Notes – For the gx_100. Set after season one and before season two, during the summer holidays. This one originates from chapter seventeen of 'Images of Genex', as a few people commented on the picture asking for more of the situation. But to stick with the rule of the challenge this story is a stand-alone and you don't need to read that to understand this. Also, I'm not a huge fan of characters drinking in fanfiction so this sort of story is unusual for me to write.

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He wasn't a drinking person by nature.

Not because he'd had any sort of objections to it, but he'd never particularly seen the point and he'd always been under aged before.

Before. He used it as if it was a past tense. Which was a lie, because the legal drinking age was twenty and yesterday had been Ryo's eighteenth birthday. But for some reason Fubuki had still insisted… It wasn't as if they were going out anywhere, it wasn't as if they were hurting anyone, it wasn't as if the percentage of alcohol in the drink had been that high.

Those were all words Fubuki had used to reason with him. His parents had said they thought Fubuki was trouble, in retrospect he should have listened to them instead of him.

But all that was what Ryo would be thinking about the situation when he had regained the ability to think logically once more. Right now he only had one thought in his mind, and that was a thought quite common to those who woke up after their first night drinking.

He thought that his head hurt.

Then he tried not to think that. He tried to stop himself from thinking anything at all, but it was too late for that. The headache had got its grip now and it wasn't letting go.

So now that he was awake and in considerable pain he might as well put his brain to other uses while the rest of his formerly sleeping body attempted to catch up.

He remembered… Fubuki. That all too smug grinning face of his looked up in Ryo's mind's eye, and he was holding a bottle. Ryo didn't need reminding about the bottle. He'd never trust 'grape juice' for a long time to come.

And he vaguely remembered taking a drink, then being offered another drink, then a lot of loud talking, and he had a hazy memory of Fubuki starting to cry for no reason and then starting to laugh straight afterwards, but he might have imagined that.

Then… they'd both tried to walk but they'd fallen down again. But Ryo had been determined to get on his feet so with Fubuki's support they'd stumbled around like the worst contestants in a game of Twister ever.

He couldn't remember what had happened after that. He presumed another drink.

But all recollection was suddenly put on hold because something had just slapped hard against Ryo's face.

Opening his eyes he saw that it was an arm. Someone sleeping beside him had just rolled over.

Someone… sleeping beside him?

And there had only been one other person in the room with him, he was aware of that.

Oh no.

Please no.

He turned his head slightly to aside and was greeted by the face of Fubuki, who's mouth was wide open as he snored indignantly. As shocking as that was it wasn't what worried Ryo the most about the situation.

Now he'd been forced awake he was suddenly faced with the visual confrontation of the scene. His eyes trailed down Fubuki to notice that the other boy had not got his shirt on. A very swift glance further down had revealed that thankfully he did still have his pants on. So things weren't as bad as they could have been.

Fubuki minus one shirt. But where had that shirt gone?

He didn't even need a mental image to remember that shirt in particular; it was bright red and covered in yellow Hawaiian flowers. It was Fubuki's favourite and something that Ryo had seen many times before. Though he didn't approve of it.

As he considered the missing shirt a cold wave of worry ran through him. Fubuki was shirtless, so that might also mean that he was too…

A look down both put an end to his worry and told him where the lost shirt was. He was wearing it.

Well that was just great. He was lying in his room with a topless boy wearing a Hawaiian shirt while it felt like graduation duel crowd was shouting up a storm in his head. He really didn't want to remember how he'd gotten here. The before was all that his mind wanted, and if he could hurry up he'd gladly take the after too, probably laughing about it with Fubuki in years to come. A lot of years to come.

Fate had decided that he was going to deal with the situation now however, as Fubuki was starting to stir awake.

The other boy blearily opened his eyes and muttered some unintelligible sounds at Ryo then closed them again without moving his arm from Ryo's face.

"Fubuki…" Ryo tried, putting as much force as he could into politely coaxing someone to be awake.

There was another mutter and a frown, and then Fubuki opened his eyes again.

"Oh… man, sorry," he said, pulling the arm away, "Last night was…"

"No," said Ryo plainly.

"…What?"

Rubbing some sleep from his eyes Ryo confirmed, "I don't want to remember what happened last night. Not yet."

"Fair enough, though you look great in that shirt by the way," said Fubuki, who seemed to have much greater ease waking up in the morning.

Ryo's response was also something he edited out of his mental playback of that day later on.

His eighteenth birthday had been many things, and when the subject was brought up he'd tell people a lot about before and a lot about after but seemed to be decisively absent about what had happened during.

Perhaps there were some things about him and Fubuki no one would ever know.