Serafíne
Whiskey River doesn't actually serve much
whiskey and there's not a single fucking river in the whole of the sweet
little bar tucked away on a sidestreet in East Colfax. The
bartender/owner is (naturally) a guy with a pretty impressive beard and
round coke-bottle glasses and a thing for hard ciders. Not commercial
ciders - too sweet, too girly - but old fashioned ciders where
all the sugars have been fermented out so that the alcohol is rather
closer to champagne than apple juice, or Red's Apple Ale (heresy: that
shit will never be served here.)
It's early. Whiskey River
doesn't have a kitchen, doesn't serve food. It's just a bar, not some
fucking gastropub. Oh there's always a foodtruck nearby, at least when
there's a Thing and often when there's not a Thing but in a city of any
size there's almost always some sort of Thing close by. The point
though: there's no kitchen, no dinner rush, a few regulars for happy
hour maybe but it's not the sort of place that middle managers seek out
after their nine to five so at this hour Whiskey River is uncrowded and
uncluttered. A little extra business downstairs sure thanks to the pot
dispensary upstairs and you can sit out on the back deck beneath the
arbor overhung with vines and smoke a discrete bowl and watch some
friends unload gear from a white conversion van.
Inside
there's this girl seated at the bar. Feels like a rock star and she's
wearing sunglasses inside in daylight and has half-her-head shaved so,
hey. Maybe. Elfin ears bristle with metal, as do her heavy black
combat boots. The bartender has laid out one of those long hand-hewn
wooden troughs full of little tasting glasses and one of the guys
setting up the stage takes a break to come to her and wrap his arms
around her shoulders and drop his mouth to the crown of her dyed blond
head. Murmurs something that makes her lift her head up, all sudden and
ghosting smiles.
(What he says, which you can't hear, is: I thought you weren't drinking tonight. What he thinks, which you also can't hear, is: If you're going to drink, I wish you'd eat something.
What she says, laughing, back is: I changed my mind.
Girl's got a right.)
Ian
Sometimes
people ended up in bars by happenstance - because they were nearby and
wanted a drink and hey, look... there's a sign. Ian had never been
inside of Whiskey River before and had no real idea of the kind of
drinks they served there, but his car was waiting for an oil change and
he had time to kill, so he jogged across the street and slipped in
through the front door.
The place was relatively empty, apart
from the bartender and a scattered handful of regulars. It made Sera's
presence at the bar all the more eye-catching, with her bottle-blond
hair and her pierced ears and her sunglasses and that unmistakably
potent resonance. It didn't take long for Ian to find his way over to
her, dropping down onto the seat next to her own. The sleeveless shirt
he had on (it was an old black band shirt with a picture of Iggy Pop on
the front) showed off the warm tan of his arms when he leaned over and
rested his weight on his elbows.
"Any recommendations?" He nodded toward the bottles lined up on the wall and the taps down at the end of the bar.
Serafíne
"Not yet."
Sera,
with the flash of a smile - white teeth in a painted mouth, quick and
sure - and Ian's own reflection doubled back at him in the surface of
her sunglasses. Her posture is a mirror of his - elbows against the
bar, her forearms hovering, her hands fine, deliberate, inked - above
the tasting glasses. There are stem glasses and brandy-like snifters
and beer glasses, all miniaturizednd lined up in front of her. That
posture of hers half resembles a master playing chess, half a monk at
prayer.
"I'm tasting." So she says, so she smiles,
nudging her wooden tray in Ian's direction. "Ciders. You can start on
that side and meet me in the middle if you want. I've got a card here
somewhere to say what the fuck everything is."
Then her eyes drop from Ian's face to his chest. Back again.
"Tell me that t-shirt belonged to your fucking ex-boyfriend and he left it behind when you kicked his ass out."
Ian
"I
don't do boyfriends. If I did, I wouldn't fucking steal their clothes."
He glanced down at the shirt for a moment, contemplative. The fabric
was thin and faded. A couple of holes showed in the hem at his hip. It
fit the over-all look he had going, with his fashionably distressed
jeans and black harness boots. Maybe that was intentional, or maybe it
was just laundry day. "I got this at a thrift store in New York."
He
eyed the drinks on Sera's tray. When the bartender started to approach,
Ian gave a little wave of his hand to indicate that he was fine. If she
wanted to share, he wasn't going to complain. So he picked up the glass
on the end closest to him, swirling the contents slowly. The cider had
an opaque golden glow where the light hit. When he took a drink, he let
the flavors sit for a moment on his tongue.
"Hmm. Less sweet than I thought it would be." Judging by his tone, that wasn't a complaint.
"You look like a vampire," he teased, reaching over to wiggle the edge of Sera's sunglasses.
Serafíne
PERCEPTION PLUS EMPATHY MAGIC POWERZ? (focused on don't do boyfriends because why the hell not.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Ian
It
was a matter-of-fact remark. And from what Sera could tell, an honest
one (at least from Ian's perspective.) Whatever the status of his
particular relationships, he seemed to have a knee-jerk resistance to
the word: boyfriend. (Which, knowing him, probably applied equally to girlfriend. Though he had once admitted to having one of those.) Both the title and the implications.
He
didn't have any particularly strong emotions about it though. At least,
not at that moment. What little was there to read was mostly along the
lines of: yeah, no thanks.
Serafíne
"I love thrift stores," Sera tosses back. "Buffalo Exchange is the fucking best. Though I never exactly pictured you inside one. Don't tell me I've judged you all wrong either, Ian. It'll ruin my fucking day."
The
last with a slicing grin that is both half-a-challenge and suggests,
well, that her day will be anything but ruined no matter what he says.
Sera
doesn't really examine the cider. Doesn't lift it to the light to
examine the tone, the clarity, the texture. She takes one of the
glasses at the far end of the tray, lifts it, drinks. And savors,
yeah. Makes a contemplative noise when Ian says that the drink is less
sweet than he assumed; more complex. The effervescence and the noise
and the base and top notes merging on the palette.
"I'm too
fucking tan to be a vampire," she tosses back, lifting her brows as he
wiggles her glasses, leaning into it, inviting physical contact in a
manner than is heedless, thoughtless, reckless. "And I don't have the
teeth.
"You wanna see my new tattoo?"
Ian
Don't tell me I've judged you all wrong.
Ian laughed at that. "I like what I like. But if it makes you feel better, these jeans cost about three hundred dollars."
Likely
Sera had a whole closet full of shoes that cost more than that, but it
was still a fairly large sum to pay for jeans on a dancer's income. That
much, Sera had never been wrong about. Ian's priorities leaned rather
heavily toward vanity.
Sera thought she was too fucking tan to
be a vampire. It wasn't that long ago that vampires had been in their
thoughts in a very real and visceral way, and yet... here the two of
them were, joking about it like they were nothing more than myths of
folklore and Hollywood horror. How odd their lives were, sometimes. Ian
responded to Sera's claim with a broad grin, showing off the white gleam
of his own teeth. His canines had always been just a tiny bit too
sharp. Perhaps it was him who was secretly harboring vampiric
tendencies.
You wanna see my new tattoo?
"Sure."
He tipped back his head and finished off his cider. When he set the empty
glass down, he leaned closer to Sera, eyeing her with a curious slant to
his gaze.
Serafíne
Sera is - in fact - carrying tonight a
skull-studded clutch made by Alexander McQueen that costs upwards of two
thousand dollars but no matter. Ian likes what he likes. Sera likes
what she likes and on some level maintains this absolute bloody pretense
that she is not utterly loaded. Twines bicycle chains with her strains
of golden south seas pearls, wears tin bubble-gum rings on the hand
opposite that deceptively ancient bronze piece she always seems to wear
on her right index finger.
And on, and on, and on.
--
But hmmm. Here they are. She says something about her tan (and it is summer, and she is - brilliantly, beautifully golden) and teeth and Ian flashes his, without remark and she, lovely thing, is looking at him. Looking
at him, in profile, inhaling over the rim of the next sample she is
about to down a certain tick of recognition evident in her countenance
that surfaces and turns over and subsides in the time it takes her to
swallow the next one down. Golden, dry - winesaps, so says the
cheat-sheet on the bar in front of her.
And they're talking about her new tattoo, and it isn't that new really, just new compared to the others and as she sets down her glass she offers Ian her left forearm. Turns it over.
So
much ink on her arms, hands, wrists, fingers. On the palm of her left
hand her absurd tattoo of a pair of scissors, the blades on either
finger, the handle either turning into or being consumed by a shark
whose body continues down her palm and onto her wrist. Other bits here
and there: compressed letters and words, miniscule images, familiar
enough from the flash of her hands. She has a larger piece on her right
forearm (a crow's skull) and another large piece on her upper left arm
(a grinning, skeletal torso) - but the new tattoo she points out to him
(likely with yet another tattoo-framed finger) tumbles down the inside
of her left forearm, three small letters following sinuous twists of one
of the darker veins branching beneath her skin like objects tumbling
down a waterfall.
Three little letters, all akimbo
y
e
s
--
"I
think you should try having a boyfriend someday," Sera tells him,
then. Why the fuck not? She has opinions about everything, it seems.
Ian
[Life 2, coincidental diff 5 +1 (just had a drink) -1 (practiced)]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Ian
Sera
looked at him, and in the light of the bar his features had a sharp
cast. The slope of his eyes, his nose, his lips; the angles of his
cheeks and jaw... there was primal elegance in his profile. The kind of
beauty that felt at least partly unapproachable - like glossy magazine
prints and skyscraper billboards. Sera was that kind of beautiful too.
The kind that could hurt, sometimes.
But Ian didn't have any tattoos.
Sera turned her arm over, and her skin said: yes.
Ian smiled, just a little, and touched the palm of her hand, guiding a
slow, winding path down her wrist to her forearm, where those three
letters greeted him. He traced over each one with the tip of his finger,
and where he touched the nerves in her skin prickled with warmth and
something like the gentlest electric current. As though in
acknowledgment of the invocation inked into her flesh.
"I'll take that under advisement."
Serafíne
Awareness. 'Cos!
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne
So, Prime 1: Watch the Weaving. Dif 4 -1 (practiced).
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne
She
said the tattoo was new, but it has been long enough that her skin has
healed, the ink sealed deep in the layers of her skin. Nothing raw, or
raised, or scabbed over about it, really. Months old and yet: new.
--
He touches her. She, lovely thing, goes still in a way the feels expectant, active, animal,
coruscant. Head tucked as if she wear listening for a secret.
Somewhere between pointing out the new tattoo and Ian reaching for her
hand and wrist, she has picked up the next of her drinks with her free
hand. Her fingers steepled over the mouth of the glass are still now
too.
She has the oddest little smile on her face, no more
than a twist of her darting mouth, a certain curve lifting her cheek and
she does glance at him, then, when she senses his magic, when she both
feels the warmth, the current, and also inhales the texture of as it
hangs in the air - around him, between him. Breathes it in and
breathes it out,
and looks,
and sees,
mesmeric. Mesmerized, right?
She
exhales, a little bit of force from the diaphragm with the shape of a
laugh that has gone unvoiced. Her dark eyes bank from his hand to his
profile as he assures her that he will take that under advisement. The tone makes her laugh again, and laughter becomes her.
She
says, "Will you?" because she wants to needle him, and, a moment later,
quieter, "Don't stop," because she doesn't want him to stop. Not right now. Not precisely yet.
The magic, she means. Doesn't she?
And, yeah, the rest of it.
Ian
[One more roll for good measure]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
Ian
Will you?
"No."
His smile broadened when he spoke, the answer a little needle of its
own. He was a stubborn creature. But needling words aside, he didn't
seem terribly interested in resistance just then.
Don't stop.
Ian's
lips parted. His breath exhaled full and slow. Sera's skin was warm and
alive beneath his touch, her body language inviting him in as much as
her words. That slow, tracing contact from his index finger spread into a
series of points as his hand settled onto her arm and slid up the
length of it - to her shoulder and then her neck. Wherever his fingers
touched, her skin came alive underneath them. When he reached her
throat, he slid the pad of his thumb over an artery, feeling the faint
beat of her pulse. With his other hand, he reached over and pulled her
sunglasses from her face, setting them down on the bar. When he could
see her eyes, he looked at her, tilting his head slightly as though in
curiosity. His gaze flickered from her irises to her lips.
When
he kissed her, it was open-mouthed. Slow and almost infuriatingly
gentle, but when his tongue touched hers, it sent a spark of sensation
radiating down through her body.
Serafíne
This
is what denial does both to her and for her, you see. Wears her, or
perhaps she wears it, until her want is as close to the surface as her
pleasures ordinarily would be. This is what she seeks, cultivates,
hones in these days and nights when she denies herself. No hairshirt
purification this vaguely ritualistic fasting of hers, (when she is
starving, when she is wanting, when she is hungry, when she is sober The
Next Step seems so achingly close that she can hardly begin to
understand how or why she doesn't end each fraught, hungry night making
out with her goddamned avatar), but something else entirely. Quite as
deliberate, and also - somehow - (entirely) wanton.
She is just so - hungry.
-
Another
breath, the edge of laughter on its cusp but still withheld as his hand
continues up her forearm, and over her spare biceps to her shoulder, to
her temple. The glasses she allows, and he finds her on the otherside,
the smear of eyeshadow and mascara, her pupils a bit dilated from both
the darkness and perhaps some small bit of something she has ingested
contricting like a predator's as he pries away the glasses. But she's
no predator, not really, she's something else entirely and she is
curving her neck in his directly, lifting her chin, inviting his gaze,
his touch, his mouth with this lambent stillness that haloes her.
And
maybe he starts that kiss slow and infuriatingly gentle - seeking her,
provoking her - but fuck it. There is this moment between where she is
hanging there, tenterhooked, that sensation sparking warm against her
tongue and spreading.
And then she makes this noise.
God that noise.
And she's on her feet and she's kissing him back kissing him back and she wants wants wants
and nevermind that it is 5 p.m. or maybe 6 and Ian is maybe getting his
oil changed and running and errand and her bandmates are setting up the
stage for a quick little runthrough of a gig where they're gonna work
(really work) on those songs they're gonna put on the EP and she's
(mostly) fasting because It Is Time for Things to Happen and this is Ian
and she wants to tell him to go get a boyfriend already, try a relationship,
it's not that hard, because she likes to tweak him and she knows he can
take it and anyway she has Opinions and none of that matters.
She's reaching for him.
Her
hands are in his hair and she's stepping into him and he's kissing her
and she's kissing him back harder, breathing the air from his lungs and
if there were a wall behind him she'd probably have him pressed against
it in two seconds flat, that's the kind of kiss this is.
Serafíne
Time
3 / Mind 2 / Life 2 (Coincidental. Dif: 6. -1 focus. -1 resonance.)
I think she'll need at least 4 successes for minimal effect.
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Extending. :D Dif +1
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Ian
There
were things about Ian that Sera didn't know. Facets of his life and his
emotions that only made a complete picture when viewed as a whole. She
didn't know that he'd once had something like a boyfriend. But he wasn't
thinking about that right now, because Sera was kissing him like she
was ravenous and there wasn't room for anything else in his
head or his body apart from that overwhelming sensation. It caught him a
little off-guard at first, and when she stood up - when she pushed into
him - he answered her sound with a quiet one of his own. This low note
in his throat - pleased and surprised and slightly tinged with his own
hunger.
It was a feeling he knew well. The drive of it. The
aggression. The way it coiled up from his stomach into his his teeth and
his fingers. The pool of it low in his hips. They were in public. It
was barely dinner time and the bar was only sparsely populated, which
made their little demonstration all the more obvious to anyone watching.
Perhaps the bartender shot them a surprised look and wondered if maybe
he ought to say something (suggest they find somewhere else to do
whatever it was they were in the midst of doing.) Perhaps one of the
customers watched them and secretly hoped that maybe they would stay
right where they were. If so, Ian didn't notice, because Sera had his
attention captured completely.
They were both standing now,
and Ian slid his fingers into Sera's hair, grasping at it on the longer
side while his other hand scratched through the soft buzz of the shorn
half. Sera kissed him hard enough that their teeth clicked together, and
Ian's lips spread in response - almost a baring of fangs (if he had
them.) He bit down on her lip hard enough to leave it reddened.
And
then time just... stretched. Like an infinite pool of hunger and breath
and touch and that kiss, when he melted into her again, seemed to go on
forever. Dimly he realized that might be Sera's doing (the same way
those warm little sparks of sensation where his) but if so he wasn't
about to complain.
Except that, really, pulling off someone's
clothes in an open bar was a bit too exhibitionist even for him. Sera
wanted to push him somewhere, but there was only empty air behind them.
And now the bartender was looking at them. And probably so was everybody else.
"Mm, we should go somewhere," Ian murmured against her lips.
Serafíne
Mmm, we should go somewhere.
He has to break
the kiss in order to murmur that, even if it is murmured against her
lips. And, really, she has to breathe sometime, doesn't she? And she:
loves to breathe, relishes this too, this coming up for air, the crest
of the wave of want and fulfillment when she is breathless enough that
her chest is still aching and the first molecules of oxygen are hitting
her lungs.
His first answer is laughter. She has pulled away
now enough to breathe and her brow rests against apex of his cheek, the
bridge of her nose against his jawline, her mouth below, seeking his
neck, but gentler now. The first wave of push him against the
wall is past and she is dimly aware that she succeeded only in
upending a few barstools or something. And that informs the laughter.
Shapes it in her body and in her breath.
Her hands have found
his body, of course - and her arms are loose around his waist now.
Maybe others are watching. Maybe Dan, setting up for the little happy
hour set they were going to play to work through some early ideas for
the EP Sera has promised she will buckle down to produce: soon, soon,
soon.
"Maybe there's a back room," she mutters back, mouth
open, seeking him with her teeth now. Because see, " - we're supposed
to play soon. Or you could stay and watch. Take me home, after."
Serafíne
Hard to tell when she becomes aware of the change-in-him. Hard to establish, precisely, when it clicks home to her that he has withdrawn from the strange click-home concordance that was - seemed to be - lock-and-key because wherever she is, there is no room for idle thought. She's still there, her brow against his cheek, her mouth beneath his jaw, this sense of wholly-animal-seeking about her now more refined, tempered. Almost delicate: an opening not a consumption.
But then he's laughing - to be honest - and she doesn't know what that actually means but he's pulling away and reaching to unhook her hands and she sure as hell knows what that means. He doesn't really get to do that: unhook her hands from around his waist, because when he starts to do that, like he's untying a strange little knot she figures it out and drops the contact and pulls away, pretty much all-at-once. Breathless on an inhale, this sharp kind of withdrawal that has her dark eyes stitching with this neat, darting, quite shallow precision over his face.
Her brows are drawn together, and her hands - and her body - are shaking, just a little bit. Doesn't say anything, and after that brief, shallow glance - she just turns around and walks away.
Ian
She didn't ask if he was alright. It was debatable whether he would have really answered if she had.
Serafíne
She doesn't ask him if he's okay. He doesn't ask her, either. And he's always closed off and right now - right now she's trying very hard to be closed off too and she has not quite the shittiest-walls ever but it's close but if you never think to try to looksee what's on the other side, well. Right now she can't look at him, not really. She has learned to give herself permission to just feel her shit sometimes and not everyone else's, and she's not going to turn around, no sir, except -
It's the apology, the I'm sorry he offers to her back that has her spinning around amidst the disordered jumble of barstools they've upended and shoved about all around them and she spins like whoa.
"Fuck you Ian. I don't accept your generic bullshit apology. What the fuck."
--
Maybe he still leaves. Maybe he doesn't. She's a seer but that doesn't mean she knows which path he's going to take.
Ian
