i held it in but now it seems you've set it running free;

[knifeaddict]

It is early morning when she wakes, her face still buried in the blanket and unwilling to open her eyes to a fresh day. Better to take stock like this: it is morning, and it must be early, because the sliver of light that breaches her cocoon is grey still. Her head is throbbing – she drank the previous night. She wants water; all the same, she feels strangely... sated. A light groan escapes her, because that's not too surprising, either. Though not as frequent as it used to be, her increasingly escalating arguments with David occasionally lead her to his bed, no matter how angry, and no matter how much they tend to resemble a pair of duelists like this.

It can't be the other option – that option is too mechanic in what he does to leave her feeling anything remotely like pleased in the morning.

There is an infernal sort of noise outside, and she groans again. The worst part of New York, for her, has been the traffic.

New York.

New York.

She is not in the deck, she is not in her own bed, nor her husband's, and she pushes the blanket away to confirm what has at once ice-cold settled in the shape of knowledge in her bones. "Alasdair!

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[dreamsofwords]

He jerks awake, but he doesn't jacknife up into a seated position, the way that shriek makes him want to. His head hurts too much; trying to keep up with Thea in sheer volume of vodka martinis is frankly a terrible plan at the best of times. "Volume," he mutters as he claps his hand over his face. It has not hit him, yet, what the combination of sounds and fuzzy memories means. He does remember introducing Athena a number of places, culminating in his favorite dark and dim cocktail bar. He remembers it was crowded, as it always is, and that they had to be tucked close together in a booth. He remembers, after, wrapping his arm around her waist as they staggered back to the Plaza. He remembers the elevator.

He remembers pushing her up against the wall in the elevator. He remembers the two of them falling on the bed in a tangle of limbs and half discarded clothes.

Alasdair's eyes snap open, and he stares up at the ceiling, not seeing it so much as the whole...night starting to come together. Missing pieces, but enough there to know. "Oh," he says. Not the most eloquent he's always been, but here they are. Literally. Definitely no one wearing clothes in this bed anymore.

He drops his hands and looks over at Athena before gingerly propping himself up on his elbow. "Good morning?"

[knifeaddict]

For all the ways that she does drink, she is ever diligent in taking her water with it – rarely does she wake up hungover, and this day is no exception. It's partially a necessity, in the literally cut-throat world that is Spade castle. She cannot be caught unawares, no more than she can be hindered by light or slight noises.

All that talk of awareness aside, it does take him propping himself up for her to realise that she is, indeed as naked as he is – unsurprising now that memories of last night amble past the fuzz of recent sleep. The cover is quickly brought back up, as though that can undo the way he'd pinned her up in the elevator... Or the way she had ridden him on this very bed.

"Good? Have you gone mad? Do you have a death wish?" No, she has not lowered her voice.

[dreamsofwords]

Alasdair is a man who has been described as sweet enough times that it doesn't even annoy him. There are a number of acquaintances and coworkers - not friends, at least - who assume that he is somehow unaware of Athena's reputation, or such a sweet man would not be friends with her. There are, in a few words, a lot of people who have never bothered to look beyond the very surface when it comes to him.

He gives her a cool stare before he throws back the covers on his side of the bed and stands up, striding over to where he knows the acetaminophen and the bottled water are. He swallows three before he looks back at her, before he says another word. "No," he says. It's crisp and sharp. "I am not and I don't. But there isn't any going back at this point, is there?" He walks back over to hand her the bottle of water, if she wants it before getting back on the bed and pooling the covers over his lap. As if he hadn't just given her a show, he thinks. He doesn't let his lips twitch, but instead reaches out to tuck her hair back.

It isn't healthy, but he feels like he's lost the ability to panic, the last few years. The weirdly steady world of the Deck has been upheaval near constantly, and on top of that, there's his family. Full of highly capable and ambitious women, it regardless ended up being Alasdair who took charge when it came to his father and his failing mind.

None of that is here or there, of course. He drops his hand before Thea can push him away. "We can scream at each other if you prefer," he says dryly. "But we'll still have had sex after we're done."