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The kitchen clock blinked 12:03 AM when Matt realized he was thirsty. The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that only exists in those strange hours between midnight and dawn. He shuffled through the darkness, his phone's flashlight casting strange shadows on the walls.
"Just need some water," he mumbled to himself, reaching for a glass from the cabinet. The smooth surface slipped through his fingers before he could get a proper grip. Time seemed to slow as the glass fell, shattering against the tile floor with a crash that felt deafening in the silence.
"Shit," Matt whispered, wincing at the noise. He stood frozen for a moment, listening for any movement upstairs, but the house remained silent. His brothers were apparently dead to the world.
"Okay, this is fine," he muttered, crouching down to start picking up the larger pieces of glass. His phone's flashlight balanced precariously on the counter, casting just enough light to make the glass fragments glitter ominously on the floor.
That's when it happened. As he reached for a particularly large shard, his hand slipped, and he instinctively tried to catch himself, right in the middle of the glass-strewn floor.
"Son of a bitch!" he yelped, jerking back as glass bit into both his palm and foot. Blood started welling up immediately, and he scrambled backward, managing to step on even more glass in the process. "Oh fuck, fuck, fuck."
Upstairs, Chris was just emerging from his room, driven by a midnight Pepsi craving. He heard the muffled cursing from the kitchen and frowned. "Matt?"
"M' fine!" Matt called back automatically, though his voice cracked slightly. He was decidedly not fine, now sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by glass, bleeding from multiple cuts.
Chris took one look into the kitchen and his eyes went wide. "Jesus Chrisler, Matt! NICK! GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!"
"What? Why are we yelling?" Nick's groggy voice called from upstairs.
"Because our idiot brother is bleeding all over the kitchen floor!" Chris carefully picked his way across the room, avoiding the glass minefield. "What the hell were you thinking, trying to clean this up in the dark?"
"Like I fucking know, I was half asleep," Matt grimaced, holding up his bleeding hand.
Nick appeared in the doorway, hair sticking up in all directions. "Holy shit, Matt."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm a dumbass." Matt tried to stand but Chris pushed him back down.
"Stay still, you moron. You'll just hurt yourself more." Chris turned to Nick. "Get the first aid kit and the broom. And turn on the actual lights, for God's sake."
The kitchen flooded with light, revealing the full extent of the disaster. Glass everywhere, small blood drops on the tile, and Matt looking both sheepish and pained.
"This is why we can't have nice things," Nick muttered, returning with supplies. "You're literally the worst midnight snacker ever."
"Shut up and help me," Matt groaned.
Chris started cleaning the cuts on Matt's hand while Nick swept a path clear of glass. "Next time just wake us up, dumbass. Or better yet, keep a water bottle in your room like a normal person."
"Where's the fun in that?" Matt tried to joke, then hissed as Chris pulled out a small shard of glass from his palm. (he didn't mention how inconvenient and unnecessary it was to wake someone up for a simple glass of water but he figured not to upset the man pulling glass out of him)
"Oh yeah, this looks real fun," Nick rolled his eyes. "Love spending my midnight picking glass out of my brother's appendages."
"Could be worse," Matt offered.
"How exactly could this be worse?" Chris asked, applying antiseptic perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary.
"Could've been your precious Pepsi bottle instead of a water glass."
Chris paused his first aid efforts to give Matt a dead-eyed stare. "If you ever break my Pepsi stash, I'm leaving you to bleed out."
"No, you wouldn't," Matt grinned, then winced as Nick started working on his foot.
"Try me," Chris muttered, but his gentle handling of Matt's injuries betrayed his words.
"You guys suck," Matt said affectionately.
"Says the guy who can't handle a simple glass of water," Nick shot back. "Now hold still, unless you want to keep this glass as a souvenir."
The kitchen clock now read 12:45 AM. In the space of forty-two minutes, they'd managed to turn a simple drink of water into a minor emergency room scene.
It took about an hour for all of Matt's cuts to be taken care of, the kitchen to be cleaned, and the triplets to finally head to bed. While Matt headed up the stairs, he couldn't help but think to himself how they would never let him live it down.