Anything But Numb

[Harlequin]

He was right; she did have considerable knowledge on the physics of backyard wrestling. But, apparently he was used to girls that didn\'t. She came with him to the ground, either way, though her landing was better cushioned than Tau\'s, considering it was Tau she landed on.

"Oh, fuck!" she cursed, when she heard his head clonk against the dresser. Arms still wrapped around his middle, the singer tugged on them a bit "Hold on. I\'m stuck." Well, actually, they were both stuck, but after a bit of uncomfortable wriggling and no small amount of untangling limbs, Morgaine was able to maneuver herself off of him by rolling awkwardly sideways. From there, she got back on her knees, to a position where she\'d be able to help him sit up, at least, so that he wasn\'t all scrunched up, "Hey, you feel like sitting up, or d\'you wanna just...lay there for a minute?" Morgaine had certainly been there herself, which was the only reason she\'d asked. She held her arms out, either way, so that he could grasp them and haul himself upright if he so chose. If she\'d set out this evening with the intention of giving someone a concussion, she doubted she could have done a better job.

"I\'m sorry, dude," she said, a worried look painted across her face, "I totally didn\'t expect that to work." She was used to wrestling with her friends, and they were used to her tactics. "But thats what you get for tickling me."  She grinned, "But I\'m down for playing scrabble, or whatever –" Of course, her mind went in an entirely less wholesome direction – because she\'d liked having him above her, and the touch of his fingers on her skin – even despite the tickle-torture they\'d been inflicting – but she kept her trap shut. She couldn\'t help the devious smile touching the corners of her mouth, however, "–After I get a look at your head."

[Existentially Odd]

"I think... I\'ll lay on the bed," Tau laughed, accepting her offer of help to get to his feet, surprised to find his head actually ached with a dull throbbing once he was upright.  It brought back memories of the pain he\'d endured a few years before, thanks to the bear trap, and caused an internal shudder to boot.  "It worked very well," he told her wryly, sitting on the side of the bed and then gingerly laying back.  Even the softness of his pillow hurt the point of contact with the dresser, though, so he turned on his right side, hoping Morgaine would lie with him and he could still see her.

"After you look at my head," he began, feeling her hovering over him - at least his turn onto his side had given her better access to the pulsing spot at the back of his skull, "maybe you could play me another song to help me feel better?"  The suggestion was asked with enough guile that it could have just popped into his mind to request it, but really, he wanted to take every opportunity he could to listen to her sing and play while she was there.  The afternoon was fading and he had no idea how much longer she\'d stay; he had to make the best of it.

[Harlequin]

"Well, let\'s call it even, then," she said, chuckling as she helped him up, "As a cat, you can kick my ass three ways to Tuesday, but I\'ve got you beat on two legs."

She clambered up onto the bed shortly after Tau, and knelt at his side (which, when he turned, became his front) – once again running her fingers gently through the softness of his hair in search of a serious contusion (and finding two minor ones, this time – one slightly worse than the other).

His request surprised her, considering all of the bad talk that had come out of their first session – bad talk which had lead them, ultimately, to their current position. She couldn\'t help but keep a note of enthusiasm from entering her voice as she answered, however, because she\'d loved playing for him; his was the kind of childish wonderment that made her job the beautiful thing it was meant to be. Playing for him was nothing short of cathartic, and she was thrilled that he\'d asked her to repeat the experience. "Totally! So long as you promise not to try and jump out of your skin again," Then, lowering herself into something more akin to a crouch than a hover, "You\'re sure you don\'t want some ice first?"

[Existentially Odd]

"Ice?" he queried, having to settle the jolt of excitement that shot through him when she agreed to play again when she proposed this rather unusual... remedy?  In his mind, he pictured himself sucking on one of the little blocks of ice that his fancy new freezer had to offer... and he had no idea how that was supposed to help his wounds.  "How would ice help my head?" he asked, nonplussed.

Although he was impatient for the music to start up again, he didn\'t ask this question meanly, but rather more warily than anything.  He trusted that there would be some sort of wisdom to her making such a random offer but he was buggered if he could figure out what benefit there might be.

[Harlequin]

She furrowed her brows. He couldn\'t really be ignorant to this most simple of remedies, could he? Really? "It feels fantastic when you put it on bumps like yours," she explained, anyway, as she mentally wiped away the perplexion  that showed on her face, "I mean, you aren\'t bleeding or anything, but it\'ll help take down the swelling." She grimaced. She sounded like somebody\'s mom. Not his mom, though, because that would just be too creepy. "Honestly, there\'s nothin\' better than an old-fashioned ice pack for a bump on the noggin." Well that sentence certainly didn\'t help her image any. And then she remembered their previous conversation on the term \'old-fashioned\'.
 
So she barreled on, "Really, I\'ll show you. You got any plastic bags in this place?" She assumed he had one of those fridges with the built-in ice dispenser (who didn\'t? Except her. But that was because she lived in a motel.)

[Existentially Odd]

"Um... yes," he answered tentatively, for he bought meat and vegetables on a regular basis (not that he ate the vegetables regularly) and didn\'t always remember to take the material bag he had purchased to save the environment.  "I\'ll show you," he told her and got up off the bed about as carefully as he\'d laid down - if he hadn\'t been so intrigued by what she was going to do with a plastic bag while he sucked on some ice, he probably wouldn\'t have bothered.

They emerged to find Alacer no longer slithering about and her bedroom door closed.  Tau figured that meant she\'d transformed back to her human form (for how could a snake close a door?) and wanted some privacy.  Perhaps she was eating.  He decided he wouldn\'t close his door when they went back into his bedroom, then Alec would have a better chance of hearing Morgaine sing as well (though she\'d likely not missed the last performance, closed doors would have muffled the brilliance and lessened the impact, he believed).

As it turned out, there wasn\'t a great deal of mystery to what Morgaine wanted to do with the bag and the ice after all.  The shifter was fairly certain he\'d even seen this process happen on T.V. in some show or other before... but he didn\'t bring that up.  His freezer was a shiny silver and very new, he watched as Morgaine took the bag he\'d extracted from a drawer full of them and got a good fistful amount of ice from the dispenser into it.  She twisted the top together, wrapped it in a tea towel and told him to hold it against his head.

Ohhhhh.

Feeling silly, he refrained from doing any more than nodding before he led her back towards his room, holding the ice against his head.  It actually did help, which pleased him.  He paused in his doorway, right between the lounge area and his bed, and turned to face the beautiful singer.  "Did you want to stay in the bedroom or would you prefer sitting on a couch?" he enquired, willing to go wherever she felt most comfortable - he could lay on one couch while she had the other if they stayed in the lounge room (and Alec would be certain to hear the gorgeous noises Morgaine could make) or he would lay on his side of the bed if she was comfortable enough sitting up on it.

He didn\'t mind either way.

[Harlequin]

That beautiful singer almost ran straight into him when he paused and turned, but she caught herself and stopped short a few paces away, though she still had to aim her eyes skyward to see his face. It didn\'t matter to her one way or the other where they were (though she did like the privacy a closed door offered) but she assumed – wrongly – that he wanted to move, since he\'d brought it up in the first place, so she nodded. "Well, I\'d sit on the coffee table, " she told him, "It\'s hard to play on a chair with a back. But out here is fine. You get settled, and I\'ll go grab my guitar," She moved to scoot past him, considering the matter closed, unless he had a problem with her sitting on his coffee table.
 
 Happily for her, he didn\'t, so the singer scootched past him into the bedroom while he arranged himself on whichever couch he so desired. She was almost jogging when she returned -- guitar in hand, hair messily wound up and clasped in a black plastic claw clip retrieved from her guitar case.
 
Once she was back in the living room, she placed herself on the corner of the coffee table nearest him, and spent a few moments adjusting her guitar. Up close, it was easy to see why Morgaine had been nervous about where the instrument in her hands would be placed; that guitar had seen a lot of love. The wood was worn all the way through in some places - -creating tiny windows into the hollow body of the instrument-- and paper thin in others, right under where her hand caressed the wood when she strummed as she did now.
 
She chose a relatively low-key song for this performance, to spare Tau\'s head; a loose translation based on an old German ballad called Die Lorelei. She liked the story -- it told of the Lorelei, a siren whose song lead men to their deaths as they travelled the German river Rhine; though this version painted the Lorelei as more of a trickster, a beautiful devil of wind and waves and current -- and there were no jarring chords to aggravate the shifter\'s throbbing head.
 
"Feeling better, yet?" she asked as the final notes faded, feeling bad for selfishly hoping he\'d say no, so she could keep playing.
 
He wasn\'t feeling better yet, but he did have questions about the lyrics -- which she answered to the best of her ability. And so it went for the rest of her performance; she sang, and played, and he listened as exactly as one was supposed to listen to music; with every fiber of his being -- only stopping her to ask the occasional question about something she\'d sung. So absorbed was she in this rapport, Morgaine lost track of time itself, not to mention her surroundings.

[Luna Moon]

The snake woman heard all of their playing in Tau\'s room. She sat up in her bed when she heard them walk near her door. Listening intently, Alec moved from her bed to the floor right beside her door. Then she heard Morgaine singing. The woman was a great singer, she could give a siren a run for its money if she ever ran into one. During the performance Alec had inched her way out of her door and was now sitting outside it beside the frame, leaning against the wall.

As Morgaine continued to play and speak with Tau, Alec\'s curiosity got the better of her and she inched down near the lounge and was leaning against the nearest couch arm, where only Morgaine could see her if she looked. Morgaine was so into her song and music that Alec could have swore she had some Siren in her. Alec watched and listened curiously as the woman played.

[Harlequin]

Morgaine came up for air shortly after Alec made her entrance, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw the other woman leaning against the arm of the couch, "Jesus!" she cried, accompanied by a jangling of strings, which she put an abrupt stop to by slapping her palm down across them, holding them to the body of the guitar and silencing their noisome vibrations, "You scared the living hell outta me, girl," she declared, breathing deep to calm her razzed nerves.

It took a lot to rattle Morgaine, but Alec had just done an admirable job.

[Existentially Odd]

Tau watched Morgaine looking down towards the floor at the end of the couch where his feet were and frowned - both because he couldn\'t see through his own body and also because he\'d not been aware of Alacer moving about at all.  That was unlike him, but was evident of how enthralling Morgaine\'s music was, he supposed.

He swivelled positions, not raising his upper body above the midline as he crawled down to the other end of the couch and rested his chin on the flat, cushiony arm to peer over.  The fingers of his left hand were beneath his chin and he was surprised to find his head so close to Alec\'s, since she was hunched down, against the sofa.  He didn\'t say anything, just watched, waiting for her to reply to Morgaine first.

[Luna Moon]

Morgaine\'s reaction made Alec jump back slightly. She arched forward as if she were a snake again, then remembering that she was human, moved back to sit cross legged. She heard Tau move but when he popped up over the couch so close to her face she fell backwards trying to get away fast enough. She looked at Morgaine as she lay on her back for a minute. "Well, we should be even now," she smiled, then looked back at Tau. she blushed slightly at the thought of how close he popped to her. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked over at Morgaine.

"You have a lovely voice Morgaine," she said to the darker woman. Alec sat there looking between the both of them.

[Existentially Odd]

"She certainly does," Tau agreed enthusiastically, taking that as his cue to turn over off his stomach again and position himself so that he was mostly on his back, propped along the backrest of the couch and laying on his makeshift ice pack; he\'d got sick of holding it on his head ages ago and decided laying on it after wedging it at the crook of where the arm met the back of the couch was a more than acceptable solution.
 
"I could listen to her sing all night," he sighed, looking blissful despite the fact that his stomach rumbled a protest to that idea.  He glanced around, finally forced to acknowledge the shadows that had encroached upon the living room while he\'d been staring so raptly at Morgaine.  It was getting late and he was hungry... but he was loathe to stop the impromptu concert, lest she never play for him again or, worse yet, decided she had to go home for dinner (which he didn\'t doubt was the case but he wanted to draw their sojourn out as long as possible).

[Harlequin]

Morgaine laughed, "Hey, I could sing for you kids all night," She thought it wold be rude not to include Alec in that statement, though it was mainly Tau she sang for, "But I think my throat might have a wee bit of a problem with that." As she spoke, it became apparent that her voice was a bit ragged around the edges; barely noticeable, but there nonetheless. She hadn\'t paced herself like she should\'ve, but thrown herself into the songs, and now that she was no longer in the zone – and coming down from her high – her body reminded her of it by way of an annoying tickle at the back of her throat. She knew she\'d be fine in a couple of hours, but it irked her nonetheless.

Contrary to the shifter\'s belief, Morgaine was perfectly content to stick around until Tau was sick of her. And she didn\'t have mealtimes; she ate whatever was available when she got hungry (which she was, but not tummy-rumbling hungry, as Tau apparently was. She bit bit her lip to keep from smiling at that.) "I\'m going to be out of commission for a little bit. My vote goes toward lightening up your fridge, in the meantime." She grinned ingratiatingly – misguidedly believing that Tau had something resembling normal food somewhere in his coffers – and looked from one face to the next, as if trying to convince them that feeding her – not to mention themselves – was absolutely the best thing for them to do.

[Luna Moon]

Alec ignored Tau and instead concentrated on Morgaine\'s words. As she spoke of food Alec bit her lip and looked to Tau. "Do you have any normal food?" she asked, confused. Having never ate normal food herself, Alec was intensely curious. Being part snake wasn\'t that great. Alec stood from her place on the floor in one fluid movement and headed for the kitchen. She kept her mouth open and her tongue trailing across her teeth. Tasting the air she could taste the meat smell in the kitchen. Speaking so that Tau could hear her if he stayed in the living room, "Tau, is all you ever eat is meat?" She poked around a few cabinets and the fridge, not smelling anything particularly appitizing to her.

[Existentially Odd]

Embarrassed, Tau was forced to nod (head bobbing carefully upon his bed of rocky frostiness so that he didn\'t dislodge it) and give Morgaine an apologetic look.  "I really don\'t have any food you would like to eat - unless you enjoy tearing into raw steak or chewing on some of the fresh vegetables I have?  I cannot cook at all, so raw would be the only thing I could offer," he winced, gaze lowering worriedly as he tried to think of a solution.

Of course she would want a drink after singing for him so long!  Why hadn\'t he thought of that?  Just because water was the only thing he ever drank didn\'t mean it would satisfy his very talented guest!  He felt stupid, his cheeks pinking with embarrassment, casting about mentally for a solution to this problem.  When he had one, his expression brightened immediately, eyes opening wide and eyes twinkling eagerly.  "We could go out and eat?  Or order something in?"