by Serafine Roche
19 May 2012 20:00 (updated 19 May 2012 20:06) | 0 comment(s)
(OOC NOTE: Takes place Wednesday, May 9th, shortly before the log: It's A Date)
Watching the pretty woman at the bar check her cell phone for the fifth time in at least the last thirty minutes, Maeve Brennan sighs. She makes a last circular swipe at the bar top, and grabs the bottle of Southern Comfort Reserve from the shelf behind the bar. She pours more than three fingers into a glass, and slides it to patron.
“If you’re reduced to sitting around waiting on a call, Sera, then the rest of us dinna stand a chance,” Maeve teases lightly, though her words ring with a bit of truth. Even if the woman wasn’t a Vampire possessing whatever supernatural lure it is that surrounds both Sera and Kieran, she’s still a woman who turns heads and catches eyes. From what little she’s heard, Serafine was a coveted prize and appreciated sight back before Kieran ever turned her.
It’s rare to catch a Vampire off guard, but Maeve manages. Sera startles, her luminous green eyes flickering up from her iPhone to focus on the woman behind the bar. “What?” She blinks, and gives her dark curls a faint shake. “No, oh no, I’m not waiting on a call.”
“That isna what it looks like from where I’m standing.”
The vampire’s gaze drops to the phone again, and then she clicks the screen dark and sets it aside. She reaches for the bourbon, wrapping her hands around the glass but not lifting it right away. “Really, I’m not waiting on a call, Maeve.” Green eyes shift, a nail scrapes along the side of the glass. “I’m … working up the courage to make one.” The words come soft, slow at first and then in a rush of breath, tumbling over one another and colliding at the end in one final gasp.
That’s new, Maeve thinks. In the more than twenty years she’s known Sera - the first few back when Maeve was caught up in the affair with Kieran, and more recently now that Sera has relocated to the city - she’s never seen the woman uncertain about anything. Particularly not as it pertains to the realm of men.
“Still means there’s lil hope for the rest of us, duckie.”
“What … “ Sera frowns at her, and it’s clear that she’s still not entirely having the conversation with Maeve. She might not be entirely at Flanaghan’s at all. “No, it’s not like that. I don’t think.” Beat. “I don’t know.”
“Want to talk about it? This bloke who’s got you all tied up like so?” Maeve takes a look around the pub. It’s a Tuesday night, with a crowd of regulars, but it’s not very busy and the women have this little corner of the bar to themselves. “It is a bloke, innit?”
Sera laughs, and it’s halfway to genuine because it lights up her face a bit and makes her appear just a little bit younger. “Yes, it’s a ‘bloke.’ “ Her gaze darts to the cell phone she’s set to the side, and then she takes a few big swallows of the Southern Comfort.
“I like him,” Sera breathes out, holding the glass clutched in both hands.
“That’s plain to see,” Maeve laughs. “Else you wouldna be lingering over your phone like so.”
“No …” Sera shakes her head and bites her lip. The vampire closes her eyes and for those few moments, Maeve can see shades of a younger woman, a girl who grew up to be the woman that drew a dead Irishman’s attention. “I really like him, Maeve. I don’t even know him but … mon dieu, I like him.”
When the vampiress opens her eyes, there’s an intensity shining in them that takes Maeve completely by surprise. She blinks and looks away, simply to not feel as though she’s being sucked into all the intensity and passion the woman is feeling in that moment.
“It’s going to sound crazy, or like something I’d put in one of my books, but … when I met him? I felt something.”
“Here I thought you knew what lust was better than any of us,” Maeve winks with a smile. She tops off the woman’s drink and then pours one for herself. She’s as careful about drinking on duty as she requires her bartenders and servers to be; pissed to the gills and in their cups bartenders and servers do not for good service make. Doesn’t mean Maeve won’t indulge in a glass of something or other, usually a bit watered down, simply for the camaraderie that it makes the patrons feel.
There’s a beat before Sera’s mouth quirks up in a half-smile. She spins the glass in her hands and then tilts it up to drink from it. “It’s not lust. I kind of wish that it was. I know how to handle lust. If that’s all it was, then I’d just lure him into bed with me and show him a night he’d never forget… so long as I wanted him to remember.”
That sounds like the woman that Maeve knows. Serafine Roche is never wanting for company, unless it’s a choice to be alone by her own design. A snap of her fingers and crook of a smile, and the vampire could have any man (or woman) in the pub that she wants. The fact that she’s preoccupied with this bloke that she won’t call when there’s a handsome bloke been giving her the eye all night? That’s unusual.
“What it sounds like ta me? Someone’s got a wee bit of a crush.” Maeve leans her arms on the bar and smiles at the nearly two centuries old vampire who doesn’t look a day over thirty - and never will. “Tell me about ‘im. Might feel better, clear your head if you talk it out.”
As Sera stares down into her glass, worrying her lower lip between her teeth, Maeve thinks that the woman will refuse. So it’s a pleasant surprise when the vampiress begins to speak. Her voice is low and soft, the dulcet southern tones heavier and more distinct - something Maeve has noticed emotions bring out in vampires as well as in humans, that return to a native tongue and dialect.
“Bryn,” Sera starts. “His name is Bryn.”
“A good Welsh name,” Maeve identifies.
Sera nods. “Maybe. He is British but there’s a hint of something else in his accent. Not really London or any parts close in. I’m not quite recalling the Welsh sound that well.”
When she says it, Maeve remembers to whom she’s talking. She always holds that knowledge in her mind, but it’s statements like that which remind Maeve that Sera is far older than she looks, that she has seen and traveled the world and watched it change.
“What’s it about this Bryn that’s got your eye?” Maeve asks.
“What doesn’t?” Sera gives a mirthless bark of laughter. “He’s handsome, he’s smart, he’s a good conversationalist, he …” Leaning on her arms, Sera rests on the bar. “You’re going to think I’m completely crazy when I say this, or just waxing poetic, but when I first met him … something … it was like the world just stopped for a minute. Like there was nothing else except him and I felt it. I felt this connection that just went right to my gut. The world and the universe just came to this grinding halt and then started up again, but when it started, everything made sense, for just a moment. It was like I met him before or knew him or was meant to know him and it should have scared me to death, Maeve, but it didn’t. It felt right.”
Beat.
Sighing, Sera tilts her glass back and empties it. “Crazy, right?”
“You have a way with words, don’t you?” Maeve teases and shakes her head. “No, I dinna think it sounds crazy. But I’m a romantic.”
She lifts the bottle in an offer and pours more when the vampire nods. “You know that there’s an old legend. That all souls start on a journey as one, but eventually broke apart. One soul became two that move on separate life journeys but always seeking reunion with our anam cara. The other half of our soul.”
The vampire stares at her. Just stares at her. She tosses back the second glass quickly and her eyebrows rise nearly to her hairline. “Are you trying to tell me that he’s my soulmate?”
“You’re the romance writer. You don’t believe in soulmates?”
“I don’t believe that just because a man makes my heart skip and my panties wet means that we have some eternal mystical connection and are meant to be together.”
Maeve reaches out and pulls the cell phone closer to the “younger” woman. “Then why haven’t you called him, duckie? He’s not like other blokes for you, and you’re not behaving like he’s the usual bloke. He’s something.”
“Yes…” Sera pushes the word out in a puff of exhaled air. “He’s … it’s complicated.”
“Anything worth having or going for usually is. If he’s gotten to you this much, then it’s worth exploring, yeah?”
Leaving Sera the bottle, Maeve turns to take the orders from a handsome couple who’s just walked into the pub. She’ll leave the woman to think about it. She is only a bartender, with the occasional fit of whimsy, after all.
