From the shoulders to the back -damn, his back really hurt- down the hips, the legs, knees, ankles, toes, tail...What in the hell had posessed him to sleep on the floor in the first place? He felt like a dinosaur, every thought taking hours to be executed in an action. He tried to rub his eyes, managed only to drag the back of his hand across them a few times. He felt bleary, groggy and stretched out. Yet another hangover.

Edging himself upwards, the weight he was leaning on his other arm abruptly threw out as his balance decided it would much rather be on the other side of the room and Kyo hit the hardwood floor with an auidable crash, his stomach lurching almost as angrily as his head was spinning.

A really bad hangover, then.

"Sssson of a bitch," Kyo's tongue was still lead, he was still drunk, and cracking one eye open a little only made him wince and squeeze it shut again. Unlike Chovek's forgiving apartment, this room had a marvelous bay window on the far wall, which the sun was pouring through to announce the glorious arrival of morning. This hangover, apparently conspiring with the early sunrise, was wandering the hairy edge which made what drunkenness that was left unpleasantly inhibiting and what sobriety had wormed in surly and irritated. Maybe it would have been better if Kyo found himself a couch to sleep under for a few hours. Water, though, would make due in a pinch if he was willing to brave the sunlight.

His eyes watered at first, the pupils unwilling to shrink accordingly and the lancing pain seeming to go straight through the center of his eyeballs, but he managed to get a better view of the room than simply of its bay window, which he remembered from the night before at any rate. The couch, which he was lying paralell to, was within arm's reach- along with a loveseat behind his head, both left unoccupied. The remnants of a small party littered most of the living room surfaces- plastic cups quarter-full of lukewarm liquid, handfulls of chips and scatterings of crumbs and crumpled napkins. A small garden of beer bottles had sprung up on the glass coffee table, and Kyo knew if he got up to use the bathroom and came back, those bottles would have made the entire room smell like a brewery just by being left out overnight. He only didn't smell it now because he'd slept in it.

But the one thing which really perplexed him, besides the white and pink flower blanket that was draped over his legs, was curled up at his side fast asleep.

He couldn't get a good look at her face, but from her markings he remembered her a little. A kind of hazy recognition in the back of his mind that kept snapping its fingers and waiting for an answer to come. She was white-furred, blotched with silver spots and short, boyish-cut hair. She was small, just the manner of her build, and the striped shirt she had on made Kyo's sore and bleary eyes beg for anything else to look at. If he thought a minute, her name would come back to him, but he didn't really know her...so why was she snuggled up next to him?

He needed to be thinking more clearly.

Flailing a hand behind him, he felt his fingertips brush the surface of a the corner table that sat between the couch and loveseat, and he explored weakly for any glass. Most of them would have been just ice by the time the party had ended, and that would have melted into at least a little water...tepid as it would be. He finally felt the smooth plastic of a cup, and picked it up from the rim to bring it around to his chest. Without waiting, he threw back the contents in one gulp- Overnight melted party ice was not a taste he enjoyed, and he wanted to taste it as little as possible.

He didn't taste it at all.

The mix of warm whisky and flat coke was so unexpected he nearly snorted it back out his nose, but managed only to jolt upwards a little. The girl went on sleeping.

Well, shit, he didn't ordinarily drink anytime before lunch, but this seemed like a rather extrodionary situation. This was, most certainly, the first time he'd ever had such a wakeup revelation.

Weak as it was, the mix helped his stomach a little. Kyo took the chance to recount the events of the previous night to himself, because he was almost certain he'd done nothing to lead him to this current point.

He'd left Chovek's in the morning and taken the local train home, which meant he'd spent an extra 20 minutes feeling self concious and far, far too restricted. He hadn't been able to sit, because the pants just became intolerably tight at that point. He had no desire to sing soprano, so that had been an extra 20 minutes standing as well. As soon as he'd made it home, he'd changed with immense relief into his usual jeans and spent a few minutes feeling confused about what he and Chovek had done, would do, and othersuch typified self doubts and regrets.

Eventually around lunch he'd gotten up to fix himself a drink and a sandwich, but never really got around to the sandwich and decided to read for a while instead. By the time he was bored reading and the drinks from lunch were starting to wear off it was time to head off to the party.

It wasn't really a party, persay, nor was it thrown by anyone Kyo really knew. A casual aquaintence of a friend of his ex-girlfriend, but somehow he'd wound up being invited. The cream coloured Hekshanian with dark blue eyes who was hosting it was apparently a pretty frequent feature on the club scene, but Kyo wasn't, so he didn't know the guy. The theme of the party was that a few people were going to gather to listen to the first-time rebroadcast of a famous radio drama that hadn't been aired since before the massacre. There would be drinks and food and only a small cover charge, and Kyo hadn't really planned anything else for the weekend when he'd accepted since he hadn't met Chovek yet.

On his way across town again, Kyo passed Chovek's station and suddenly had the strangest feeling that he ought to have gotten off there and gone back up to the halfblood's flat and imposed another night. But that was just a flickering irrational desire...or at least he'd thought that, then.

He was welcomed into the party by people he, of course, barely knew if he knew at all. Being friendly to strangers came almost second nature to him, though, especially after a drink, and he was almost immediately just another friendly feature of the atmosphere. There were only a few folks in the small apartment, seven or eight, but one or two would leave or go at random intervals and so the cast of characters kept switching. Kyo at first made the effort to go from room to room doing standard introductions that he would forget in a few seconds, either a beer or a plastic cup in his right hand at all times- his left had to be free to shake on greeting. After a few hours, he gave up on the wandering back and forth and simply took up a quiet seat on the couch to watch the sociality or talk to anyone who would come and sit down for a few beside him.

The host was weirdly attentive, Kyo noted in retrospect, always on hand to offer him another drink when his ran low. The evening was still just starting, the broadcast had yet to hit the airwaves, and so Kyo accepted these offers.

Now he remembered...the girl was wallflowering through the party, always somewhere in the corner of his eye watching people but never taking anyone up in conversation. Kyo remembered now, because right before the radio was switched on, he'd had her pointed out to him by the host who suggested Kyo go try to talk to her. He'd done his best, but was fairly sure the impression he made was not exactly the one he had been going for, as his attempt to casually sidle up to the spotted girl had actually ended in his falling against the wall besides her. But come to think of it, she hadn't exactly seemed startled by that, and she had smiled...She probably saw him coming a mile away.

They'd gotten on alright for the short time he'd tried to talk to her, Kyo thought. Maybe she was just shy or maybe she just wanted to see him dig his own grave, but she hadn't spoken to him through his slurred attempts at casual conversation. She'd put a finger to her lips when the radio broadcast began, and for a while, Kyo was absorbed into the story of an old woman recounting her wild life as a dancer during a great war.

It was about when the broadcast had ended that things got a little spotty to his memory, but not nearly in such a way that he'd have wound up bedding some girl who hadn't even talked to him. He did remember, though, giving her a piggyback ride around the party for reasons even he was unclear on, since she was completely sober. Maybe it'd been her idea. Maybe it'd been his. No one seemed to think it was really that odd, but a few made wisecracks about parasites and leeches.

One thing Kyo could remember for certain, now, suddenly flared a level of frustration in him that he didn't like to feel. He had a clear memory, quite clear, of going to tell the host he really needed to get going. It'd been a great party, thanks a ton, but he really needed to get home and get some sleep and he was going to miss the last train.

And the host, he could remember, had said he was sorry to see Kyo go. Couldn't he just stick around for one more drink?

And Kyo had said no.

He'd said no.

But somehow he'd wound up being bugged into accepting it anyway, probably because he'd thought it would get him out of there.

Evidently it hadn't.

He felt around the corner table again, hoping for a cup of melted ice this time. Again, he caught the rim of a quarter-filled plastic one, but again the jolt after bolting it down told him he'd picked wrong. Well, he had already been buzzed when he'd woken up. All this had done was cleared the vice off the outside of his skull and calmed the riot going on in his stomach.

He was stuck. He didn't want to get up, because he might wake the girl up. He didn't even know where that might lead. He didn't want to sneak out, but he didn't want to have her wake up on her own and have to deal with that either. He just really, really hoped that some godly being would intervene before the critical moment of his talking to the girl again had to strike. Oh please, oh please, oh please-

"Well goodmorning, Brighteyes."

The party's host was not, at all, a godly being. Kyo was not at all happy to see him. "Dude, what the fuck?"

Squared in the frame of the hallway entrance, the cream coloured Hekshanian wore only a bathrobe. Down the hallway behind him, Kyo could spot one of the other girls from the party climbing from a bed to slip on a pair of underpants. The cream male pressed a hand to his chest, looking mock-offended. "What do you mean?"

"I mean there's this girl I dunno the name of next to me and-"

"Her name's Mulder. All better?"

"No. Dude what the fuck, I don't remember-"

He rolled his eyes, an expression of peculiarly out of place annoyance. Like Kyo was being immature about the situation. "You don't remember because nothing happened. You spent any time you could have spent in bed talking about how sleeping on couches made your neck hurt. You went to sleep on the floor. She went to sleep on the floor because that's where you were."

Kyo blinked his eyes slowly several times, attempting to piece the logic of what he had been told together. "...Huh?"

"You didn't sleep with her."

"Well," Kyo struggled for something remotely appropriate to say, running a hand through his hair. It felt stiff and unwashed. "Well, good."

The girl from the hallway chirped a laugh, passing behind the cream coloured male and into the bathroom. "That's gratitude for you!"

"Th'fuck's that mean?"

Sighing as though he was explaining something for the tenth time to a particularly stupid child, the host began to pick his way through the living room, pinching several cups between his fingers at one time in a half-hearted cleaning effort. "Well, everyone knows you broke with Zara. You've been nothing but a drag since then." This guy didn't even know him...where was this kind of stuff coming from? Where did an almost total stranger pick it up? Kyo was more confused than angry. "We figured you just needed to unwind."

"Wait," Things were starting to make a very ugly sense. "You mean you thought I'd bed her just cause-"

"Mulder's been obsessed with you for weeks. The last party you were at? Hello, you would have been doing both her and yourself a favour."

"What the hell makes you think she woulda done that, either?" He really, really hated to get angry. It was rising up in him slowly, though, and more than anything he wanted to get out of this apartment before it got worse. He didn't like himself angry.

Another eyeroll from the cream coloured man. "Because she sleeps with anyone who pays attention to her."

"Dude," Kyo was shaking his head now, unable to find words for how disgusted he was with the entire plan that'd been arranged for him. "Dude, fucking uncool. Fucking uncool."

"Oh yeah, like you're the goddamn king of good morals. Suicide and alcoholism are fine by you but one night stands aren't?!" He'd raised his voice now. Kyo was getting to his feet, stiff and angry, not caring if Mulder woke or not. At least now he knew where this talk was coming from. Too bad he didn't share Zara's mutual harsh candid tongue, or the urge to use what little dirt he knew on her.

"No, they aren't!" Kyo wasn't used to raising his voice and the volume of it frightened him. Mulder was moving at his feet. He didn't want to deal with this right now.

"Oh, why the fuck not?!"

"Cause I'm not that kind of person!" He checked his pockets...wallet was still there, good. That was it, he was finished with this. The conversation was over. And he was certainly not going to return any party invitations from friends of Zara's friends in the future for a while. Pushing past the other male, he made his way pointedly to the door. Opening it, he stood a minute in the doorway, his eyes flicking from the host to the girl on the floor who stared at him as if he'd struck her. He couldn't find anything to say between the mixed emotions. "I'm sorry."

That was it. He closed the door behind himself and made his way down the flights of stairs and out the apartment building door as quickly as possible. On his way to the train station, he glanced at the schedual clock. It was 9:41 am.

It was far, far too early for any of this.

Generally, Kyo made it a point to keep drinking minimal until the sun went down. For a while there he'd tried to keep every waking moment just barely in focus, but that'd been one of the main reasons he and Zara hadn't survived as a couple. Maybe the part of him that made the choice to slow down on the alcohol intake was trying to hang on to the hope that Zara might take him back once he shaped up. Course, it was every bit unlikely as him turning into a five dollar hooker, but common sense was also trying to lobby for taking better care of himself.

Least, they had been, until his mind got on a high-speed merry-go-round that kept flashing between last night, this morning, yesterday morning and the night before last.

He really wasn't that kind of person, the kind who would go in for a one night stand, which made him fine with how he'd acted thismorning. He was fine with that, if it was just a stand-alone situation. But right behind it, like some kind of whistling wise- ass waiting to point out the inaccuracies in a recounted story, was the night and morning before. He'd done exactly what he said he didn't do, and he'd done it with a total stranger. Just because he knew Chovek's name and they left on good terms didn't change that fact. It was no different. But it had to be, because he had the guy's phone number. It wasn't like he'd left a twenty on the dresser and walked out the door with a half-lit fag hanging from his lips. So...

So what, so what, so what. This was the circle he was stuck going in. Not even ten in the morning and he already wanted to get a hammer and crack open the front of his skull just so he could stick a hand in and press stop on the loop-tape.

Drinking would probably do less damage than a hammer, though, at least short term.

Back in his own neighborhood, Kyo knew he was in that obnoxious dead-zone where the bars had closed up seven hours ago and the liquor stores wouldn't be open for another half hour. This was the dead zone he'd spend asleep, before the hospital, before Zara grabbed him by the collar on the train platform and demanded her key back from him. Something didn't exactly feel right about backtracking to then, but he was pretty sure he'd be going insane from this internal interrogation way before he came to grips with it. He wasted time pacing the block. The cafe across the way, the one that always kept the wilted flowers in the window...that was open, but he really really didn't feel like coffee or tea or any kind of anything in his stomach.

The waitress saw him making nervous circles back and forth on the pavement and waved through the glass. Kyo waved back, but was glad she was on duty. If it was one thing he wanted less than coffee, it was to have someone asking what was on his mind. Nothing, sister, it's what my mind is on. This damn merry-go-round that just won't let me stop and get off.

He wished he had a watch.

Didn't he have anything at the apartment?

Not what he was after, that was for damn sure. This was going to put a dent into his already fairly dented wallet, but it would be worth it.

There were times when Kyo really felt like a schizophrenic, franticly trying to find some way to shut down the clamouring that went on feverish in his head through any means nessicary. If he didn't, it felt like the merry-go-round would just keep speeding up and speeding up, making his heart beat faster and faster, until he finally snapped from not being able to get away from the repeated mistakes and did something completely irrational...wasn't that what wound him up in the hospital where he met Zara in the first place? Jesus, how did she and all of that manage to hop onto this cyclone. Shit, shit, shit...

A hand inside the still-dim liquor store flipped the sign around to read open. Kyo was down the street with a hand on the old press-down handle before the lights were even on inside. Both the grey-furred kid stocking the shelves and the older redhead behind the counter looked a little surprised to see him. Not that they were at fault for it, Kyo knew he probably looked a lot more determined than he had in a long time.

"Oye Kyo, ain't seen you in here so early for a while-"

"Ain't got the time to talk, Rin," He waved a hand at the stocker without looking, taking long strides towards the import section. He liked this shop, their imports were never in the itty bitty 'tester' bottles, they managed to import things in proper quantities. It took a moment to find what he was after- they'd rearranged the shelves last week and he hadn't checked back here since then. One hand shot out, closed around a light green glass neck and Kyo was ready to go, the familiar weight dragging down on his arm. Back past Rin, who was back to stocking the shelves, thankfully apathetic. Putting the bottle down on the old wood counter, Kyo went through his pockets...his wallet was always hiding when he was in a hurry. This was a mass conspiricy and now he was getting paranoid, great.

The redhead lifted the bottle to ring it up, his glasses slipping down his nose a bit. He gazed over the rims at the label, then up at Kyo, inquiring. "Chartruse?" With a shrug, he dropped it into a thin brown paper bag. "Ladyfriend trouble it is, then."

"You know me as only a bartender can, Ross." Kyo dropped a handfull of bills onto the counter and reached out, reciving the bag in one hand.

Then, they were done. No muss, no fuss, no real questions. Already, Kyo felt a little better. The candid professionality of his liquor store- he could already feel it pushing down some measure of control on the merry-go-round. He was positive he'd get it to stop, now, it'd just take a little bit of time. He would get home, get a glass from the freezer, and that'd be the end of this nightmare. Things would quiet down, and he'd finally file it all away peacefully in his head.

With the heady, herby taste of chartruse stinging his sinuses and slicking the back of his tongue, it'd all fade to a low volume.

Thank fucking God.