The morning after

[Emily Littleton] It has been a long night, at times sleepless, and Emily is not ready for wakefulness when the first light of dawn reaches through the windows of Jarod's flat. The aurora is rosy-fingered, softly spoken, and it tickles the edge of her senses. She stirs, shifting on the couch and drawing the blanket closer around her. Minutes pass before she shifts again, yawns a little, and begins to blink the morpheus from her eyes.

It is quiet. Blissfully quiet. And Emily does not start awake this time, does not gasp for breath against the sensation of asphyxiating. It is a quiet thing, waking up here, and though she has spent several nights in his flat she had not yet woken up on the couch.

Rolling a sleepy sound at the back of her throat, Emily pushes herself up to sitting, brushes her hair away from her face and looks around the living room to get her bearings. It feels different, waking up here and not waking up beside him, and that confusion (loneliness?) touches her features in small sadnesses, gentle consternation.

It is too earlier in the morning for Emily's self-protective side to have crafted a clever mask for her to wear. What she's thinking is plain: it is better to wake up beside him, than to wake up alone on his couch.

Another small sleepy sound, and she turns her face toward the growing daylight. There is no good morning for the dawn, not today.

[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod had gotten up early. Very early. He hadn't slept tremendously well the previous night, and Emily's presence on the sofa (and her midnight rustlings and talking) had been a large part of the reason, though she could hardly be blamed. He'd never been a heavy sleeper, and there was something about that alien form that made relaxing all the more difficult. So about thirty minutes before sunrise, he'd finally given it up as a lost cause and tip-toed carefully into the shower.

By the time he re-appeared, he was himself again, completely and thoroughly. And he felt a good deal better for having cleaned up and basked for a time in the permeating heat of the water. When Emily woke up, she might be able to hear him moving around in the main bathroom. And moments later he exited through the doorway closer to the living room, hair wet and skin still slightly flushed, and with a clean white towel wrapped around his waist.

"You sounded like you had a restless night," he commented gently as he walked over to kiss the top of her head.

[Emily Littleton] She had heard rustlings in the bathroom, but Emily's mind had been slow to put the sounds together with the concept of a shower. It was objectively interesting, somehow, this lag between her awareness and understanding of the early morning. She could think on it later, after the rest of her mind had ambled slowly into consciousness.

Emily scrubbed at her face and yawned again. The cobwebs were finally clearing when he made his way into the living room and addressed her. She watched him openly, with that same unguarded (unveiled) honesty that surfaced only in their most intimate moments. Dark eyes, blue and stormy colored, took in the familiar details of his form, weighed them against the form he'd worn the night before, and came to an understanding about the whole thing.

"Mmm," she answered, noncommittally, when he kissed her. It was at once a sound of appreciation and a not entirely verbal answer to his query (statement! [oh... you're awake]).

"I had the strangest dream," she said, her expression twitching as she briefly revisited the memory. Emily pulled the blanket closer around her, making room for him on the couch. She was not yet awake enough to get up and relenquish the cozy, warm place sleeping had made, but she made no secret of wanting him near (here [for a moment])

"I'm sorry if I woke you up," she added, belatedly, when she realized that he must have overheard something. (Maybe you weren't dreaming [maybe you weren't just hearing things]). She reached out to touch him, to greet him in a familiar way. It was not a needy thing, she did not grab at him or pull him toward her. Just let her fingertips say their helloes.

[Jarod Nightingale] "It's alright. It wasn't all you. I still... need to get used to that. Being so physically changed." As a man, it is a bit of an odd thing, really, rolling over at night and feeling breasts on your arm. "Wonder how I'll take to it when I can finally change into something... not human."

He pondered this to himself as he sat down next to Emily on the sofa, in the space she made for him. Briefly, he glanced down at her fingers where they reached out to touch him. "Do you want to talk about it?" By this, of course, he meant the dream. "You sounded a little... well, like you were arguing with yourself, actually."

But this wasn't so terribly strange a thing, to him, so rather than looking at her as if she'd just grown a third eye, he smiled, gently, and a bit knowingly. One of his hands reached out and rested on her knee, wherever it happened to be located beneath the blanket.

[Emily Littleton] Because it was early, and because she was still tired, and because she was still thinking through things in her own head, and also because of the night before... Emily did not look at Jarod like he was patently insane when he mentioned turning into something inhuman. It raised a little red flag in her mind, but little red flags were like compiler warnings: unimportant until you had to parse a kernel panic or some other catastrophic ending.

"I ... don't even know where to begin," Emily said, shifting on the couch to fit in beside him. She trailed her fingertips over his hand where it covered her knee, let her hand still over his, linger. She exhaled slowly, then shrugged a bit.

"I kept hearing voices," she said, and her mouth twisted wryly at the thought of just how insane she sounded. "Voices of people I know, trust -- mostly people I care about rather significantly."

"My friend, Ling, who called earlier in the evening. Gregory. His father. You, and Wharil. I even heard my own voice. Strange," she said the last word softly, mused it out into the early morning. "I think my subconscious was chastising me," she said, again wryly. As if it didn't seem so strange, after all, that her deeper mind might be displeased.

After a longer pause, she looked over to him and shifted the conversation deftly. " ... are you... glad to be back to yourself?" she asked, expressing a fair bit of naivety and curiosity. Emily was glad to have him back, well, as himself. The way their bodies fit in beside one another was proof enough of that.

[Jarod Nightingale] As Emily described her dream, it sounded progressively more and more familiar, until Jarod had to smile, in that oh-so-patently-feline way of his (as if he knew some delightful secret that she wasn't in on). He didn't interrupt, though, not even to correct her on her assumption of a disgruntled subconscious. (Maybe she wasn't entirely wrong, to that affect.)

Instead he reluctantly retracted his hand from her knee and stretched his arms up into the air, yawning and arching his back. Another very feline habit of his. The movement was smooth and oddly seductive, despite being so casual. "Mm," he murmured an assent as he let his arms fall back to his sides. "Quite. Not that being able to masquerade as the opposite sex doesn't have its perks. But having tried it a number of times now, I can say with certainty that I prefer the body I was born with. Even if you do have better orgasms."

He let that little tease sink in with a knowing grin before continuing on. "I think your avatar was talking to you. In your dream, that is. Mine does it all the time. You get... used to it, I suppose."

[Emily Littleton] "We do?" she asked, letting her curiosity about the subject usurp their other conversation. Then, as if she'd suddenly realized she'd gotten caught talking out loud, Emily blushed rather significantly and looked down at the blanket in her lap. she blinked a couple times and swallowed back whatever other questions might have come forward. (Self-editor, you can join the party at any time!)

He pulled his hand away, so she pulled hers back into her lap. He stretched, and she watched him appreciatively out of the corner of her eye. But she did not move back in beside him when he settled. It was an odd, awkward time, early morning, and so they were a little flawed in how they settled into being near one another.

"My... Avatar?" Emily asked, confused, clearly drawing different meanings from that word than he had meant. Perhaps she meant a many-meters-tall blue creature from the recent sci-fi movie, or the more mundane internet vernacular. Neither of which she would have expected to talk to her in her dreams. "Ah... are Avatars often displeased and pushy?" she asked, with her eyebrows elevated and the pink just beginning to fade from her cheeks.

[Jarod Nightingale] "They can be, at times. Usually, if they bother to talk to you at all, it's because they want to push you, or pull you, in some direction or another." He paused to contemplate this, then he reached over to pull up the blanket that Emily had so cozily wrapped around herself, invading the cocoon of warmth with his own body. He was pushing her back and crawling over her gently, hands at her sides and lips gradually finding their way to her throat. His fingers tickled a little as they explored, and he applied delicate little kisses up the side of her neck.

A terrible distraction. Was this how he planned on delivering all of his lessons?

"An avatar is a shard of the spirit world that's connected to you. All of us have them. Anyone who is Awakened, I mean. Some of them are louder and more disagreeable than others, from what I hear." He said all this between kisses, against her skin, then he let his hands slide to the cushions to prop himself up a little as he looked down at Emily. "As for orgasms, they're actually pretty similar, but yours are more... acute. And they can last longer. For this I will be forever jealous."

[Emily Littleton] A terrible distraction, indeed. And a rather inappropriate mix of topics. His body was a welcome invasion in her warm, safe blanket haven and Emily shifted beneath him to accomodate his length above hers. She laughed, a little when his fingertips tickled against her skin. And there were small, barely shrouded sounds when his mouth found her skin and laid kisses against it.

She tried, terribly, to pay attention to what he was saying, but only the part about orgasms truly came through. Surprise? Not quite, with little more than a towel between them. She'd worn a thin tee shirt to sleep, and left her jeans folded neatly on the floor beside the couch. Her legs slid against his, skin meeting skin where the towel did not get in the way.

Avatars. She was supposed to be learning about avatars. Or orgasms. Mmm, Emily had learned quite a bit about orgasms from him already.

(Focus! [Not on that.])

[Jarod Nightingale] "I'm a horrible mentor," he laughed gently at himself, realizing perhaps how little use he really was to her if all he ever thought about was having sex. "Tell you what, we can talk about avatars, and magic, and whatever else you want to learn about, after breakfast. And I will be completely..." he bent down to kiss her neck again. "...and thoroughly..." Then her jaw. "Professional." And finally, her lips.

"But I can't focus right now. I just woke up, and it's been awhile, and I had to spend yesterday as a woman. I so, so, so want to fuck you. Like, biting and moaning and multiple-orgasm fucking." (Maybe Emily would understand the impulse. They were both rather evidently pleased to have him back in his male form, including the return of a certain seven and a half inch appendage. Well, it wasn't that big yet, but it was getting there.)

"Any chance I can convince you?" His voice dipped a little, becoming softer and a little more husky, and this time when he went in to kiss her neck, he nudged her head back a bit and bit down delicately on the tender skin.

[Emily Littleton] She laughed again, and it was a freer sound. Each time they were together, a little more of Emily surfaced and a little more of the mask(s) she wore faded away. There were times, of course, when he couldn't see through the facade, but more and more Jarod was getting to see a lighter, warmer personality beneath the accents and artful half-truths. In some ways, it was like looking backwards in time, unearthing bits and pieces of who Emily had been (had been becoming) before something went terribly awry.

So she laughs when he chastises himself, and her mirth tangled up with his for a moment. Then he was biting down and her breath hissed in through her teeth, caught in her chest, and left her dizzy.

"God, yes," she managed, and entirely in English. The words were heady, distracted, and unequivocally clear. As if to stave off any confusion that might linger, her back arched, bringing them closer together.

In a moment, before she lost the train of thought entirely, she managed to eek out the words, "But... Avatars? Shards of spirit world. Often bossy. But expected, yes?"

I'm not going crazy, yes?

If he was a terrible mentor, then Emily was a terrible student. (More words! [only ever words]) One far more interested in how his body fit against hers, right now, than the nuances of her Awakened life. She wrapped a leg around him, dragged her fingernails down his shoulderblade and let her breathing shallow, keeping it taut (quieter) in her chest.

[Jarod Nightingale] "Mhmm," he murmured in response to her question. "Entirely expected."

And then he was grabbing hold of her and pulling her with him off the couch, and at some point the blanket dropped to the floor, leaving him to carry Emily's barely clothed body against his chest as he extracted her from her temporary bed and transplanted her to a real one.

And there wasn't any more talk of avatars at all for a rather long time after that.