William
He's got a few more days in Denver before he ahs to catch another flight out of here back to Louisiana to deal with his family for, what William presumes, is going to be another awkward Thanksgiving where his relatives are nice, ask how things are, generally avoid talking about the big awkward thing in the room where they're fairly certain he shouldn't be living on his own (espeically since Jenn's gone- up and moved to Los Angeles, is actually having a pretty damned fantastic time, and avoiding the fucking blizzard that Denver is currently experiencing) .
Exhale.
He got to Sera's place through a buzz route, a train, and very careful navigation that didn't involve having to use a motorcycle. He was going to have to get a car now. Wasn't going to have to worry about covering the rent because he was the one who paid for the apartment anyway- had Jenn's back when things were a bit much for her but we digress again because it is a time for digression.
He stands on the porch, knocks because he always knocks, but actually waits to be let in this time. Takes in his surroundings and how much he can't stand the fact that it's cold and he can feel it in his lungs and how he keeps checking to be sure the sun hasn't burned out.
It hasn't, by the way.
Serafíne
The blizzard warnings were bloody well overstated thank you very much NWS with your aggressive forecasting. No need to run out day-before-yesterday on a desperate quest for milk and bread and cigarettes and beer and Tito's Handmade Vodka and cheap red wine and cloves and local honey and cloves and cinnamon and firewood and carrots just in case there was enough snow to build snowpersons each of whom would require: noses but what the hell. There's enough snow that the residents of 719 Corona Street can pretend that they are snowbound and throw a party. Or kind of a party.
Out front there are these maybe foot-and-a-half high snowpersons with raisin eyeballs and these pouty-red twizzler mouths and hot-pink shot glasses and a semi-frozen can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Have to walk past them to get to the porch.
There's alcohol enough for whoever shows up. Wine mulling with spices on the stove. A red velvet cake cooling on the rack waiting to be iced and a bit pot of chili and this lovely jalapeno-cheese cornbread to be crumbled into some waiting bowl and inhaled along with the spices. For whomever shows up.
--
Elijah shows up.
Knocks, as he does. Takes a little while because the residents here never expect their visitors to knock but bare feet on warm wooden floorboards and then Dee opens the front door.
"Elijah! God I hope you aren't frozen to death, though honestly I'm a little disappointed in our mediocre blizzard. We haven't had a proper one since I moved back, and here we locked in supplies for days. Your timing's great, though. Sera got in this morning? Probably the last flight that landed at DIA before they shut it down. I'm making a red velvet cake as a welcome home." Stepping back to let him in, closing the door after. Shivering that inside shiver: like fuck, she forgot it was winter outside. Keeps chattering as she walks back through: the foyer and down the long hallway, past the empty front parlor, toward the kitchen and living room that are, in winter anyway, the heart of the house. Is he hungry? Does he want a drink? Does he like hot wine? Warms you up but good. Rick made the chili and Dee the cornbread, there's this grist mill in Golden that does the cornmeal, stone ground, artisinal, can't be beat.
William
"What is wrong with the mountains?! Dee, why is there snow? Louisiana doesn't have snow."
Said like someone who is not from here, and he is very much not from here. He would never get used to snow, just like he would never get used to the fact that Denver is a place that doesn't have any air and he's still making peace with the fact that his lungs are going to have to readjust to the fact that this place has nothing remotely resembling air since they're a mile above sea level.
He already misses home and he hasn't made it back yet. He already wants to be back in Denver, though, even though the time to realize homesickness isn't a real thing has passed him.
But he comes in, hugs Dee if she'll let him like he's a lost toddler trying to make sense of a world that makes abso-fucking-lutely no sense to him. Laughs after a point when he steps in and he's cold but he's not cold, because very rarely has Elijah's demeanor been anything other than warm. He goes through the checklist- he would like chili, mulled wine sounds fantastic, you can't go wrong with cornbread, and he might have water and a nap after that but he'll probably take the nap somewhere else. He just wanted to come by and see human beings whose company he enjoys.
Which, in case she has not guessed, includes Dee.
Serafíne
The first non-awakened person to see her was a bus-boy in the only remaining Howard Johnson's Restaurant on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and he had been avoiding (for some reason) clearing off booth 13 where she was ensconsed, reading Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay, mouth moving with the words, picking at some stranger's leftover fried clams and slipping them underneath the table to Sid, crowded all gawky around the table legs, mostly out of the way, and truth: he didn't notice her, not right away. He saw the dog's tail sweeping out from beneath the booth and thought: maybe the shit is cousin got her two weeks ago really was LSD with some really delayed action; and then thought: fuck, a snake!; and then thought: what's a dog - ; and then realized the dog was actually there and was attached to a girl he couldn't take his eyes off, once he noticed her. Sunglasses and a weird, skinny book and a leather jacket and something about her that made his breath stop and his chest hum with something he couldn't really name. Not love or lust or anything, but something else entirely, something that made him want to: be, rise, change, wake.
Wake.
Wake.
--
"Shit I'm sorry. Let me clean that off for you."
He meant the table. She started crying. And he wanted to, but somehow he couldn't begin to ask her why.
That was less than twelve hours ago.
--
Elijah laments the presence of snow to a girl who was lamenting not 2.3 seconds ago the lack-of-it, so: perspective, you know. That's all that matters. She pats his poor tender head and suggests that he get a nice tobaggan. That's what she says: tobaggan. Dee has a friend who hand-knits them with slightly - well - racy takes on the traditional Fair Isle patterns and sells them on Etsy and maybe Elijah would like to buy one before the real snow comes? If it ever does?
He is loaded up with whatever he wants: mulled wine, chili, cornbread, a hot toddy, probably a goddamned napkin or three and hey! living room. There's a fire starting to crackle in the hearth and Sera and Dan on the couch and a dog kinda crowded-underneath the coffee table, part of her muzzle and part of her tail sticking out because PEOPLE ARE HERE AND SHE LIKES PEOPLE. Sera is curled up with Dan: hasn't left his side since she got home. He has arm flung around her body and her temple is resting on his shoulder and his head tilted towards hers, mouth close to her brow. She's too drunk to decide whether his beard is scratchy or ticklish but either way it makes her fucking happy. So happy she is still sometimes starts crying for no goddamned reason.
Dan lifts his free arm and gives Elijah a wave. Shifts and murmurs something into Our Sera's ear, enough to have her following suit. Waving: hi, hello, salut, what the fuck ever.
William
"Wait, what is a tobaggan?"
And thus there was the explanation, which made him laugh, and he was soon enough inside. Ditched the coat and the scarf and the gloves but doesn't take his vest off or anything else because Elijah was fucking prepared for the day that things were going to be cold and, truth be told, he was always dressed in too damn much clothing anyway because he liked the aesthetic. Could deal with being a little warm and now he could survive it.
So he sits down in the floor, where he can see Sera and Dan and seems... intent. Intent on looking at people and taking them in, perhaps odd because he'd want to be there in the middle. He'd wanted to pile in and be in her space and have moments of just talking and listening and conveying the world of things that he wanted to say but couldn't because-
Well, because. There were people, and she'd spent so long without them. Couldn't dare interrupt it to take that time for himself because, like Dee said, she just got home. He's eating, sneaks Sid a piece of cornbread.
"So, house is full again," he says, smiles, just takes it all in for what it is.
Serafíne
There are times when she looks harrowed. Walks herself to some invisible edge and just stays there for so goddamned long you'd think she would have no choice but to fall, and she has that look about her now, Sera. That bones-through-skin translucency. The too-sharp profile, the spare, fine-spun sense that she was created, not born, and from all the things that are disappearing from this world.
And yet: also a sort of fullness to her, that sense of repletion that opens beneath the breastbone at the first sight of a too-full moon. She's glossy and way-too-drunk and watches Elijah as he crosses the room juggling chili and cornbread and wine or whatever and sits where he sits and as he feeds Sid ('sneaks' hah) some cornbread and Sid is okay with cornbread but she would like chili much fucking better, thank you, and Elijah remarks that the house is full again and Dan's eyes stitch to him briefly then. Wry grin that touches his mouth but looks - well - weary when it gets to his eyes. "Yeah," is what he says in response, and it sounds so: solid that there's as much meaning in that one word as there is a whole damn tree, root to branch and back again.
He says something to Sera right into her ear, and whatever it is is enough to rouse her, to have her perking up like an adorable goddamned meerkat who could tear your body apart from the inside out, so incrementally you'd swear the world had started spinning backwards and then she's up, untangling from the throw she'd wrapped around her long, long legs, shaking it off one leg that is especially tangled, laughing as she stitch-hops and then, fuck it, sort of untwirling from it. She is wearing: a man's button-down shirt and black lace panties and her hair is still damp from the shower but only in the middle of the mass and Dan's trying to figure out what she's going for before she staggers into the fire but she's magick, she's not staggering into the fire.
So; lots of complications.
But she finds what she's looking for: a superbly battered fuzzy panda-bear backpack and pulls out something: a book!
Which she hands to Elijah as she bends weavingly down and kisses him on the temple.
Murmuring, "Proud of you, kid. Congrats."
William
He had once talked about wanting to know Serafine as a human being, wanted to know things like what her fond memories were and where she was from- never asked what her birth name was though it comes to him. Knows that perhaps he shouldn't ask that, especially now that names have such a significance. She is how she is, she is as she is. Not her complete definition but that bit of truth isn't his to actually touch. Wouldn't dream of knowing someone so intimately, but he certainly does have the fantasy of getting to know her. Past what she presents and, instead, the places that take her further from whatever box people use to define her.
He's earned his keep in this city, whatever weird and miraculous things he's witnessed have come in dreams or had the misfortune of crossing his doorstep. What he's capable of is often a question of debate, the general consensus being that he's still young, still inexperienced, still very much that deer on spindly legs and yet-
He just came back from an experience that said the opposite. Where his betters assessed and didn't find him wanting, where he was regarded as someone that people could see as a peer. Came back to Denver and things have changed, drastically so but not in a bad way. This is more of the same, but a welcome stability and who would have ever accused Serafine of being a source of stability in his life?
She swings by, has a book in hand which he then is holding, kisses him on the temple and he half whispers- words only for her- "It's William now," he tells her, "but you can call me whatever you want. Won't be salty."
Pulls back and looks back at her, smiles and looks at the book in his hands, "scout's honor."
Serafíne
The book in his hands is a small, slim book by a man named Ross Gay. It is the book she was reading this morning - slouched, slung low really, one the bench seat of Booth 13 of the last remaining Howard Johnson's restaurant on the Pennsylvania turnpike when: someone noticed.
--
The cover is a bright riot of color, like Claude Monet had sex with de Kooning and Frieda Kahla and made it: see? This. The name is: Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude.
--
"William. I'll call you whatever the fuck you want me to call you."
then she is: standing up. Something about the way she does it suggests that remaining upright is a goddamned pleasure and a near-insurmountable challenge but she's taking it on with goddamned gusto. Balancing with an outflung hand on the crown of his head while also wiggling her fingers at Dan all come get me please, which he loves, and also: refuses to do. On principle, at least right now.
William
She'll call him whatever he wants her to call him, and it makes... it provokes and evokes a reaction that is not one other than pleasure, of relief. Like he expected it to be harder, like he expected her not to, like he'd expected a lot of things and it's a sign to him that there's acceptance of the newer parts of his life, that he's not drowning and someone accepts that about him.
He looks at the cover, holds it and turns to the page indicated and he looks it over. Eyes trail over words and he's reading, translating- a little known fact. Sometimes, English hitches in the back of his mind. Only occasionally, but it means when it comes to poetry he is mindful of what he is reading. Takes it in slowly and then perks up.
Flashes a bright grin at Sera-
"I wanna read this," he announces.
And so he does. Starts off with "Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil-"
There's a way that he reads, a way that he presents things and a way that he seems aware of what he's doing. He's a storyteller, this one. Can convey what is in front of him and words come by with delight. Reads aloud for others to enjoy, but eventually settles again in to observing people. Trades stories with people about how Boston was- Dan knows which hulking details he's leaving out. Listens to the little bits of people's days and is just content to take them all in. The huamnity of it, the warmth of it, the way that this house feels more like a home than any number of places he's been.
He'll fly out again in less than a week, may think of being on Corona street instead of Baton Rouge
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