Cameo-Dan

Steel

[Nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Aidan

[also nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Steel

[Also, as we're 'working'... ]

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

Steel

Summer is in full flow, and so are the streams of people passing through the shopping precinct. People come and go in search of food, coffee, shopping, or simply passing through on their way elsewhere. It’s a warm, pleasant day. The sun is out and those who aren’t tied into the suit-and-tie uniform that their gainful employment demands are showing more and more skin, trying to develop that tan that the fashion magazines tell them that they should.

Sheeple, really. People who follow the same routine, think what they’re told to think, drink the brand of cola that they’re told to, working towards their little white picket fence, perfect wife, and 2.4 children, even if there’s something that niggles away in the backs of their mind that this isn’t really what they want.

But the crowds can be advantageous to certain people. Those who prefer to blend into the crowd, a faceless blur in a sea of faces. The sun, and the extra skin on display, gives added distraction to the marks. Middle-aged men work well – their surreptitious glances at the youthful cleavage in easy view means that they don’t pay much attention when someone remarkably unmemorable happens to bump into them. Faces aren’t noticed, the lack of a certain weight in a certain pocket isn’t picked up on until later when there’s something to pay for or an ID card to dig out.

The pickings are slim, though. A short, thin female fishes a ten dollar note out of a wallet before slipping it quietly into a trash can. It’s better than a kick in the teeth, but she’s had better hauls. Maybe it’s just time to take a break. After picking up a coffee from a stand, she finds an unoccupied bench to settle onto and just watch the people passing by for a while. The hood of her top is slipped down, revealing dyed black hair and pale skin. Black combats and boots finish the look. Apparently someone didn’t get the message about goths being out of fashion these days.

Aidan

[perc - Intuitive - + awareness]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

Aidan

[*sad*]

Aidan

The world has always been different to Aidan; at least he thinks it has. There are blanks in his mind, things that hide away memories about himself. He can only assume, then, that this had always been the way it was. Ah but did it matter?

He had no desire to buy things. Aidan didn't really understand the need to collect anyhow. He always had just enough to get by, clothing wise, and enough supplies to create his art when he needed it. Besides, Aidan believed in meaningful relationships, and if a shirt didn't want to come home with you, it shouldn't be forced. He was here because he had followed the wind, and the wind had whispered softly of fun things and people. Then it went on its way. Wind spirits were like that. They were flippant and whimsical, most of the time, so one couldn't expect to talk long with them.

But we digress. Aidan was wandering, as he often did, with a bit of a bounce and a smile. He hummed some song he heard somewhere, though he couldn't recall where or what it was. It was hot, but Aidan had a tendency to flip social convention on its head and... and well wear a long sleeve. It was light fabric of course, probably hand knitted some time ago, but it was long sleeve none the less, and extended past his own hands. It hung loose enough that his collar bone showed and it was a mercy that it hadn't fallen off his frame; Aidan could never properly size his shirts. It was only his jeans that were worn appropriate to his shape, and his sneakers, which of course were used and worn from walking. He had nothing else.

Aidan found himself pausing near a planter, blinking at the greenery that rested inside. "Oh?" He said, as if he understood every word...and maybe he did, maybe he didn't. He leaned in, pushing a few leaves out of the way. "Oh right! This?" And he plucked a dry leaf from the poor thing and smiled brightly. "All better! Right?" Aidan pressed it against his nose. "Smells nice though."

He never minded the people. Aidan understood how odd he was, and how that tended to translate to all the people around him; sometimes though, he forgot. He straightened and stepped from the plant, walking past the benches with no particular goal in mind. He wasn't here to shop after all, just wander.

Steel

[Per+Aware?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Steel

The crowd in the mall is fairly tasteless, no particular edge of emotion powering it. So it’s easy to notice when a little extra something doesn’t quite blend in. Something sprightly and enchanting – almost other-worldy? Something less than ordinary, more than the mundanity of the background blur.

It takes a short while of watching people before she starts to narrow down its owner. A young, thin thing talking to… Is he really talking to the plant? Oh, good grief, like the plant really cares about a dead leaf. There had been thoughts that maybe she should try to reach out to the local Awakened, but maybe this isn’t the best of choices. Assuming that this isn’t some elaborate Technocracy plant, anyway.

So for now she sips her coffee and watches him.

[Because we’re trying not to be obvious, Man+Sub?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Aidan

[Do I sees you seeing me?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Aidan

Aidan was...Aidan was like a faerie, someone might say. The way his resonance played, tossed and tugged at the part of each person that sung their desires. It didn't need to know what those were, it only needed to make one feel as if it did. But bounced in a way; it bounced in a playful way that said whatever 'it' was, it had no ill intentions, but merely wanted to dance... or run.. or play games. His resonance sung of magical forests and glowing creatures that sang and dance without a care. Aidan was very much like that. He never seemed to notice the terrible things in the world, or he found the silver lining in them.

Aidan laughed. He laughed and he turned just a little and dropped his eyes down. "Hello." And his smile was bright and warm. Sunshine, someone might call it. It felt like that..inviting, pleasant. But he was smiling at something near his feet, and then reaching a hand down to grasp at something, something small, and holding it gently. "I did...thank you." He says. To most people, Aidan is just another person off his meds, or tamed enough that he's not a 'danger' to them. Still odd. Still strange. but he doesn't notice.

There is a feeling he has in the back of his mind, of being watched. He can feel the eyes perhaps, feel the person keeping watch, but Aidan doesn't see them, doesn't find them in the crowd. It's not unusual afterall.

Elijah

He was running out of vests.

One couldn't be sure that this was even possible, but it was true. Elijah was running out of vests. Specifically, he was running out of vests and things that went with vests. Which was a terrifying notion when one thinks about the sheer volume of clothing Elijah must own in order to successfully fill up two closets at two different locations, but it was true. He was running out of things that were business casual and then running out of things that he found even remotely interesting because… well… who could really find business casual interesting? Elijah had a palpable disdain for polos, a strange feeling of irritation that came when he tried to pick out cargo pants, and an irrational distaste for being asked to wear chucks or vans.

He was particular about shoes. He was particular about a lot of things, the least of which was making certain that he- in all of his longish haired and lanky glory- was not mistaken for someone who could even remotely come close to skateboarding. He's taken one too many face plants. Seen one too many curbs from close up that he does not want to entertain the idea that he might end up down there for awhile.

Today's search yielded little results, but he did happen to emerge victorious with a couple vinyl records, a DVD, and three books on ancient Egypt. He had to get something that would be even remotely helpful, or maybe he was just interested because Egypt seemed interesting, or maybe still there is a chance that Elijah actually picked up his phone and checked messages on something. Whatever the case, he was walking, had a powerful need for something that rounded to being food. Attire was comfortable, but warm- because let's face it, Elijah Poirot wears way too damn many clothes. Jeans, some three-quarter length half button up thing for a shirt, a vest (because where else will he put his pocket watch?), and about half a dozen bracelets on one arm.

Oh, yeah, and a necklace he couldn't take off that was tucked into his shirt because Jenn tied knots really, really well.

Steel

Steel peeks over, puzzled. There’s apparently someone there that he’s speaking to, but it’s nothing obvious. Certainly not a person, and he doesn’t seem to be wearing one of those little ear pieces that make perfectly sane people look like they’re talking to themselves as they walk down the street. None of that, and so? Maybe it’s drugs, or a lack of meds, or something else. Either way, he doesn’t exactly come across as the most… sane person on first impressions.

On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like she’s been spotted either. There may be a little looking around, but nothing focussed and searching. This time, at least, she seems to be passing without notice. For now.

And suddenly it seems to be raining Awakened. Another resonance, another Mage. This time she takes a moment to pull up her hood before looking through the crowd again. The moment helps to mask her features, make her a little more anonymous in case she needs to vanish again. Again, she scans the crowd to locate the source while she takes another sip of coffee.

Aidan

Elijah and his vests. Elijah wasn't exactly subtle, at least o Aidan, and he wasn't hiding. He was clearly there, holding things he had bought and Aidan...Aidan could sense him of course. He pushed himself on his toes, looking for the signature he felt near him, still holding onto to...whatever it was he was holding onto. Then he half knelt and smiled to the uh...air.. "I think I see him!" He let go of the invisible thing and began a small jog towards Elijah, who may or may not be privy to his existence.

He weaved, as needed, then vaulted himself at the shopping Eli with a "Eli!" To follow it. "We've been looking for you!"

Elijah

[Am I completely oblivious to the presence of other magical people? Per+aware]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Elijah

He is clueless. Sure, he picks up that tiny feeling of enchantment and the sense of something on the back of his neck that was like some darling little far creature in the woods, but he is completely oblivious to the idea that there were any other people around that weren't Aidan. There is a sound he hears, one that accompanies Aidan like little footsteps and perhaps a sigh. Little people. Little dead people specifically. He liked crowds, liked the sound, liked how you could get lost in the sensory input and pretend like the people reflecting into the shadow lands were just… regular people.

Maybe they liked that. He wasn't sure.

There was the sound of his name, and his brows rose and Elijah transferred the bag from one arm to the other (books about ancient Egypt don't come in reasonable sizes. They only come in why is this so freaking huge and it's just about lower Egypt? Fuck! (It's a very specific, but very common size. One can also buy boxes of Cheerios by the same measurement.)) "Hey, princess," he said with a grin, "and Aidan. Who is most assuredly not a princess."

A beat.

"Been looking for me long?"

Steel

The strange one, maybe talking to ghosts and plants and bugs, shoots off with a target in mind. A target, it turns out, with more to it – to him – than meets the sleeping eye. A target who is the new source of resonance in the mall, and another one that he’s unfamiliar with. She doesn’t yet have much in the way of knowing contact with the other Awakened in the city, but she’s beginning to get the feel for some of those who are around. Most she’s gone unnoticed by – the way she likes it, for now. One she’d come up against and left – was allowed to leave – but that one, on later thought, was less likely to be a threat to her than the other. The one in the park, who’d attacked without warning. She begins to get angry again as her thoughts wander, balling her free hand into a fist before she catches herself and makes it relax.

Well, I know how she feels and I won’t be letting that happen again.

Now, though, there are these two. One who Steel was close to writing off as someone to contact, another that she knew nothing about. One way to start working out that little problem, and getting a better feel for him. Steel stands and starts to wander in their general direction, following the ebb and flow of the groups of people passing by. Getting close enough to listen, she finds a shop window to stare into. Or, at least, stare study the reflection and the two people talking.

[Just drifting, nothing to see here… Manip+Stealth]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 6 )

Aidan

Aidan is confused by this. "Why? Why am I not a princess?" The concept of gender roles has apparently slipped past him. He pauses close to Eli and lets his eyes drop to the books. "Oh! You have new friends!" He sounded delighted, exceptionally so.

"No." They hadn't been looking for him at all really. Aidan lightly scratched at his neck. "We were just going to explore but then you showed up! And now we're together. She was my guide. To find you when I came." Aidan looked down and smiled warmly. "I guess we're just meant to be together. I like having friends."

He hasn't picked up on Steel yet, hasn't noticed that she tends to be around wherever he is. Aidan laughed warmly. "Or maybe you can't get away from us Eli."

Elijah

Sincerely, if he knew what he was missing, he would kick himself. Would roll over on his face and lament to the stars how did I become so blind? But, the fact of the matter was this: Elijah Poirot was outclassed when it came to noticing Steel. The young man with the detective's name was just not on his game when it came to the powers of observation at that juncture. So, there he was, bag in hand and posture comfortable, just conversing with the black-haired young man standing with him.

"Princess is a gendered term? The male equivalent is prince, but there isn't a gender neutral royal offspring term," which, given that this is a modern age, Elijah wonders if that is something people need to work on. Aidan's eyes drop to the books and Elijah perks up immediately from instruction mode- and let's face it, he could explain any number of things about modern society that Aidan didn't get. He was comfortable with that- into a frame of thought that was decidedly more excited. The bag gets set down, and one of the books- heavy and having the slightest scent of decaying paper and ink to it- gets pulled out and opened up.

"I wanted to look some things up about ancient Egypt and I realized I don't have any starting point for knowledge about ancient Egypt, except fro some of the things I talked to Kalen about but I really wanted a gigantic primer on the history of- anyway, I wanted to know more to make some things make sense in a broader cultural context," he said, flipped through the pages, "they have an entire chapter on the Rosetta stone."

Steel

Oh, Elijah, not as blind as you’d think. This is something practiced, something that came naturally. Maybe not as naturally as some other things, but still good enough to evade casual attention. Add to that the way the world just seems to overlook her most of the time… At least until she does something stupid to draw attention to herself, which is a habit she tries to avoid developing.

The conversation gets going in earnest, and there are fragments that might be useful to know. Someone named Kalen who seems to know things. Egypt might be trendy enough for this to simply be idle academic interest, or there’s the possibility for something more going on. Awakened have hobbies, but they also tend to get involved in things that bite back.

There’s still coffee, so she takes another sip. And keeps on listening.

Aidan

Aidan blinked, a little confused. "What if I want to be a princess? You get to wear tiaras right? They're sparkly and pretty! I heard they have a really bad attitude though sometimes. Really vain. I've never met one though! They're probably just really proud of how they look! What do princes get to wear? Oh wait! You can be a prince!"

Aidan looked to the book Elijah had, and then he tilted his head a little, scratching at his hair. "Why don't you just ask them? The people who were there? You could travel to Egypt and ask them what it was like. They'd probably tell you. They'd probably like being asked! Oh oh.. you could ask the lion statues too. I bet they see everything." To Aidan, asking the direct source of information made far more sense, but then, he wasn't much of a book worm; he spent most of his time talking to the things people read about, or at least, talking to things that had been there longer, even if he didn't always understand them...

"What's...the Rosetta stone? Is it red? No no! Is it a stone that is a rose?"

Elijah

"You can wear a tiara if you damn well please, regardless of whether or not your royalty. Jenn's got a tiara somewhere, she was in one of those school-sponsored popularity contests and placed third. She was the representative for the art class, which was technically also a club," he said, conversational and still flipping through the book. He gets to the page about the Rosetta stone, the chapter that starts it all and there is a look of delight in those bright green eyes. He settles in a little closer to Aidan, a little conspiratorial, "anyway, it's a fucking badass tiara and there may or may not be pictures of me wearing it on Instragram."

There totally were pictures of him wearing a tiara on instagram.

"Traveling to Egypt is kind of cost and time prohibitive," he said with a laugh, "I've got my passport, but I don't speak… I think it's Arabic? I don't think they speak Koptic there, at least not regularly- anyway. It's easier right now to load up on books and soak it in. The Rosetta Stone is what enabled people to be able to decipher what the ancient Egyptians wrote, it was basically like the equivalent of microwave instructions that come in three languages… if microwave instructions were culturally significant. It's basically a gigantic carved stone."

A beat, he flips through, "I don't know off the top of my head if it's marble or limestone or sandstone…"

Steel

The first guy she’d spotted, well. Downright strange. He seems harmless, but then appearances can be deceiving. Hadn’t she used that to her own advantage before, after all? And all of them – the Awakened – had the potential to be much, much more than they physically appeared. There were ways of working that didn’t end up with the world fighting back too much, but when the necessity was there? Well, explosions can be made to look coincidental.

The other guy, though, sounded a lot more interesting. Cost being a limit? Then either he isn’t a fan of black suits and mirrored shades, he’s too far down the pecking order to take advantage of the perks she assumed they could get, or this is an extra-curricular activity. It’s too early to tell. Too early to know if it’s worth the risk of letting down her guard for a bit.

Time will tell.

Aidan

"Jenn has a tiara?" There was something about his tone that made it sound like a child who was just given the keys to the candy factory. "You'd look good in a tiara! I think anyway." Aidan flashed him a bright smile. "Really! Is it just diamonds or are there different colors? I like tigers eye. It's fierce. Rawr." He gave a mock claw in the air and giggle to himself.

"Wouldn't they speak ancient egyptian?" Aidan's brows furrowed slowly. "Why would they speak Arabic? Wait did they speak that back then?" He scratched his head again. "Oh! I bet you could find a way to talk to them normally. Or make pictures or... or maybe they can show you places that are important!"

"So the stone is a translator? Does it just tell them what it means? " Aidan blinked and canted his head. "Microwave instructions..Oh I think I get it now. I think. Maybe? Yes! I get it now. It's like having one of those rings the cereal gives you because it likes you."

Elijah

"It's mostly just those little fake diamonds? A lot of glass and crystal but it's made out of freaking titanium, which I thought was kinda badass. The thing is freaking impossible to break," as though they had tried to put the tiara to the test. Couldn't even coax it into a wobbly semi circle. We digress.

He starts to meander, picking the bag back up and halfway precariously perching the book in one hand, and he makes his way slowly to a nearby window to look at what might be there. Elijah didn't have a shopping problem, wasn't prone to impulse buying- or, rather, was very good at convincing himself whatever it was that he was buying wasn't an impulse buy and therefore needed to come home with him. This is how you end up with three books on ancient Egypt, ladies and gentlemen.

"I think if I were to show up in Egypt I'd get eaten alive by tourist traps and get robbed and I'd end up having to ask very politely to have someone come and fly me back home on account of being stranded in a country where I don't speak the language. Basically, I'd just be bracing for disaster. And languages morph and develop and change over time depending upon a number of factors, like who is ruling and who is conquering and what's going on politically. And some languages end up dying out over time." A shrug, "it's a thing."

"Anyway," he drops his voice and converses in more conspiratorial, quiet tones. Slips in and is a little more in Aidan's space than he was before, "not everyone has the luxury or opportunity to talk to things directly, so that's why things like the Rosetta stone are hugely significant. Being able to interact with the actual, like, spiritual manifestation of things is generally considered the exception instead of the rule."

Dan

Tall guy, lanky. Somewhere north of 25, and actually north of 30, thank you very much. Happens to the best of us, happens to all of us if we're lucky enough. Black skinny jeans and a button-down short-sleeved plaid shirt. No bow-tie tonight. The button-down is open a the collar. Arms full of tattoos, from the edge of his wrists until they disappear beneath the sleeve of the short-sleeve shirt, colorful work, deliberate and deliberately chosen.

Exits a little hole in the wall, frowning at the display on his phone, lighting a cigarette.

Doesn't normally smoke except when she smokes, but, well.

Sometimes you just need a vice.

Steel

Ever since coming to this city, Steel had pretty much kept herself to herself. Oh, she’d been out and had contact with people at the most superficial level, but no real contact. Nothing more than some very tense, stressed minutes while she got away anyway. It had been relatively easy the last time she’d tried this. But that was before she knew about who – and what – was out there, and generally best left far, far away.

There comes a need to make new connections, but there are various issues surrounding trust to get over first. Otherwise it would simply be a case of saying ‘hi’ and letting her own resonance flare out to mingle and merge with theirs. No, she needs to know more about this guy before she risks coming out in the open. She doesn’t exactly have the resources to search official files, doesn’t have the contacts in the city (yet) to ask around and see what people have to say.

Which leaves a possibly riskier approach. Steel pushes away from the window and turns to walk, a route which just happens to pass by Elijah and Aidan. She seems to stumble on something and bumps into Elijah, muttering some kind of apology. The voice, for as long as it lingers in memory, sounds vaguely English.

[Dex+Larceny, I’ll have your wallet please, Elijah. Pickpocketing spec, Larceny aptitude. Which I completely forgot about earlier, still not used to this character's dicings.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]

Elijah

[Per+alert=6 - 3 (damn you, arcane!)= 3, diff 6]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5) ( botch x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]

Aidan

[Perc + alertness? Totally just a trip right miss? 7-3= 4 dice]

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

Aidan

"Did she name it? Sometimes things like to be named. It makes them special." Or maybe Aidan just liked to name them and he was convinced they liked it. But Aidan moves with Elijah no, lifting his hand sup to wrap around behind his neck, his elbows hanging down against his chest. He hummed when they moved, even whe Elijah talked. When they stopped at a window, Aidan beamed. "Oh that's pretty!" He said with a smile, dropping his hands and leaning against the glass. He pressed his palms against it. "I wonder what the pattern is for that. " He squinted his eyes, pressed his nose against the glass."Oh. So you should learn the language then. Leanr the language and visit. Then you'll learn what you need to learn from the people who lived there right? I bet if you ask someone real nice, they'll teach it to you." And someone really meant someone that wasn't necessarily corporeal to everyone else.

Aidan's head jerked up and he looked away from Elijah momentarily. But then he realized he was talking to him and Aidan turned his attention back. "huh?"

"Oh! I forgot." A small laugh escaped him, as if it were just some tiny joke between the two of them. Sometimes he really did forget that people couldn't 'see things.'

Now Aidan notices Steel bump into Elijah, even tries to give her a smile to show it's alright. "That's OK." He says it almost on behalf of Elijah. But he doesn't notice the wallet grab. It's all innocent to him. But then...wasn't most things?

Elijah

All he knows, at that juncture, is that he ran into an English woman who had a voice that was sort of highish lowish mezzo soprano alto coloratura feeling to it. Who had hair that was… uh… something. She had clothes on!e remembered very distinctly that she had clothes on, and he responded to the apology with a- "hey, no problem-"

but he's walking, you see. He's walking and there was someone who was presumably attractive shaped and had a lovely accent and he was thinking about something and about to explain something to Aidan and all was well and fine and dandy-

But he kept walking. And was heedless of the fact that he was walking into a store from with a giant glass window. A floor-to-ceiling glass window that was polished and primed and perfect and probably should have had some tape on it or an X or something that would indicate that people need to stop walking at some point.

Elijah did not.

The next thing he knows, there is a hollow clang and a reverberation and he has sprawled, flat on his ass, in front of a giant glass storefront. Now, carefully adorned with an Elijah-shaped set of prints where he'd run flat into it.

Dan

He lights that smoke. Inhales, long and raw and slow. One hand with the cigarette, the other - rough fingers, broad palm - around the screen in his hand. Turns his blond head and gives a faint smirk goodbye to friends leaving the bar - not for a smoke but, for good. Words are exchanged, and there would be a fistbump but he has both hands occupied. Straightens all-at-once when Elijah walks right into a picture window. Considers stubbing out the cigarette and heading over to help but sees the kid with them.

Figures they're on a date.

Wonders if he oughtta suggest Elijah check the kid's ID before sleeping with him.

Thinks better of going over to see if Elijlah is okay since that other kid is there.'

Steel

Steel had planned on just walking away, blending into the faceless crowd and going through the wallet carefully, away from any other prying eyes who might wonder where she happened to come across a wallet of a young man who she most definitely didn’t look like or was in any way related to. Although it’s surprising the things that you can ‘’just happen” to find that others have unintentionally dropped.

There’s a noise – some noises - just behind her, though. Not the kind of noise that comes with having been made, that kind of noise tended to involve a lot more shouting and running and calling for the police. So it creates a pause, just long enough to look back over her shoulder at what she was about to leave behind. She sees the young man sprawled on the ground and the oily marks that his skin had left on the plate glass window, and she laughs. Just the once, but it’s been so long since she last did it and it felt good to just enjoy that fleeting moment. And it is fleeting because she needs to vanish before he tries to pay for something, notices what’s missing, and tries to patch together what had happened.

And so she fades from view, and most likely from memory.

Steel

[Sorry that was slow, didn't spot it was my go]

Reality-Induced Traumatic Brain Inury

Elijah

After dinner, after conversations, after doing dishes (because Elijah figured he should at least do the dishes after eating someone's steak and drinking their wine- both of which were fantastic on account of the quality) it was off to go talk to Sera. If Sera was up to talking. Or check on her. Or… well, the intent was clear. Elijah, Sera, convergence.

It was up the stairs with him, slow and purposeful and perhaps slow and perhaps purposeful because he wanted to have some time to think. A time to reorganize thoughts and to put things into near, findable boxes only to realize that Elijah would never be organized, at least not in a way that others could readily follow. More spirals and fractals and spider webs than boxes. Categories overlapping, attention ping pong balling all over the place. But there was the question- what do you say?

That was what had him thinking. That was what had his attentions wherever they chose instead of what was in front of him. What do you say to someone who saved your life? What do you do to thank someone when, really, everything feels trite?

He lingered at the door for a second before taking a step in. He knocked gently- always knocked, even if he was just going to walk in anyway.

"You awake?" he asked.

Serafíne

She must be awake. Were she asleep he'd never be able to wake her with a knock on the door of a bedroom in a silent memory-of-a-house, but she's half-way to sleep. Exhausted, groggy, incoherent, head throbbing. The room is rich and quiet and wreathed in shadows. Some light from outside, the moon dwindling from full bright in the otherwise now-dark sky. The enormous bed, the furnishings, hardwoods and Persian rugs underfoot. Curled up beneath the crisp white sheets, she kind of stirs and then turns over as he asks her if she's awake.

"No."

Hahaha, funny joke Sera.

Delayed.

Reaction.

"Wait. Kinda."

Elijah

e would have sat on the edge, but given the sheer size of the thing he kind of suspected he wouldn't actually be able to talk to her if he did since she'd be an eternity away. She says she's not awake and it gets half a laugh out of him, breathless but amused because he does get amused by the tiniest of things some times. There's a pause in the reaction time; she's not quite home. Of course she wouldn't be. Elijah does bridge the gap, though, doesn't close the door, but rather leaves it open and eventually gets a seat on the bed.

Awkwardly scoots himself in closer, tentatively pets her hair because she has a wonderful texture.

"We had caviar and triscuits, it was pretty good." A little smile there.

Serafíne

Dan has cleaned Sera up and stripped her out of her clothes from the bar and located (somewhere) a proper, old-fashioned men's pajama top for her to wear in bed. Probably more covered up now than any other time Elijah has seen her, particularly with the sheets tangled around her long, lean legs. Even half-asleep, sick from that reality-induced traumatic brain injury Elijah assumed earlier, the creature responds to touch. Kind of nuzzles her way towards it, like some small, half-blind baby animal. Rolls over to be closer to the physical warmth of his body, that awkward half-scooched I don't know what I'm doing or how to do this posture.

"Mmph." -- and a few other half-garbled words, his only real reply.

Elijah

His fingertips traced from the short, shorn part of her hair to the longer parts and again and again. There is a quiet moment; he's inexperienced in terms of being supportive when someone's hurt. Uncertain, his bedside manner lacking in technical prowess but not in honestly. This is the most covered he'd ever seen her; even in the winter, she seemed to be half-clothed and content with it. All mini skirts and cavalier fashion sense.

"It…" he looks up, half laughs again but it's nervous, breathless, "shit… It hit me while I was cleaning up that… uh… well, this… this is a big fucking deal. Things got really bad tonight and if you'd not been there I could have died. A lot of people could have gotten really hurt if you hadn't been there to help."

He purses his lips, "and… like… you kind of take it for granted, because you know people who are fully capable of fixing whatever the fuck can happen to you but… I saw you save a guy's life, once, when that dude decided to try and eat that jock dude? Like… you just got there and you fixed it, and you fixed me."

Silence.

"Thank you doesn't cut it. I'm alive because you didn't let me die… and… you're here because… I guess your reasons are on you… but… it really fucking hits me sometimes that you give a shit about me and it's… it's fucking huge." his hand slops, rests in her hair, silence and stillness don't suit him. "Yeah…"

Serafíne

Oh, Elijah.

--

There's this very precise and carefully maintained line of demarcation between her shorn left sidecut and the longer wealth of dyed blond curls. The soft, downy growth is not blond but a brown that would probably verge on the mousey if she let it alone and perhaps shut herself indoors for the whole of the summer. Would probably take to the light, though, quite like the rest of her. This close, well, he can see that she has tattoos everywhere. Ink on the cartilage of her ears, a few more incomprehensible letters or numbers maybe, and another piece - a blackwork triangle - tucked beneath the shell of her ear, half-hidden by her hairline.

He can slide his fingers through her hair all he likes.

And he half-laughs, nervous, breathless, even though his only real audience right now is Elijah himself. He knows that, doesn't he? Intuitively, as he sits there, sliding his fingers through her hair, how far away she really is. And also, how very close. That body after all, which seems all the smaller when she is not wholly animate within it, is absolutely, utterly Sera quite as much as anything else about her.

She's simply hibernating, at the moment.

Inhales, breathing somewhat raggedly, mostly from the mouth because her nose is too full of dried blood for her to get a proper breath in, exhales. Sometimes she murmurs something, sometimes she whimpers. Even in her sleep she wants: perhaps in sleep she wants more than she does, waking, and even if she doesn't really hear him and even if she really won't remember this, well. He will.

And anyway, she likes to cuddle. If nothing else, he can tell that his physical presence, his touch, quiets her a bit. Helps her sink from that shifting restlessness to a deeper, healing sleep.

Elijah

After awhile, he settles into something more comfortable, keeps petting her hair like this was something that they could both find comforting. He knew the truth of the matter, that Sera wasn't going to remember this, most likely. But there she was, something human instead of the beyond-worlds figure he'd grown to know. She's all artwork and color. Elijah was comfortable there.

But, there they were. Sometimes, she murmurs something- sometimes he responds. Sometimes, he just talks, because he needed someone to talk to. It was unfair, really. It was a one-sided conversation, because he knew pretty well that Sera was just hibernating for now. He talked to her about things he saw during his day, the layers of the universe. He tells her about the times that he was interested in seeing the world pass over itself and time flash forward. Little bits. Sometimes poems. Mostly, poems.

Once she's settled, once movement slows and the whispers cease, he kissed her on the forehead and went to go find Dan. He needed to go home, even if all he wanted was to stay.

Almost dying to get into Hawksley's pants.

Dan

Cooking the steaks from frozen takes forever. Long enough to search out a pair of neatly frozen and portioned sides. French green beans, long and slender, dressed lightly with olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, brought back to life with a quick, hot stir-fry on one of the many burners on that huge, professional stove. Takes a while to find the everyday silver, the napkins (linen, not paper), neatly pressed and tucked away with a refreshing sachet of something subtle, bright and clean so that they do not smell like mothballs but rather like: summer, somehow.

Outside, then, with the both of them and a bottle of red and a pair of purpose-made red wine glasses, through the dark, quiet house to the back courtyard. Low voltage lights define the still-well-groomed garden. There's an iron-work table on a brick patio overlooking the low-gleam of the outdoor pool, two chairs tipped forward, resting against the table so garden detritus does not accumulate in the seats. A trip or two, in and out, sees them settled: filet mignon, green beans, caviar and Triscuits, a small dish of olives and marinated artichoke hearts and other shelf-stable delicacies.

They look like strange refugees in a fairytale palace, something like it.

Elijah

"So," he announces, because that is how one begins these types of conversations. With a hearty so and thus one will spring into action. Start talking about whatever it is they were saying. It was a punctuated so, not a drawn out type. Not the type that is expecting someone to fill in the answer, make muddy waters clear. Not that type of so.

"I have no idea whose pants I'm wearing."

An announcement. His gaze goes from Dan and briefly over to the pool. He's content to let it stay over there and he's going to stay over here and they will both be just fine, thank you very much. It's pretty, though. He can't help but find the place they're staying overwhelmingly pretty, the kind of place that you rent for a wedding- and he doesn't even know about the ballroom.

Dan

Dan breathes out something not-quite-a-laugh. He has half a glass of wine (not drinking much, figures he'll need to give Elijah a ride home) and half-a-filet left on his plate and doesn't give much thought to the prettiness of the enormous-empty-mansion. Or weddings: Dan doesn't much think about weddings, either. But Elijah says so and it is a meaningful so and that has the other man's blond brows spiking up in inquiry before the rest of it all comes down.

Then that not-quite-a-laugh.

Thought he might get out of all this without that question, right? I mean: so far, so good.

"I'm pretty sure they're Hawksley's."

Elijah

"Oh," he says, as though this is no big deal. He takes a second, as if he was going to say something, but he laughs under his breath and refrains from taking a bite of green beans, "this is proof that I would have to literally almost die to get into Hawksley's pants. And innuendo aside, these are really fucking comfortable pants."

He shakes his head, takes a bite of food and chews, swallows, "is he, like, on vacation or something? This place is a ghost town."

He has no idea that this is a bad line of questioning, but it hits him that it is once he asks. There's the awkward moment, too, the dawning on his face when Elijah figures out I probably shouldn't have asked that. He doesn't have a lot of experience with Hawksley, just a couple nights out partying- a hand full of interactions at best. Enough to know that he's young, attractive, and has enough money to have a driver. He hadn't figured that the man lived in a freaking castle, but eh? What do you do.

Dan

Dan does not respond to the innuendo. Maybe a smirk, but a supple, elastic one that hardly breaks the shadow of his beard. He's still sitting back now, but there's something - clipped about his expression that seems reined in somehow. Leashed.

This tick of his gaze back to Elijah when the younger man asks if he's on vacation or something.

"I don't know that he's lived here for a good nine months. Last time I saw him was Thanksgiving."

Elijah

[Per+empathy - waaaitaminute, what happened?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

Dan

Dan does not like Hawksley.

He's trying to be diplomatic because he's a fucking diplomat but he's just angry with the dude. That anger has had some time to change and not-precisely-soften but tenderize - like circumstances yadda but he still can't help it. He's plain old angry with Hawksley.

--

And Elijah isn't reading his mind so he doesn't really know what happened but what he gets - clear and raw and immediate - is that Dan is angry with Hawksley and it obvs has to do with Sera, and also: Dan is trying very hard to be careful with that and get a handle on that, also because of: Sera.

But fuck: right now, Dan cannot stand the guy.

Elijah

"Ah," a brief, punctuated answer peppered with the realization that this is a line of questioning that could go very bad, very quickly and he knows that Dan is diplomatic. He knows that Dan is pissed off at Hawksley, but he doesn't quite know the reason. Doesn't know how to ask where he went, but the guy literally just up and left his house to do something and-

"Sera's holding up okay, right?"

It's clear, at that juncture, that the question means two different things. He's leaning less on the fact that Sera is upstairs and probably sleeping off what the universe did as retribution for her actions (was it worth it? Not Elijah's question to answer), and more on the fact that something clearly happened between Hawksley and Sera that was bad enough to even make Dan- who is arguably one of the most non angry people Elijah knows- furious with the owner of the house.

"What happened?"

Just because Elijah shouldn't ask doesn't mean that he won't, though.

Dan

Dan breathes out hard, once. Straightens and flicks a glance back at the young man who very nearly died tonight. Threw himself in front of a strange as a damned human shield. Dan thinks: maybe Elijah shouldn't've done that, but he's said it once already tonight. Doesn't need to say it again.

This deliberative moment, a kind of weighing-of-things, and Dan has put down his fork and picked up his glass. Maybe he'll drink more than one glass of red wine. Maybe they'll get Elijah a taxi home.

Considers. Grimaces, this little spasm of something wry and strange.

(Elijah, keyed in as he is to every nuance of expression that beard is capable of, also gets that: outside of the anger, separate and apart from the anger (because they are separate things), Dan also: sympathizes, empathizes, something for Hawksley too. Doesn't shift away his anger, though. Doesn't really dent it at all.)

--

"Sera had a hard year," sharp breath out, "But yeah, she's okay."

(The last bit is both: true and not-true, and Dan is perfectly aware of both the truth of it and the not-truth of it and that awareness of Dan's is plain as everything else Elijah has seen in him tonight.)

"Sorry, I'm trying to figure out - how much to say, really. The short story is: Alicia disappeared and he spent some time looking for her, then family obligations pulled him back east. What happened is - he didn't fucking tell Sera.

"Just disappeared. Maybe he'd respond to a text now and then - but fuck. One day he was here, the next he was gone.

"She was pretty broken-up about it. Even if she was trying not to be."

Elijah

He gets the basic run down, and is keyed in. Paying attention to the little twitches in expression, the nuance of it all. There are truths there, layers there because nothing is ever clear cut and dry. Nothing is ever straightforward and he knows it. Sometimes, Elijah has a good sense for people, and something it lets him know that things are a lot more complicated than he can really fathom.

"That had to be hard," he says, "someone you care about just being there one minute and being gone the next. Things were pretty messed up back in November, I would have been worried out of my damn mind."

He's learning- things are always pretty messed up.

"I'm guessing he's not coming back any time soon," and he can guess that he and Sera must have been pretty damn close, given that she had the key to his house. Can come and go at will. That implies a fair degree of familiarity. Perhaps he assumes they were (are- because it's Sera, he can't imagine her writing people off) friends. The kind of friends that he and Jenn are, puts it into perspective. (Perhaps some introspection of some of the less-than-considerate things Elijah had done to Jenn. She moves halfway across the country for him, and he shuts her out for six months. Said she was fine, that things are good now because they're being open and honest but... he imagines, briefly, what that must have felt like.)

"That's pretty messed up." Finality, that.

Dan

"She was abandoned by her folks when she was a kid," Dan doesn't really - remember what was messed up about November. What was really messed up about his November was that: Sera was gone, off to London and quite on her own, for reasons he knows perfectly well, which he isn't sharing now, even when he is sharing so much else.

"They sent her off to boarding school overseas. The first couple years they brought her back for winter break, maybe a bit of summer vacation, but those visits home kinda fell by the wayside. So being treated like that by the man she loves - "

He breaks off. Said too much, probably. Maybe it's the brush with his own damn mortality. That sort of thing will do it to you.

"They made up." That much Elijah could easily guess. Sera wears a ring with Hawksley's resonance written into the substance of the metal. Consecrated. "Or what the fuck ever."

Elijah

"Makes it just kinda par for the course," he says, like that makes it make sense. Like maybe he understands on some conceptual level- that this could be what Sera expects from people who are supposed to love her. They're supposed to see you when they think it's convenient, they're supposed to flitter in and out of your life like you're an accessory. A car. A house. Serafíne.

But, he doesn't know. Doesn't know if it hurts to think about, if she feels like she's lost or abandoned or floating out in the wilderness. Doesn't know if she would open the door wide open- except he does. Except he suspects that she would, because they made up. Or what the fuck ever. She carries a piece of Hawksley around with her so he's always there, so it's not like he left, so it's not like he just ran off and did what the fuck ever it was he was doing without telling her.

Yeah.

Elijah can kind of figure how Dan would be pissed.

He takes a drink of wine, not the kind of drink that one does when they're just tasting it and certainly not the kind of drink one takes when they're drinking a bottle of wine that cost as much as a crappy car. No, that's a drink to wash a taste out of his mouth. He's a book, and an easily read book at that. The wheels turn and there's pauses in his thoughts. The pauses in his speech and the way that he occasionally pins things with his gaze and thinks. Gets lost in thought.

"That's fucking bullshit," he says, and there's actual frustration, actual, legitimate anger that hints at the edges and rides there. The kind of anger that comes when you find out something and your brain is trying to process it and the only response you can have is to be angry, "she's not a fucking show pony or hood ornament or whatever."

Hogwarts: Revisited.

Serafíne

Chaos. One and then the other shooter stop shooting and take their guns and throw them into the small crowd listening to the Cherrybomb cover band. The tall old man and the skinny little kid both turn and run, this scramble for the door (skinny kid's gun goes off again and the blow-back is enough to free him from Dan's tackle) That big, dangerous guy has disappeared into the backroom and it has only been seconds, see. The drummer still hasn't figured out what's going on so there's still rhythm in the background when Sera sinks atop Dan and presses her hands to the wound pumping blood from his right chest and bends over and kisses him.

Abruptly, the ugly wet crackle of his breathing changes and he sits up, dazed, sitting her upright too and struggling to his feet. She's already scrambling away, flinging up the service hatch behind the bar. Magick again, wringing, spent. By the time Elijah comes back to consciousness (the astonishing ricochet of it - that blowback of pain like having the center of his spine seized and torn out of his skin, the slow-motion stagger, nanoseconds writ large inside the dome of his skull, the abrupt, seering recovery), the drummer has finally stopped. The bartender Elijah jumped in front of is slumped over the speedwell, bleeding and in shock but still alive.

Some patrons are screaming, others are scrambling for the doors. Others are caught between the two impulses. Dan is upright again, at the bar, reaching out a hand for Sera, mouth taut. Soon as he sees Elijah upright -

"C'mon, man. We have to go. Car's out back."

Elijah

Seconds.

This all takes seconds.

It was a good shot, and what he remembers is clearing the bar, hitting the peak over the air and something vital being struck. Body going limp, whatever pride he has that tells him don't make a sound is overcome by the fact that he wouldn't have been able to make a sound even if he wanted to scream. And he did. He wanted to, but his lungs wouldn't work and the world was echoing and dark and pinpoint quiet. Isn't this familiar? It's black. And his nerve endings and his brain and reason are insisting that he's dying, he's dying and was it worth it? He's dying and it's finally happened. He was going to die in some hole-in-the-wall bar, but not the way everyone expected him to.

But, then he's not. Then, the world is bright and sensations are loud and there's blood everywhere and the bits of the situation he remembered came with Sera screaming and now his shirt has actual bloodstains on it instead of syrup and beet puree. He's back on his feet, because he has to be on his feet. Looks at the bartender- breathing, vital. Looks at Sera and Dan-

"Oh, god," is all he can get out. Makes an exit with them, but doesn't leave their side. Doesn't hurry forward, doesn't leave them behind. "Is-" words escape him.

"Fuck."

Serafíne

(One more Rote b/c I realized that she has 1 more WP anyway: Mind 3 / Time 2 / Entropy 1 "Them? Uh, I think they left with the band." to soften up the memory of who was where. Targeting: the bartender primary, but add'l successes will open the circle to the closest other patrons.)

Difficulty: I think would be coincidental, if they hadn't been so much in the middle. But they were in the middle so. Hmmm. Still - too much blood for it to be coincidental. Dif: 8. -1 focus, -1 quint).

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

And, extending, still spending quint, +1 dif.

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Last quint, one more extension?

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Paradox

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Soak it!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

They are far from the only people getting the fuck out of there and as they weave through the (tiny) (some people want to be heroes, some are paralyzed with inaction, some are running not toward the back entrance, but the Back Room, others are simply running - they have warrants or they're holding or they're scared or they hate cops) and they won't be the only people running away and as they go Dan has a solid arm around Sera who is doing something necessary enough that she stops him before they leave disappear into the long narrow hallway lined with old flyers leading past the filthy restrooms to the alley entrance.

Nothing wrong with her yet except exhaustion but Sera and Elijah and even Dan can sense the deep, buzzing throb of consensual reality stretched around Sera like a rubber band ready to snap back at any moment.

--

Outside, out back - Dan keeps it together, gives Elijah a solidly sympathetic clap on the back and uses that solid hand to turn the younger man the right direction. Other folks out here too, rumors passing, one girl yelling FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Dan takes them both down a cut-through parking lot backed up against the alley toward an old jeep parked near the next street over. Unlocks the doors physically with a key.

"You okay, man?" He's asking Elijah before Elijah gets into the backseat. It's not simply a check-in, it's a visual inspection, a meaningful question: is anything still bleeding, do we need to worry about more than your mental health right now embedded in those three words. Dan hasn't let go of Sera yet but he's about to put her in the back seat with Elijah.

(Note: that last soak doesn't apply, really. she's gonna get the paradox all-at-once so she gets only the one soak. I'll add that 1 success on instead of re-rolling.)

Elijah

The hand on his back makes him jump. tense, makes him aware of the fact that he's holding his breath.

He doesn't touch anything. Doesn't leave a bloody hand print on things, doesn't press outward, seek out additional sensory input because his mind is reeling and it's close to panic and the cops are going to show up and they need to do anything and everything in their power to try and cover the fact that there are three bloodied bodies leaving this place that aren't going to make sense once someone tries to piece together a crime scene.

He exhales hard, tells himself he has to keep his head together because this was probably just a fact of life. Things were going to happen hat people couldn't explain, and part of covering your tracks is keeping yourself out of situations where people might question your alibi. You okay, man? Dan asks. Dan keeps it together.

He can pretend to be Dan for a second.

"I'm cool," he said, hands raised does a quick twist to indicate that there isn't any damage left. Just… blood. Stuff that's left over, most of it is his own, some of it's the bartender's. "You good?" looking for confirmation, affirmation. Dan looked after Sera. Dan could take care of Sera, but… he couldn't figure it out. For a second, he couldn't figure out how Dan could be as collected as he was. It was into the back seat with him, slides all the way over. Still doesn't touch anything unless he has to.

"Where are we going?"

Serafíne

Where are we going?

Elijah asks. He's in the backseat now and Dan has helped Sera in behind Elijah, reminding her quietly 'seat belt' with a murmur, his bearded mouth against her hair. She gives him a reassuring little smile and he shuts the door then climbs in the front. The keys. That's it, Elijah. The keys: Dan's hands are shaking too, just a bit.

He takes a deep breath.

"Fuck if I know."

Head back, engine running one minute two minutes three minutes to tattoo a beat against the steering wheel with the heels of his hands.

They can't go home. Too many people, too many ordinary people. Too many ways to see and be seen. Can't go to the chantry - not yet, not now, just-in-case.

"Hogwarts."

Sera says quietly. Dan's mouth tightens and his eyes flick to the rear-view mirror.

"I know the codes, keys are in the glovebox."

Sirens in the distant.

A beat. Then two, before he relents. Puts the Jeep in gear. Pulls cautiously onto the street, using his turn signal and looking every which way.

"You can get cleaned up there," Sera is telling Elijah, "and we'll get you home," when the paradox hits her. She makes this whimpering little noise and her nose starts to bleed. It won't stop, for nearly the whole drive there.

--

Cautious on the city streets, every traffic code obeyed. He takes them away from thoroughfares, turns a corner, turns another, navigates neatly around the low-rise mess that is East Colfax until he finds an on-ramp to the highway, doesn't really matter which one. Something to get them away, and away from there.

The city opens beneath, changes, sharpens. Here are the mountains with the sun setting behind them, here the sparkling corona of the rings of neighborhoods surrounding the high-rises downtown. Away from the city, a smooth, solid ride over a handful of circuitous four-leaf-clover interchanges, these deliberate misdirections like the flight of a common housefly. Dan has no idea if they will ever matter but - he has to make their route as confused and confusing as possible. Eventually: Cherry Creek. Swank retail outlets where even the fast food restaurants look high-end, then tree-lined streets and fences and gates and mansions beyond the gates. If Elijah has been here before, it was a long, long time ago, but soon enough Dan drives up to the gate of one of the mansions, leans out and enters a code it something, who the hell knows, and pulls inside.

The place is a dark bulk against the skyline now, all shadowed. The sun has sunk further down. Dan closes the gate behind him, climbs back into the jeep and parks in the driveway right in front of the front entrance. Not a single light on inside. There's a garage, sure, but he doesn't have the remote.

The engine ticks quietly as he cuts it off. Reaches into the glovebox to root around for any keys he can find and hands the ring to Elijah.

"I'm gonna get Sera. See if you can figure out how to unlock the door."

Elijah

Her nose won't stop bleeding and Dan's hands are shaking and it's fucking terrifying but they're alive.

Elijah doesn't know who Sera reacts when she's hurt. Doesn't know if she needs comfort or wants space but he leans a little against her, ditches his shirt and some point because it dawns on him that using it to clean up blood is better than sitting there and letting it hold in a mess. He doesn't say much on the ride back, doesn't really place where they are or where they're going; if getting lost was the point, the point was made.

"Things will work out, it'll be okay," he says, says it like he means it. Like his wanting that to be true would make it Truth. He's holding it together with duct tape and delusions- it works for now, but who knew how long it would hold.
--

So, they drive, and it was the only thing he said. It'll be okay. It'll be okay because it has to be okay, because things weren't okay right now it didn't mean that things couldn't normalize out. That Sera would be fine and that Dan would be okay and that whatever heat was going to get thrown from the fact that there should be three dead bodies in that bar would fade out because- what? Because maybe cops have too heavy of a caseload to justify looking into it too heavily.

Delusions, you know. Things that taste like hope but don't keep us going. Things he could think about later but he's headed up to the door with keys in hand and he goes through the motions, pretends like he's supposed to be here and this isn't strange and this place is fucking opulent. Doesn't know the context, doesn't know why Dan was so tense before he acquiesced, didn't know why Sera sounded small- but maybe it was blood loss and what Elijah probably presumed was a reality-induced traumatic brain injury. But, unlocking doors wasn't something he generally had a problem with.

Unlocking doors to a fucking mansion, however, was something completely different.

He'd seen his share of nice places, sure, but that came when your father worked in construction and you occasionally got to hide in closets and occupy yourself in places you probably had no business while you got to listen to the owner whine about things like wanting granite counter tops- rip out the ones you have now and start over, I don't like this it's supposed to be perfect- when in all actuality granite was an inferior surface when compared to- hey, look, they have a balcony!

He unlocked the door with relative ease. Had to fumble with keys for a second to get the right one and in they go, presumably with the alarm silently whining away to alert the authorities that someone had the audacity to use the door instead of magically appearing in the fireplace like a right and proper fucking wizard.

"Where's the security panel?"

Serafíne

This place is opulent and a whole damn room is devoted to entering the goddamned house, and then after that is a whole damn room devoted to climbing up the ridiculously gorgeous stairs, and after that a whole damn room is devoted to ballroom dancing but they haven't gotten that far yet. Dan's unbuckled Sera from the back seat of the Jeep (she's half-asleep by now, semi-coherent. Elijah's assessment of reality-induced traumatic brain injury is spot-fucking-on) and when her shuffling up the front steps is too slow for Dan he simply picks her up. He's not especially athletic and she's kind of unwieldly but she weighs next-to-nothing so that's how they come in, Dan behind Elijah,

"Fuck if I know - " he mutters, jostling Sera awake to repeat the question to her, getting back enough to tell Elijah, "I don't think there is one."

There isn't. A wizard lived here. If some asshole bothered him he could zap them with lightning.

So, he didn't much worry about security.

--

"Find the light switch or something - "

Somehow one of them does. Enough to cast a corona of light from the entrance hall into the reception hall. Enough to give a sense of the scale and magnificence of the place, and its emptiness. Oh, the furnishings remain.

Not the inhabitants.

"Let's go upstairs. We'll find a place for you to get cleaned up. Fifty million bedrooms in this place so we're bound to come up with something you can wear, too."

A brief stitch of a frown. "Sorry about the shitty start to your 21st birthday, man."

Elijah

This feels wrong.

Being here, that is. Being in a place that is very clearly furnished but no one lives here. There isn't bustle, there isn't life, there isn't something to indicate that there are people who care about the house beyond it being a shell. It's no one's home. It's… he doesn't even have context and the place feels lonely. he looks round, takes it all in and he would be taken back by the fact that this place is gorgeous but… He can't shake the feeling he had. Elijah exhaled slowly, managed to finally find a switch, and it was up the stairs with them. "Do you need help getting her up the stairs?" Elijah isn't particularly athletic, either, but Sera seemed a little like a semi coherent noodle at this juncture.

There's a frown, some silence, and Elijah smiled. The word, you see, is sardonic.

"I'm not surprised?" he said, "last year I had… y'know… a break with reality in the stairwell at the university and… yeah, anyway." He exhaled hard, focus. Back to reality, "Birthdays kinda just suck but I made it to twenty-one so I feel kinda like I won."

Like there was a score- Elijah: 2, Expectations of his ability to not overdose and die: 1.

Serafíne

"I got her."

Which is true. He does.

More or less. Carrying her up the stairs isn't effortless and he uses an assist or two from the sweeping bannisters (and by the gods, the bannisters sweep, old English manor style, from the cavernous reception hall to a remarkable open loggia overlooking an equally remarkable ballroom, downstairs. This view of the back gardens (formal, then informal) through elegant oversized windows - leaded glass, the lot of them - two stories tall. Low voltage lighting dotting the landscaping (still meticulously maintained) comes on at dusk, so there are these small points of light in the distance.

Dan is a little bit out of breath by the time he reaches the second floor. Has to stop to catch it while Elijah again acts as the light-scout, finding some switch somewhere to guide the way. "Right," he directs Elijah away from the master suite when he gathers himself again, but stops, pauses, listens as Elijah talks about what happened on his 20th birthday.

Dan's eyes are - damp right now, more bruised than you might imagine given how damned efficient he is being. He's still moving because someone has to. That's what happens. He's also listening, gives Elijah a brief, sympathetic grimace. "You're magick kid," Dan tells Elijah, as the young Hermetic details last year's psychotic break from reality, and he says it because, "Reality can go fuck itself. Right? That's what you have to remember."

Elijah

He starts to head one way, but does have the good sense to take direction that whatever is going on over there is not something he particularly wants to deal with. He half expects to walk in, see the walls splattered with gore. Or, more accurately, he expects that whatever is in that end of the house might be punctuated with the sterile feeling of a place cleaned too heavily to scrub out whatever was there before. There was something inherently offsetting about a place that was very clearly free of residents. When it's large and beautiful, it feels less like an escape and more like a memory.

"Sometimes, I think about it, and it's less of a departure and more of an interlude with something bigger," he says, "it's not all bad."

Stops for a second at a door. Third door on the right on the right, he knocks like he's expecting to be given entry before he actually going in. Lights are hit and he looks back at dan. At his damp eyes and the bruises and Elijah gets this feeling for a moment that he can put himself away for a second.

"You really hold it together," he said, "like…" A break, a beat, "you don't have to be okay all the time."

Serafíne

"I'm not," Dan tells him, this little short-circuit interruption. "Okay all the time. But I'm okay now."

This smile edging its way through his blond beard.

"Thanks, though. Go get cleaned up."

So: Elijah disappears into the third bedroom on the right. No one answers the knock and the door to the room he opens is clean, luxurious, quiet. Fine, really. Fine - real antiques and actual tasteful shit on the walls that matches both the tone and tenor of the furnishings and the space proper. Ensuite bathroom though first he'll blunder into a closet empty except of linens and then into the bathroom. Not the master but there's probably a tub deep enough that Elijah could go swimming or at least soak for days.

Serafíne

Dan: Int + Medicine.

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Elijah

Eventually, he does come out of the room he's in, once he's done having his Countess Bathory moment and is thoroughly convinced that and remnants of the bar or the night or he's done stewing over the fact that there's enough blood in the front of his pocket watch to make the inlay russet and gold. He doesn't know how to clean it off, though he may try later. The stubborn bits will remain, though, they always do. He knows something about blood stains. Spends more time than strictly necessary making sure that the tub was clean and there weren't spots or discolorations or drops or traces of the violence they'd seen earlier in the evening, not because he cared about the house, but rather, the prospect of having it linger. The places his imagination and memory wandered weren't particularly welcome.

Twenty hadn't been particularly fantastic. (Elijah ran the water again-)
Nineteen had been a disaster. (- hotter than the fucking sun-)
Eighteen's festivities ended with an orderly with a broken nose. (he rubs at a spot he was pretty certain he could still see, Lady Macbeth would be proud.)

Water turns off, he exhales hard.

---

He comes down stairs and is wearing clothes. Clothes that would probably be filled out by someone who is in decidedly better shape than Elijah, and that's saying something because Elijah isn't actually in bad shape. Things that are tailored for someone who is, well, most assuredly not the person wearing them. He's got V neck on, and jeans that were just the appropriate level of distressed that it took some designer care and attention to make nice work of them.

"We should probably eat something," he announces.

Serafíne

Dan doesn't take as long to get cleaned up. Showers, rather than soaking once twice three times in a tub the size of Texas. Wads up his short-sleeved plaid button-down as a lost cause and throws it in the trash can in the corner of one of the larger bedrooms. Eschews the remnants of Hawksley's closet in favor of scrubbing at the stains on his black skinny jeans. Leaves the jeans on - less of a lost-cause and the black covers up the blood.

--

He does take the time to stabilize Sera. Clean her up a bit. Check her airway and gently wipe away the blood crusted around her nostrils. To satisfy himself that she's settling into sleep that is healing rather than restless. To get her clothes off her and tuck her into the cool, crisp sheets.

--

Downstairs, though.

Easy to get lost in a house this size. Who the fuck needs something like it? And why do people gravitate to the kitchen in times of need and crisis? Because both of them head there, Elijah and Dan. Dan's shirt-less and barefoot and drinking a glass of water, leaning against the counter.

"Read my mind. Not much in the fridge but there are some steaks in the freezer. I'm pretty sure I spotted a tin of beluga caviar in the cabinets. No toast-points but we can make due with Triscuits, I bet."

Elijah

"I could do steaks," he told Dan, "I'll even cook, too."

Because there is mention of steak and he's already started on with scouting out something that he could actually cook on. He's not bad in the kitchen. Sure, he's not a chef and the quality of beef that in the freezer is probably weeping at the prospect of what is about to happen to it, but we digress.

"Not that you're not, like, a fucking fantastic chef, but seriously this is probably the only time I'm gonna get to cook steak this year and so long as we're recovering from whatever the fuck just happened I may as well," pans found! A second passed.

"What… did happen?" he asks cautiously.

Serafíne

That's a sub-zero range. Soon enough Elijah figures out that the griddle in the center can be removed and becomes an indoor grill. Probably there's some fancy system for hickory smoke or what the fuck ever to be infused into the fibers of the meet, but.

So: Dan stands back. Gets Elijah an some ice from the freezer and water from the filter and sets it on the counter by the range. Leans back. Gets up again to find the caviar tin and the stray box of Triscuits that lives in every uninhabited kitchen and settles for a snack. Doesn't give a fuck how much that caviar cost or that it isn't his.

"At the bar? You want our story, or the real one?"

Elijah

The middle comes out and it's a legit indoor grill.

"Oh holy shit," he said, brows raised and the tiniest bit of delight in his voice. Tired delight, but delight none-the-less, "cool." This gets settled into the things he is never telling his parents about, though he does wonder what the wholesaler's price is on a unit like this. He gets on to work with food prep. washes his hands like a surgeon before looking back.

"The real story," he said, "I figure the alibi's something we can figure out later."

Serafíne

"Big guy was headed toward the back, fuck if I know what for," Dan starts. This vaccuum-seal noise as he opens the caviar jar, which he totally got from the fridge not the cabinets like I wrote before, because why would you eat room temperature caviar, Dan. "Two other guys came in behind him I figure they weren't supposed to start a gunfight in the open like that, maybe they were supposed to intimidate or guard the door - but the one was trigger happy or thought the bartender was going for a gun and shot the bartender. Then you jumped in front of the bartender - " here a pause, a Tricuit dipped in caviar like a toast-point. No sour cream or dill or hard-boiled eggs for it, but what can one do.

" - which, by the way, I totally get the desire to save someone's life, but fuck. You put yourself in danger there. I wish you hadn't done that. Or that you instinct wasn't quite so run into the light of an oncoming train, you know? The other guy shot you. I charged him and I'm pretty sure he shot me too. The rest is sort of fuzzy - Sera was casting something, I don't know what. She must've healed me. I mean, quick enough that I hardly had time to register that I'd been shot. Then she scrambled over to you and got you on your feet.

"For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the bartender is going to make it."

Elijah

There a moment when one realizes they aren't bulletproof. There is a moment, then, after that when Elijah concludes that the fact that he is not impermeable to bullets is bordering on unacceptable. Mouth sets in a fine line, but he nods. Nods because he is listening, nods because… well…

"I'm finding that there's kind of a fine line between trying to help someone and doing something irrevocably dumb," he says. "I'm glad he's gonna be okay but… like… fuck, Dan, that got bad. That got bad really fucking fast."

Stunned is the word.

Serafíne

"It did,"

Dan affirms. That's all. Doesn't reprimand, doesn't scold, he lets that observation live and steps back from it, listening, aware, non-judgmental, nothing more.

Elijah cooks. Dan eats the caviar, offers Elijah a taste if he wants. It'll take the steaks a while because FROZEN but magick and a big fancy kitchen have something to say about that. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Dan ducks back upstairs to check on Sera. Must go someplace else too because he returns with an expensive bottle of red wine (Chateauneuf-du-Papes) that opens to let breathe while Elijah finishes the steaks.

They eat, drink too. Maybe chat, maybe they don't. Dan offers Elijah a ride wherever he wants to go, whenever he's ready. That got bad, it got bad really fucking fast, but there is this too: they're okay.

Every sngle one of them. All okay.

Crossfire.

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Forever until it stops.

Samir

Sometime around sundown on Friday Sam Lakhani walked the perimeter of his studio apartment checking the blinds. He opened and closed each set of blinds one time for every year he had been alive and then he sat cross-legged on the floor and awakened the black handheld computer that was never far from his person.

If he lives long enough to wield any sort of real power this machine will make anyone who does not bear his pattern feel as if the device is stabbing their hands. Sam is still young. He doesn't think himself a hero. He's just trying to get by same as everyone else on this planet.

The life data arrays of the woman he's looking for is not yet known to him. He has not yet studied life data arrays at all. Her virtual body though. The sense of her. That he's starting to know.

A green-on-black glow as the low light of the sun gives way to the dim light of neons and street lamps. Overcast as it is tonight the sky will glow a post-apocalyptic pink when he steps outside. He types a series of commands into the array window and waits.

Coordinates. Easy enough to translate into a physical address. Another window and another set of keystrokes and he figures out where Serafíne is and where this party she's invited him to appears to be occurring.

It takes him longer to get himself out of his room the older he gets. He does the same thing he always does when he knows he's going to meet someone. As much a ritual as his technomancy: he rises from the floor and sits down at the desk where a fraction of his computer equipment waits. Packs and lights a bowl and smokes until he's down to resin and then he shuts himself in the bathroom. What he does in there is his own business. He emerges showered and dressed and before the high from the pot wears off he slips on his jacket and tucks a baggie of round white pills with the letter K punched in the center into his pocket. Checks the faucet in the kitchen and the locks on the door. Doesn't matter how high he is. He has to check.

Two hours after bodies started drifting into the party Samir dismounts a three-speed bicycle and walks it up the curb in front of the house. He locks it to the nearest street sign and checks his pockets.

Here goes nothing.

---

Samir @ 10:07AM
[Corr 2 - Where the hell am I going? Diff 5, -1 unique focus, -1 quint. Spending WP.]
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafíne

719 Corona Street is a house full of pleasures.

Maybe not for Samir Lakhani, but hell. It is nearing dusk and therefore the light is slanting and lovely in a way that makes everything familiar go strange and changeable and there is the facade of a house that is three stories at least, blond-brick, with a wide porch that sports a handful of houseplants, a wooden porch swing hung from two hooks, a spinning prism swinging from a hanging basket and a unicycle propped by up the front door. Light gleaming from windows and an open door and the sound of music, murmured conversation, laughter somewhere inside.

Herbs in a flower box on the banisters framing the handful of steps up the porch and an old floor mat covered in multicolored sunflowers in front of the front door. The musky scent of pot smoke wafting from somewhere and an array of Edison lights framing the big picture window out front - and that's just the front porch. Her resonance everywhere. Sunk into everything.

This couple ahead of him - two girls, both pretty butch, holding hands as they jog up the front steps - goes right in. The screen door opens, then bangs shut behind them.

Moment of truth or something right?

Right now he's singular, intact, whole, himself, now.

Who knows what waits on the other side?

Samir

Escaping tendrils of pot smoke tell him he's in the right place. Ought to tell him he'l fit right in with this crowd. He's met Serafíne enough times that he thought not be surprised at her proclivities. If he were the entrepreneuring type he would see a hotbed of new clients laid out for him. He is not in the business of making money. He is in the business of staying alive.

He watches the couple hustle up the steps and let themselves inside. Moment of truth or something. The young man paces back and forth in front of the doorway four times and then quick and sharp like jumping into a lake in the early days of spring Samir takes hold of the screen door and hauls it back. Lets himself in.

Now all he has to do is find Sera. Find Sera and not let his nerves overcome his lingering high.

Serafíne

'That kid's here.'

So she tells him. When Samir is somewhere: down the block, perhaps, around the corner. Walking his bike up to the curb, locking it around the metal HANDICAPPED PARKING sign with arrows erected for the lady two doors down with no discernable need for it, but - no matter. This summer last a person might've seen this anthracite gold Porsche 911 parked there (does Dee still think that was a Jag? No. Someone surely corrected her in the intervening years), on occasional summer nights.

These days, it doesn't come around.

--

So he gets up. Climbs over the back of a green velvet couch in the somewhat crowded living room. Glances over his shoulder, out into the dark garden laced with strands of Edison lights above, the startling sparkle of the shadows dusted below.

--

Last time they met, or perhaps the time before, Samir asked her how she knew - or maybe why - that Denver was becoming home. Maybe he knows, now, what she meant. This place feels like a home, like her home. The noise and the crowd and the smoke. Something lively in and around and beneath the walls. The collection of shoes upturned beneath the antique halltree, the eclectic mixture of art, photographs, collages, figurines, books, posters, flyers, plants, fucking macrame. Yeah: macrame, a macrame owl hanging from the ceiling above an enormous canvas of an oil painting of a street scene, some ordinary corner, sprawling, low-rise, dreadful. Apex just off-center, a bus - sighing, kneeling at the corner stop. The sun coming out after the rain.

And this is the entryway.

--

Samir is looking for Sera. What he finds, first, is a tall, lanky, tattooed man with a scruff of blond hair and a scruff of blond beard striding up the hall towards him, holding out a hand. His own personal welcoming committee.

"Samir? I'm Dan. Good to meet you."

Samir

This place feels lived in.

No reek of sterility soon as he walks in. Clutter everywhere. Dust. He can see stains most other people wouldn't think to look for. It's the heat from other people's bodies sinking into the walls. His eyes scan the spines of the books if they're visible and note whether the hardcovers still have their dust jackets or not.

It's almost possible for him to hear the ghosts of yesterday's parties underneath the throng of the live one.

That kid tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans so soon as the door has clapped shut behind him. He doesn't have much interest in talking to or touching anyone. When Dan met Samir his friend was locking lips with him on the curb outside whatever gastropub they'd gone to by the park. If he had been nervous been it was not an obvious thing.

He doesn't look nervous right now. Tense sure but he's got enough THC running through his system and knowing that there's clonazepam in his pocket has him anesthetized.

A moment's pause before he registers that Dan is holding out his hand to shake. At some point Samir had dropped saline solution into his eyes. They are not bloodshot. It's hard to tell if he smells like smoke. Everyone in here smells like smoke.

"Hey, man," he says as their palms connect. Sounds as if he isn't feeling any pain right now but he isn't sloppy. "How's it going?"

Serafíne

"Night's just getting started. Already feeling good."

The flash of white teeth, quite, mobile, framed by his blond beard. Dan's taller, see. Doesn't shy from his height. He's skinny enough that it makes him seem even taller, sometimes.

"C'mon, I'll give you the tour. You want a drink? We've got pretty much everything, but the signature cocktail of the night is this gin, blueberry and rosemary concoction. Least it is until no one's in a state to be making signature cocktails."

Calloused hands, these. Probably hard for the computer nerd to read them, the story they tell but. The guy's a musician.

A fucking good one.

Samir

Computer nerds don't have the softest hands in the world. Especially not the computer nerd who knows how to operate a soldering iron and routinely cracks open dead pieces of equipment to get at the guts inside. Dan doesn't have time to examine his digits but Samir has little scars here and there. Burns or cuts and none of them self-inflicted. He is neither strong nor particularly delicate. He has the potential to be either. He's young. All he is is potential right now.

He just met him and Samir already likes Dan. It may be impossible to not like Dan. No resonance about him but the chillness is infectious. Samir does not have a naturally limp grip. That hesitation has more to do with inescapable fear than social awkwardness but the two are mistaken for twins sometimes.

"That sounds... interesting." This of the cocktail. "I'm alright, right now. Let's..." He makes a loose fist and hoists it diagonal across his chest up to his shoulder. An old-timey gesture of affirmation. "Let's get that tour going."

Serafíne

Dan knows his way around a Mac, at least.

Is also the designated curator of Sera's iPhone, which he has surprisingly never listed on his resume.

So: they have something in common.

--

Samir gets to duck into the front parlor (Dan says, front parlor with a certain irony some people might find punch-worthy) and there are partygoers there, chilling on antiques, ignoring the books, drinking, not-yet-making-out because it is early, flipping through LPs, eating bits of things off napkins, laughing, glancing out the window the way you do when headlights flash by and you're expecting someone you haven't seen yet. Introduces Samir here and there, gives the odd fist-bump (IRONICALLY though not entirely), then back into the foyer, down the long, long hall. A glimpse of the stairs leading-up-up-up, a framed portrait of Amelia Earhardt and a spider plant hanging from a hook on the landing ceiling in another macrame holder. Fine woodwork all the way up up up.

More places for dust to settle, for decay to set it, for mites to learn first to crawl and then to bite.

The kitchen: big and white - renovated and expanded for sure, younger than the house, though no longer young. 15 or 20 years old now. Good work though: marble counters, custom wood cabinets. Food and drink in abundance, on the center island, arrayed around a big round table on the breakfast nook attached, sliding glass doors open to the backyard where more people hang beneath those criss-crossed Edison light. Pulls the screen open and ducks outside, standing on the patio looking out over the lovely setting, he pats himself down until he finds a pack of clove cigarettes and digs a little joint out of the mass of kreteks.

Offers it, philosophically, to Samir.

Along with a light.

"We try not to smoke inside," he remarks, as he waits for Samir to fire or not-fire it. Samir can feel Sera, somewhere back in the house. Can see, too, deeper in the garden the cabana bed beneath the big oaktree that dominates the garden.

Hell, there's even a bridge, higher up, from the third story of the house to the loft above the garage that fronts the alley, with a little balcony overlooking the garden and an elegant iron staircase leading down down down. "Studio's up there." He says, with a nod of his head.

A moment later, "Sera never told me what Tradition you were."

Quiet this but. You know: telling.

Samir

Others might have but Samir has no interest in stopping to touch or examine anything he finds. He glances here and there but it's the ambiance of the place. The humming of the code calling to him.

Dan introduces him around and Samir is polite but he is also not the friendliest individual in the room. The fewer hands he has to shake the better off he will be. By the time they reach the kitchen he has had enough of casual human contact and has removed a small bottle of hand sanitizer from his jacket. Applies a quarter-sized drop to the palm of his right hand and returns the bottle to his pocket and rubs them together.

Outside is better than inside. Relatively. That house feels like Sera and Sera's Home and he can sense her somewhere inside but he doesn't hone in on her. She can feel his resonance piercing through the crowd. Took growing magic to get him here. It wasn't a text or a Google search.

They try not to smoke inside.

Samir offers his gratitude when the joint comes his way and removes his own lighter from the same pocket responsible for the hand sanitizer. He lifts his eyes when Dan points out where the studio is. Right. Sera's in a band. He probably met the whole band tonight. He awakens the joint and takes a coy first hit before pocketing the lighter and drawing a proper second slow down into his lungs.

Sera never told Dan what Tradition Samir is.

"Oh," he says. Releases the lungful and passes the joint back to Dan. "She never told me what hers is, either."

Serafíne

Dan gives Samir a bemused sideglance when Samir says that. Waves off the joint, without explanation.

Maybe he doesn't want to get high(er) just now.

Maybe someone named Sera noticed some of Samir's tics, once upon a time-since-past, said something to her longtime friend.

--

"Well. We fulfill the stereotype pretty fucking well. I bet you can guess."

Samir

"Oh, no..."

It's almost funny what one can recognizing about oneself without realizing other people will notice. Like the cigarette thing. Sure he could figure Sera would think it weird that he wouldn't want his cigarette back but most people don't notice tics like that.

Especially not most people Samir knows. The stereotype of social awkwardness doesn't come from nowhere.

"You guys are Hermetics, aren't you?"

Maybe Sera also mentioned that he is capable of saying something slightly funny once in a while. Maybe she didn't. He is trying to be funny. They're obviously Cultists.

Serafíne

"That's it." Dan, a quick grin, this throaty, baritone chuckle, appealing in its openness. Has his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, again. "House Only the Gods Fucking Know. My Craft name is Ramalamadingdong.

"I was always a big fan of The Edsels. The secrets of the universe are buried in their non-sense verses. Gonna go with Etherite for you. You've got a mad scientist thing going. And, as you can see, your goggles would probably totally fit in with the vibe of the guests."

Glances down at the disappearing joint.

"When you're done with that, we'll go find Sera. Just, I wanted to give you fair warning, sometimes she gets a little chaotic, you know?"

Samir

You've got a mad scientist thing going.

Samir lets out a "Hah!" that is both a- and bemused. Doesn't ask Dan to clarify his statement but he doesn't need him to.

With the glance down at the joint Samir begins to consider how stoned he's getting. How he's tried to pass it back to Dan and Dan hasn't gone for it. Sometimes Sera gets a little chaotic.

"That's alright," he says. Passes the joint back to Dan again. If Dan takes it that settles that score. If he doesn't Samir is going to have to pinch off the cherry and stash it in the pack of rollies he keeps in his jacket pocket. Either way: "I'm good with this."

Serafíne

Samir's laugh has Dan grinning again. Quick and sure and engaging and maybe there's something a little bit self-satisfied in his chuckle but charming folks are allowed to recognize their own charms, now and then.

Still grinning, not ear to ear but you know, as he takes the joint back when Samir offers it. One big hit, holds on to it, head tilted back, looking up past the eaves of the house, through the branching arms of the big oak tree, the night sky washed out by the city's glow beyond.

Exhales. Takes another hit to finish the damn thing off and stubs the remainder of the roach into a convenient ashtray on a mosaic plant stand by the sliding glass doors. Which open here and close there as people slip through, most of whom know Dan, some of whom haven't seen him tonight and greet him as they come and go. Here's something else: most of those folks don't really notice Samir. Dan doesn't draw attention to him, either.

"C'mon."

The rest of the tour. Back through the kitchen (where Dan stops to pour a highball glass of that gin-and-blueberries-and-rosemary drink), back up the hall, to the living room. Another big room on the first floor of the sprawling old house. Fireplace, that jumble of art work on the walls, antiques mixed with modern pieces. Curtains framing a series of high windows overlooking the back. The windows are open, curtains dancing in the breeze. Sera holding court on an antique green velvet couch crowded with strangers.

She glances up at the Dan and Samir wander in and Dan circles behind her, dropping a kiss on the crown of her head and that drink in her hand.

"Dan." She says, lolling her head backwards, mouth slurring around his name. "What the fuck is wrong with you. Why the fuck doesn't he have a goddamned drink."

Samir

It takes premeditation and purposeful movement for Samir to find himself in a place where he can cant his head back and look at the stars. It takes the same amount of effort for Sleepers to look for him or hold them in their minds. He fades from recollection so quick that if any of them ever had any reason to run his name in search of a background or criminal record the system wouldn't betray his existence at all. Even his birth certificate seems to have never existed in the first place.

As they travel back through the house in search of Sera the Virtual Adept does not tag close to Dan's heels. Neither does he amble exactly but the haziness of his high lets him appreciates his surroundings more than he would have been able to straight. Then there's Sera.

He doesn't invite himself to sit down. He hovers from a short distance until Sera addresses Dan. Then he gives a small chuckle and says, "Should I have a goddamned drink?"

Serafíne

"'Course you need a drink," the creature rejoins, dark eyes ticking from Dan to Samir and lasering in to focus. Her cheek against the green velvet, and then - lifting - her chin. "It's a fucking party. You have a drink. You get stoned. You talk about beard care - " an ironic flash of a glance to Dan, " - or artisan cocktails or That Thing That Guy Did and you flirt or you dance or you find someone new to fuck, or maybe someone old. But you start with a drink."

Then she turns her wobbling head, focuses on the guy parked next to her on the couch and tells him to Get The Fuck Off. Looks back at Samir, then. Pats the spot beside her. "Come sit with me."

Samir

Though Samir does not let the moment of hesitation show on his face he does hesitate. Could be momentary separation from temporal stability given that he can't exactly feel his limbs and the silence where his nattering neuroses tend to be is as loud a sound as the silence where the chaos from a herd of small children would ring to a mother or a nanny. He accepts it though. He is Awake. He can see the Code in everything. This does not distress him even if he is aware of it.

The guy on the couch next to Sera fucks off and Sam hesitates but then he says "'Kay" and closes the distance between them. Keeps his hands in his pockets as he sits down on the couch. He's numbed a bit but that doesn't mean he's stiff. Depending upon how fucked up Sera is she may or may not notice the looseness in his limbs and the lack of jangling electricity in his eyes. As if he's not imagining the creeping germs he can't see like he usually is.

Leaned back against the couch he cannot feel the velvet through the thickness of his jacket. He does lean back though. Lolls his head to look over at Sera and gives her a quick up-and-down glance. Assessing but the assessment is blunt. Blunt like something dulled rather than something direct. The blunt end of a pencil. He is feeling no pain.

"I don't know shit about beard care," he says. Maybe Dan is still behind them. He is aware of him if he is. Touches his face to assure himself of the absence of hair and goes on, "Maybe I should grow one..."

Serafíne

She's curled there on the couch wearing a little red cocktail dress and fishnets. Shoes kicked off, and someone has thoughtfully nudged them underneath the coffee table because otherwise they would be weapons. Both legs curled beneath her body right now, that drink Dan brought her in her hand.

Having delivered Samir unto Sera, Dan doesn't linger lurking behind them like a weirdo creeper, no. He's not a butler either so right now Samir does not have a drink, even though Sera is shooting Dan a recalcitrant look that edges into a pout, these are the kind of looks from her that he can ignore and does now and she's drops her gaze back to Sam just as he touches his cheeks to make sure they are still baby-smooth and laughs and reaches out and captures his jaw in her free hand and sweeps her thumb across his cheek.

"I know way more about beard-care than you could fucking imagine. And I like scruff better than beards. And I like this just fine."

Tries to hand him her blueberry-gin concoction, because it is a party and he does need a drink and anyway she still has her bottle of tequila tucked against the side of the couch, so. She'll be a-okay.

"Let's play a game."

Samir

If Samir had wanted a drink he would have had no problem asking for a drink. It isn't as if he doesn't drink. Sera has seen him drink. Sure he's got his little rituals that he goes through when he's out in public rearranging things at restaurant tables and futzing with things with which he oughtn't futz but it isn't as if he's so paranoid he won't consume anything he didn't prepare himself.

He's stoned. That's why he doesn't want a drink. He's stoned and maybe Sera can sense his stonedness once he's sat beside her. So soon as Dan leaves the room he won't forget why he went in there in the first place but it's a fair bet he'll forget about Sam.

Sera laughs and Sam does not fight to regain control of his jaw. His eyelids threaten to close when her thumb brushes his skin but he keeps them open. They're dark in this light. So are hers. She likes this just fine.

So she hands him her drink and Sam eyes it a second longer than would be considered strictly polite but in the end he does reach out and take it. Condensation slicks his fingers and he swaps the glass to his other hand so he can wipe the water on the thigh of his jeans. He replants his feet on the floor.

It takes some effort for him to lean back against the sofa. He isn't anxious but that doesn't mean he's relaxed either.

"What kind of game?" he asks.

Serafíne

"I ask you a question and you answer it," this is wry, which is a strange thing to surface through all the drugs she has taken and/or will take tonight but there it is. Somehow they pull her back to stitch her sometimes in her body, in a certain place and time, where she is everything she ever was and also: this.

Here.

Now.

A girl with on a not-anxious, not-relaxed young man's jaw.

"That kind of game. What was the last party you went to? Your cousin's first birthday party counts."

Samir

"Whoa. Hold up."

Laughter stains his voice which is slowed and dulled by the pot he'd smoked outside. That's what he wants out of a joint anyway. To mellow the fuck out enough that he can try and live outside his own head for a few hours.

"Am I supposed to answer truthfully? I guess it wouldn't matter. If I just lied and didn't say anything you wouldn't know. Except I just told you I was thinking about lying. ... fuck. What was the question?"

Serafíne

"You think there's a supposed-to?"

Hasn't let go of him, Sera. She's still sitting there, sort of sprawled, in her little red dress, cheek against the green velvet, her dyed blond hair spread in curling tendrils all around her shoulders. Still the same wry twist to her mouth.

"The last party you went to. Then your favorite flavor of yogurt. Then why you came tonight."

Samir

With her hand still on his face Sera can feel when he almost smiles. The tension in his jaws that betrays his nerves. Muscle memory holds up beneath the mellowing influence of the pot but Sam's eyes are calm. No sign of the normal sheen of wariness that comes to him when she's happened upon him out in public.

"That's so many questions..."

Maybe if he puts his hand on her head she'll take hers off his face. He tries that. Puts the palm of the hand not holding the lemonade concoction on her crown and smoothes down her hair. He's fascinated by the way the yellow strands stand out against and hold to the velvet but this shouldn't surprise anyone. Virtual Adepts are not known for their mastery of forces but many of their apprentice's rotes require its application.

"I, ah... well, you said it was tonight, so I came tonight. Also I... you know... wanted to." His eyes are on his hand and her hair now instead of on her face. "They'll take my leet card away if I act like being outside the house isn't the worst thing in the world. I really don't trust flavored yogurt, is that weird? Like, plain yogurt with honey on it is amazing, and I've had it with strawberry or vanilla before, but the way they have to process the shit out of the milk to make it taste like lemon or chocolate or whatever without killing the bacteria kind of weirds me out."

Serafíne

There's this din around them - it's a party after all - but sometimes that din creates a thoroughly private space, even in the midst of a crowd. Then there's the way that Samir seems to fade into the background when one isn't immediately focused on him. The ordinary folk cannot quite seem to focus on him.

And, well: why would you, when Sera is around?

There's something awkward about the way he's holding that drink she gave him, so Sera reaches out and takes it right back from him and briefly upsets the whole apple cart by sitting up and scootching far enough forward to set the drink down on a much-battered chapbook of a friend's poetry. The movement has the strands of her long hair caught in and slithering through the nap of the velvet, organic and geometric, somehow, all-at-once.

Slides back into almost the same position, except now one knee is tucked very neatly beneath her hips.

"Yogurt's bullshit, I like booze."

So maybe he's still looking at her hair, the sharp, burnished angle of her features. Maybe he's sinking into his high or rising above it. Maybe that anxiety is still twitching in more-than-his-muscles, it hardly matters. Here is the grace of her gaze on the edge of his profile, banked yes, but never wholly shuttered.

"And I have no idea what the fuck a leet card is, but I think we're both better off that way."

--

She turns her head a bit then, closes her eyes, breathes in the noise and the brilliance and the energy the way she is given to do. Shifts her weight, then, from a hip to a knee and is rising up-up-up, reaching back to brace herself against the back of the couch, and he might think that she is getting up - drunk right? - and other things, swaying as she reorients herself to the motion of the room and threatening to fall on him.

But no: that's not falling. She's headed upright and then she's shifting herself to straddle him and that's a fucking choice not any sort of accident. Hands braced on the back of the velvet couch behind him, head tipped so that she can look down at him.

And maybe his hands stay kinda awkwardly where they are. Slip from her hair back down the velvet couch, or maybe they find her hips, which is where they seem to fit best. Her mouth is soft when it finds his, but nothing close to yielding.

When the kiss ends, she stays close. Brow-to-goddamned brow.

Her breathing is shallower, now.

"Have you ever had sex before?"

--

Apparently they're still playing that goddamned game.

Samir

If he's going to indulge his mental illness then Sam would have to admit that he is perfectly fine with the fact that he fades from memory just so soon as he has turned from the other person. That the government can't pull up anything on him if they ever find a reason to search for him.

But he is mentally ill. Sera has picked up on that. She has picked up on his compulsive behavior and the little rituals he performs out in public. The fact that he has an antagonistic relationship with germs and that he doesn't allow himself to like physical contact. He is fine with accidental contact. If a hostess touches his shoulder or a stranger brushes up against him or he hears a sudden loud noise he maintains his shit. Sure handshakes and making out are germ-laden but it's something else. He has been distracted most if not all of the times she has seen him. Even on their coffee date Samir seemed as if he were making an effort to focus.

Sera has a centripetal pull on him. Maybe she hasn't picked up on what exactly nags at him yet. But something does nag at him.

Not right now. Not as loud as usual. Right now he lets her pull away from him and shift and then oh fuck she's straddling him. Sam is not a robot. He is not detached from his sexuality. He has not buried it. He is not awkward in the sense that he does not know how to talk to people or relate to them.

He likes her. He likes being around her and he is attracted to her. She knows this. She has picked up on this the same as she has picked up on the fact that he is troubled if not outright crazy. Hard to tell if a person is crazy or not just by meeting them a few times. Sera has never used her powers of Mind on him without his permission.

That's another reason he likes her.

Anyway: she kisses him. He is wire-taut beneath her but kissing Sam is not like kissing a post. He responds. He relaxes when her mouth finds his and yes. Yes he lets his hands find her hips. He does not pull her down hard onto him but they do not float over her body either. Pressure. Pressure and wanting and in his shoulders is where he carries his tension. The shoulders support the neck which supports the brain. Sam spends a lot of time in his own brain.

Brow to goddamned brow. His eyes are closed when she speaks. Her breathing is shallower and his is faster.

Then her question. Then his lie.

Sam opens his eyes and she hears the hitch of hesitation before he says, "Sure." Beat. "Once." Beat. "Almost." Beat. "Okay, no, not technically, but..."

Serafíne

The hedge of her smile, a crescent curve against his mouth.

They're no longer kissing but she's still straddling him and her arms are loose around his shoulders and one of her hands has found its way into his hair and she's looking right down at him, pupils blown wide open.

"Promise me something, okay?"

Samir

So she's drunk and possibly high. Fuzzy perception. Sera has perception to spare and her hips are flush against his. Sam is not uncomfortable right now. Not physically anyway. If he is mentally uncomfortable then the pot has done a good enough job of ironing that out of his mind that it does not affect his body.

His hands leave her hips to slide around to the small of her back. Maybe she can see how much time has passed since he's touched a woman like this in the way his eyes threaten to hood. Fuck she's got her fingers in his hair he could die right now and be happy. Her pupils are blown open because of drugs. His are thrown open because of anxiety. They're open to each other.

Dry mouth. It's not entirely the pot's fault.

"Okay," he says.

Serafíne

"If I ever do anything that makes you uncomfortable - not uncomfortable in a way that you are seeking, yeah? - when you're pushing yourself because you want to push yourself - "

Strange the way the noise of the others in the room - other lives, other conversations, even the music threading through - just kinda recedes when you're this close to another person. Becomes part of that background hum.

" - but uncomfortable in a way that is fucking material to you, let me know. Just say it."

Gives him a little nudge with her forehead, and then kisses him again. Brow, temple, cheek, mouth, her hand spreading open in his hair to support his head as she bends him backwards.

"We can go upstairs now, if you like. But you did just get here and the party's hardly started."

Samir

Recession doesn't mean oblivion. Sam is aware of them but it is a spiteful sort of awareness. Refusing to let himself completely fall into himself and his own experience because who knows what could happen if someone decided out of nowhere to come over to them and interrupt their moment on the sofa.

A moment can last forever and Sam doesn't ever know if he's going to see Sera or anyone else again after he leaves them. He's listening to her as if she is the only person in the room. That counts for something. Everyone else is there but he refuses to let them matter right now. Her flesh and her bones and her gaze feel too good to him right now. Jangling awareness that he would not enjoy it so much if he had not gotten stoned twice first.

A nudge and a kiss and Sam lets his eyes close as Sera nuzzles him and cradles him and Sam does nothing to fight her.

"I don't really like parties," he says with his eyes still closed. A stutter as he keeps whatever his next sentence was to be to himself and then, "I like you."

Thank you, Pot.

Serafíne

"Alright."

That's all she says. Murmurs, really, with a certain distinctive and clarified tenderness against his brow.

Then she's sliding off him, half-stumbling, it's awkward - there's the coffee table behind and her discarded heels somehow but god, this is something she has done how many times, with how many other strangers and not-so-strangers.

The creature reaches for his hand as she shifts back and gains her feet and pulls him after. Turns and does this deft little handoff of his hand from her left to her right as she does so. Murmurs some apology to a friend trying to squeeze by for the last seat on the couch and leads Samir around the green velvet couch, back into and then down the dark hallway, then up the stairs, rising to darkness.

They turn the landing and keep going up and then there's a hallway, doors closed, and then there's one door that opens with a faint creak onto and into a large bedroom with a wide bank of windows overlooking the back garden.

And there's so much damn stuff in there that it is hard to take in, and god, if he weren't stoned. The things to be counted and sorted are so endless and varied he might never leave the space.

"You don't have to lie to me, about what you've done or haven't done, Sam," she's telling him as she pulls him inside and reaches back to pull the door closed behind him. "I like sex and I'm a good fucking teacher. You can sit down on the bed if you want.

"Take off your shoes, maybe."

Samir

`The part of him that doesn't like germs or contact with surfaces of dubious cleanliness doesn't want to take off his shoes. The other part of him that recognizes this is abnormal behavior that won't go away unless he bombards his brain with exposure to the stimulus it fears most in that moment doesn't particularly care.

In the morning if he is still here in the morning Sera may have to deal with a mental engine stall. Chances are about equal either way that he will or will not still be here in half an hour let alone in the morning. But Sam let her take his hand and wind him through the party. Though the bones of his hand proper were taut the bones of his fingers were not and they did not seek to knit with hers.

Sam is now sat on the bed. He's told her he would promise her something. Fuck. What was it. Maybe she can tell that he's very much focusing on her to the exclusion of what exists in the space around him. Conscious effort. Sought discomfort.

It's scary to meet someone who recognizes your mental fucked-up-edness for what it is and not judge it. Maybe he's more scared than anxious. He's gone his whole life without proper intimacy.

He sits down on the bed. He's watching her with whiskey-warm eyes but not touching the bed or taking off his shoes.

"I'll tell you," he says. If she does anything that makes him uncomfortable. "I'm not."

Serafíne

She's lovely, really. Loose curls and a tequila haze and certain spare vulnerability to her features when seen in profile. As now: Sam is sitting on the edge of the bed and not taking off his shoes and trying very hard to remember what he was meant to have promised her and ignoring the canvases stacked against the far wall, the lingerie trailing along the floor, the make-up stacked on the vanity, the books on the shelf, the clean-clothes-monster piled on the armchair by the windows where she likes to sit and read when she can remember that there's a chair there.

Has tugged open the drawer in the bedside table and pulls out a couple of condoms (colorful ones: one pale pink, the other a rainbow gradiant) which she palms and carries with her as she walks back to where Sam is sitting on the bed and drops the little packages on the bed within reach as she climbs up on the bed, straddling him again.

Tells him, as she is sinking over him. "You should put your hands on me. Over my dress, or under it if you want."

Then she's kissing him, again and again and again with such care and such breathless focus that it seems like it will go on forever.

Until it stops.

She's breathing harder, flushed a bit, her mouth red from kissing him.

"You okay?"

Samir

The body beneath her is focused on her body. Not the disorder around him or keeping his hands to himself that he might not contact the germs on the duvet or the floor or whatever thoughts kick down the door in his head and come barging in hollering and hovering uninvited and loud. They're called intrusive thoughts for a reason. Without the pot he would have never made it to the party let alone into her bedroom.

Tension electric in his bones as he waits for her but Sam is not anxious. Anticipatory, maybe. Uncertain, sure. The inside of his head is a bigger mess than this room but that doesn't mean his body is an operating theater. She disengages for a moment and in that moment Sam unties his boots. Does not get so far as actually removing them.

He has his hands to himself when Sera comes back with prophylactics and when she tells him he should put his hands on her Sam takes his lower lip between his teeth. Breathes heavy but not loud through his nose and lets his eyes drift over her body and then her mouth captures his. His hands are calloused and blind but he finds her thighs and slips up under the hem of her dress. Finds the small of her back and the pulls her down to him.

Sam is breathless and disembodied but he is not unaroused. When it stops he has to take a moment to catch his breath.

"Yeah," he says. Breathless. His hands find the sides of her face her hair her neck and shoulders. He kisses her again deep but quick and opens his eyes once before finding the corner of her jaw. His voice comes from there. "Yeah, I'm good."

Right. Shoes. He holds on tight to her and kisses her neck and shoulders as he uses one heel then the other to extricate his feet from their bindings. The clunk of the soles as the heavy boots hit the floor.

Serafíne

Somewhere in the midst of all this, her hands find his face, too. Span his cheek, cup his jaw, her neat little tattooed fingers thread their way into his hair. There is something quick and fine and tender in the way she holds onto him, though it both loosens and sharpens as his mouth slides from her mouth, finds her jaw, her neck, her shoulders.

Her head sags back then, and her hands slip from his face to his shoulders. Her breathing is heavier, and sometimes she stops him, makes this little noise or twists a hand into his shoulder, grinds her hips into his. Sometimes she bears down on him, demands that he surrender his mouth to her. Sometimes she laughs, because she's fucking ticklish. Mostly, though, he can explore her neck, her mouth, her shoulders, her body for quite as long as he likes.

"Wait," is how she stops him, next. There's no rhyme to it except she had decided she would like to be slightly more naked than she is right now, and she's smiling, of course, laughing down at him, this edge to her smile that is both indulgent and challenging, and then she's reaching down for the hem of her little red dress, pulling it up, up, up and sort of shimmy her spare frame. More tattooes on her torso - a word in elegant script on her left flank, dark knotwork framing her right breast. A scorpion over her right rights. Stripped down to her garter belt and her polka dotted black cotton boyshorts (no bra, not beneath that dress), she pushes him back down onto the bed, beneath her, starts to get him naked, too.

"Stay here with me, okay? It doesn't matter if you don't know what to do. No one really fucking does."

Samir

Chances are Samir won't ever feel comfortable telling Sera why when they met each other he was twenty-three years old and couldn't say he had had sex without dancing around the subject. Maybe years from now after he's popped the hood and rearranged the wires inside his head. After they've gotten to know each other better. If they get to know each other better.

She is a woman familiar with pain. She knows what it is to walk through life with demons lurked beyond her periphery. Their shape and intention change from person to person but every fucking body has a demon or twelve. Sera has let him keep his in the shadows so far.

It stands to reason she's the first seer the hacker has ever met. He's made jokes about the presence of the Order in every city he's inhabited since his Awakening before. Samir's exposure to the other Traditions is purely text-based.

If she is capable of reading his thoughts she has kept that to herself. Maybe he thinks if she were she would tell him. Maybe the girl with whom he almost lost his virginity was. There are a lot of maybes. When Sera sheds her dress Sam's gaze is rapt. When he loses his jacket and his shirt his chest is bereft of ink. Ink-black hair follows the tracks lain by his ribs and sternum and his trunk and arms are slender but not meatless. He is not emaciated. He just doesn't spend much time at the gym. He lives on the computer.

Even if no one has ever told him this: Samir still owns a mirror. He is not blind. He knows he is a handsome young man even if he hasn't got a fit body or amazing sexual prowess.

His hair is still tied in a knot at the nape of his neck but Sera's ministrations and their collective manhandling has loosed tendrils from their bindings. Lengths of it frame his face. He swipes it back from his brow as he lies beneath her half-bared and electric.

Stay here with me, okay?

A quick flash of pain. Vulnerable isn't a look he wears well and he isn't comfortable with acknowledging it as a facet of his person anyway. He doesn't want to talk about his illness. He knows it's an illness. A virus taken over his synapses. It doesn't matter if he doesn't know what to do.

Half-a-smile follows the pain. Just a flash. He's nervous. His fingers find the waistband of her boyshorts and slip beneath them. Run the inside of their perimeter before kneading her buttocks.

"Okay," he says. Lets out a breath like he's been holding it. "I'm here." Another breath slower and quieter and he wants her out of her underthings. "I'm here."

Serafíne

That spasm of pain has her heart seizing in her chest, if only for a moment, and she cannot help but wear that responsive empathy absolutely openly. She breathes out and she braces herself, hands on either side of his head and bends to kiss him again. Gaze raw and tender as the kiss.

"Here."

She pushes herself upright again, still straddling him though now they are tumbled deeper into the bed.

"I love the way they fucking look, but. Garters are kind of a bitch."

Shows him how to undo them, though. Undoes the left and then reaches back for his hand so that he can undo the right one. Stays there, smiling but also quite still, allowing him to explore her hips and thighs with his hands as much as he likes. Encourages him to touch her between her thighs, if he moves to. Over the boyshorts, or beneath them, either way he is rewarded with a hitch of her breath, maybe even a noiseless wimper and a roll of her hips.

Then she rolls off him, and maybe he follows ("Help me with these - ") and she's laughing and kind of breathless, scooching back into the bed and bending her knees and peeling off first her stockings, then her boyshorts and garter belt.

And then, fuck. She's naked and kind of squirmy and propped up on an elbow beside him. Oh wait! Condoms! So she's naked and kind of squirmy and propped up on an elbow and then naked and clambering over him to grab one from wherever it has tumbled in the sheets and she comes back to him (propped again on an elbow, hair all loose, a warm flush of arousal bright beneath her golden skin) and drops the condom in the middle of his chest before she reaches down and starts to undo his belt.

Her hands are neat and deft.

She knows what she's doing. She's done this before.

Doesn't seem to care that he's a virgin at twenty-three or the whys and wherefores of it.

"It's your first time," she tells him, quiet as she's doing this, and she's very fucking turned on now, but she's banking some of that, holding her desire back to keep her eyes open, and on him. "Do you want to be on top?"

Samir

They are both empathetic creatures. He doesn't have to ask why his flinch elicits an answering coloration in her gaze. He doesn't want to ask her any more than he wants her to ask him. This isn't like ripping off a Band-Aid. Sera lives in the moment and Sam as much as he is held captive by his compulsions has a strand of opportunism in him.

He lives a full and rewarding life on the Internet. He is an initiate of the Mercurial Elite. This may be one of the last experiences he has in his physical body but Samir would like to think that they are more than their collective paradigms.

In general he would like to think. Right now his body is tugging at him and his mind is tugging at him and he just wants to stay here with Sera.

Kissing helps keep him centered. The rhythm of breathing with his lips locked to hers and his body rising to meet hers groaning deep in his throat when the friction between their hips stokes a sharp fire in him.

Garters are kind of a bitch.

He laughs that distracted laugh she's starting to know quite well by now. If she is a patient teacher then he is a quick study. Clips and straps and Sam unwraps her quick but not rushed. Foil square meets hot skin and his eyes find her hands as her fingers work the tongue through its clasp.

In the silence she can hear how hard he's breathing. Cannot quite hear how hard his heart's beating. He wants her. She knows what she's doing.

Sam may be a virgin but he is not ignorant. While Sera works on his jeans he unwraps the condom. Another flinch as she reminds him this is his first time but that flinch may well have something to do with the sensation of losing his clothing. Nude before a girl he likes and his eyes are the eyes of a troubled man. Whatever thoughts are crowding his skull he keeps to himself. He keeps his wits about him.

Their eyes meet in the middle. His chest rises and falls steady and fast and does he want to be on top. A small distracted nod.

"C'mere," he says. He kicks his jeans their belt and boxers onto the floor. Takes one of her hands and brings it to the rubber disc. "Help."

Her experience eclipses his. He kisses her as she sheathes him and gasps against her mouth as her fingers find him. Gasping turns into soft panting and maybe she's close enough she can feel him frown. Stay here. Stay here. He keeps kissing her as he leans into her. Chest to chest back to mattress and he holds himself up on an elbow keeps kissing her while his other hand finds the junction of her legs. He likes the noises she makes when he touches her. Knowing that if he touches her a certain way she'll move her hips a certain way.

He's stoned. He could touch her like this all night. He does not touch her like this all night. Something gives or she pulls him to her and Sam's eyes search Sera's face thorough and quick at once before he lies between her legs. One hand between them until he's flush against her and he tries but cannot keep quiet.

No idea what he's doing and it's hard to see her face when he's on top of her when he wants to bury his face in her neck when he wants to--

After nearly an entire distracted minute Sam says, "I lied." Christ. She feels so good to him. He can't see her face. She can hear some distant distress in his voice but she told him to stay here. He stays here. "Shit... Sera..." He kisses her cheek takes hold of the back of her head kisses her cheek again kisses her brow kisses her mouth. "... I want you on top." Kisses her mouth." Could you...?"