other hand is holding a bottle of Veuve Cliquot which, gauche as it may be, she drinks directly from the mouth of the bottle.

Why the fuck not?

The night has just begun. Best celebrate.

Ian

[Bodies in Motion (Life 1/Forces 1) diff 4 -1 (resonance)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ian

[Awareness]

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

Ian

[Ian how hot do you look tonight? (I dunno man I want to roll App ONCE before he dies)]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 6 )

Ian

[Dancing! Dex+Performance -1 diff from that rote]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 10 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]

Ian

Some of them were there to celebrate. Some were there to be someone (or something) other than who they were. But Ian was not at the Paranormal Palace to become something new. They were already extraordinary creatures, Ian and Sera. What need did they have for masks on the one night of the year when anyone could be anything?

Sera had never seen Ian perfectly in his element before. The room was smoky and filled with a thudding, pulsing bass from the music and the lighting was shadows and deep color, blending from one shade to the next. And there were people performing with fire and for some the night was early yet but... Ian wasn't here to hang out at the bar and make small-talk. People dealt with trauma in all kinds of ways, and Ian usually found some way to purge the wild, destructive emotions from his system. When he was a kid, he'd done that in a lot of dangerous ways. Now he mostly did it by finding places like these and dancing until his heart felt like it might give out.

Which is what he was doing right now.

His costume was less a costume than it was an impression. He was shirtless, with body paint decorating his back and shoulders and arms. Whoever had done it must have been an actual artist, because the impression of fur was surprisingly realistic. Orange and white with black tiger stripes. The paint had a very faint sheen of glitter that caught the light now and then. There was paint on his face too, but not much. Just an elegant brush of color dark liner around his eyes. Again, reminiscent of a tiger's markings. There were glittering black claw rings on each of his fingers, and if one happened to look closely at his teeth, they'd notice small caps on his canines. Just enough to give them a bit more length and sharpness. They looked professional, like his makeup.

(A little on the nose tonight, Ian? Maybe that was the point.)

Oh, and he was barefoot. Which for anyone else might have been dangerous with this crowd, but Ian seemed to have a knack for avoiding getting his toes tread on by less graceful dancers. His pants were coated black denim, cut slim with a slight taper. They sat low on his hips. Some of the people near him seemed to appreciate that. The ones who were paying attention, anyway.

He was dancing, and he looked. fucking. amazing. Like a force of nature. Primal and wild and hungry and so impossibly graceful. Sera was at the bar in her barely-there couture drinking champagne from the bottle and once, Ian swung around and opened his eyes and looked at her. He had on golden contacts and when he smiled his teeth looked sharp and dangerous. There was just that - this flash of acknowledgement. Then he let himself get swept into the music again.

Serafíne

The bottle she lifts upward in response or is that the lighted hula-hoop? She has two hands, Serafíne, and both are part of the far-flung galaxy of her body but she does not quite remember how to work one independent from the other, or which is which, or why there are two. This ache in her lungs that makes her feel both expansive and contracted, so very precisely in this place and time that each breath she takes feels like has defined a whole new universe.

But listen: Ian flashes her that look and she lifts both her slender arms overhead and a person who is not a stranger wraps her arms around Sera from behind and Sera half-folds into her, breathing, breathing, see. Turns her golden head to catch the edge of whatever said someone is saying to her and catches sight of Ian again. Across the crowd. Dancing, you know, as if the word had been invented simply to describe what he's doing in just that moment.

This time her gaze snags on Ian, Ian in his painted attire, Ian too on-the-nose with his contacts and his claw-rings and his sharpened teeth. Ian in his element.

This time,

she watches,

and watches,

and watches.

Serafíne

(Per + Awareness-as-empathy)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Ian

What was Ian feeling in that moment? He could have hidden it, sure. But doing so would have made him... less. Less beautiful. Less wild. Performers knew how to channel their instincts. It's what made Ian's dancing more than just skill and elegance. It's what made him fit so perfectly into that moment and into that costume that was less a costume and more an elaboration of his nature. Like wearing his skeleton on the outside of his skin.

(See, he and Sera hadn't had all-that-dissimilar ideas.)

He danced the way that he felt. Like he wanted to grow claws and sink his teeth into someone's skin. He felt aggressive and hungry and a little unstable. A mood that could easily turn dark with the wrong push, but that just now was balancing on the edge of primal release. And he wanted to be near people. He wanted to smell their sweat and taste their pheromones and be overwhelmed and buried by a thousand beating hearts.

He wanted to not think. To be in the moment, as Sera was.

Shadows of a terrible place and terrible brutality still lingered on him. This is how he purged those shadows.

Sera watched, and watched. And Ian felt her eyes on him but he didn't stop to look at her again. Not when there were people all around him and there was one girl dressed as some kind of faerie who actually wasn't a bad dancer and she seemed very interested in him, so he let himself drift into her for a moment. Let his lips graze her ear before he pulled away and lost himself in the crowd again.

Serafíne

Her attention is a quick thing. Alive in its own way, with a measure and a pulse and a heartbeat all its own, even when she's rolling, as she is tonight. Even when she is fucked up and slitheringly alive, and so it is tonight. Sera watches Ian dance for three four five heartbeats and those heartbeats turn to measures and those measures turn to something else for which she has no name, but which is bounded and framed by the pulsing lights and the beats and the shadows of spent flame from the front stage. Or perhaps merely the shadows framing Ian,

and then he finds that girl in the crowd, lovely enough and liquid enough and lively enough to complement him as he undoes the many layers of tightly framed masks behind which he spends so much of his waking life.

And Sera - she smiles this hooked little smile that is mostly to-herself, you understand, and she lets him go.

See? It's like catch-and-release. She is aware of him in the crowd, the way he slices through it like a swordfish through deep waters, the silver flash of his belly against the lights, but for all that she lets him, you know, Be.

Maybe he feels her resonance as she slides from the bar and joins the crowd, radial around him, but he's not looking for her, he's not looking for anything except the waves of strangers all around him and she's so fucking short that when she slides into the crowd, even half-way to naked as she is, she all but disappears.

Here now yes, and in the crowd, but then farther away. Upstairs maybe, through the warren of dark corridors that serve as the mini haunted house. Just like that see - like a spoke in a wheel, revolving.

Ian

They passed each other by. Or rather, Sera passed him by. Because they were each in their moment and sometimes moments did not need to intersect. Sometimes it was enough for them to graze past each other in the night.

So: time passed. Sera went upstairs and Ian kept dancing and at some point that dancing became as much about contact as it did movement. Ian tried to be careful of all the sharp points on his teeth and his fingers, but he left a few scratches in his wake. No one complained. It was Halloween and they were drunk or high or just wild with energy and the music was low and thrumming and dark and frankly most of them liked it. The sharpness. The little pricks of pain when he grazed their skin with his teeth. He liked it too when they did it to him. He would have liked more.

He wasn't exactly tired by the time he left the dance floor, but the rush of his blood was less wild and immediate. It was... what, an hour later? Maybe more. He hadn't been keeping track of the time, and unlike Sera, that wasn't something that necessarily came naturally to him. First it was because he needed to drink something. So he claimed a bottle of water at the bar and downed most of it quickly while the music and the lights continued to play in the background. The rest he finished up as he made his way up the stairs.

This was an intermission. He may as well explore while he was at it.

Sooner or later his path took him past the couch pit that Sera had rented. Past the press of bodies that joined her there. Almost he kept going, but then he stopped and looked - the way she had done with him. And slowly he padded forward until he came to stop beside Sera.

"Nice costume."

Serafíne

The champagne bottle is long gone. She has something else near to hand or maybe a half-dozen other options close to hands and none of them is water and she is reclining on the spine of one of those couches like, you know, some sort of languid deity and the complicated architecture of her hair has become unmoored and there is a trio of strangers standing on the table in the center of the couch pit (a zombie, Elmo, and a sexy/creepy baby doll) dancing even though there's no music out here, or rather: not much music, and all of it subdural, heard the way elephants hear those deep, deep tones we never new they could make, with the body rather than mind, and from very very far away.

She's smiling at them elbow crooked, temple in the palm of her head, her free arm wrapped loosely around a stranger's neck, mouth hovering just over the crown of her red-gold hair when -

- Ian stops, and Ian speaks, and Sera flops backwards and favors him with this half-private smile, so winsome and genuine it might be heartbreaking if one had a heart one wanted broken. Her pupils are huge. There is nothing natural about that.

And she reaches out both hands to him, palms up and wordless. She expects him to take them.

Ian

Ian

They passed each other by. Or rather, Sera passed him by. Because they were each in their moment and sometimes moments did not need to intersect. Sometimes it was enough for them to graze past each other in the night.

So: time passed. Sera went upstairs and Ian kept dancing and at some point that dancing became as much about contact as it did movement. Ian tried to be careful of all the sharp points on his teeth and his fingers, but he left a few scratches in his wake. No one complained. It was Halloween and they were drunk or high or just wild with energy and the music was low and thrumming and dark and frankly most of them liked it. The sharpness. The little pricks of pain when he grazed their skin with his teeth. He liked it too when they did it to him. He would have liked more.

He wasn't exactly tired by the time he left the dance floor, but the rush of his blood was less wild and immediate. It was... what, an hour later? Maybe more. He hadn't been keeping track of the time, and unlike Sera, that wasn't something that necessarily came naturally to him. First it was because he needed to drink something. So he claimed a bottle of water at the bar and downed most of it quickly while the music and the lights continued to play in the background. The rest he finished up as he made his way up the stairs.

This was an intermission. He may as well explore while he was at it.

Sooner or later his path took him past the couch pit that Sera had rented. Past the press of bodies that joined her there. Almost he kept going, but then he stopped and looked - the way she had done with him. And slowly he padded forward until he came to stop beside Sera.

"Nice costume."

Serafine

The champagne bottle is long gone. She has something else near to hand or maybe a half-dozen other options close to hands and none of them is water and she is reclining on the spine of one of those couches like, you know, some sort of languid deity and the complicated architecture of her hair has become unmoored and there is a trio of strangers standing on the table in the center of the couch pit (a zombie, Elmo, and a sexy/creepy baby doll) dancing even though there's no music out here, or rather: not much music, and all of it subdural, heard the way elephants hear those deep, deep tones we never new they could make, with the body rather than mind, and from very very far away.

She's smiling at them elbow crooked, temple in the palm of her head, her free arm wrapped loosely around a stranger's neck, mouth hovering just over the crown of her red-gold hair when -

- Ian stops, and Ian speaks, and Sera flops backwards and favors him with this half-private smile, so winsome and genuine it might be heartbreaking if one had a heart one wanted broken. Her pupils are huge. There is nothing natural about that.

And she reaches out both hands to him, palms up and wordless. She expects him to take them.

[reposts!]

Ian

Ian was careful about the way he took Sera's hands. Careful because tonight his fingers had claws on them. They were relatively short, but the tips were just sharp enough not to be terribly comfortable (unless one liked being scratched.) So he was careful, but Sera would still feel the light press of metal points against her skin as Ian climbed down onto the sofa. The atmosphere here was different than it was on the dance floor. Up here the music was little more than a low echo, and everyone looked as languid and high as Sera did.

Ian settled against the cushions with both knees bent and let his eyes glance toward the dancers. He was sweating, and he swiped his hand up over his forehead to catch some of it, running clawed fingers through his hair.

"Happy Halloween," he offered in a dry tone.

He did not bring up their last encounter. What they'd done. What they'd seen. Neither of them were in the right place for it.

Serafíne

Oh! Sera is both surprised and pleased that Ian takes her hands and takes them with care and yet there is also a kind of perfect equanimity about her in that moment. She's still laying down as he climbs over her and draws her shoulder blades together kind of arching her spine and smiling up at him - lips pressed together even as the corners of her mouth are all curving wide. And she doesn't understand that he has claws, she thinks that he must be so careful because he is delicate, because he is fastidious, but she also remembers the edge about him as she watched him dance, how singular it made him seem to her.

How alone.

--

Maybe he likes that.

But here he is and he climbs over her and settles on the couch and she lets him go when both legs have swung over her body and he's hoping down into the little couch pit, sweating and drinking - what the fuck? something clear that Sera assuredly hopes is vodka or something reasonable what are you a Puritan, Ian? - and he says nothing about the last time they saw each other, and she says nothing about it either.

She looks better, doesn't she?

She looks - quite simple - happy and she's rolling over onto her side, propping her head up with her right arm and reaching out to slide her left hand through Ian's hair. It looks like water in the moving lights.

Like dark, dark water.

Poor redhead, she's right there and somehow she's already been forgotten.

Sera leans closer to Ian, maybe she doesn't hear the dryness in his tone. Maybe she does. Maybe this is what it calls for. "I missed Halloween last year," she murmurs, confides, from behind him, her mouth close to his ear. "So this time I'm gonna celebrate. I already got to be a cheeseburger. I have this sweater."

Ian

This is what Sera has come to symbolize for Ian. She could be dressed like a naked skeleton, all sheer skin and gold filament. Or she could be dressed like a cheeseburger. She was so much a creature of whim that very little about her would have surprised him at this point.

Sera hoped that his water was vodka. It was not. And in fact, he finished it off now, tipping back his head to down the remainder of its contents in a few deep gulps that made the muscles in his throat roll fluidly. Sera touched his hair. Ran her fingers through it. Ian's hair was dark and soft and coated in a thin layer of some kind of hair product that kept it styled loosely and smelling a bit like sweet citrus.

Sera may have forgotten the red-head, but Ian did not. He glanced at her and smiled lightly, one side of his lips upturned as he set the empty water bottle down somewhere nearby.

He didn't protest Sera's hand in his hair, but he did roll his head back to look at her. The makeup around his eyes was actually quite striking. Unless he had a secret talent for makeup artistry (which, who knows, he might) he'd probably paid someone to do it. Or maybe called in a favor. (Or maybe slept with the right person.)

"I was in LA last year. I think I went to about five different parties before I passed out."

Serafíne

It is only when Ians turns to look back at her that Sera really notices the make-up around his eyes. She smiles again, this time catching her lower lip between her teeth. There's some sort of lag time in the middle that is almost visible - the spark of awareness like a match struck to a fuse that sizzles through her lean frame before her expression changes, her dilated eyes flashfocus. Something. Shift from his eyes to his cheeks to the smear of the lights around his head and back again.

Her hand is still in his hair, gliding over a few loose strands. She smells: rich, and sweaty, and spicy, and sweet.

"Did you dress up like this, then, too? Or something else?"

The edge of her grin, then, cutting past his profile and rising, then dropping toward the circular table in the center of the couch pit. She's looking for her drink, man, but there's no reason for Ian to know though. He probably just thinks she's drifting.

"Like Spiderman, or the Hulk. Or a cowboy. Oh fuck, Ian. You should dress up as a cowboy. Do the universe a favor and wear some goddamned chaps."

Ian

[Per+Alertness - does he notice?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Ian

Ian laughed. He laughed in a way that felt genuine, rolling back his head and letting out this lush, rolling sound that almost made you forget he was the only person here who wasn't on something. The light reflected off of his fangs. (See, even like this he was not soft. All striking angles and sharp points and instinct.)

"I didn't really have a proper costume. Just had one of the make up girls at the photo-shoot do some abstract glittery thing to half my face. Maybe I'll do a cowboy thing next year."

(Maybe not.)

Ian glanced up at Sera with his tiger's eye contacts and watched her for a moment. Then he swung his gaze back in the direction of the table, where a bottle of something was sitting open and half-consumed. Without needing to ask, he leaned forward and grasped the neck, handing it up to her.

Let it not be said that he wasn't observant.

"Looking for this?"

Serafíne

(Dex + Athletics: Reach for bottle or fall off couch? +2 dif for substances.)

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 4, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

"You could do it tomorrow!" Sera is insisting, in a way that seems childlike without sliding into petulance. She's smiling with the words, breathing in around the idea of tomorrow, which is an open door, which is still a promise, still a possibility. "I figure Halloween can last as long as you want it to last. I'm gonna dress up as much as I fucking want."

Then her eyes refocus. She feels Ian's laughter as much as she hears it, stippled beneath her fingertips and she wonders - she does wonder this - if it is the first genuine thing he has ever done in her presence, and she's kinda rising, by which we mean, leaning upward, leveraged a bit awkwardly on her crooked right arm when he produces her bottle of Stranahan's, much to Sera's absolute delight.

"YESSSSSSS."

- so she exclaims, laughing, reaching for it, more than a little bit breathless and she's kinda reaching for it with both arms, rolling forward and turning in toward Ian in a way that makes her start to, you know, sliiiide off the spine of the couch and into / onto Ian before she catches herself at the last minute, herself and the bottle of whiskey, from which she takes a solid pull before offering it wordlessly to Ian.

Ian

It was not the first genuine thing that Ian had done in her presence. Perhaps just the first thing that registered. (And like those other moments, it was just as likely to fade in memory. A sliding moment in time.) Sera spoke about an endless Halloween filled with as many costumes as she could imagine, and Ian offered her the kind of softly amused smile that someone might give to a child. Not really meeting her enthusiasm, but not judging it either. She took the bottle of Stranahan's from him with a sound of absolute delight, and see...

He saw her about to fall. Saw the way her balance tipped. And Ian, who was not drunk and who had animal-perfect reflexes, could probably have caught her. But he didn't try. And in the end, he didn't need to, because Sera caught herself.

But when she offered him the bottle, he just shook his head.

Sera had seen Ian drinking before. He didn't have any particular aversion to it. Had, in fact, gotten fairly drunk at Elijah's house party (just before singing karaoke in front of a room full of strangers - which was likely something that a number of the Denver mages would have paid to see.) But for whatever reason, he wasn't drinking now. Maybe he didn't want to accidentally forget that he had fangs in and try to give some guy a blowjob in the bathroom.

"Hopefully tomorrow I'll be too fucking tired to do much of anything."

He reached up to thread his fingers over a section of Sera's unspooled hair, returning the gesture casually. Then he got to his feet and hopped gracefully over the top of the pit.

"Have fun." His voice was a warm, sultry note as he bid his farewell, padding off barefoot to make his way back downstairs.

Serafíne

Sera does not really need the alcohol, not tonight. She has other things in her system that make her body curve, make her aware of her heartbeat and the movement of the stars, of the curve of the universe, the unspooling arms of something great and fine and terrible that moves like a current beneath them all. She feels both anchored and threaded, joyful and mournful, and for all that she is giving herself over so thoroughly to delight right now that Ian is smiling at her the way one would smile at a child, in an hour or two she will spend twenty minutes just crying in a stall in the ladies' room,

without ever, precisely, admitting why.

But oh, she knows.

Knows too why Ian hopes he'll be too fucking tired to do much of anything, tomorrow, falls back against the spine of the couch, half-lifting her chin to watch him as he reaches for her golden hair and then stands to climb over her. Head aslant, chin against the quite spare frame of her shoulders, hovering just over the golden line of a painted collarbone, her regarding sweeping up and askant as he rises, her hand sliding from his hair, back to her body.

"Does it help?" Something soft, and dark, and bruisingly aware in her eyes. "The dancing?"

Serafíne

(AWARENESS YADDA.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 1

Ian

[Subterfuge because it's Ian]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Ian

He turned back when she asked that question. And already some of the veil was coming back over his eyes. But he was honest when he said,

"Yeah. It does."

He'd be dead by now if it didn't.

And maybe that was the reason why he wasn't drinking, moreso than pragmatism. Maybe for Ian, transcendence came when he was most awake in his own body. He wanted to dance for hours, and then he wanted to find someone to fuck until the sun came up (maybe more than one someone) and he didn't want anything that might take the edge off. That might slow him down. That might make the world a little less sharp. He felt much the same now as he had downstairs. Less wild and immediate, but the impulses and emotions lurking under his skin were the same.

This was an intermission. A brief one. And for a few moments he'd let himself be calm. Let himself exist within Sera's space without needing to express some kind of primal drive. But now that intermission was over.

The truth was, Sera already knew what he was feeling. A different shade from her own, perhaps. But he'd been shaken. And he needed to find his way back to himself.

And yes, dancing helped. So that was what he did.

Serafíne

"Good."

- says Sera, smiling now, painfully, quietly. Her eyes are shining. She's inhaling in this way that seems to both require and consume her whole body and holding his eyes until he has climbed back over her, ready to return to the noise and the movement upstairs.

Later she will be dancing, too. But she probably won't come into his orbit.

They'll be dancing for different reasons, and both will know it.

"Night Ian."

semiotics

"I dreamt that I had a guinea pig."

Sera's curled up in one of the bedrooms at the chantry. She looks like hell: both eyes blackened from the concussion reality gave her for daring to break its rules - again and again - in flagrant and dramatic fashion. That's okay. She's warm, and the ache is receding and anyway is little more than physical and Dan's bringing her her mug of Darjeeling and her dreams are still close enough to the surface that they seem almost physically present. She can taste magic in her mouth, in her skin, on her tongue. The acid hangover makes her feel just a bit more wretched and a bit more strange and a bit more alive and a bit dreamier than she would otherwise feel. The curtains are drawn or perhaps Dan's shape simply interrupts her view of him and he's laughing, she can feel laughter incipient in him. She knows it will be there before it starts.

And then it starts. "What the hell?" he says along with his laughter, beneath his breath, a bit of a guffaw but fundamentally indulgent rather than querying. He smells like coffee but he's bringing her tea and he looks at her and he aches a little but he knows that this will pass. He knows: that this is already passing. Her hair's a bit oily, sleep-tousled, and he reaches to smooth a few curls out of her face as he hands her tea. "You're not getting a guinea pig. They can't be housebroken. And you wouldn't be able to leave it in a cage."

She's just looking at him, pupils still a bit dilated, this steady - assured - manner she has that always seems both transparent and opaque. She cannot keep a secret, but there are a million mysteries beneath her skin. "I kept him in a closet, not a cage. It was so dark in there and I couldn't see a thing and then I lost him and I went looking for him in a sink full of dishes and then there was this pink nose coming up from the drain."

She is sitting up by then, leaning forward, fingers laced with around her mug. Dan sits on the edge of the bed, half-behind her, then scoots in further, right arm wrapped around her right shoulder, nose against the crown of her head as he breathes in her scent.

"Is this some kind of metaphor?"

"It was a mouse. A little white one. Not my guinea pig. He was white and that color that's like brown but not all the way - like liver or some gross word. And no it isn't a metaphor. Just some fucking acid come-down I got my ass kicked by reality dream."

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

"Gonna to to London soon. After Halloween, though. I wanna dress up."

"You can always dress up."

"Yeah, but not like that."

"I'm not coming with you, am I."

"Nope."

"I kinda figured. You're right though."

"About what?"

"Liver. It's such a specific color of fur, I can't think how else to convey that tone. The word doesn't really seem to go with the thing-itself."

"The signifier and the signified."

"Oh fuck. Someone's been reading my old semiotics texts. How do you like de Saussure?"

"Miserable. I only cracked the spine 'cos it sounded French and I wondered if it was poetry."

"Heh. You're right. It is a gross word, liver."

"It's so bloody. It tastes like being torn open. But that's what he was. He was liver-colored. I hate to even say it it's so gross, but he wasn't gross. He was lovely. He made these squealing noises and he had that swirley fur, it wasn't all straight, like a million cowlicks and there was the mouse and then I kept looking for him in the dark, where he'd been, but I couldn't find him anywhere, no matter how much I looked.

"I liked the way he felt in my hands, though. I remember that from the dream.

"His fast-beating little heart."