Morphed

Chapter Eighteen

Sorry it's a bit later (and a fair bit shorter) than I'd initially planned, but school was more of a bitch than I was expecting and we got a new puppy. *Squeals* She's a Staghound cross, she's brindle coloured and we've named her Rhani.

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I always knew that you'd
Come back to get me
And you always knew that
It wouldn't be easy
To go back to the start
To see where it all began

~Lost In You (Three Days Grace)

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Roy awoke at stupid o'clock the next morning, his brain doing cartwheels and somersaults inside his throbbing skull, with little memory of the previous night. Groaning, he sat up, waiting for his vision to stop clouding everything in a yellowy haze. When his eyes finally decided to cooperate with his barely functioning brain, he realised it was still dark out. He groaned again, glancing at his clock. Really, he should still be able to go back to bed, he still had another hour before he normally woke up, but he groggily recognized that in this state if he went back to sleep there was a piss poor chance that he would wake up when he needed to.

Not wanting to in the slightest, he dragged himself out from under the covers and shivered when the cold air hit his mostly naked body in a wave of please-let-me-go-back-to-sleep. It dawned on him then that somebody had stripped him down to his boxers. Who in the name of alchemy did that?

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he shut his eyes and attempted to recall what had happened last night. At some point, an image of Maes wondered across his vision, and he decided it had probably been him who had put him to bed. Blinking back another haze, he awkwardly got to his feet and searched around for some clothes. Eventually he found a clean uniform an dragged it on, fumbling with the buttons, finding that his fingers kept either slipping or going numb. When he missed the same button for the third time, he realised what this was. He was hungover.

That would explain why I don't remember last night. He thought. Dammit, why do I keep doing this? He knew that if he kept this up he was very likely to lose his job, or at least get demoted. He didn't want either of those things to happen; he;d worked too hard over the years to obtain his current rank to lose it now over some binge drinking.

Binge drinking? Where did that come from?

Then he remembered. He'd been out practically every night drinking since his Lieutenant had been shot (oh, crap, how could I forget about that?!)

Grumbling to himself, he stumbled over to his door, having finally managed to put on his uniform, and opened his door, hand slipping on the doorknob a little. He wandered to the kitchen, poured himself a small glass of bourbon, and headed to the living room, where he found his best friend passed out on the couch. Roy blinked and then shook his head, noticing that Maes had taken his jacket and shirt off to avoid getting it too crinkled. He was shivering in the cold. Shaking his head again, he drained his cup of it's liquid, gently set it down on the small glass table and went to the cupboard, pulling out a woollen blanket and softly draping it over Hughes. After a few seconds, he stopped shivering and relaxed, and Roy smiled despite the pounding in his head. He liked watching Maes sleep.

Deciding to let Maes sleep until he himself would have normally woken up, Roy set about his morning routine, if not with a little extra stumbling and mumbling than usual. He slowly made his way to the bathroom, stripping himself down (why had he even gotten dressed in the first place again?) and turning on the tap, waiting until the water was at a nice temperature before stepping under the spray. The water was just bordering too hot, the way he liked it, and he could feel it loosening up his tight muscles and easing away the fatigue that still assailed him. He grabbed the bar of soap from the rack, rubbing it against the wash-cloth before cleaning himself up, noting with annoyance that he was riddled with patches of dust and dried alcohol. His face was especially dirty, and when he wondered why, he vaguely recalled being lifted to his feet by Maes after falling flat on his face at some point on the way home. Great. He thought.