Log [Alison, Haroun] Dates and dates and more dates and... dates!

[x-dazzler.livejournal.com]

Saturday, late afternoon. Sometimes, the grandest of plans end up colliding, just a bit. Though when you're determined to make things work out one way or another, it tends to work out all right. Featuring Alison cleaning up stuff (at the last minute) and big romantic ideas.

Looking up from her book at the clock idly, Alison then returned to her reading. And stopped, book flying as she pushed up from the bed to look at the clock again.

"Oh crap."

Scrambling for the book, she gave up on even finding a bookmark, and instead just snapped it shut and set it back on a shelf - and then retrieved and set it back on the book shelf, with the other books. Standing up in the middle of the room she eyed what had to be picked up, cataloguing what could be stuffed in her 'to be cleaned later' basket and what had to be put away or else. And she had all of five minutes to do so. Taking a deep breath, she started to pick up things after tipping the basket cover open, sometimes folding and piling away things on the bed, sometimes just throwing things at the basket without a second thought. By the time she'd draped the still damp towel from her shower on the towel rack in the bathroom and stepped out, the room actually looked… picked up.

"Huh." The door to the main room opened, Haroun's unmistakable tread announcing his arrival, just as she spotted one last pile that had been previously hidden, behind a chair.

"Eep!" The mad rush for it was successful, thankfully, and she was closing the lid of the basket and taking a wide step away from it even as Haroun walked in the bedroom.

Haroun walked in with a smile on his face. "Hey." he said, grinning at her and then looking around. "I have to hand it to you. The place looks good." he said. "You've really taken my advice to heart. But I have to ask you a question. Do you feel like going out tonight? Because I just happen to have two tickets here in my hand..." he said, flashing her the tickets in question.

Her eyes did not flick to the side, to the blouse hanging from the door handle behind the door. She'd nab it and throw on the way out, while he has his back turned, after luring him into the living room area. That was the ticket! "Hey!" A beaming smile answered him, until she spotted the tickets. Wait. Tickets. Today? Not today! No no no, no tickets today! "What are those for?" She wandered closer to him, intent on her plan to lure him out of the bedroom, eyeing the tickets but not reaching out to nab them just yet.

Haroun grinned. "It's a sekrit." he said with a laugh. "Trust me! So - you up for it? A little alone time, just you and me ..." he said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

She did not whine. Bravely so, she did not even whimper or moan in dismay. He looked so pleased with himself. "A surprise?" The confirmation receipt she'd printed out earlier and folded up was now burning a hole in her back pocket. "Really?"

"A surprise." Haroun looked at Alison, and for once saw through her attempts at deception. "But hey, if you've got something else planned, it's cool. Nate and Moira could use a night out, I can give this to them..." he said, letting his voice trail off. He was so looking forward to going out tonight, and he thought she'd have been delighted at the prospect. She'd been bugging him that he needed to take his nose out of a book, step away from his laptop, and go do something fun.

No sad face! Ack! Stepping forward, Alison cheated by way of nabbing him in a hug, leaning against him firmly. "Oh no you don't! Mine!" Wriggling around she made a determined grab for the tickets, intent on not tearing them up should she get a lucky shot in. They could figure something out. And the sad face killed her, each and every time.

"You don't have to go if you don't want to..." he said stubbornly, although she was already chipping away hard at his reluctance. "Really. If you've got something else you'd rather be doing..."

"It was with you anyway!" she said quickly, stealing in a quick kiss - which was cheating and she was going to shamelessly keep doing so. "I want to go! I'd just had this idea too but hey, we can always work it in some other day because that's fine and I want to knoo-" she blinked, peering at the tickets she'd manage to liberate from his grasp, spotting only a few words on it - but those words were more than enough. "Ooooh." 

Haroun laughed. "All right then, I can tell when I've been outmaneuvered. We need to leave here by six. It's four now. We've got a little bit of time to kill, if you're interested..." he said with a leer, then kissed her. Hard.

"Mmm," was pretty much the only reply he got during that particular moment, Alison vaguely making some attempt to reach the paper in her back pocket at one point. "Distracting me. No fair." The words were a touch breathless and she grinned up at him, digging the confirmation slip from her pocket to press it against his chest. "That was my idea?" She decided that getting another kiss was a fine idea though, so rather than let him look right away she did just that, the paper scrunched up between them in the process.

Haroun claimed that kiss first, and only when he'd done a most thorough job of things (she was hyperventilating a little) did he pick up that piece of paper and look at it. "Nice." he said, reading it quickly. "Let me go make a phone call, then we can, err, go waste a little time?" he said with a nod towards the bedroom. He made his call quickly, in rapid-fire Arabic, and by the time he had hung up he had another grin on his face. "This should work out nicely..." he said.

She was standing still by the time he turned around, though his phone call had consisted mainly of her ducking into the bedroom to nab the stray blouse and stuff it in one of her drawers hastily. That and catching her breath. He was getting seriously good at the 'make up from down completely without importance for Alison in two seconds flat' stuff. "What did you doooo?" It occurred to her that really, she only needed to catch her breath enough to not keel over from lack of air at an inopportune moment. Anything else wasn't that important for the next while.

Haroun grinned wolfishly. "Just rescheduled the dinner plans that I made in favor of yours." he said, and then closed the bedroom door.


*** Strategic Fade To Black ***


Haroun straightened his tie in the mirror as he waited for Alison to finish with her own preparations. "Come on, we'll be late!" he said mock-irritably as he slightly adjusted the way his suit coat lay against his chest. "We have quite the evening planned, and I'd hate to miss it because you decided that you had a hair out of place and it was offending you."

"It is offending me and is being punished accordingly!" The lofty tones drifted from the bathroom, followed a moment later by Alison leaning her head to the side to grin at him. She had her hair piled up, curls cascading down merrily in a seemingly wild and haphazard way which was actually very well choreographed. "I like summer," she commented idly, stepping into full view slowly, just to make the impact last a little longer. "I can wear short skirts in the summer." Trying not to sound too smug, she turned around just a bit, the short skirt flaring out nicely with each motion before settling back at mid-thigh length.

Haroun swallowed heavily as she showed off for him. "Yeah. Much to the detriment of my higher functions, and ..." He left that thought unsaid, refusing to give into any black moods tonight. "If the lady has adequately prepared..." he said, grabbing his (too-slender!) wallet, watch, and a few other things from his dresser and transferring them to various pockets. "I believe we have a carriage to catch, do we not?"

"The lady is, and we do indeed," she purred, the heels she was wearing giving her a bit more height than usual. Enough so that she could brush the tip of her nose against his lightly without having to resort to going up on her toes or pulling him down, which was fun, really. "Carriage ride and then dinner on a boat on the lake." Her eyes danced at the thought, pure fun planned ahead for several hours. "I love carriage rides. That was a brilliant idea."

"I have one more surprise for you, but that can wait until after dinner..." he said, looking for an instant like the cat that ate the canary. "But for now, we have to get going. I take it considering you're in heels you'd like for me to drive?" he said with a grin. "Means you get to pick the music..." he said, to unnecessarily sweeten the pot for her. He looked disgustingly proud of himself for the carriage ride idea. It was a risk, and it had already paid off and would continue to pay off for him.

"More?" Instantly curious, mostly because he was radiating smug in waves, Alison tried not to dance in place and ask for more details. She'd wait and let him savor the moment if it killed her. Which is might. "Hrm. I could drive with the heels, but I'm going to go for getting to pick the music." Bribed, she could be. Nabbing a tiny and glittering purse which Clarice would have gone in delighted sparkly shock over, Alison nodded. "Ready. And we're still on time," she added, glancing down briefly to check on the straps of her shoes.

Haroun, in a moment of perfect Western gentleman-hood, opened all the doors for her on the way down to the garage. "Any preference?" he asked, looking at the fleet of Mansion cars. "We should really think about getting one for ourselves." he said, and then shook his head. No dark thoughts, not tonight! "The Jeep, perhaps?" he elaborated, mindful of her short skirt and her heels.

"I keep thinking about that and end up using one of the cars here each time anyway," she admitted, with a small shrug. "The Jeep will keep me from having to scramble out," she agreed, a hint of warmth to her voice. Haroun invariably took that into account whenever they went out and she had that particular challenge to look forward to. "And the batch of CDs we usually leave in that one should make for good music," she added. And then, on impulse. "We could always listen to the radio, though." 

"As you wish." he said, and opened up her door for her before climbing in behind the wheel. He kept the pace just this side of legal - which for him was a leisurely drive indeed. After about an hour's worth of driving, he slid the car into a parking spot. "OK, we're here." he said, noting with approval the trees and greenery and how the day's heat was starting to give way to what promised to be a spectacular evening.

Waiting until he opened the door, with a slight flourish that brought a delighted smile to her face, Alison stepped out of the Jeep - and couldn't help peeking to the side towards the carriages, wondering which model he'd chosen. "Carriage ride!" she said gleefully, the door closing and the alarm system being set to on before she allowed herself to cheerfully kiss Haroun on the cheek. "We're not far off. I can see some of them from here. Which one is ours?"

Haroun laughed, and pulled the tickets from his suit jacket pocket. "Over there." he said after examining them briefly. This is the part that had cost him a small fortune, but after seeing the look on her face, it was just completely worth every penny. He'd arranged for something old-fashioned and sweet, that provided a certain degree of privacy.

The carriage gleamed darkly at them, the dark bay leading it stamping one metal-shod hoof smartly on the ground. "Oooh." If she cooed anymore than she already had since seeing this tickets, she'd be taking up a career as a professional coo-er, Alison decided. "It's perfect!" Because saying so was worthwhile just to see the look on Haroun's face in return, and because the whole set up did in fact, most certainly appeal to Alison's sense of grand gestures and romanticism. The driver grinned at them from the cab up front, clearly used to seeing customers pause and focus on one carriage or the other in such a way, it seemed.

Haroun laughed and then helped her up into the carriage itself. Once she was situated, he climbed in on his side and then made himself comfortable, placing his hand on her knee and leaning back into the bench of the cab. "Perfect. Just perfect." he said in a tone of complete fulfillment.

Carriages rides in the early evening, with the sky slowly bleeding into colors of sunset demanded snuggling, and that was exactly what Alison indulged in, the merry sound of hooves hitting the ground a regular counterpoint to the quieter comments in the carriage itself. "We very much got lucky on timing," she smiled, happily nestled against him. "We'll be able to just walk over to the boat deck after this." Not that she wanted to ride to end anytime soon.

Haroun had to fight hard to be a Good Boy and not do something highly entertaining and utterly inappropriate. He did, however, permit himself to snuggle back as much as she was snuggling with him.

"Sometimes, it all works out for the best." he said with a sappy private smile.