Outside Milliways

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It's a nice day outside, sunny and still but not too warm, and Kaidy has had a long and busy (though not entirely unproductive) week, so she's doing something she always finds calming: she has targets set up on the lawn outside the bar and is practising with her handgun.

She's not a bad shot but it doesn't come naturally to her, which means she has to concentrate. It used to frustrate her that not everything came easily, but these days - now that she's got the knack - she actually quite enjoys having to concentrate on something in order to get it right. It's an opportunity not to think, and the mechanical repetition - load, lift, aim, pause, fire - is oddly soothing.

So she's smiling to herself faintly, as the bullets march closer and closer to the bullseye.

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Well. She has all her clothes on for the moment.

"House? Lights to three."

And with the lights up a bit (not startlingly bright, but good enough to see by), there's at least an improvement in her chances of seeing him naked again... preferably after the hot food has vanished, admittedly.

She grins, leaning in to give him a quick kiss on the cheek as he sits up. "I might have done." She takes both plates off the tray, sitting down next to him on the bed with them. "Ketchup or brown sauce?"

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Martin is suddenly rather aware that he hasn't brushed his teeth or anything, and surely he ought to have done, but he hasn't really had a chance, and anyway he doesn't have a toothbrush with him...

"Oh, er, brown sauce please." He smiles at her.

He'd really quite like to nip to the bathroom and wash his hands and wake up a bit before eating, but realistically this would mean extracting himself from the sheets, as well as actually finding the bathroom.

And his pants. At some point he really should find those. Yep.

(The bathroom is probably the door they didn't come through from the Bar, but he'd rather not take the chance that actually it's a hallway while he's naked.)

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Pants are highly over-rated... most of the time.

Kaidy laughs, passing him the right plate. "I'd apologise for vanishing on you, but it didn't seem like you missed me."

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Martin takes the plate gratefully. He is far hungrier than he'd thought.

"Thanks."

The bacon is still hot, the brown sauce perfect, if a little drippier than is actually useful.

"Be fair, I was asleep." He says, through a mouthful of sandwich.

"I was tired." He adds, a little indignantly a moment later, while licking brown sauce off his thumb.

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Kaidy smirks. "After last night, I'm not surprised."

Although her own breakfast is also disappearing at a rate of knots.

[honestlyapilot.livejournal.com]

Martin is too invested in his breakfast to choke on it. Which is probably a very good thing. He is quite embarrassed. But also a little bit proud. And definitely a bit pleased. His smile hovers somewhere between the three emotions.

He coughs a little and finishes his mouthful before daring to look at her again.

"Well." The blush crosses his face, and his ears start to redden. "Yes. Um." He squirms. (Remembering the night before during breakfast is not entirely conducive to eating that breakfast.) "Er, could you pass- um. Tea?" He asks, waving at the mugs on the desk.

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Interesting thing about that blush: given that Martin is currently essentially naked, and is so pale that under the right light he's probably capable of blinding small children, it's possible to watch the traces of pinkness bloom all the way down his neck and beyond. She wonders if, under the right circumstances, the blush would tint his entire body pink, and then follows it up by wondering exactly what those circumstances would have to be.

Aaaaaand hold that thought.

"Gimme a sec," she tells him (also through a mouthful of food, because she is every bit as grown-up as Martin is). She undoes her boots in between bites of sandwich, pushing them off before toeing her socks into the remains of last night's clothing, and stretches as she puts down her empty plate and stands.

It's warm in here - the air-con has had it again; the damn thing spends more time broken than fixed - and frankly Martin looks incredibly appealing right now, all ruffled hair and rumpled sheets. So, before she retrieves the tea from her desk, she peels off first her tank top and then her combats, maybe a little slower than normal but not exactly playing for his attention (although she totally is), leaving her in black bra and boxers as she pads the few steps to the desk and carefully passes Martin his mug.

Carefully, because whilst she is more than happy to show off for him, she'd really rather he didn't spill tea over her bed - especially since she plans on getting back into it quite soon.

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Martin ducks away from her gaze, still blushing, and takes another bite of his sandwich. He's almost finished, and yes, he is rather bolting it, but as he explained, he is hungry, and it's not as if Kaidy's slouching on the speed-eating front herself. He stuffs the last bite into his mouth, licks some escaped brown sauce off his fingers, and looks up from the empty plate to find that Kaidy is in the process of removing her clothes.

...

Martin watches, somewhat aware that the flush that's covered his face and spread to his shoulders and chest can probably be seen from space. At one point, while she's busy kicking her trousers off onto the floor and he's busy looking with no small interest at the spread of inked feathers and fur across her thigh, he realises that he really ought not to stare, but then he can hardly help it if she's both gorgeous and wearing only underwear.

And then she's handing him tea and he has to balance the plate on his knees while he swigs at his drink, reasoning that if there's less in the mug, he'll be less likely to spill it on the bed. It's slightly too hot for swigging, but he doesn't quite burn his mouth, just stings it a little.

"Thanks." He manages to get out. He's smiling, but he hasn't been part of a lot of morning afters, and he thinks he might have forgotten the rules.

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"You're welcome."

Kaidy smiles back at him, her grey eyes mischievous as she leans in to give him a kiss, swiping his empty plate from his lap (and giving him a pretty decent view of the tattoo a few inches below her left collarbone) as she does so.

"And you are allowed to look, you know," she reminds him amusedly, before she withdraws to deposit his plate back on the tray on her desk. And, oops, to bend down and pick her own plate up from the floor and pile it on top of the first. "If you're really lucky, I might even do a twirl."

She picks up her own mug, sipping from it as she watches him. Well, if Martin's allowed to look at her then she's definitely going to look at him, and besides the blush (now approaching at least mid-torso; she really must test out her earlier hypothesis at some stage) she's rather intrigued by all those freckles.

Well, she didn't have much opportunity to study them last night.

[honestlyapilot.livejournal.com]

The kiss isn't much more than a press of lips and Martin's eyes do flicker to the curling script and away again as she moves.

When she says he's allowed to look at her, he's embarrassed and ducks his head. He does smile though. Embarrassed or not, he's pleased. His eyes flick back up from his tea to see her bending to retrieve her plate. His blush probably couldn't get worse than it already is, but she's certainly not helping it get better any time soon.

He smiles up at her from the bed, and sips his tea while he tries very hard not to think about Kaidy twirling. Or other things that are not entirely helpful while he's only wearing a sheet.

The quiet stretches for a moment or two, before Martin realises that he should probably say something... Too bad he can't think of anything to say. Um...

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Well, it is nice to have his attention. (Because clearly she wasn't getting enough attention from him already. Clearly.)

After a few moments she moves to sit down next to him on the bed, her mug cradled safely between her hands.

"Oh, and by the way," she says innocently, "Your shooting was very good, too."

Well, she did say she'd tell him later. And she is, of course, only talking about his talents with a gun. Ignore the 'too'.

[honestlyapilot.livejournal.com]

It's probably a good thing (at least for her bedding) that he's only staring at his tea rather than drinking it when she speaks.

Shooting? He's almost entirely forgotten what started this whole business, and he's about to take her comment as just innuendo when he remembers that he did, in fact, do some shooting during the evening before. And somehow that lead him here. He's still not entirely sure how.

"Um. Thank you?" It might be a question. His blush really, really isn't going away, though he is still smiling through it. He takes another swig of his tea and tries not to look too sheepish.

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Only partly innuendo, thank you.

"Mmm, no." She smiles at him, but she does wait until he's swallowed his tea before her arm snakes out, gently turning his jaw to bring him just within range for a careful, lingering kiss.

"Thank you."

Call her crazy, but she suspects not many people have ever told Martin he's good at something.

[honestlyapilot.livejournal.com]

Martin's ears actually look like they might be painful, they're so red. But honestly, there's a lot of pleasure mixed up in that embarrassment. Yeah, he's not used to being in this situation, he's not used to people fancying him and especially not used to people who follow through on that fancying, but he isn't entirely inexperienced, and he's pleased that (at least on the face of it) she had as much fun as he did.

Martin sinks into the kiss easily. He does try to keep in the back of his mind that he's holding a mug of tea, but that sort of thing doesn't matter as much as she does.

His expression is a little dazed coming out of the kiss, and then she says thank you, and it's morning and he's not even entirely sure why she's saying it, but there's really nothing left for it but to grin at her, squished morning face and bed hair and all.

Kaidy is definitely not wrong in her suspicions.

He ducks his head, still grinning, and takes another swig of tea. He thinks as he does so.

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Kaidy is laughing softly as she pulls away, her grey-hazy eyes still watching him as she takes another pull from her own mug.

He has pretty skin, smooth and warm and pale under the fluctuating blush; soft and unblemished where hers is calloused; paintbrush-flicked with freckles rather than scarred or tattooed. She's tempted to reach out and touch again, but maybe not before he's finished that tea, unfortunately.

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Martin takes another swig, nearly down to the dregs now, and peers over the side of the bed, searching without being too obvious. He hopes.

He grips the mug tightly for the last few swirls of warmth at the bottom.

"Um. Sorry, but er, where's the bathroom, and do you have a toothbrush I can borrow at all?"

He's trying not to be awkward, but unfortunately awkward is built in.

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"Bathroom's over there," Kaidy says, pointing to the door on the left. "Once you're in there, you may want to click the lock on the far door," she adds. "It leads to Ariel's room. Afraid it's a no on the toothbrush - Ariel might well have one going spare, but waking him up to enquire would not end happily right now."

She smirks at him, well aware of what he's looking for. No, she won't be helping him find them - at least, not unless he asks.

(It could be worse - she could have deliberately kicked them under the bed or something. Which, come to think of it, she really should have thought of earlier. Damn.)

Behind the door, the room is small and narrow, walls covered in a hodgepodge of different tiles, with a high, curved ceiling: it's more of a wetroom than a bathroom, with only a shower, toilet, mirrored wall cabinet and sink. It's all very clean, and on the sink there is a toothbrush with a bright yellow sticky note on it.

K,

For your ginger. You can tell me I'm wonderful later - much, MUCH later.

A.

[honestlyapilot.livejournal.com]

Yes, okay, he's looking for his pants. He only wants to get to the bathroom without blushing himself to death.

"Great, thanks." Martin smiles at her, drains the last of his tea, and plonks the mug down on the nearest flat surface. He scootches to the edge of the bed and kicks his feet out from the sheets. He very carefully doesn't look at her as he scans the floor, locates his pants and drags them over with one foot.

Awkwardly (is there any other way) he wriggles them up to his knees and then in one motion stands and pulls them the rest of the way up, abandoning the safety of the bed sheets.

He doesn't want to think about what he looks like, mostly because he suspects 'pasty' and 'scrawny' are the two adjectives that most readily come to mind.

He chances a glance at her and gestures to the bathroom door.

"Right. Um. I'll be, er, right back. I'll just-" He waves vaguely. "Yeah."

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"You're no fun," she tells him good-naturedly, but doesn't tease him further as he crosses the floor: she's been known to go a bit far, but she's not deliberately mean. And, yes, he's skinny and pale, but she's blocky and battered; so what? She still thinks he's cute.

She blows him a kiss when he looks back at her, anyway, and reaches for the plane manual on her desk as he turns to the door... then changes her mind and sneaks up on him, wrapping her arms around his waist and planting a kiss deliberately at the base of his neck before letting go again.

Her expression, as she drops back on the bed and reaches once more for her book, very clearly says so there.

[honestlyapilot.livejournal.com]

He grins at his feet as he shuffles into the bathroom, the kiss still tingling on his neck.

It's nice. Nicer than he thought it would be, though he's not entirely sure what he was expecting. He isn't expecting the toothbrush and the note. The kindness makes him smile, and reminds him to lock the door.

The 'your ginger' part makes him raise an eyebrow though.

Martin sorts himself out as quickly as possible, and post-teethbrushing, he scrubs at his hair in the mirror, attempting a fix. It's sort of futile.

When he's as presentable as he reckons he can make himself, he takes a deep breath and exits the bathroom.

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Well, it wouldn't be Ariel if it didn't involve at least some trolling.

By the time Martin emerges Kaidy is half-sprawled on her bed, already partially immersed in her book: it's a new one, found by Threnody the last time she went shopping, and for a plane that might be in the future for Martin but which is definitely retro for her.

She looks up, however, as he pushes the door open, smiling up at him.

"Hey, Red. Better?"

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"Um yes. Thanks. I found a toothbrush by the way. Ariel left it. And this."

Martin crosses to the bed, trying not to think about his near-nakedity and passes her the sticky note.

He wonders for a moment if he can get away with getting back under the covers, but since she isn't it would be a little odd for him to climb back in, so instead he sits.

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She pushes herself into a more upright position before reaching out to take the note from him, and laughs when she reads it. Trust Ariel.

"He's such a prick, honestly." She runs her hand slowly down Martin's bare back from his shoulder, her slightly roughened fingers gentle as they trickle over his skin. "He does know your name..."

She doesn't in any way argue with the 'your', though.

[honestlyapilot.livejournal.com]

Martin's eyes flutter shut as her hands skims along his spine. The touch is somehow like a tickle and yet entirely un-ticklish. He shivers a little and swears he can feel the goosebumps rising up in its wake.

Mostly he misses what Kaidy says, which is unfortunate.

"Mm-hmm." He murmurs a noise of general sort of agreement. To be fair, even if he knew what he was saying, Martin probably wouldn't dispute the 'your' either.

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Kaidy smiles, watching his face...

And does it again, fingers stroking lightly over soft warm skin, all the way up his back to his shoulder.

Well, he's been acting almost - almost scared all of a sudden, walking on eggshells, the way he was the night she first went to his house. As if he thinks that at any moment she can and will change her mind and kick him out. Maybe - hopefully - this will convince him she wouldn't dream of it.

Maybe.