Sera D'Onofrio (toomuch4you) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-04-26 22:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | #october 2017, caius, caius x sera, sera |
Life is Short
Who: Caius and Sera
Where: Caius’s place
When: Wednesday October 18, after practice
Things were looking up. Sera was at least 90 percent sure she wasn’t going to scar from any of those glass cuts, she’d gotten an A on her English essay, she’d flirted with a hot dude the day before and she was about to spend the evening with her brother. What could be better? Well, okay, she could think of a couple of circumstances that would make her very happy, but she figured she’d work with what she had for the moment.
She’d just texted that she was on her way, and once she loaded her gym bag into the car and belted herself in, she made the drive to Caius’s house, singing along with the radio as she went. Sera loved fall. Honestly she couldn’t decide if fall or summer was her favorite season. Bikini weather versus pumpkins and spice and spooky Halloween stuff. Hard decision, that. Once she got to her brother’s, she parked and grabbed her huge Michael Kors shoulder bag out of the trunk, peeking in at the surprise she’d brought him to make sure it was intact. That being done, she hurried up the sidewalk and rang the bell.
Caius was more or less recovered from the weekend by Wednesday. The backlash cut into his back was still healing and sore when he moved the wrong way, but he felt stronger and more like himself. If he’d had more time to prepare to exorcise a demon out of a teenage boy, it all might not have hit him so hard, but some things couldn’t be planned for. Panicked kids showing up at Reagan’s door was one of them. It had been an inconvenience that set them back a few days on taking care of their own shit, but at least they’d successfully handled the problem.
Reagan was working and Caius was overdue for a visit with his sister, especially considering that she’d been in an accident, so he was back at his official home for the evening, at least. He’d been staying with Reagan every night, and his own house was starting to not feel like home anymore. He needed to get it ready to sell, but he also needed to break this fucking curse. He was puttering around in the kitchen, working on cooking dinner for the two of them, when Sera rang the bell. Caius went to open the door for her and gave her a smile, stepping back so she could come in. He glanced down at Sera’s arms and spotted the cuts. “Those don’t look too bad,” he commented, moving in to hug her once she was inside.
Sera hugged him enthusiastically with one arm, keeping her heavy bag in the other. “I think they’ll be fine,” she said. “They’re fading pretty well.” She had a couple beneath her hair where the glass had gotten into her scalp, but they hadn’t been deep enough to need stitches. “What’re you cooking?” she asked, twirling around once to use up excess energy and then heading toward the kitchen. “It smells great!” Once she got over to the counter, she pulled out what she’d brought him: an expensive bottle of mead she’d slipped from the liquor cabinet at home. “Ta da! I felt like you might need this.” Chances were her parents would never notice the loss, and she didn’t care much if they did.
Caius smiled even easier as Sera danced away from him. He shut and locked the door, then went to follow her, about to tell her what he was cooking when she revealed the liquor bottle. Caius lifted an eyebrow as he briefly scanned the label, a small laugh escaping him as he reached to accept it. “You are brilliant, this is exactly what I need,” he told her with a bright grin. He was sure this particular bottle had come from his father’s liquor cabinet instead of the store -- Sera didn’t have a fake ID as far as he knew -- but that didn’t bother him in the slightest. Anthony could afford a dozen more just like it. Caius leaned in to pop a kiss against Sera’s cheek before he turned toward the stove where some chicken was sizzling in a pan. “Chicken parmigiana,” he answered. “That good with you?”
“Brilliant and psychic,” Sera teased him. “I just add to my list of talents every day.” It was awesome to have parents who were into liquor and kept it well-stocked, because Sera actually didn’t have a fake ID. She probably could have, but what would be the point? She went to enough parties and had fun things to do; there was no need for an ID so she could go to clubs or whatever. Who had that much time in their life? Not her. She grinned at him when he kissed her and set her bag aside out of the way. “It sounds amazing,” she said. “Can I help with anything?” It smelled as if it were nearly done, but maybe she could get out drinks or set the table.
“It’s already a long list,” Caius told her with an easy smile. He knew she didn’t always have an easy time with the fact that she wasn’t magically talented, but she was becoming such an amazing person in other ways, Caius knew she would be fine in life without it. Intelligence and ambition and savvy made up for a lot, and Sera had plenty of those already, especially for her age. “Yeah, put some silverware out and whatever you want to drink.” He moved to check the pasta and determined it ready to drain, making a vague gesture toward the fridge. Caius already had a glass of wine out for himself, and Sera knew she could make herself at home in his kitchen. “So how was practice? Is everybody healing up okay?”
“It totally is,” Sera said. She was all about self-promotion when necessary. She knew where Caius kept everything, so she made short work of placing the silverware and finding herself a drink. She’d be driving home, so she opted for a glass of tea instead of anything alcoholic. The last time she’d really tied one on had been Jules’s party and she’d ended up regretting that later. She couldn’t even remember the name of the random guy she’d flirted with so hard, although she guessed it didn’t matter since she hadn’t done anything with him. “It wasn’t bad,” she said of practice. “Everyone seemed to be better. I think we got real lucky with that crash.” She made an amused sound at her own words. “I mean, if a crash can be lucky at all.” Caius would know what she’d been getting at.
He did, and he chuckled and nodded. It definitely sounded like they had been lucky, and the injuries could’ve been a lot worse. Caius hadn’t allowed himself to really entertain thoughts of what he would’ve done if he’d lost his sister, but they’d briefly crossed his mind here and there. The point was, he hadn’t. Sera was fine. There was enough at stake in Caius’s life at the moment, he didn’t need to torture himself with more what-ifs. He got their food all plated, chicken and pasta covered with fragrant sauce he’d made from scratch, and put a couple of slices of garlic bread on each plate before he went over to join Sera at the table. “Reagan and I have made a breakthrough on our curse problem,” Caius said once he’d settled and picked up his fork. “We found where Baron -- the witch who cursed us -- is buried. So having some of her remains will make it easier to find a descendant.”
Sera would have understood what her brother was thinking. Sometimes in the middle of the night she awoke from strange fragments of dreams where Caius was dead or Reagan was or they both were. It had been that way since he’d told her about the curse. The thought of losing him was unbearable, and she knew he felt the same way about her. She was occupied cutting up her chicken when he spoke, and her knife clanked against the plate as she looked up at him. “So uh, does that mean you have to dig her up?” she asked, her nose wrinkling. If it meant the difference between life and death, sure, but ewwww. Maybe not being a witch wasn’t the worst thing after all.
Caius had to laugh a little over the look on her face, not least of all because he’d had pretty much the same internal reaction. He twirled up a bit of pasta and nodded. “I’m not too worried though, it’s been long enough that she’s probably just bones by now,” he assured her. If they were digging up a fresher corpse? Caius would have more reservations. But unless Abigail Baron had cast some incredible preservation magic on herself, there wouldn’t be a lot left to her. “It’s still going to be a pain in the ass though, and I’ve got a backlash injury from the weekend, so ... Nate is going to help dig.” Reagan wasn’t getting her hands dirty, and as much as he and Nate tended to bicker, Caius was grateful for the help.
“Okay,” Sera said dubiously. “Bones is better than… other stuff.” Not a pleasant subject to think about, especially while she was eating. She shook her head slightly as if putting it firmly out of her mind. Maybe that would be the magic ticket, the thing that would get them out of this mess. She nodded once when told Reagan’s brother would help dig. Sera didn’t really know Nate, but she knew who he was. She was more inclined to think fondly of him for helping. “Backlash? What did you do?” she asked, picking that out to comment on because she felt the need to know if Caius was doing crazy magic things he shouldn’t be.
Bones were certainly better than ‘other stuff,’ Caius had to agree. Thank the gods that this curse had been put in place three hundred or so years ago. He just hoped the grave wouldn’t be too booby-trapped or wind up being empty or anything crazy like that. Caius was more than ready to solve this goddamn problem and move on with their lives. At her question, he gave a low chuckle and shrugged. “I uh ... exorcised a demon,” he said, glancing up at her. When Sera had been younger, he’d tried to avoid giving her too many details about dark magic, wanting to shield her a bit from the shittier parts of reality. But now she was old enough to need to know what they faced every day. “It had possessed a kid who’s friends with some other teenager that Reagan knows. They came to us for help. So ... I helped.”
“Seriously?” It wasn’t that Sera thought her brother would make up some huge lie just to mess with her, but that wasn’t something one heard every day. “An actual demon?” She was old enough now to know that terrifying things existed, but she couldn’t imagine being so close to one. How much danger had that put him in? She took a bite of pasta, trying to figure out how she felt about what he was telling her. The almost immediate conclusion was not great. What if it had gone wrong? “I know you won’t tell me,” she said when her mouth was clear, “but I’m dying to know who got possessed and how.” She’d wondered how her brother had gotten dragged into it, but if it was someone Reagan knew, that explained that.
Caius looked a bit regretful as he nodded an affirmative to her question. Yes, an actual demon. They hadn’t been raised in a religious household for obvious reasons, so Sera probably didn’t think of demons the way most people would, but they were distinct from your run of the mill spirits. More malevolent, more powerful, but mostly locked away in another realm. Until some idiot teenagers opened up a pathway with a cursed Ouija board, that was. He quirked an eyebrow and then squinted, trying to remember the names that Reagan had given him. They hadn’t passed around introductions at the time, but she’d filled him in later, but now Caius couldn’t really recall who they’d been. Just that the possessed one had been the sheriff’s son. “Probably better not. Witch-client privilege and all,” he said with a little smirk. “Sorry. Just ... promise me you won’t ever play with a Ouija board, okay? Most of them are harmless, but this one wasn’t, and that’s how the demon got through.”
Religion had never been a factor in Sera’s life and she wasn’t sure she’d missed anything, although it was nice to think of a benevolent being up in the clouds watching over them and intervening on occasion. But hell yeah, demons were scary. She’d seen enough movies and TV shows about them. “It was a Ouija board that caused it? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one, so I guess we’re safe.” Not that she thought every Ouija board was possessed, but it’d definitely be more prudent to leave them alone on general principles. She took another bite, chewed and swallowed and then said, “Do you cook for Reagan like this? She’s a lucky girl for sure. It’s amazing.”
Caius didn’t know if the board had been cursed or possessed by that one single demon or what. Reagan had destroyed it before he really got a look at it, and rightly so. But for Sera’s sake, it was best for her to just stay away from them in general. She had no means of determining if something like that was safe or not. Forewarned was forearmed and all that. He looked up at the subject change and smiled a little. “Sometimes,” he answered. “I’m much better in the kitchen than she is. We still order in a lot. But thank you. So, anything new going on with you? Got any boys with master chef potential on the line?” Caius smirked and popped some more food into his mouth.
Sera’s mom was a great cook, so she supposed it stood to reason that Caius might have picked up some of that. Sera herself hadn’t really tried to cook anything beyond making cookies a few times for one of the cheerleaders’ fundraising bake sales. She wasn’t in any hurry to prepare meals so she figured she’d wait for either college or when she really wanted to impress a guy to start. “You’re welcome,” she said. At the mention of boys with chef potential, she shrugged lightly. “I’m not sure. I mean, high school boys?” She rolled her eyes. “I met a cute guy yesterday but cooking skills weren’t discussed.” Sera was getting bored with her lack of love life, but there was no point in trying to force anything.
Caius had gotten accustomed to having rich tastes, and he wanted to keep up with that once he moved out on his own, so he’d taught himself to cook what he actually wanted to eat. The whole process of it was sort of soothing to him, when he actually made time to do it. It was like magic, there were ingredients and steps and an internal logic. Sera might find she enjoyed it later in life, or she might not. Whatever. Caius just wanted her to be safe and happy. “Oh yeah?” he asked in a prompting manner, arching a brow at her. “Not a high school boy then? What did you discuss?” It didn’t surprise him that the teenage idiots who populated Chamberlain High didn’t interest her much. Sera was leagues above almost all of them anyway, and Caius didn’t want her getting tied down to this black hole of a town.
“No, definitely not a high school boy.” Sera smiled, a faint tinge of wickedness in her expression. She wasn’t sure how old Noah was, but he had to be in his mid-twenties. That was very awesome even if she never got anywhere with him like she never had with Dom. “He wanted to talk about the town and how creepy it is,” she added to her brother’s question. “It was fun hanging out with him.” Sometimes she got so frustrated, wanted so much more than she could have right now that it satisfied something deep inside her when she could use her charms on men and not just boys.
Caius could read that wickedness easily, he knew how that expression felt on his own face, and he’d been seeing it more and more in Sera as she grew up. From an older brother perspective it was slightly worrisome, but he knew his sister wasn’t an idiot. She’d been taught how to protect herself, too. Caius hummed and nodded, then ate another bite of food before he answered. He shot her a meaningful look. “I do hope you’re being careful,” he said mildly enough. “You can catch much more than pregnant from strange older guys. Or any guys, for that matter.” Caius wasn’t going to lecture her and tell her not to have sex or anything -- he’d left his virginity far behind by the time he was her age -- he just wanted her to be safe.
Sera snickered. “I’m not planning on catching anything, thanks.” Especially not a baby. The thought was horrifying… but the thought of a disease was also horrifying, to be honest. She never went unprotected. The most action she’d had lately was the occasional booty call with Cam Malone, and he was also pathological about using protection, so it was all good. “I’m super careful.” She knew Caius wouldn’t judge her; after all, hadn’t he been the first one she’d told about her freakish losing-her-virginity experience? It was nice to have one person in her life she could completely level with without worrying about status or image or having secrets used against her.
“Good,” Caius murmured, and left it at that. Nobody ever planned to catch anything, but shit happened, and as long as she was being careful, that was enough to satisfy him. Life was too short to deny yourself pleasures, in Caius’s humble opinion, and good sex was one of the ultimate pleasures in life. He thought everything having to do with girls and purity and all that was complete horseshit, so he wasn’t going to ever judge his sister for her sex life. As long as she was safe and happy, that was all that mattered to him. Not just about sex, in all things, really. It was just another reason to get this curse broken, so he would protect Sera’s future children too. Caius was going to protect and fix this family in ways his father never had. But for now he was going to enjoy his meal and his sister’s company.