Archive of Our Own

Alexander felt consciousness dawn on him before anything else. He didn’t register an alarm—and had a vague remembrance of disabling it the night prior—but he registered a pounding headache spreading from his frontal lap to the back of his head. He didn’t open his eyes as the light which shone through his eyelids already boded for an even worse headache should he attempt to embrace the day. He groaned as he rolled over in bed, careful not to roll over the edge of the too slim bed (he had discussed several times with Edward whether they could rearrange so he could get a bigger bed, a factor which had not been a necessity before he suddenly had to share his bed with Magnus, who liked to spread out during the night). Then what had awoken him in the first place struck him, an incoming text message on his phone. He thanked the angel that he had been sensible enough to turn off the sound before he went to bed, even though the vibration through the mattress already seemed to drum through his brain, which already threatened with leaving his head for somewhere with more space and more sensibility than drinking that much. He dared one eye open, closing it promptly against the light in the room (hearing the distinct sound of water running in the shower—so he couldn’t even ask his roommate to close the blinds). It took another two attempts before he could look at his screen which seemed to shine triumphantly into his eyes in an attempt to annoy him further. The message was from Magnus (luckily only one), and he unlocked his phone to check it.

Alexander groaned again as he hid his face in his pillow. He could remember no such thing as running out of ice or crying out for the poor polar bears, but he did not doubt that Magnus was telling the truth, unfortunately. It took him a couple of minutes, mostly spend contemplating how to best not show his face publicly again, before he could reply to his boyfriend.

They had started out almost the whole West Wing, but Alexander remembered several people going back to their dorms, so hopefully most people had been too wasted to really notice his very drunken outburst. A door opened and he looked up, seeing his roommate walk in with a towel slung around his waist. “Ah, you’re awake, finally.” He was too tired to figure out whether Edward was sarcastic, demeaning or disapproving, and too tired to care, so he only answered with a non-committed noise before checking the time on his phone. It was almost noon, so Edward had not been taking his morning shower as Alexander had hoped for, but rather one after a couple of laps of running or whatever activity he had decided was worth his time this morning. Buzz buzz. He looked down at his phone,

‘Magnus Bane: 1 message’.

Alec turned off his phone and decided to leave it on his bed when he got up, just for good measure. If he ignored it, it might go away (he hoped the same for his headache). Standing up proved to be less dangerous than he had expected, no sudden hit of nausea or dizziness, though his head felt heavier than the rest of his body put together. If he could get through the coach’s bad days, where running a lap was done in a sprint, followed by twenty pull-ups and ten more if you needed prompting, he could handle a hangover. So Alec took a shower, keeping it short only by thinking of how coffee was waiting for him downstairs, and got dressed. He managed to produce a sweatshirt without holes, though still with frayed hems, and complimented it with a pair of black jeans, not caring one bit about fashion when his headache had turned into a dozen horses galloping through his head. Coffee sounded more and more promising though, so with another non-committed noise to Edward (which really was what a lot of their conversations extended to), he left his room and headed for the common room.