Chapter 2 - drinks - part 1

Hours later he wakes to shuffling noises. He'd fallen asleep on the couch, his well-trained, and -muscled, arm still holding an empty bottle of Beam. Just as well, he thinks, his pillow'd have given him pinkeye by this point.

He knows she is in the fridge. She'd eaten lackadaisically at dinner. A large salad, tomatoes, carrots, chicken, even eggs and an oil-based ceasar. When he'd left for the living room, she was only a third through it, still staring at her phone. He knew she'd still finished it though--probably dumped half a jar of bacon bits on it too. The fridge raid was not out of hunger. It was gluttony, boredom, and general indignity. And probably being pissed at him.

He sits up. Still drunk. Head churns. He thinks for a moment before standing and walking toward the source of the noisy fluorescent lighting. To give her a hard time. To pick a fight. To get some release. Really, anything to feel something other than bottled.

They haven't screwed in forever, and even when they had it'd seemed almost mostly out of anger. Passion for fucking'd never been the issue; it was revulsion and power games that were the seeming cause of all their spite. He was sure she was sure he was cheating on her. He sometimes wondered if he was himself.

He reaches the doorway and almost smacks it with his head in his stupor, but manages to lean on, into, it instead. Even the fluorescents can't penetrate the fog now, and the room looks dimmer, dingier, than even it should. Still, her second most frequented, it too is burdened by her moods over the last weeks... months... whatever. Here at least though he couldn't bear total filth, and so the stacks of plates, old take-out cartons from mid-day binges, sauce pans and miscellaneous refuse is only piled gently around the room. The sink itself shines proudly as actually empty.

He looks at it through his haze, and the pot smoke in the air. He almost laughs. A stack of plates from the counter now sits in what he'd cleaned only yesterday, unstacked and surrounded by glasses crammed in haphazardly under the faucet. On the counter where they'd been are more Chinese containers, or maybe Indian, from today. Another reason she'd been slow to the relative health food of dinner.

His gaze finally makes it around the room to his blushing bride now. As if she could even be so shamed as to blush. Along with the pan on the stove of what smells like mac and cheese about to burn to the bottom, she is shoulders-deep in the refrigerator looking for more.

He snorts for real now: She is naked, of course. Even the teddy is abandoned. Maybe she'd left it in the dirty bath water to soak and magically end up clean.

The fan at least is on over the stove, doubly-ironically, probably more to spite him later as his sleep faded and hang-over took full effect, than to clear the air, and yet it was her gluttonous clamor that'd actually roused him.

She moves to browse a higher shelf and her bottom jiggles freely a moment, softly, fatly, where there had once been firm and smooth muscle, sexy and sleek and toned, rather than slowly piled with ever more indolent, degenerate, consuming fat; layered in it. The jiggle echoes to her chubby hips, and he feels himself coming sordidly erect in and against the slacks he still wears.

Shit.

She stands up and looks at him. She's known the whole time he was there, of course.

Of course.

Women. Eyes rolled quietly to the corner of his skull, he sighs inwardly, but surprisingly heavily. Seemingly ignoring him again now, she turns back and lifts the pot off the stove and pivots to set her food on the only counter space available, a corner she's cleared of the small island by pushing the rest of the crap into a larger pile. In her other hand, he now sees--with an emotion somewhat similar to revulsion--are a pack of cold hotdogs--too lazy or impulsive to heat them--and a carton of... a carton of half-and fucking-half.

Jesus.

He tastes a hint of blood: He's bitten the inside of his lip. Drunk fool, he thinks; grinds his teeth; self-effacing amused mirth.

"You fucking serious with that shit?" he slurs, staring at her 'drink', a mostly-full half-gallon.