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They were both drunk. They'd passed a floor test and had time to train before the next one. There was no reason to be sober.
Except perhaps for the heightened amounts of common sense available to those who were.
If they'd been sober, maybe they wouldn't be in one room, on one bed, tangling hands in each other's clothes and frowning over how to get them off. They wouldn't be kissing each other harshly and tasting the alcohol and rice dinner from each other's mouths, wouldn't be inhaling lungfuls of each other's scent and sweat and cologne, and waking up hours later with a pounding headache, naked, and wondering what in the world possessed them to make a mistake like this.
Hatz stared up at the ceiling, blinking for a moment and just feeling his body, sore in a different way from after training with his swords. He breathed in, out. Still lying on a bed next to a snoring Shibisu, weighing all the decisions that had led to this one.
"We made a mistake," he finally said quietly. He pulled himself upright and scanned the floor for his clothes.
Shibisu shifted, groaned, and slitted open his eyes.
Hatz wondered when the snoring had stopped and if Shibisu had heard him. He didn't know what to say, just paused where he stood, hovering over a tangled heap of Shibisu's vest and Hatz's wrap.
For one eternally long, awkward moment, they stared at each other, then Shibisu cleared his throat. "Water?"
Hatz hadn't gone for water yet, despite the hangover, more intent on his escape. He glanced around and found a bottle to toss at Shibisu.
"Thanks." Shibisu sat up, stretched, drank as his bare chest was on full display. He hadn't bulked up any, but he'd put on muscle all the same and Hatz didn't mind the eyeful.
He should mind. He went back to locating and putting on clothes.
"A mistake," Shibisu muttered quietly after a moment.
He had heard.
Hatz paused again. "I don't want to ruin anything." Friendship. Teamwork. Their honor, however much the last mattered to Shibisu.
"Of course not." Shibisu grinned. "That'd be impossible."
He was putting a good face on it, but Hatz couldn't help but feel a bit relieved.
They were fighting. Hatz rarely disagreed with Shibisu's plans, and for all Anaak and Hatz were good at tactical decisions, they'd allowed Shibisu to take over strategy a long time ago.
But, "We can't afford for you to get yourself killed," Hatz pointed out, barely containing an unexplainable anger at the idea of Shibisu throwing himself into the worst of the danger.
"I'm the perfect bait!" Shibisu countered cheerfully. "That's why I play it so often."
This wasn't just bait. This was bait with no guaranteed fighter backing him up until they came together again.
"Then take a fighter with you. Take Laure!"
Shibisu didn't budge, his voice growing quieter and more serious as Hatz's rose in anger and frustration.
Anaak looked back and forth between them, eyes narrowed darkly, then walked out in disgust toward the kitchen.
Hatz was sulking on the balcony an hour later when Anaak came and found him.
She handed him a chicken pie and ordered imperiously, "Give it to Isu."
A chicken pie? He frowned at the food in his hands. "Did you make this?"
Anaak just raised her nose delicately and sniffed. "You're as bad as my mother was." She didn't explain herself, but somehow, he got the feeling she knew exactly what was wrong with him.
Hatz wished he could handle Shibisu with as much confidence as he did his sword. He'd never had trouble before. He trusted his teammate, protected him wholeheartedly, and conferred with him when they made their plans.
But none of that was this strange, squirrelly feeling that complicated everything.
Anaak was as straightforward as Hatz though, and in the end, he took her advice and went to knock on Shibisu's door.
Shibisu didn't seem surprised to see him or even seem all that angry.
Hatz held out the pie and bowed. "I made a mistake."
That drew surprise. "Hatz!"
"I wanted to sleep with you," Hatz finally admitted out loud. He raised his head to meet Shibisu's eyes. "I want to sleep with you again."
The real mistake was walking out that door as if he hadn't.
A few days later, Hatz walked into the room Shibisu had waved him toward, took one look at the pink confectionary version of a room at a red light district, and walked back out.
"Wait! Hatz, my love! Come back!"
Shibisu trailed him to Anaak's room where Hatz sat down on the other plain, ordinary bed and crossed his arms.
"It's a wonderful bed!"
"Isu."
"Don't you like it?"
"No."
Shibisu visibly deflated.
Anaak stared back and forth between them for all of five seconds before she threw them a dirty look, snagged her bag off the end of the bed, and made for the door.
Endorsi was just walking in with hers, but Anaak grabbed her elbow and kept walking. "We're sleeping in the honeymoon suite."
"We are!?"
The sounds of the women's loud disagreement wafted behind them as the door shut.
Hatz waited a moment.
"I was being romantic," Shibisu complained, pouting.
"You were being ridiculous." But he dragged Shibisu close and kissed him fiercely all the same.