Ian
Ian was in the park tonight. It was spring, and
the air was warm, and the smell of the grass and the lake and the trees
made for a more appealing backdrop than the ever-familiar mirrored walls
of the practice rooms at the dance hall. Certainly it was more
appealing than the gym (though it certainly had its sights,) and the
sharp, stale odor of old sweat that was always imprinted into those
spaces.
It was late enough that the park was fairly empty. Most of
the people occupying its spacious landscape were evening runners or
couples out for a stroll after dinner. At present, Ian was occupying
space on the open lawn in front of one of the lakes, moving across the
grass barefoot and shirtless as he practiced movements that looked like
they might have either been a dance or some kind of choreographed
martial art. Behind him, the last warm rays of the setting sun reflected
off of the water and lit a golden halo around his silhouette.
He
was focused here, like this. Different that Serafine had seen him last.
More withdrawn. Not thinking about how he looked but on what he was
doing. There was an honesty to the body that was not there in speech.
The way it moved and responded. The way his lungs drew breath. The way
his heart beat. The way the grass felt beneath his toes.
[How graceful is he being tonight? Dex+Performance]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Ian
[pfff, look at that roll. Apparently he's still on casual mode.]
Serafíne
Perception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 5 )
Serafíne
He
must be lost in that dance. By the time Ian becomes aware of her
presence, Sera behind him, seated on the spine of a park bench, her feet
bare (except for her ever-present fishnets) on the splintering wood.
Her combat boots are on the seat of the bench beside her feet, a small
canvas backpack covered in printed sugar skulls sits rather neatly on
the toes of the boots.
Sera is dressed in a short and rather
sweet pink dress, with a small patterned print of tiny white daises and
tiny yellow bumble dotting the cotton, though at some point she has
become either overwarm or immodest, as she has stripped out of the
bodice of the dress, and down to her bra. Which is naturally black lace
layered over hot pink accents, with a smattering tiny pink bows. Her
hair is loose and curling and blonde, and frames her face in a
half-tangled waterfall across the left side of her face. The right, of
course, is shaved and dark enough to demonstrate quite clearly that the
blonde comes from regular applications of bleach or peroxide.
Sunglasses cover her eyes.
She's
smoking a cigarette, which smells of spice as much as tobacco, and she
does so with this negligant confidence that feels natural, physical,
entire.
"The fuck is that, anyway." She asks - it is a question,
though her voice does not rise at the end of the phrase - when his body
language changes enough that she can guess that he knows she's there,
and watching either him or the sunset or the sky and the way the sky
changes, the city outlined against it as the day's warmth leaches
away. Exhale, all this smoke. "Jujitsu or some shit?"
Ian
[Let's see how alert he is tonight. -2 diff for acute senses.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Ian
[And now, dancing. Trick move for the win? we'll go with diff 8]
Dice: 8 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )
Ian
He
did, in fact, notice that Sera was there. Less in the forefront of his
awareness and more as a peripheral side-note. He heard her approach.
Smelled the spice-infused smoke of her cigarette. But he didn't stop
what he was doing to look at her. Not even when she asked him what the
hell he was doing.
The figure he cut was one of sleek elegance,
framed as he was by the light bathing over his skin. But the movements
weren't practiced. More of an experiment than a performance. He was
trying things. Warming up and testing the way certain motions flowed
through his limbs. It wasn't until after Sera mentioned Jujitsu that he
pushed himself into a jumping spin that was much more ballet than fight
choreography.
He pulled it off, but the ground was uneven and he
landed bad on one ankle when he touched down. The line of his mouth
tightened with irritation (less at her than at his own mistake) and he
stopped to stretch his foot and roll the ball of the ankle to make sure
that it wasn't injured.
He didn't actually answer her question.
"You know, I'm a bit surprised the police haven't issued you a citation by now. Not that I'm complaining."
He
strolled closer to the bench where Sera sat with her boots and her
backpack, regarding her with an expression of casual interest. Judging
by the way he was dressed (in nothing but a pair of soft track pants,)
the dancing hadn't been a spur of the moment impulse.
"It'll be a dance. At some point. Right now I'm just fucking around."
Serafíne
"A
citation for what?" Sera is asking as she inhales another lungful of
smoke, holding her cigarette with a sort of thoughtless elegant. She's
leaning forward, dark glasses perched on her aquiline nose, elbows
braced on her knees, which are knocked together. Her fishnets are
patterned: intersecting diamonds that have not yet been torn -
deliberately or otherwise - held up by black lace garters that dip down
from beneath her short skirt.
"Fucking amazingly good taste in pretty much everything that matters?"
There
is something about that posture that feels like a cake, collapsing in
the rain. Something boneless in the way she holds herself. There is
none of his feline sleekness to her, but rather something else: a kind
of surrender to the world and all it brings her.
She is, at
least, aware of him behind those glasses though. A moment later she's
lifting her chin, dropping the cigarette off to the side to flick away
the ashes as she asks, rather more quietly - "You okay? That looked
like it hurt."
Ian
Ian probably wouldn't have
agreed that Sera had amazing taste in everything that mattered. But
then, they were different people with different tastes and different
ways of measuring importance. Sera was there in her half of a dress and
her lace bra and her sunglasses, smoking a cigarette and holding herself
like her very being existed in a perpetual state of blissful surrender.
And
there was Ian, who typically dressed as though he'd just stepped off
the page of some glossy photo shoot, and who had never once exhibited
anything remotely akin to an urge to surrender. Not to the world, not to
another person... not to anything. He was a creature of control. Even
in the moments when his flaws showed, there was still this sense of
calculation. That he was analyzing himself - running the moment over in
his head and his muscle memory so that the next time he might reach a
little closer to perfection.
They were different creatures. Both
of them beautiful. Both of them elegant in their way. Ian looked a
little less polished like this, but also more feline in the way his skin
and muscles moved. The way his feet balanced on the ground.
"I'm fine. It happens a lot."
That's
the thing people tended to forget about dancing: how much pain went
into the final product. Sprained muscles and bloody feet and aching
tendons. You had to be a certain type of person to embrace that as a
part of your daily life.
He was sweating right now. And the sweat did not smell like cinnamon and rose petals, but it didn't smell bad either.
"Feel like dancing with me?"
Serafíne
"I
can't do that shit." The creature returns, mutters around the dark blue
paper of the filter, really, before she takes her last drag and cranes
herself back and down to stub out the cigarette on the stone frame
supporting the wooden slats, before she flicks the filter into a nearby
trashcan. This breath she holds closer and deep than any of the
previous breaths, holds it until her lungs ache, if she she were getting
stoned, then exhales it all in a cloud of something-like-laughter.
Glances
down at her right shoulder as if she were surprised to find it there,
or surprised by the shadow her body casts against the grass, or
surprised by the grass, the fact of it, the way the concrete supports
are set into the ground, the strange odor of teh night around them,
which is green and quiet and dry and sunsweet and nightdark all at
once.
"That twirly jumping shit. But sure - " and she looks up
then, Sera. Right at him, though all Ian sees of her eyes is his own
reflection in the glasses. "I'll dance with you."
Ian
They
had no music to dance to, but perhaps that didn't matter. It was almost
night, and no one was around to watch them, and the sun made the lake
glow burnished copper for a few more glittering moments before the light
finally dimmed. It was a wonder that Sera could see at all past the
dark lenses of her glasses, but in an open space like this one could
navigate with other senses. For instance: there was a touch when Ian
reached out and took her hand. A pull as he drew her to her feet and
into his gravity.
"I suppose I can deal with that. Just try not to step on my feet."
The sound of his smile carried into his voice.
They
had no music. But they hand the wind, and the lapping of the water, and
the distant ambiance of the city. They had their heart beats, like a
pair of living metronomes. Less controlled, but more vibrant. Ian led
them onto the grass and raised their conjoined hands, giving Sera a slow
spin like they were in a ballroom instead of a park. Then he dropped
his hand to her waist and pulled her into his side.
Like a point
of balance for her to move into and away from, Ian broke the contact and
stepped away. Not far, but enough that Sera could move as she chose.
Enough that he could dance around her without tangling their limbs.
[Ok dice, let's do this. Give me what you got.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 6 ) [WP]
Serafíne
(oh, does she step on his feet? -2 dice. Difficulty 8!)
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 4, 7) ( fail )
Serafíne
Nothing
is quite that smooth on Sera's end. She's on the back of the park
bench, and half stands, half-stumbles off her perch as Ian offers her
his hand. Her own is warmer than one would think, this brace of
bracelets framing her spare wrist, a leather cuff wrapped with spikes
that seem sharp enough to cut skin, and heavy enough to do real damage
in the hands of someone with ill intent. A bicycle chain wrapped
severally around her forearm. A scattering of multicolored bangles, all
pasted mirrors and woven beads. A slim bronze ring on her forefinger,
and a silver bar bridges her middle and ring fingers like brass
knuckles, and she's inhaling, laughing a bit at the delicious absurdity
of dancing on the grass in the park without music, without an audience,
without reason.
God, she's drunk. He can tell that as
soon as he hands her down from the bench, and she stumbles, not quite to
one knee but stumbles into him, half-righting herself before he guides her into that spin.
If
he smells of clean sweat (not cinnamon and rose petals), up close Sera
smells like her cigarette, all sweet smoke, and something else that
makes her rather deliciously liquid as she finds her feet somehow
beneath her and somehow on grass and the world somehow spinning as Ian
takes her hands and spins her around and then brings her in close to his
side.
There's an art to partnered dancing and if Sera ever knew
it - well. Blame the alcohol. Despite his admonition that she not step
on his feet - she steps on his goddamned feet. Ian's lucky
she's barefoot, and slight, because as soon as she realizes she's
stepped on his feet she sort of wants to do it again! Because she's
spinning and his feet are moving and her breath is catching in her
throat and the world is all rapid, lurching movement and she just wants
to keep spinning and spinning like a -
No wait. Her feet are
planted and she has lost her (thankfully temporary) fixation with
stepping on his as if they were not dancing but were playing some absurd
version of whack-a-mole and she has stopped spinning she has stopped
spinning she has stopped spinning - that seems quite nearly objectively
true to her so she keeps telling herself that truth - as she stands in
the center of the circle he creates and turns to follow the flashes of
his movement as he starts to -
- Jesus what the fuck was that?
Oh,
Sera is smiling. This lovely, drunken,
I-don't-know-which-way-the-world-is-moving smile, and she's not really
dancing because she only really dances where there's music to insinuate
itself beneath her skin but she is moving, turning to follow his arc of
movement around her, stumbling a bit, getting more and more dizzy as she
goes.
"You're fucking incredible." She tells him. "I think I'm gonna puke."
Ian
There
was this moment... between the fluid playfulness of that little spin
and the point when Sera had to stop dancing because she thought she
might puke. This tipping point when Ian just... fell into his skin. Like
it was that easy. Like maybe all he really needed was to stop
over-thinking and just have fun.
(To just... surrender.)
There were only two things in the world that brought that out in him.
So
when Sera stepped on his foot, he just gave her this challenging grin,
like he knew she was playing a game and he wasn't about to let it knock
him off-balance. Even messy like this, laughing and spinning and falling
into him, she had this wild, drunken beauty. Such a stark contrast to
the way he danced around her. The way his motions flowed with bone-deep
instinct and natural grace. She stepped on his feet, and he used it,
leaning into her and jumping away like it was planned. This was more the
way he danced when he was at a club. Freestyle and hip-hop and just...
enjoying the moment. But you could see the years of training in the way
he held his core muscles. In the way every single bone and muscle in his
body moved with purpose. Loose and flowing, but still so very
elegant. When he swiveled his torso, the motion rippled side to side all
the way up through his neck like a snake.
As Sera spun, he moved
in counterpoint, like his attempts to avoid her spinning arms was all
part of the dance. Bobbing and flowing and just...
Everyone had their own ways of being free. Maybe this was his.
But
it was over all too soon, because Sera was drunk and spinning and of
course that would turn out to be a problematic combination.
You're fucking incredible,
she told him, and he caught his breath and smiled. Not self-conscious
(one would be hard-pressed to imagine that he was capable of it,) but
not cocky either. Pleased, maybe.
"There's a trash can over there
if you need it," he offered, reaching out to steady her with his hand.
"Maybe next time less spinning, more dancing."
Serafíne
Stamina?
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2) ( fail )
Serafíne
Sera
has stopped moving by then. Right? She has stopped moving. Ian's
steadying her and that is not difficult when she's flat-footed -
bare-footed - on the soft grass. Up close she is slight enough that one
could almost imagine her to be fragile. These sharp, spare bones, the
straight line of her clavicles, the spare elegants of her scapulae like
wings framing her spine. The odd hollows in her shoulder joints as she
pulls her arms in close, not quite ready or perhaps not quite capable of
making it to the trash can.
The back of her hand against her mouth as she fights down her gorge. As she struggles
to fight down her gorge while simultaneously shaking him off or waving
him off or something. No, she is waving him off. Here is his chance to
make his escape.
There's a moment where you just believe
that she's going to manage it. She seems so very determined, holding
herself stiffly all through the shoulders, the muscles framing her spine
taut, her arms a bit crossed, elbows bracing her flanks as her
diaphragm starts to hitch.
Then she's on her knees, then she's on
her hands-and-knees, no longer thinking anymore, nothing close to
elegant, no thought of the trash can over there entering her mind, very
little of her personal dignity left. Sera inhales sharp; and vomits.
Inhales all sharp again; and pukes. Her body heaving with this absolute
rejection of the remaining contents of her stomach.
Which are
entirely liquid. Which may be the damned problem in the first place.
Shaking, just shaking, as her body purges itself over and over again.
Ian
This
is how these things went, sometimes. Sera was drunk. For a moment
everything was glittering and beautiful, and then, just as suddenly - it
wasn't.
Ian pulled away when Sera doubled over and sank to the
ground. His brand of solidarity was not the sort that involved offering
to pull back someone's hair while they puked. And he retreated far
enough that the wind at his back would offer a slight buffer from the
acrid and unmistakable scent that suddenly filled the air.
But he
didn't leave. (Maybe that said something.) He didn't outright abandon
her there after luring her into over-exerting herself while she was
drunk. Instead he just turned his nose in the other direction and
waited, and Sera would be spared the sight of his patient but quietly
disgusted expression.
"Need me to get you some water?"
Pan
From out of nowhere:
"There you are."
He
doesn't teleport although as certain unreliable witnesses can attest to
he is capable of doing so. Has done so. Would do so again in a
heartbeat if he thought the situation warranted it. But the two are
somewhat distracted by the propulsion of alcohol and not-much-else out
of the Cultist's stomach and into the grass.
Ian can tell just by a
glance at him as he strides in out of the distance that the man is a
priest. It's the dark clothes and the steel in his spine and the sense
of detached peace about him. Can feel his resonance even without looking
for it. Like holy light so bright it could burn if it doesn't just wash
away the sin. His hands are in his pockets right up until he reaches
the scene.
To Ian he says, "I'll take care of her."
It almost sounds like permission to leave but for the edge that suggests he sees the disgust on Ian's face.
Ian
[Per+Awarepathy - by 'take care of her' you mean what, exactly?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Pan
[perc + subt: I DUNNO I JUST MET YOU]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Pan
[He means hold her hair back while she pukes and then put her in bed and make sure her acid trip isn't awful duh]
Serafíne
Ian
offers her water and it is only when he voices the offer that she
registers his presence - that he has remained even while he holds
himself, well, perhaps wisely apart and wisely downwind and wisely out
of her immediate reach, right. Whatever she had tonight, she had enough
to make her body reject it all and in the aftermath - stomach emptied -
she is still drunk and now reeling and somehow lightened, purged.
Sera
pushes herself a bit more upright, rocks back on her heels, and she
cannot flush that away so she's flailing a bit blindly for a hand,
hoping for someone to help her stand up or at least scoot away from the
mess she's made. "And she's shaking now - from the purging -
"'s'a flask in my backpack," Sera is telling one or both of them, murmuring, and they would both be wise to ignore her because Jesus, Sera.
Shaking like the last leaf in autumn, but she still wants another goddamned drink.
Ian
Pan
wasn't exactly the kind of person you didn't notice. And judging from
the way Ian looked at him, silent and cold and significantly more sober
than Sera was, the fact that Pan both looked and felt like a priest did
not in any way exempt him from suspicion. It wasn't antagonistic so much
as wary. They'd never met before, and Sera wasn't exactly in the best
state to be making judgment calls.
But then, Pan probably felt the
same way about him. And at least, from what little Ian could tell, the
priest didn't seem to be hiding anything.
"You know him?" he
directed the question to Sera, ignoring her request. And if she
confirmed that Pan was indeed a friend (or at least someone she
trusted,) then he'd leave it there. Grab his bag and his water from the
place where he'd left them underneath a tree and walk back to his car.
And probably Sera would be better off for it.
Pan
So
far as confirmation goes all Ian gets from the priest is the drawing of
his hands from his pockets and the grasping of the backpack lain
nearby. He doesn't take the flask from the pouch where he knows it to
live but he does sling it over his shoulder with an ease born of
familiarity. Like a father shouldering his daughter's backpack upon
picking her up from the nurse's office at school.
It's up to Sera
to verbalize some affirmative or another. Maybe she can't do anything
other than wretch for a time. But Ian leaves and Pan stays. Even if she
vomits for the rest of the hour the priest doesn't look as if he has
anyplace else he wishes to be.
They'll learn each others' names
and traditions later. So soon as he walks away he is gone from the
priest's thoughts though. Sera is not of his flock but he tends to her
anyway.
