The Universe's Mixer

Backdated to the night of this. Is also a little tiny bit naughty.

Charlie’s house was huge. Charlie’s house was huge enough for a horse to roam around on the inside of it. Freely. Without knocking things over or making it so that you couldn’t get from one room to the other easily. For a long moment, she’d just watched the horse in awe. It was really one thing to hear about it, and another to see it happening in person. There was a horse. Inside.

Jake had willingly taken the opportunity to have the apartment to himself, so he and Lucy-Belle were nowhere to be seen. She would have loved to spend the evening with her roommate, as she didn’t get to see him all that much lately, but she also understood that it was nice to have quiet time with the one that you loved.

She and Charlie had a nice dinner. He cooked for her, and they sat in his kitchen eating it. There was talk, of course. Their conversation flowing like nothing else in the world could. Once you knew how somebody’s brain worked because you’d had their brain for a while, communication was astoundingly easy.

At bedtime, which ended up being a lot later than she normally would have gone to sleep, Charlie showed her to the room she was going to stay in and left her to it. Jennifer got cozy in the bed and managed to get an hour’s worth of sleep before she was awake again. Wide awake. She didn’t know if it was a sound that had woken her or just a natural thing. But she realized that she wanted a snack.

Quietly, Jennifer got up and snuck down the stairs, not bothering with pants to cover what the tank top she was wearing didn’t, because she didn’t think she’d be down there long enough to get caught. At the bottom of the stairs though, Jennifer spotted what might have woken her up. The horse. He had his nose in a bowl of fruit and seemed to be musing about which to pick. She watched it choose a pear and smiled.

There had been one thing that she’d wanted to do all evening that seemed odd to ask Charlie for, and that was to ride the horse. Jennifer decided that right now was a good opportunity for that, since her partner was asleep and she and the horse were here alone. She approached calmly and ran her hand down the long neck and through the mane. She spoke to the horse quietly to let him get to know her. When she was sure that he trusted her, Jennifer snuck around to the side and used a kitchen stool to boost herself up.

Never in her life had she ridden a horse, and it was a little frightening - but in an exhilarating way. Jennifer intended to only ride once around the kitchen. Or maybe just sit here if the horse decided it didn’t want to go anywhere - she didn’t have anything to guide him with after all - and then she’d grab a banana or something and head back upstairs.

( Jennifer wasn't the only one who wasn't sleeping )