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The first thing Tala acknowledged was pain.
A beam of morning sunlight sliced mercilessly through his hotel room’s curtains, aiming at his closed eyelids with laser precision. Groaning, the boy buried his face deeper into the pillow, acutely aware of a dull ache radiating from every single muscle he possessed. His head throbbed insistently, pounding as if Wolborg decided to howl and break dance inside his skull. Red eyebrows joined in a steep frown. The taste in his mouth vaguely reminisced of sand, sour apples and very bad decisions.
Something had gone spectacularly wrong the night before.
He tried to move.
A heavy, muscular and very much male arm was draped possessively over his bare waist like a seatbelt, locking him firmly in place.
His eyes snapped open.
There was a solid and warm chest pressed on his back. Movement down below denounced one hairy leg hooked between his. Warm breath from snoring tickled the back of his neck.
Slowly, he tilted his head to glance backward, desperately hoping he wouldn’t find what he was expecting.
Bryan. Dead asleep. Shirtless. Spooning him with a disturbing tenderness completely foreign to the slate-haired blader’s reputation, his face tucked against his hair with a lazy smile as if cradling a particularly comfy lover.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Tala’s pupils shrank to pinpricks and his teeth gritted, dread swiftly overriding all that ache he suddenly found himself not so interested in analyzing. “…Bryan,” he hushed, voice cracked from exhaustion, dehydration and possibly trauma.
No response.
“Get off me,” he tried again, shaking them both lightly.
Falborg’s wielder grunted and pulled him closer like a teddy bear, inhaling deeply amidst the red, wild locks as if sniffing a bouquet of rage and cinnamon. “Mmm. Shut up. M’comfy...”
“BRYAN!” Tala elbowed him hard right in the ribs, a vein throbbing on his forehead. It was a mistake. His arm screamed in protest.
“Argh! What the hell?!”
What followed was a flurry of shoves, curses, sheets and limbs. Bryan landed on the floor with a loud thud and a groan while Tala scrambled to the opposite edge of the bed as if the mattress was suddenly on fire, pulling the sheets around his waist to salvage what little dignity was left.
The slate-haired boy bolted upright with the grace of a newborn deer, hand holding his head, blinking blearily at the room. His body was half naked. Silver eyes slided up at the bed, then at his childhood friend and captain, then at himself.
“Why are you in my bed?”
“This is MY bed, genius!” Tala snapped. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Bryan hissed, rubbing his face as he tried to collect the lost pieces of memory. “I can’t remember anything.”
“You were clinging to me like a damn koala!”
He grimaced, his vision and mind still twirling. “My back hurts. And my ass. And my knuckles. And my face. Why are we naked?”
“My jaw hurts,” the redhead asked as he touched a tender spot on his jaw. “You reek of gasoline. Is that a burn mark on your hair?”
They both looked at each other.
They were disheveled.
They were bruised.
They were in their boxers.
There was something on the nightstand that suspiciously looked like a tube of oil massage.
Long, horrible silence.
Both boys looked down at the bed again as if it owed them explanations.
“…Did we…” Tala’s whisper trailed off, teetering on the edge of sanity, one eyebrow twitching.
“Oh, hell no,” Bryan gagged, his face twisted as if he swallowed a toad. “No. Never. Even passed-out me has standards.”
He received a withering glare in return. “Standards? You snore like a busted chainsaw, you maniac. You spooned me like I was a long-lost girlfriend!”
Bryan waved at him, unimpressed. “I probably mistook you for a pillow, you're basically the same size.”
Tala threw a pillow at his head with deadly force. “I swear to every god, Bryan, if you ever sniff my neck again-”
Kuznetsov batted the missile aside with a snarl. “Your hair does smell like strawberries. Not my fault.”
His face shone a distinct shade of red. "IT'S THE HOTEL SHAMPOO, YOU IDIOT!"
A polite knock echoed from the door before it slowly creaked open, and both of them jolted like guilty children caught by a parent.
Spencer made himself visible in the doorway, his figure immaculate and fresh from training and a bath, a towel around his neck, a steaming mug of coffee in hand and the other one sank in his sweatpant’s pocket. Ocean-blue eyes landed on the two battered, half naked, miserable boys, on the pants and shirts on the opposite ends of the room and then on the disheveled bed, gradually taking in the scenery.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "I always thought you two had chemistry ."
“It’s NOT what it looks like,” Tala snarled between clenched teeth, clutching the sheets tighter around him like holy armor.
Bryan just groaned and flopped back against the bed, tossing an arm over his face. "Kill me now."
Seaborg’s wielder raised an eyebrow. “Looks like you had a great night.”
“I hate you,” Tala muttered and demanded. “Explain. Now.”
He sipped his coffee.
Slowly. Smugly.
"You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“Understandable.”
The wolf’s patience frayed to the snapping point. "Spencer," he warned, voice dangerously low, "you have exactly five seconds before I shove that coffee mug up your-"
He lowered the coffee cup, savoring every drawn-out second. "Sure," he drawled calmly. "You too had a little misunderstanding after you both drank half of those fancy 'fruit juices' from the minibar and you didn’t know had alcohol. Cute."
The redhead’s expression shifted from fury to humiliation so fast the blonde’s heart almost ached. Bryan just scowled harder, muttering something unintelligible under his breath.
"You started arguing about something utterly moronic,” Spencer continued. “The bellboy knocked and asked for some information. Bryan snarled at him like a chihuahua. You didn’t like it and scolded him. Bryan didn’t like it. Yelled something about tyranny, African wildlife and power dynamics. Then you threw hands."
Tala narrowed his eyes. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Oh, I have videos,” Spencer said mildly. “You were arguing about whether or not penguins have knees.”
Bryan looked confused. “…Do they?”
“ Not the point, ” the captain groaned.
Spencer continued with wicked cheerfulness. “You went into a full-blown wrestling match in the living room. You knocked over three chairs, the table, punched the wall, scared the hotel’s cat, and then chased each other into Tala’s room yelling something about ‘settling it like men.’”
The slate-haired muttered, “I do vaguely remember yelling about mortal combat…”
“You both passed out mid-fight,” Seaborg’s wielder explained, now leaning on the doorframe, fingers drumming on the warm mug. “Bryan was trying to put you in a chokehold. You rolled onto the bed. Then… snoring.”
Tala frowned as if surrounded by utter, pure betrayal. “And you didn’t think to stop us?”
He shrugged. “I did. For like five seconds. You tried to bite me. Then I grabbed popcorn.”
Tala sank his face in his hands and fell back onto his pillow, groaning dramatically. Bryan glared daggers at the ceiling.
As Spencer turned around and left, his laughter echoed down the hallway, leaving the two battered boys alone and embraced by a thoroughly awkward silence.
Bryan sighed reluctantly, breaking the tension. "If Spencer actually has that video, we’re burning down the damn city."
Tala nodded, exhausted. "I'll get the gasoline…"