Adventures in the Urban Wilderness, Part I

[Existentially Odd]

Tau awoke around seven o\'clock the next morning and stretched in his bed, curious as to why he felt so content that he was smiling.  A moment later, it all came back to him - meeting Morgaine, wrestling with her, eating with her, having her stay over and the upcoming shopping trip today - and his grin broadened into something that would rival a Cheshire cat\'s.

He bounded out of bed to find his guest still asleep on the couch - facedown, no less, with a small stain near her mouth that had to be drool - so he grabbed some clean underwear and a pair of jeans and headed for the shower.  As he passed her closed bedroom door, he realised that Alec was home again and he was pleased she was back safely, but there was no time to delay; he had to get ready for his outing!

After an efficient shower (though he did wash his hair, so that he looked as good as possible for Morgaine), he dried off, applied deodorant and got dressed.  He did a double-take when he opened the bathroom door, for he found his house guest standing on the other side of it, waiting to use the toilet.  He bade her a cheery good morning but only got a muzzy grumble in response that could have been interpreted as a greeting as she brushed past him to get to the facilities - but he couldn\'t be sure.  It didn\'t dampen his spirit at all - in fact, he found it rather cute - so he moved off to find a shirt.

Wearing a simple navy blue button-up business shirt (without the tie), he pulled on socks and sneakers while sitting on his bed, laughing when Morgaine joined him (by flopping face-first onto the mattress beside him).  Eventually, she began communicating in real words and figured out that he and Alec had nothing in the house that could constitute breakfast food so they would forego eating until they\'d got to the hotel and Morgaine had had her chance to shower and get dressed.  She told him frequently that any time before twelve o\'clock was, in her opinion, undignified, no matter how much sleep one managed to accrue the night before; it only caused him to laugh at her more.

Of course, deciding that the sooner they left, the sooner they got eating and shopping the better, only ended up bringing the bike trip closer.  He\'d forgotten about that bit.  That wiped the smile off his face altogether.  After being told twice that he was holding onto her too tightly (and the bike had only been started but driven nowhere yet), Tau gritted his teeth, positioned his hands more loosely at Morgaine\'s hips and decided he\'d endure the trip a lot more enjoyably with closed eyes.

It worked quite well.  Without having to look at the scenery whizzing by at a terrifyingly fast speed, he could concentrate on the movements necessary to make the trip easier for both of them.  He had excellent balance and, without the distraction of fear, he could rely on that to guide him into leaning and relaxing into the corners Morgaine took.  He was fairly certain her speed was nowhere near as fast as Ami\'s had been also, which helped.

Still, when he felt the machine finally come to a halt and heard the grumble of the motor die beneath him, he leapt off the bike as if he\'d been shot from a cannon.  Breathing a sigh of relief, he blinked a few times as he opened his eyes at last - and was instantly dazzled by the daylight.  He tried looking around to see where they were while he laughed, hoping his vision righted itself quickly.  "Well, that was not too hard!" he told Morgaine confidently (sounding anything but), tugging the tails of his shirt down, since it had blown just about his back as they rode.

[Harlequin]

Lucky for Tau, Morgaine had, in fact, kept her speed to a respectable 45 mph. In fact, for the whole 3-mile drive, she\'d been a model driver. Part of her felt like doing 70, just to scare him; it would\'ve been just comeuppance for getting her her up at  7 in the goddamn AM. She hadn\'t seen 7 AM in five years.

This was the same part of her that laughed as her companion hopped off her bike as if it had electrocuted him, despite his (sincerity-deprived) protestations of confidence. "That\'s the spirit!" she told him, with a kind of sluggish cheerfulness, as she cut the engine and dismounted, pocketing the keys.

The place they\'d come to was not a particularly nice place – one of those bi-level motels with open-air hallways that seem to show up in every R-rated movie, painted a bland shade of seafoam green. The parking space where they\'d come to rest was in between two other bikes – similar to hers in their rattiness, but distinct in their own ways. There was an empty space on the other side of the bike to the their right. Chance. He\'d had trouble sleeping ever since he\'d come from his short time with Lazarus. She clucked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, and sighed.

The absence of any thumping bass coming from any of the rooms told her that no one else was awake (not that she\'d expected them to be – her friends were sensible people) which was a good thing, in her book.

The five rooms belonging to the band (and, coincidentally, the ones they\'d parked in front of) could be easily identified by the expansive chalk drawing that covered the sidewalk, walls, and doors themselves. There was no real rhyme or reason to the piece, but it was oddly lovely nonethesame. Before approaching any of the doors, however, Morgaine turned to her guest, "Just to warn you, my place is a little bit, uh, untidy."  \'Untidy\' wasn\'t the half of it, but she\'d let him judge for himself.

[Existentially Odd]

"Okay," Tau nodded, distracted by the thought that his legs were wobbling and that he needed to not fall over, or Morgaine would laugh at him forever. Rubbing his thighs absently, he gave her as cheerful a smile as he was capable and hoped that she was still too sleepy to notice his recovering nerves over the bike ride - or perhaps she\'d think he was nervous about her untidy room?  Oh dear!

"I don\'t mind untidy," he assured her, looking around at the complex a little and only then fully comprehending that she lived in a hotel.  It seemed romantic to him; he wondered if it was cheaper than an apartment.  He prepared to follow her in, looking everywhere (especially at the chalk drawing).  "What is that picture... of?" he queried when they got closer, peering at the chalk artistry.

[Harlequin]

It was only now that she was facing him  there in the parking lot with his wobbly knees and false confidence that she realized how truly he hated the bike, and felt instantly bad about having made him ride with her. When it came time to go, she decided, she\'d tell him to call his fancy car.

"I\'m not sure. It changes a lot," she told him, on the subject of the chalk drawing, as she lead him toward her door – the third. "But it\'s always kind of...interpretive." She looked down, and the smudged face of some fae creature looked back at her. When she looked up, the face of the tarot Magician stared balefully past her; a new addition. "it belongs to our harpist, Vivianne. Her singing makes my voice sound like a scratched record, but she only sings when she thinks no one is around," she explained as she flipped open her wallet, got out her keycard, and slipped it through the lock, which turned red and beeped. She frowned and did it again. And, like magic, it worked.

She couldn\'t help but notice, however, that her do not disturb\' sign was gone. She pursed her lips, and narrowed her eyes suspiciously, opening the door only just enough to peer inside. Good, the cleaning lady hadn\'t been at it. After this was detrmined, she opened the door for her guest, "Just, er, watch your step," she warned.

Now, the place wasn\'t too  bad, by Morgaine\'s standards (meaning that you could see most of the floor), but by anyone else\'s standards, the place was a disgrace. Clothes of every description hung from nearly every surface (because her instruments were stored in the closet), and the bedside tables were covered in...well, mostly small plastic toys, from the looks of it, in various states of undress (or distress). A boom box dominated the surface of the dresser. One of the two armchairs the room had come with was turned over and – basically, it was a livable rock-star hotel room.

[Existentially Odd]

Tau nodded obediently and walked in after Morgaine, his curiosity piqued by everything he looked at (and he really wasn\'t civilised enough to be bothered by untidy, that certainly hadn\'t been a lie) - and he stared brazenly around the room because he was interested.

"So you don\'t think she would sing for me?" he mused as he walked over to the bedside table to poke at some of the little toys Morgaine had left there.  He was intrigued by the fact that his friend had said she knew someone who sang so much better than her that she sounded like a scratchy record by comparison (he had no idea what a record was, per se, but he could figure out the sounding better part).

He adored Morgaine\'s voice and was insanely curious to hear someone that could (supposedly) sing better than her!  That would be worth great effort to hear, in fact; he wasn\'t convinced it was even possible, but he was definitely convinced he should do all that he could to hear it.  "I could offer to show her me shifting in trade, do you think she would like that?" he asked eagerly, looking away from what his hand was playing with and visually seeking out Morgaine for her reaction.

[Harlequin]

Morgaine swept in after him, talking as she went, "Uh, maybe? Viv is kind of..." She searched for the right words, "A nervous wreck." She surreptitiously moved to the side of the bed opposite Tau and swept up the bra draped higgledy-piggledy over the lampshade on the bedside table. The one hanging from the ceiling fan was hopeless, though, and she gave it only a cursory glance, hoping Tau wouldn\'t notice it.

"She\'d have to get to know you first – could take a couple days, or a couple weeks. You\'re really nice, though, she\'ll like you. She and the, uh, the kid we knew in the other town – the shifter – they got along really well." As she spoke, she\'d been trying to pick up a little bit – only to realize that she didn\'t really have anywhere else to put any of the things she\'d picked up – so she gave up, righted the armchair, and dumped the armload of odds and ends she\'d picked up on the seat. Which was not the reason she\'d righted the armchair in the first place, she realized – so everything just went back on the floor, and she offered the chair to her guest.

"I\'m gonna go take a shower. You can have a seat if you want, or feel free to poke around." And then she was in the tiny attached kitchenette, turning the coffeemaker on to re-brew yesterday\'s grounds. What clothing she owned that hadn\'t yet made it to the floor since her last trip to the laundromat was stored in the kitchen cupboards (though she had to stand on one of the kitchen chairs to get at them), so it was from there that she selected the day\'s wardrobe, tucking each item under one arm. "Anything else you need?" she asked as she cut back through the main room, hesitating at he bathroom door.

[Existentially Odd]

"No, I\'m fine," Tau smiled serenely, dutifully walking over to the chair he\'d been offered as his host disappeared into the bathroom.  He knew it wasn\'t really polite to poke around so he sat in the armchair in an effort to dull his feline curiosity.

Of course, once he was sitting, the bra hanging from the ceiling fan was the first thing that caught his eye and he stared at it long and hard, fascinated as he imagined how it had got up there and how it would get down.  He was sorely tempted to find the switch, just to see if it would land how he thought it might - or whether it was hooked over the blade as firmly as it seemed it was.  Could Morgaine even reach to get it down?  Not without climbing something, he decided, but she certainly didn\'t seem averse to doing that.

He glanced around the room after that, prodding at the pile of debris at his feet just to see what was in it, but always finding his gaze drawn back to the bra over his head.  It held his fascination with an unrivalled singularity until, finally, he simply had to stand up and get it down.  The rationalisations of him being taller and it being a much easier task for him fell away as he batted at the bra, to test how caught it was, which way it wanted to fall - he even grabbed all that he could and pulled it closer to his face so that he could see what it was made of.

Eventually, the item of clothing was released with one hefty swipe and he caught it in his other hand, catching the movement in a nearby mirror and grinning at himself as he stood there with his trophy.  It was at about that time that Morgaine exited the bathroom, freshly washed.  He turned to face her, grinning unabashedly and holding his prize up by one end, so that it dangled beside his head.  "I got this down for you," he told her, not admitting the games he\'d played in the meantime, preferring to gloss over that feline side of his nature, which meant everything had to be a game (by whatever means necessary).

[Harlequin]

As she stepped out of the bathroom – damp-haired, fully dressed (in another pair of holey jeans and tight fitting T-shirt; though this one had a considerable V cut down the front)  fresh-faced and almost fluffy-tailed (she still hadn\'t had anything to eat – or a cup of coffee, even fresh-faced was quite a lot to ask of her at this hour) – Morgaine was suddenly intensely glad that she\'d lost the capacity to blush when she was sixteen. Because, of course, the bra he held was one of those elaborately lacy things that  every woman owns and wears only when she needs to feel extra-sexy, and which – for all their pomp and circumstance – leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Dammit said her brain, I knew I should\'ve given him something to do. At least he didn\'t go poking about in the bedside drawers. Yikes!

Bearing this in mind, she managed a smile, and a gracious – if slightly chagrined – "Thank you, Tau!" and held out one hand, "Can I have it back now, pretty please?"

[Existentially Odd]

"Sure," he said, his gaze caught by her newly-visible cleavage.  He tossed the bra he held with little more than a glance towards Morgaine\'s face, then returned to contemplating the firm, bouncing mounds of flesh.  He really wanted to press his face between them.

Suddenly, he blushed bright red and lifted his gaze up to Morgaine\'s eyes.  "Um... Alec says it is sexual harrassment to stare.  I\'m sorry," he apologised, trying to find something more appealing than a freshly-bathed Morgaine to look at.  In the whole room, he could find nothing, so he looked at the boom box because it had topped the list, and shoved his hands in his pocket.

"What should we do about breakfast?" he queried, making more of a show of his inappropriate gawking by not looking at her now that he was speaking to her.

[Harlequin]

And, boy, did they bounce as she stretched to snag the garment out of the air, only to find that her guest was staring very avidly at her chest – though he blushed an adorable scarlet and looked away just as she was about to suggest that he pull out his eyeballs and throw them at her boobs.

She smirked. God in heaven, how she loved being a woman. She took a step closer, and with the hand not holding the bra, she reached up (a rather long way up, at that) and grasped his stubbly chin, and guided his gaze away from her grade-A genuine farm-phresh old-school ghetto blaster (Or boombox, in the common tongue) and back toward hers, "She\'s right," said the singer, with laughter in her eyes, "But I don\'t mind, babe." Then she let go of his chin and stepped back, deftly changing subjects.

"I usually just have coffee, but Joe might have something bloodier that I could steal, if you want it." The smirk, however, was there to stay.

[Existentially Odd]

"Steal?" he enquired skeptically, uncertain where to look, now that she\'d just told him she didn\'t mind him looking at her breasts.  She seemed genuine - in fact, her body language was practically roaring at him to continue admiring her, her shoulders thrust back and a swagger in the way she talked, even - but it wasn\'t something he could immediately cope with doing.

Alec hadn\'t talked about whether it was okay to stare at your friend\'s body admiringly but he could only suppose that therein lay the difference.  He and Alec were... well, housemates and friendly, but he wasn\'t sure that they were friends.  She was a lot more nervous and reserved around him and their relationship was more and more glaringly different to his and Morgaine\'s as he spent more time with the singer.

"You should not steal for me, I can pay for my own breakfast when we get to the shops.  Just have your coffee now," he told his companion distractedly.  He\'d come to the conclusion that he was certainly supposed to look at Morgaine\'s chest and he was more than happy to comply with that request (even if it was physical, not verbal).  Instinctively, he moved closer, glancing occasionally towards her eyes and wondering if she would be as open to him touching them as she was to him looking at them.  Perhaps not his face to begin with... maybe just his hands?

[Harlequin]

Morgaine loved her breasts. They were, hands down, her favorite part of her body, and she owed much to them. In her mind, a good rack and a quick brain were better than any agent. How much free stuff had they gotten her out of? How many backstage passes had these gotten her in high school? How many broken bones had she avoided, thanks to those spectacular sweater puppies? She\'d lost count long ago.

In short, she loved them, and she saw no reason that the rest of the world shouldn\'t love them too.

Every time he glanced up at her eyes, he\'d find the same slightly chagrined expression. Usually people were more underhanded about it. She\'d forgotten that \'subtlety\' and \'interpretation\' were not included in her new friend\'s vocabulary. And – while she liked the attention (not to mention this little clue in regards to the fact that, yes, he was aware of her in such a way) – her face began to get jealous.

So she took away the temptation, and turned her back,, heading into the kitchen to pour herself breakfast. She simply didn\'t have the energy to explain subtlety just yet. "Suit yourself," she said, from the kitchen, as she searched under the sink for an unchipped coffee mug "But it wouldn\'t really be stealing. We share pretty much everything."

[Existentially Odd]

"Well... you said stealing," Tau corrected her in as righteous a tone as he could adopt, wandering away from where he\'d been standing to get a closer look at the stereo while she got her coffee.  He pondered his lesser eating needs - as he frequently did - compared to a human as he did, wondering if it was odd that such a large frame could be sustained by regular small meals or one large one every few days.

He also wondered if he could catch a bird while they rode along on the bike, and how that might scare her, like riding the bike scared him.  Still the thought of one just happening to fly close enough to them for him to leap off the bike and catch it, only to swallow the thing whole, was comical... if stomach-churning.

When he caught sight of Morgaine looking like she was finished her drink, he beamed a smile at her.  His silly thoughts had him better prepared for the bike trip - plus, the closing his eyes thing had gone quite well and he was ready to do it all over again.  "Ready to go?" he asked her peppily, practically wending his way towards the door around her gear (much like an excited cat is wont to wend in and around legs as it is faced with getting a reward).  Of course this cat did it backwards, without looking at anything that might have been in his way but sidestepping everything neatly and with unnerving accuracy.