The bar is a hole in the wall somewhere along East Colfax. Which is literally called, Hole In The Wall. Someone cleverly painted both the security door the bouncer guards, half-perched on a stool beneath the dingy sign, and the bricks around it to look like a toothier version of a cartoon mouse-hole bored into the bricks. Small knots of black-clad kids and hipsters mill around outside smoking - cigarettes mostly, Marlboros or Pall Malls for the ironically old-fashioned, but here and there the wiff of marijuana from a well-packed blunt, shared out in the shadows.
It's still a bit early on a Saturday night, nine or nine-thirty. The 'headliners' (if you can call them that: Odour of Pears, a local band with a strong[ish] following, back in tour after a hard-scrabble tour around the desert southwest) won't take the 'stage' in the back room until 11 or 11:30. The opening act: well, no one's ever heard of them except a few of their friends, all of whom are on the 'list' to get in without paying the night's seven dollar cover charge.
The crowd is a grunge-hipster mix. The bar seems that type; it looks like an old dive bar, where Hell's Angels would feel rather at home. Alcohol and smoke and sweat are sunk into the bones of the place. But the owner loves beer, and it's an open secret that they have more than a dozen local beers on tap, and only serve the big brands in bottles or cans, and even then with a bit of a snear for your lack of taste.
So: kids in black leather and spiked blue-green algae hair, playing out a new version of Sid-n-Nancy with slightly more Hot Topic and BedHead and slightly less jumping-through-plate glass doors, and guys in skinny jeans and oxford shirts and 1950s plastic framed glasses and girls in cherry-covered, peter-pan collared dresses or jeans and ironic, geek-chic t-shirts, all milling around, drinking draft beers or well drinks or fucking martinis made with locally distilled gin and locally pitted olives.
The bar's been open since 1 p.m. There's no real chance for a sound check. They're setting up amidst the swirl of an ordinary Saturday night, while the regulars drink and they die-hard Odour of Pears fans speculate about who the heck they are, and what the hell happened to Bunny Fontaine Weasley & the Ziplines, who were supposed to be on stage right now.
Sid Rhodes
[awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1
Pan Echeverría
It doesn't mean anything to the future of his career whether he keeps his word and it's pride to make more commitments than a mortal man can hope to handle without juggling but he told her he would come. So he comes.
To glean a man's vocation based on his clothing presents a minor challenge when the man is off the clock. One could say a man of his position is never truly off the clock but that's why he wears a pager. He wears nothing that would make him look like anything other than a tall working-class boricua come in for a beer at the end of a double shift but he doesn't exactly fit in with the crowd of trust-fund babies and be-earringed emigrants who claim to have seen the first shows of pioneering bands that no longer exist.
Before he goes inside he stops off at a public phone that looks like it will still be standing after civilization has fallen and takes the pager off his belt. Feeds the machine a measure of coin and reads the pager's green-lit face and stands watching the teeming mass of chain smokers outside the venue's painted maw as he punches in a number.
Anyone whose senses take in the things that happen beyond base cognition will be mistaken if they think him glowing. His magic is a loud-bright thing and he recently Worked in a way meant to bring something out of nothing.
[let's get this awareness roll over with]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1
Serafíne
[Awareness!]Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 8) ( fail )
Sid Rhodes
This place, both the bar and its vicinity to East Colfax, they're not areas one might expect to find Sid. It's not her scene. She's too quiet, to shy, too straight-edge. She's probably never been this close to marijuana smoke before.
Her coworkers, on the other hand. It's because of them that Sid is here. She'd gotten swept up in Lacey's fervent desire to go out and do something to blow off some steam, and then been subsequently caught in her wake. The ladies are standing against the wall, Lacey raised up onto the balls of her feet, craning to see where their third had gotten to (he was sent for drinks but is clearly not at the bar). And Sid?
Sid stands with her hands in the pockets of her faded and worn, too long jeans, her shoulders hunched, back pressed to the wall to better keep an eye on their surroundings. She almost looks like she could belong here, except her large black glasses actually hold a prescription, and her AC/DC tour shirt is not worn out of irony or because she's a fan, but because Lacey forced it at her to replace her bright red work shirt.
Her eyes dart about, taking in the gathering crowd which so far still isn't considered a press. Tonight she has all of her receptors open. Last night, while not especially unsettling, served as a reminder that she's not as alone in this city as she might have thought, considering the complete lack of awakened individuals she'd met thus far.
Foreign energies tingle along her skin, lifting the small hairs on the back of her neck. Sucking in a deep breath through her nose, Sid stands up a little straighter. The source is easy enough to find. It draws her attention, to one of the members of the band setting up for that first act. Her brow tightens, her lips firm into a straight line, and for the moment she holds her position.
Pan Echeverría
In time he ends the call and goes inside though he has to stop and chat with the bouncer when the guy recognizes him. Their conversation languishes beneath the din of the crowd inside but both appear in good spirits. When the bouncer puts the neon paper bracelet around the other man's wrist he shakes his head like he can't believe he's doing this and accepts a patronly clap on the shoulder and then they part ways.
Once inside he's not the tallest person there though he stands over six feet so. Besides being tall he's dark of complexion and dressed in dark slacks, dark cotton shirt beneath a dark blazer. Keeps his hair trimmed and his face shaven. Lives in that nebulous area where a body has to really stare at the person's face to guess his age but the light is low in here and everybody looks less tired or less high than they probably are.
Here for the show as he is he does not go to the bar but instead holds a position out of the way for so long as it takes him to find a place where he will not elbow or be elbowed. People come to these places to listen to the bands and some of them stand with their arms crossed against the back wall and others form mosh pits in a place that wasn't designed for violence. He projects a calm that belies the fact he is about as likely to come into this place of his own conjuring as Sid was.
The energy in the place is mellow but for an energy one doesn't usually expect until the end of the show, when the blood's pumping and the drugs have taken hold and the brain can't convince the consciousness that the world won't end when the night does. And that energy isn't coming from the crowd. It comes from a girl beside a girl looking for a boy.
He crosses his arms at the elbows, low on his chest, and stands like he's waiting for someone.
Serafíne
The band is a quartet: two girls and two guys. A drumset, two guitars, one bass. One MacBook Pro propped open at the lead guitarist's feet. Their opening number is delayed as he crouches down in front of the laptop, fiddling with mix."Are you fucking done yet?" goes live over the sound system startlingly loud, the singer with her hand around the mic and her eyes cast over her shoulder, down at her crouched bandmate, perfectly aware that the mic is live at the moment and just not giving a fuck. She is grinning around the words, though, flashing a perfectly lovely, perfectly who me smile back down at him as he waves her off. Her laughter is picked up too, carried over the crowd, bright and full and insidious, like everything else about her.
The stage stands about two to three feet above the level of the main floor, though there's a little step down a dozen feet out from the edge to create a small pit. The lighting is mediocre and shifting and one of the greenfilters is strobing its way to oblivion, but even so the lead singer is difficult to ignore - once she speaks into the mic. Once her laughter drifts over the heads of the crowd, alert and bemused and oddly intimate. She seems tall: long, long legs bare tonight, descending from a miniscule leather skirt, the seams of which are bound with a half-dozen or more heavy-looking buckles. Over that, (for the nonce) she's wearing a white Cookie Monster t-shirt and a stack of leather and silver bracelets obscuring the scrawl of ink on her left arm.
There's a bottle of locally-distilled whiskey in one hand, long fingers wrapped around the mic in the other.
Sid knows she's there; can feel the girl's energy more acutely than the rest of the crowd, though it hums through them too, especially when the guitarist finally stands up and declares himself ready.
Sera has a guitar too, but right now it is slung across her back, held in place by her arm tucked against her flank. The strap bisects Cookie-Monster's furry blue face and frames her breasts.
"Okay, so," - in one hand, the mic. In the other, a bottle of whiskey, newly cracked open. " - I don't know if you guys heard, but Bunny Fontaine's not gonna be on tonight. Yeah, she like, popped an implant? I mean just - " a ripple of laughter murmurs through the crowd, and Sera emphasizes the story with an open-handed gesture in the shape of an explosion, " - just boom." Then she's nodding, still grinning, off at someone in the crowd, her long curling hair seething around her frame, except where it has been shaved. Tipping back the bottle to take a long drink of her whiskey. "Seriously, yeah - I heard it was a bad scene.
"But. Your loss is our gain. You can't really have a show without an opening act, it's like sex without foreplay. So we're gonna loosen you up, get you ready for the main attraction, Ye Olde Smelly Fruit."
She starts to count them off, glancing back at the bassist - a pretty girl, with rockabilly hair, a roller derby t-shirt, white skin and black hair whole looks like Snow White with about fifty added pounds - and the guitarist - who is a hipster through and through: the beard, the beanie, the thick plastic glasses, skinny jeans, tight plaid short-sleeve shirt, rocking a motherfucking bow-tie, natch. One of them talks back, inaudible to most of the bar, and she rounds back to the mike for introductions.
"Oh, yeah. Who the fuck are we? We don't really have a name or shit yet, but let me introduce you to the band. I'm Sera. That's Danny-boy on the guitar, Dahlia on the bass and motherfucking Broderick - " here she pulls a long arm away from the mic-stand and points cheekily back at the drummer, barely visible behind his set. " - on the drums."
"Alright. Choke on this you Danceteria types." Noise fills the bar as they launch into a Violent Femmes cover.
Mara Andrews
Balance, balance was important in one's life, yin and yang, black and white, good and bad. One had to embrace all of it if one wanted to walk the path of enlightenment.
Mara had a way of finding such places, which often involved just stepping up to interesting looking people and asking where the party was, it had worked for her before, and once again it had proved effective. The Hole in the Wall was the perfect place for her needs, a place of endless possibility, both good and bad moments were no more then a second away at anytime, and if one wanted to test themselves to find a balance of good and bad...this was certainly the place to do so.
She arrived fit for the scene, a strappy red leather jacket protecting her frame from the cool evening air. A black T-shirt with a bullseye painted across it visible beneath the open collar. She wore a pair of vintage army boots, and her legs were covered by a pair of re-tailored cargo pants, brought in to an almost skinny jean style with all the pockets and buckles one could desire.
She looked the part, so when the bald headed, green eyed young woman stepped up to the bouncer and offered him a bombastic smile and held out her [entirely fake] ID she had no fear of being discovered, no concern that the man would stop her. It was several considering moments however before the man let her through, perhaps he had seen through the ID and decided to chance it, or maybe he just wanted to keep her there a few moments more, regardless Mara strode fluidly past the bouncer and into the bar.
The music struck her like a train, and she felt it reverberate through her chest, the smile that grew on her features becoming more energetic, more atomic by the moment....this was going to be a good night.
[Awareness because!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Sid Rhodes
Sid's eyes stay glued on the singer, at least until something else grabs at her attention. There is a man across the way dressed all in dark. On his own he doesn't stand out much. True, he seems older, calmer, more leveled out than the excited and excitable young people beginning to crowd toward the stage. They're drawn to the girl in the short skirt, sailors compelled to the rocks by the siren's alluring voice. Not that man, though. He, like Sid, keeps back.
What draws Sid's attention is not his looks or his clothes, though. There is something else about him, something that she senses in the way that she senses Sera. It lights the air in a way that can't be seen, only felt. Sid watches him, her expression wary until the mic goes live and her attention is dragged back to the band on stage.
She grimaces briefly, the expression crossing her face quick as an eyeblink, at the pantomimed explosion of an implant. If true, it must have been awful for...what was the name again? It cannot be said enough that this is not Sid's preferred place to be. The music starts and the crowd starts to move, to dance, the gyrate and the redhead by the wall tries to sink into its grimy brick facade.
At some point she realizes that not only has the boy of their group not returned with drinks as promised, the other girl has left as well. Sid straightens, stretching to her full five feet eight inches, then a little more as she lifts to the balls of her feet to look around, seeking out companions who for all she knows have left her for the night. If so, should she stay? She should stay. She paid her seven dollars, she should stay and get her seven dollars' worth of entertainment, at least.
And who knows, maybe she'll have a good time, all alone in a bar with a crowd that suddenly seems made entirely of elbows. She starts to slide sideways down the wall, toward the back where it's a little....well, not quieter, but calmer. There's a little more room to breathe.
Pan Echeverría
He's not standing in the center of the crowd. From Sera's vantage point he's off to the side and between whatever chemicals float through her veins and the fluttering high of standing elevated above a group of people transfixed by the sight and anticipation not of her but of the music though she with her half-shaved head and her long long legs and her whiskey sipped right out the bottle are a sight enough - nobody can blame her for not parsing faces out of a crowd.
Unaware of echoes and prints as she is she can't hear him scoff at her preamble. Maybe she sees him reach up to rub his brow the way he did last night. He has his own kind of presence in the midst of a crowd but this isn't his crowd.
Credit where it's due: he stays. Hands stay empty and he does not drink and he does not dance but he stays.
A flash of red leather beneath the dim lights brings with it a smiling young girl, snuck past the guardian at the front door. He senses her before he turns his head to connect the two. He's not the only person in the place who looks at her but he is facing forward and away from her when she joins the throng.
Serafíne
[Re-rolling awareness! +1 dif (normally 5, now 6.]Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 2
Shoshannah
[Awareness, might as well!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne
The set is a mishmash of covers and originals. The originals no one around here has heard before, and the covers run the gamut. The band is good, but they're still learning to work together as a unit, so there are flubs, missed transitions. Several entirely skipped verses and bridges that end with Sera laughing and hugging the bassist like a long-lost daughter. The guitarist is the best of the musicians; anyone with an eye or an ear for it can see that, the way he holds his instrument, the deep note of concentration on his bearded face. The flash of irritation when Sera, floating and drinking regularly and holding court and bathing in the attention of being on stage, fucks things up.Which she does, with charm and grace in a way that just makes her seem brighter and more visceral, like she's always on the edge of just falling apart.
They screw up the set list at least twice, with the two guitars launching into different songs than the drummer and bassist. And the last number is an add-on, an add-lib. She pulls her mouth from the mic and leans back in a long arc of her spine to chat with with guitarist, the flash of her teeth razer white against his dark blond beard.
By the time the set is over, Sera has consumed a fair third of her bottle of whiskey, perhaps more, and is loose-jointed and lovely, curling her hands over the mic with the familiarity of an old lover. Now she knows that they're out there. All of them; she can feel them skimming against the back of her spine.
"So, yeah. I guess our time is up," someone shouts no! and she grins so wide and white, nodding with laughter down at the faceless smear of the crowd, " - yeah really," this one-sided conversation that the rest of the bar gets to hear.
"We're gonna finishing up with a cover of a Will Oldham song. This one's dedicated to my guests tonight," lifting up the whiskey bottle in the direction of the priest, she throws back yet another damned shot.
This time, she puts down her whiskey bottle, pulls her guitar back around her torso. It's just mostly Sera and Danny: they know the song like the backs of their hands, and he sings it with her in rough harmony. Sera sings it staring through the crowd, grinning around the microphone right at the padre. "Well the glory goes to those
who do not seek it / reveling in midnight clothes among the wicked / picking scabs from off their skin / and rolling holy deeply / to the rhythm called the song / that does not end..."
She sings like she's living every single word, like she's injected them into her open veins in just that moment. There's a kind of silence afterward. Sera finishes up a moment later by handing the guitar off to Daniel and lifting her bottle up, offering the crowd a "Cheers."
She's way too drunk to be any help to the rest in breakdown their gear, so she just jumps off the stage and pushes through the crowd, seeking out the priest. The priest first, and then the rest.
"I can't believe you came." There's a moment where she looks like she's going to slip her arm through his, pull him along to the next point singing against her senses like she's gathering up pearls on a silk string. Unless he stops her, she probably will.
"...and you brought friends."
Mara Andrews
A place like this was a smorgasbord for the senses, the sounds pulsed and screamed, the sights were a kaleidoscope of colours and shades, and one could not forget the myriad of experiences one could draw from the simplest touch of a body in passing or the smells of alcohol and perfume. If Mara had been apart of the Cult of Ecstasy such places would be her bread and butter, a place to test ones senses and find the path through sensory overload.
Mara seemed to be enjoying all of these things, the way she moved like mercury through the crowd, the way that the smile fitted within her caramel face grew brighter with each moment told anyone who looked as much. She moved with purpose however, not milling about, not striking up a conversation with the first person she encountered. She weaved her way towards the bar, sensing things that the average human was blind too.
A brilliance captured her attention as she neared the bar, her gaze finding its source, which had found her as well. Pale green eyes took in Pan Echeverria and she nodded her head to the man. He might think she would approach in that moment that contact had been made. But instead she steps to the bar, and orders one of the local beers.
There were necessary steps it seemed. One being a wordless cheer as the band finishes its set, that smile still brimming upon her lips as she leaned against the bar and watched the lead singer work her way through the crowd.
Shoshannah
Shoshannah . . . is actually not used to having much in the way of rules. Or rather, she's not used to there being much in the way of consequence on the occasion that she doesn't follow those rules established by those with some claim to authority over here. So it can't really be a surprise that she's clung to the exact wording of the agreement she has with the good Padre. She comes and goes when she wants, but she does anything that's asked of here, be it in the rectory or the church itself.
Unless, of course, it's in the actual sanctuary. That place, she avoids like the plague.
Regardless, she's out tonight and it's late. She doesn't exactly look like a kid, but her face is still young and round in a way that one could easily assume she hates and be quite correct in the assuming. If she were anyone [anything] other than what she is, there's no way her bike would be safe where she locks it to the sign outside the door, next to a bunch of motorcycles (already singing along with the song she hears coming from inside, one she knows better than she might be given credit for). There's no way she'd get past the bouncer with the ID that's not only out of state, but plainly shows she's not old enough to be here.
All it takes is a look, and people back away. They find reasons they had to do anything but be near this . . . this girl. Because she's not out of her teens yet, and looks it.
Inside is cacophony It's noise and chaos and an influx of sensation with which Shoshannah, being as young as she is and with the upbringing she's had, is only passingly familiar. There are familiar resonances here, people she's met, people she knows - as much as she can be accused of knowing anyone in Denver, anyway. There's Padre, there. There's two someone elses, vaguely familiar, and a stranger.
Shoshannah is tense, nervous, but appears tough as nails. A look, a raised eyebrow, a word, and she gets what she wants. None of the normies want to be anywhere near her if it can be helped - hell, half of the Awakened probably don't either. She makes her way to the least crowded part of the bar and, look at that! Doesn't even try for a beer.
"Just a coke, please. Whatever flavor."
She'd come from Texas, after all.
Sid Rhodes
During the rest of the set, Sid has managed to slide back further out of the way. Let the younger people go to the fore and take the brunt of the waves of music. She'll be toward the back, keeping to herself. Quite the opposite of the much younger girl that approaches the bar asking for a coke. She's nervous but doesn't show it. Sid couldn't look more nervous and out of place if she tried.
She stays through the opening act, at least, that's what she'd told herself she'd do. There's something about the singer's voice, the way she moves on the stage, the way the band fucks up in places that is actually a little endearing. Something about all of that compells her to stick around, just a little longer. One more song. One more chord. One more shout into the microphone.
When it's over, Sid peers about, casting one final desolate look for the companions she's now given up hope of ever seeing again (before their next shift together). She heads toward the bar, hoping to get something to drink. Non-alcoholic, of course, at least that's her intention. Upon her arrival on the outskirts of the small crowd jostling to get in their request for vodka or one of the local beers, she notices the girl from last night.
For a moment Sid stands rooted in place, feet glued to the floor, looking from the crowd to the girl and back again. Letting out a short breath, she decides to head toward the bar, the part of the bar closest to Shoshannah that is. She tries to get the bartender's attention but there are louder, more noticeable patrons that make it impossible for her to be heard. Giving up, she nods to Shoshannah, more acknowledgement than greeting.
Pan Echeverría
Really? his face asks across the heads of the people in the crowd between his point in time and hers when she announces the song's destination. The expression fades as he accepts the dedication. If she watches him she can see he cants his head just-so so he can listen to the words underneath the whiskey.
she swears nightly before resting
that i give her soul a testing
He laughs. Not that tamped-down not-a-laugh he made in the silent space they shared last night but a live noise, a flash of teeth in the dark. Through it he comes to occupy the next several minutes in a state of uncertain observation, like a missionary come out of the fog for the first time.
And then she's off the stage and headed towards him. He doesn't shrug her off or tell her nah don't do that. If she wants to slip her arm through his they're all friends here.
"I think they brought themselves," he says of the other Workers all clustered at the bar now.
Serafíne
So, Sera slips her right arm right through Pan's left. There's a moment's negotiation as she has to juggle her bottle of whiskey, has to offer him a drink from the bottle with an arched question in her brow. She's not sober enough to think better of the offer in just that moment, though she might've stopped herself from doing it if the set and stopped a half-hour before.Sera seemed so tall up on stage, but even with her heels and her long, long legs, the good father has three inches or so on her, and appears to be approximately twice as broad.
"DID they," she tosses back to him, catching his profile with a streaky glance, her own eyes shining with the looseness and grace of all that whiskey and whatever else she has taken tonight.
"Well. Let's. Go. Say. Hi." - this, intoned like it's the name of the band or a game show or a fucking coming attraction full of giant robots and hardbodies in such brilliant 3-D that you can see the definition of their eight-packs screaming at you to get to the gym, you lazy movie-going bastard.
She turns her head in a long arc of motion, inhaling the play of resonance against her senses, and pulling Pan against her to stalk poor Sid. Way in the back, abandoned by her co-workers, without a drink in hand or, well, anything. There's a tip of her head through the crowd. Oh, she picks out Mara. She picks out Shoshannah. She is not shy, she jerks her head in invitation, hair damp from sweat dancing all around her lean frame as she and the good father slip through the crowd, descending on Sid.
And this is what she does when she gets there: lifts the bottle to Sid in offering, with a slash of a grin by way of greeting and a flicker of her bleary eyes up and down the redhead.
"Hey. You looked like you needed a fucking drink. I'm Sera."
Shoshannah
"Hey." It's an interesting thing, what happens when Shoshannah touches the bartender - it's not threat, almost anyone can see that, and yet he pales as if she's just sucked half his life away. It's not a pleasant thing to be near the girl, it's less so to be in her attention, and if this guy's reaction is any indication, it's even less so to be touched by her. "Quit ignoring that lady," here, a nod towards Sid that could be acknowledgement or indication, either one, "and give her what she wants. Not everyone's good at yelling over the mob, and her tips are just as good as anyone else's."
The 'asshole' goes implied this time, for now, and whatever it is about Shoshannah? Well, it gets results. It may also get her drink spat in, or worse, but one very creeped out bartender comes to find out what Sid wants, and to get it for her.
And then there's also Sera, and Padre. Were it not for the latter, Shoshannah might shrink almost as much as Sid does; she's not shy and she tries hard to be tough, but when presented with just that sort of confidence in the younger girl's situation, it's difficult to retain one's own. If Shoshannah had thought of speaking with Sid, she hesitates now.
Mara Andrews
The bar was the place to be it seemed, out of the corner of her eye Mara spotted two individuals she'd never expected to see in a place like this. The shy redhead was easy to spot, standing down at the other end of the bar near the mobile VIP section that was Shoshannah, a visible ring was growing around the young woman as people tried to find spaces elsewhere to be. The two of them converged upon each other, and Mara seemed to consider her options.
The decision is made when the lead singer, fresh from her performance on stage looks in her direction, an invitation spread across her features as she drew the man who had been looking at her onward, the pair of them eventually merging with the duo of Shoshannah and Sid. It took Mara only a moment to fall in with the rest, her pale eyes first looking to Sid. "Hey girl, how you doin?" She asks energetically before she nods to Shoshannah and to her credit, manages to keep the discomfort out of her features for once. "Hey Shoshannah."
A moment later she was looking at the two 'newcomers' so much in the fact that they were new to her she nodded to them both with a tilt of her head to the side and a confident but tiny smirk playing through the smile on her lips.
"Hey, good to meet ya, I'm Mara."
Sid Rhodes
[okay first thing's first, WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 4 )
Sid Rhodes
Sid probably does look very much like she could use a drink. She stands near Shoshannah, rigid with tension. There are so many people in this place. Now that the opening act is over and breaking down their gear, the place is packing up for the main event, people cramming into every open space, jostling for room. And Sid, away from her wall now, is unprotected on all sides. Someone gets too close, an arm brushes against her own, and she (believe it or not) stiffens further still and takes a half step to the side. Half step is all she can maneuever.
There are far too many people now for her to notice that any one of them could be following her over to the Dreamspeaker. Perhaps that's a good thing, as it allows Sera and the Padre to make it all the way up behind her without her darting into the nearest hiding space.
It's Shoshannah who she sees react to her first. The teen is unnerving to be near, true, but in this crowd Sid has no more room to react to her unsettling aura. The bartender turns to the girl and blanches, then looks at Sid as though he's only just now noticed her standing there. Probably, that's precisely the case. "C-coke," she stammers, eyes squeezing shut as she tries to - for her - shout over the noise. He scurries off to get her drink post haste, leaving Sid to give Shoshannah a very relieved and thankful sort of almost-smile.
Which is about the time the other willworkers converge upon their location. There are the strangers, one of whom sloshes a bottle of whiskey in her direction. Sid frowns, chin ducked down and her upper body leaning back, and she waves off the offer. The man all in dark is with the singer, another stranger. And then there's Mara, melting out of the crowd like a liquid creature. Sid's nostrils flare and her dark brown eyes widen behind her lenses, but she, strangely, is able to hold her ground. She doesn't turn and bolt for the door to get away from this group of strangers.
She even finds her voice just enough to say, "Hi," just loud enough to be heard.
Pan Echeverría
Sera has to feel a bit of relief in knowing if the priest were one of those fire-and-brimstone types he wouldn't have come here in the first place. To stand in the midst of all sorts of human excess and affronts to God's good graces means he has to have at least a healthy dose of respect for free will and the exercise of it. So long as they aren't about to commit one of the sins that cries to Heaven all he chooses to do is observe.
Which means it almost looks as if Sera, all five-foot-whatever of her, looks as if she's dragging a man who could probably bench press her through the bar.
They three who noticed each other before the band broke for the night come into a lineup and Pan looks right at Shoshannah and sighs, slow so it does not burst out of his chest like a judgment. While Sera thrusts her bottle of whiskey at Sid and Sid summons her strength to be polite, he registers that Mara is greeting them.
Might as well. His left arm is otherwise engaged but he can hold out his right hand. As a younger man he might have been lanky but the only vestiges of that remain in the length of his reach. He can reach past Sid to shake Mara's hand without jostling anyone.
"Mara, hi," he says. "My name's Francisco. This is Sera." That done, he jerks his chin towards Shoshannah. "Get her, would you?"
Shoshannah
"Hey, Padre." Sometimes Shoshannah uses the priest's given name as he asked, but more often she doesn't - they haven't known each other long, or even necessarily talked much, but somehow there's a respect and even maybe a hint of fondness there that Shoshannah hasn't shown previously. "It's just coke," she says as a glass makes its way in front of her (and Sid too). Real Coke (or maybe Pepsi even, not just Texas coke.
"Mara. Sid. Sera." It's as close as she gets to real greeting, though one might argue that her insisting the bartender take care of Sid might have counted as more. "Who's getting whom?"
Mages, by definition, have stronger will than others. That allows them to stay close to Shoshannah despite how she feels, if they want, but doesn't prevent them from feeling it. It's uncomfortable, it's clammy, it's a feeling of death far too near.
Pan Echeverría
He makes a come here gesture with his free hand when Shoshannah asks who's getting whom.
Serafíne
If Sera understood that the good father was a stranger to several of others staggered in a loose knot like outflung stars now, she would have introduced him as she introduces herself, to Sid. But she doesn't. She thinks on some level that it's just so cool that they all came out to see her play out for the second time in Denver. Never mind that the priest corrected her on that point already: she thought he was making a joke. Then the Akashic joins them and offers her name and oh, the padre replies, for himself and for her as well.Sera offers Mara a grin, all liquid, sliding across her curving mouth, and a "Serafíne," that is not so much a correction as it is a drunken little appendix to the older man's introduction, in a way that emphasizes the foreigness of the name. The long accent over the I that opens it up into the longest vowel ever.
There's sweat on her brow, dampening her temples and her hair, sliding in a slow trickle down her face beside the shaved bit. It has soaked through the white Cookie Monster t-shirt so that the already tight cotton clings to her spare frame. Expands and contracts with every breath.
Sid refuses the bottle and Sera is the sort to insist, in the right space, but she has one arm occupied holding onto the priest and just one hand and one bottle, so she gives Sid a philosophic shrug as the redhead refuses the whiskey, and a " - you sure? It's good stuff. I had to listen to the fucking bartender tell me all about the cows that pooped up the fertilizer for the fucking. Heritage - " an expressive flop of the bottle. She cannot remember or does not know what fucking grain they use to make fucking whiskey.
Then her head tips back toward Mara. And Sera offers up the bottle first to Mara, with a winsome smile, sliding bright, damp hair streaming over her narrow shoulders, down the long line of her back. Shoshannah will be offered it next. Who cares if she's underage. Sera was (we will not talk about how old) the first time she got drunk on stolen communion wine.
The hangover was murderous.
Shoshannah
An eyebrow raises at Pan's gesture in a completely innocent who, me? sort of look, down to the hand finding its way to her chest just to emphasize. It's a sad fact that Shoshannah can't remember the time someone asked her to come closer. At any rate, she takes her coke, sniffs it to make sure anything extra that made its way in wasn't alcohol (at least the sort that can be detected by smell), then offers Sid a careful little smile before making her way to the priest's side.
"Yeah?"
If she weren't so [damned] off, she might be a good kid.
Sid Rhodes
"Ah, Sid," she says when names are given out, eyes downcast, chin lowered.
Sid notices the way the crowd thins around Shoshannah, and she remembers the way Mara had reacted to her last night. Somehow, simply by existing, the girl makes space appear around her. As the threat of getting elbowed, bumped into, or in some other way being forced to make physical contact with complete strangers ebbs, Sid begins to relax. On a molecular level, at least. To everyone else she still reads as tense, nervous, wary. Her head may be bowed a little, but her gaze is constantly shifting side to side as she makes heavy use of her peripheral vision to keep tabs on the people outside the bubble.
It means she notices when the bartender sets her glass of dark, fizzing beverage at the edge of the bar, which gives her the chance to step away from the man's reaching arm without being completely obvious about it. It means she can again refuse the offer of alcohol, though Sera's drunken story gets a flicker at the corners of Sid's cupid's bow lips, the ghost of a smile that is far, far from resolving into something more than that flicker. If she could, she'd simply lean over, keeping one foot as though to save her patch of floor, but that doesn't get the man his money. She darts a glance to each of the others and steps away a moment, pulling a plain black leather wallet - the sort that is usually only found in the men's department, only very well-worn and patchy. She slaps a bill down and snatches up the glass in one quick movement.
"You have, uh," she mumbles in Sera's direction when she's back among them once more, but she stops and goes a slightly different way. "You're good. Up there." She gives a slight nod in the direction of the stage.
Mara Andrews
The offered hand is shook with a warmth. "Good to meet you Francisco, there a short form for that? I have a feeling in the next few hours the whole thing might become some deranged mutation with the addition of booze." She laughs lightly, and then as if talking about it made it magically appear, Serafine offers up her bottle of Whiskey.
Mara stares at the bottle for the brieftest of moments, before the neck is grasped and the bottle upturned, the woman taking two healthy swallows before wipping her chin and grinning ear to ear as she put the bottle back into Serafine's hands. "That...is the best greeting I've had all night...no offense Francisco." She winked at the man as she licked the remaining alcohol from her lips.
"You know Serafine you can work a crowd, you ever thought about trying to set up your own dictatorship? I bet your country would be awesome."
A hand trails to her stomach, resting under the now open zipper of the leather jacket. She feels the warmth of the alcohol beginning its slow spread and she smirks as she takes her hand from her belly and throws both of her arms over her head.
"Okay! this place needs a mosh pit...I am so ready for a mosh pit tonight."
Pan Echeverría
In the amount of time it takes Shoshannah to realize she's been summoned and acquiesce to the request, Mara asks if Francisco comes along with a diminutive. The priest lifts his eyebrows like that helps his old ass hear better in a bar that's grown more congested with the approach of the main event and then laughs, like he gets that a lot.
"Pancho," he says to Mara. "Or Pan, then you only have to worry about one syllable."
And then the teenager with an essence like a shiver shot up the spine on a warm day is on the side not held by the Cultist. As much as it appears as if he's holding her up, Sera thus far stands on her own. She is the only one who can feel the muscles tensed beneath the sleeve of his blazer, like he has taken it upon himself to escort her and not just submitted himself to this whim.
He reads Shoshannah's eyes and the skin under them and she can see him debate, internal and quick, how much of a lecture he wants to give her. In the end she gets:
"You eat today?"
Serafíne
"Oh, hey, thanks," to Sid as the redhead returns with her Coke in hand. The flash of a grin, warming at the eyes too with more than the alcohol, though the alcohol makes Sera actually turn and glance over her shoulder to see where, precisely, Sid is nodding. There are her bandmates, still packing up the gear. Her smiles shifts into something deeply fond though not quite nostalgic."Yeah, Dan and I have played together a long-ass time. He's fucking brilliant," because doesn't You're good. Up there. meant tell me the life-cycle of your band. Perhaps with an Appendix about the band that precede it. "Then we had this other band, I mean it was just a trio, but the fucking drummer decided he wanted to go to fucking med school. So, but yeah. We've got a house together with Dee and Rick up in [insert HIPSTER neighborhood here], we're just starting to play out, but I think it could be pretty tight. I'm glad you like it, though. You should give me your number and I'll send you a text or something next time we have a gig, right?"
Then, laughter, outright, lifting her chin and showing her teeth, like she's the sort to drink down the sun, for Mara. "Nothing would get fucking done in my country. But we pretty much have a part every weekend. Standing fucking invitation.
"You too," a nod back to extend the invitation to Sid as she accepts the bottle of whiskey back, fingers wrapped around the next in a complexly woven familiarity. "I mean, I'm even gonna make Pan here come." Here, her arm tightens through his in emphasis of his name. "Someday."
She knows just enough mythology to be dangerous, and there's a glint of fine dark humor threaded through her unfocused eyes for the good priest's diminutive.
"And you know you wanna see that."
Shoshannah
"I had . . . something." There's a shrug, and the brief pause rightly implies that she had a caffeinated beverage and some chips from a vending machine somewhere at some point rather than bothering with one of the food places near the rectory or a grocery store (or Pan's fridge); it's a blessing of being young and [devilishly] beautiful, perhaps, that she can pull that sort of thing off without a blemish or ounce of extra flesh. Or maybe it's all the bike riding, who knows? "Hi. Serafine. I'm Shoshannah."
The initial greeting is obviously for the Cultist (who swears like a sailor and despite everything, or maybe because of it, it's pretty clear that Shoshannah has had a pretty good life as far as material things and the Manners that go with them are concerned) - the assertion of her name (personhood) is for anyone who doesn't remember. She doesn't necessarily get it on the first meeting and certainly doesn't expect other people to remember her.
But then it's back to Pan, and she assures him, "I'm fine. I'd tell you if something was wrong." She probably wouldn't, but that's neither here nor there.
Pan Echeverría
"Uh huh."
The man believes in the story of Moses ascending Mount Sinai to bring back the divine rules of conduct but he doesn't look as if he believes anything Shoshannah has said to him tonight.
"Listen. Eight o'clock tomorrow morning, after you eat breakfast, meet me at the church. I'll show you around before services start. Got a project for you."
Translation: get your ass home.
The combination of his name and the pressure against his biceps has him glancing sidelong at Sera and then double-taking as the rest of the sentence creeps into his cognizance.
"See what?" he asks.
Mara Andrews
"Hey sometimes you just gotta do nothing to get what needs to be done, done." Mara offers in response to Serfine's talk about running a country. "And then party the hell outta everything afterwards." Mara's smile is bordering on atomic, its like she could split atoms with that smile as her feet start to move, fluidic steps and a bob of her head.
The bobbing gaze turns to Pan and she asks. "So Pancho, you seem to be a man in the know, as obviously Shoshannah and Serafine are no strangers. Whats the deal with Denver eh?" She inquires casually as she continues to move on the spot, her own beer in hand, expertly balanced so as not a drop of amber liquid was lost to the floor.
It is then that Mara's gaze finds Sid once more, and she takes a few steps towards the woman, not straying far from Pancho so that he can still answer her question, while she speaks to Sid.
"So...girl, how is it we keep running into each other...seriously now. I gotta know."
Sid Rhodes
Truthfully, Sid had only been trying to be polite. She'd meant what she said, though, that Sera had been good. Up there. When the woman launches into the history of the band, Sid's reddish brows twitch a little higher above slightly widened eyes. She supposes she had that coming. Talking to people only begets more talking.
She blinks a few times, a quick fluttering of her eyelids, then she leans a little to see past Sera to the rest of the band. Dan, Dan, Dan must be the guitarist? She looks back to Sera, nodding once or twice to show that yes, she is in fact still listening, but it seems as though her voice has been packed into a box that's been padlocked shut. Hope you don't mind.
Before her attention can fully tune in to Pan and Shoshannah's conversation, it's snatched back by the Cultist, and completely, too. Her chin lifts and she actually meets Sera's gaze for all of about ten seconds. She's being invited to...to a party? Sid's expression clouds with confusion, indicating that such invitations are exceedingly rare. Who would want her at a party? She can hardly bring herself to speak more than a low, bewildered, "Thanks?"
Then her eyes drop, and she takes a cautious sip of her soda. Her free hand comes up to grip below the collar of her borrowed t-shirt and fan it out in a vain attempt at cooling herself off a little. The place is getting a little too close for comfort.
Sid Rhodes
Mara takes a few steps closer to Sid, who immediately takes those same steps and a little more back and away, keeping her distance.
"I-I don't know."
Serafíne
Another huffed laugh for Mara's endorsement of both doing nothing to get things done and partying like mad afterwards. This nearly wry, a sidelong glance to catch the widening edge of the Akashic's atomic grin."Shoshannah," a lift of the bottle in the girl's direction, when the younger (...creepier...) girl offers a name. Sera is by now soaked in alcohol and whatever else she took before climbing onto the stage. To open her up to the now, to make her sing, to make her fly. Mostly, that sense of - well, dread - just slides over her, part of the wash of sensations in the evening air.
Only the priest will (perhaps) feel the subtle tension in her flank, in the long muscles of her thigh where she holds on to him, leans against him, their arms tucked together like old friends. This is the first note of restraint all night. Pan admonishes Shoshannah to get home and asks her if she ate. Sera assumes that the girl is his apprentice, and does not offer up the bottle of whiskey this time, not fully. "Awesome."
"Oh, yeah," her chin is turned, her view of Shoshannah across Pan's profile. She lifts her mouth in a rising gesture when he cuts in with See what?, and supplies, with a winging, razorline of a smile, " - you at one of my parties." Her mouth somewhere between his cheek and his ear, though three inches or so lower. "They're all looking forward to it. Even Sid's coming, right?"
The sudden cut of her glance all direct toward the redhead. There's a certain swimming brilliance to the look, the drunken glaze to her eyes, and a kind of gleaming awareness.
Shoshannah
The scowl that started somewhere around the underlying implication that Shoshannah's underage (for the bar, anyway) ass should be home (but where is that, really?) deepens at Serafine's mention of Sid; there's little accounting for the teenager's reaction, perhaps, but the resulting, "Leave Sid alone," is more venomous than anyone here has any reason to expect. The sudden temper, though, is blessedly gone quickly, leaving just sullenly crossed arms (resultant of setting aside the floatie-filled coke she'd been holding onto) and knit eyebrows.
"Whatever. I was getting bored anyway. I'll see you in the morning, I guess."
Very little about the girl is pleasant, but her ill-temper is significantly worse. But now, there's a huffy, swirly turn that allows her to pass by Sid with a brief pause. "I don't have a phone or anything, but I said yesterday I was crashing with Padre." There's no more to it than that, though Shoshannah does wait for acknowledgement before sulking her way out of the bar.
Sid Rhodes
Startled to find the singer's attention rapt on her, Sid's mouth opens but no sound comes out. At least not initially. She's stepped away from the group, given herself breathing room in order to get away from the sudden approach of the Akashic. She does not hide the discomfort the woman creates in her.
Before she can find her voice, Shoshannah, the girl she'd only met briefly the night before, steps up to her defense. Maybe there's a connection there, maybe it's because Sid, quiet, timid, mousey Sid, stepped up just enough to offer advice to the girl (about her bike, and the night, and something that might keep her safe from oncoming traffic), who knows. Sid doesn't get the chance to read into it. Well, she does, but she's so startled by the outburst that her voice recedes a little deeper into her breast.
She looks at the girl, who was getting bored and is leaving (not because Padre chided her, but because his desires and hers happened to converge, of course), and she gives her a small nod. Something in the shy woman's expression softens oh so slightly in that moment. Gratitude, of course, and something else, something a little warmer than any here have seen thus far. She lifts her free hand, her left hand in a quick wave of farewell - flashing ink, but only for a moment.
"Maybe," is all she says to Sera.
Pan Echeverría
"Oh, you will," he says to Shoshannah before she walks away, in that genial tone that only serves to further piss off pissed-off teenagers. "Have a good night, Shoshannah."
After the teenager has made enough of an exit that if he leaves soon he won't be obviously following her, Pan considers the two women down the bar and though he doesn't respond to the matter of the party he does turn his head to tell her something. Not quite so close to her ear as she was to his, but he does tower over her even when her feet are strapped into those torture devices she calls shoes.
"Sera," he says, "I... am glad I came tonight."
He doesn't say he enjoyed the show, or that he thought the music was good, or anything that would imply that he approved of the foul language or the rough clothing or the libations flowing as freely as water. But it was an experience, like he got that confession out of her after all.
Mara Andrews
As Mara came forward, Sid stepped back. It had been this way since they had first met, and so far as Mara could tell it would be their dynamic for a long while to come. A look of confusion settled across her features for the briefest of moments before melting away. The redheaded woman had never directly spurned Mara, so she simply took it as Sid's nature, and took a few steps back, giving her the space she sought.
"Well worse things could happen right?" She commented as she settled down some, the movement of her body lessening with the lack of music, or excessive alcohol intake.
It's then that Shoshannah takes her leave like a fell wind, the power of her very existence enough to diminish Mara's smile in both scope and power, the whole of it reduced to an ordinary grin. "Adios Shoshannah." She offered the woman as she departed, a tilt of her head indicating her curiosity as to the sudden turn of events.
She then looked over at Pancho and Serafine, before turning her gaze back to Sid with a questioning look upon her features as if to ask. What just happened there?
Serafíne
In her living memory, Sera has never met anyone as timid as Sid. Maybe it's because people like Sid just don't come into the orbit of people like Sera, who appears to have never met a stranger. Who proposed making out with a priest in his confessional, then invited him out to see her band. Unless they have something in common.And they do have something in common. Sera can feel Sid's resonance in the air around her. Is fascinated by the way it breaks against the stiff-shouldered defensiveness of her physical being, is studying that countenance, that pale skin, that red hair, those glasses for a glimpse of whatever lies underneath it, when she is stripped bare and Working.
Shoshannah bursts out, then - lashes out, really, and the venom sudden, explosive is enough to drag the singers black-rimmed blue eyes after the girl as she stalks out. Sera lifts her bottle to the girl's retreating back. And laughs: close-mouthed rather than open - not mocking, just the sweet, sloe-gin laugh drawn out of her in those moments when her night goes strange and the stars start to spin around. Outside her head and in.
When they realign, the crown of her head is tipped toward Pan, the long spare length of her neck, the cut of her clavicles and curve of her shoulder so clear from the other side. Where Mara takes a step or three back, giving Sid her space. But her eyes are on Sid. Narrowing into a slowing focus as she takes another slug from that bottle.
"You know. If I ever do something that bothers you. I don't mean, bothers you. I mean, bothers you. Freaks you the fuck out. Fucking tell me." Her head tips forward in emphasis, ever-so-slight, then she's turning her head toward Pan as he drops his mouth to her ear. What he says is enough to pull her eyes to his face, his profile, for the first time in a long time.
Her smile diminishes, until it is just a neat little tuck at the corners of her mouth. But her eyes are shining as she tells him, quietly, "I am, too." A moment's pause. Then, "Padre." Her teeth around the word.
Not that she would ever think that he got that fucking confession out of her, after all. She'd call this, all of it, a different sort of sacrament.
Then, she takes a deep breath. Declares, "I need a fucking cigarette." - which is the start of a farewell, especially since she follows up the declaration by rattling off an address and reiterating her invitation. Telling them that they should drop by. Anytime, there's always someone around. But Thursdays and Fridays are the best time to catch a house party.
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