Mixed Muses: The Morning After

[thefirststark]

He wakes up.  In a strange bed.

It takes a moment to remember where he is.  And who he's with.

As he gets his bearings, he smiles to himself and looks over at Alisa.

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[invisi_cipher]

Alisa takes a minute longer to react to the subtle shift against her, and wakes slowly, but not groggily. She looks up at Howard with a little smile, and props herself up on her arms.

"Good morning," she murmurs.

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

"Good morning, Alisa." The room is fairly dark, except for a clock and the light from the bathroom creeping through the cracks. "What time is it here?"

[invisi_cipher]

She turns to look at the clock, tapping it to make the face light up; it shows six-forty in the morning. "Do you have to be somewhere?"

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

"Eventually. I still have a Halloween party to get back to. Which I really don't want to do at six forty in the morning.

"I don't like doing anything at six forty in the morning." With the war behind him, he's come to cherish the lack of reveille.

[invisi_cipher]

"You don't have to go anywhere yet," she says. "If it's the one outside the door, it won't go on without you."

She stretches and settles back down, cheek pillowed on her folded arms as Alisa watches Howard. "You can stay for a while if you want to."

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I want to. What man wouldn't want to?" He reaches out to stroke her cheek. "You don't have anywhere to be, either?"

[invisi_cipher]

"Not for another seven hours," she says with a little smile.

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

He cuddles up close. "Then we should have some breakfast together. Maybe just enjoy the day."

[invisi_cipher]

"Maybe," she says, smiling. "Have you been outside yet to the lake?"

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

"Once or twice. Isn't it a bit nippy out there?" Whereas it's warm under the covers.

[invisi_cipher]

"Yeah..." she chuckles, tracing his cheekbone with her fingers. "Maybe putting on clothes would help with that."

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

"It might." He looks at the floor. "I might have to dash to my room, though. I came with a costume and even it's still Army gear, it's not good for a walk outside."

[invisi_cipher]

She leans over him to glance at the floor. "Maybe. If you have to," Alisa says. "Or we could stay here for a while."

It's early for her. Very early.

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

He smiles and stay for a while.

But eventually, when time has passed enough for him to feel hungry, he figures not to have too much of a very good thing.

"So how about that walk?"

[invisi_cipher]

"I think it could happen," she says, climbing out of the blanket nest and fading out of sight as she stands. "If you want to get breakfast."

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

Funny that this might be the longest he's ever been with her before she went invisible. And funny that she feels the need to be unseen even after he's seen so much of her.

"Walk first, or breakfast first?" He begins to dress. In his Rhett Butler outfit, apparently.

[invisi_cipher]

She turns from the door of the closet, where she's standing, and tilts her head at him; her weight shifting on the floor makes the tiniest of subtle skiffing sounds as she shifts her feet. "You might need to get more comfortable clothes first," she says, halfway between actually considering and amused.

She does blink back to visible as she pulls on a pair of jeans, though.

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

"I have something in my room." Pause. "No, it's more like the room has something for me. It's like my closet got copied."

He dresses carefully. He'll still need this outfit when he heads back home.

[invisi_cipher]

She smiles as she pulls on a shirt, a short shudder dying as she pulls it down and covers her bare torso. It might not have escaped Howard's notice that she's not wearing the usually requisite amount of layers, but what she does have is nicely warm.

"Should I come with you?"

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

"That only seems fair. I see your room, you see mine." A prelude, he thinks for a moment, to trying to find a way to show her his world, his time.

[invisi_cipher]

"I wish I could show you what it's like in the sixties. You'd like it," she says lightly. "You could see the school I got to."

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

A reminder, briefly, that Alisa is still in school. Howard isn't sure if he feels really old about now, or really young.

"The way you talk about your time, though, I don't know if you would feel comfortable in mine." Things will change. But not for a while.

He opens the door to a corridor where every so often he sees people who look relieved to have their regular clothes back. And yet no one is staring at his.

[invisi_cipher]

"I don't know. I...think I would be," she says. "But it would be different."

She reaches for his hand slowly, less shy than she expected to be.

[thefirststark.livejournal.com]

"We've have to...behave a certain way." He holds Alisa's hand a bit tightly. She is not the first woman he's slept with, of course. But this is something so different and new and good but strange. "It might be a lot to ask."

[invisi_cipher]

"Meaning I'd have to act like we didn't sleep with each other," she says. The distinction isn't one she's unfamiliar with, because while it's not the forties, it still gets her stared at when she goes out with any of the other students or the Professor.

"I don't think it would be too much to ask."