„Pillow Fiiiight!"
There was a general, all-consuming silence as the mentioned object hit David's head, seemingly remained glued to it for a moment and then softly fell down on the ground. David didn't twitch or react in any visible way, but everyone was sure that he tried send death waves towards his assaulter, who laughed it off, while everyone else in the room began to question the entire point of their little get-together – once again.
It was just like Jake to turn their business trip to a hotel in Marchville City into some kind of sleepover. It was beyond them how they even had ended up in all the same room, despite it originally only being designed for three people. Somehow Jake had gotten them all together, comfortable seated on the double and the single bed, and now the Dominators had to deal with his stupid snickering.
"You're all boring, come on, fight back, you cowards!"
He was thrown off the bed by a well-aimed pillow, only a few seconds after. The one who threw it actually turned out to be Glen, second strongest fighter in their group. He calmly sat back down and leaned against the headboard, while next to him Odin exhaled very slowly and calmly.
"Jake, save your energy for actual battles, will you?"
"Alrighty, alrighty, I'm sooorry~", Jake sing-songed from down on the floor. Hugging the pillow close he seemed to have no intention of getting back up soon.
The hotel was nice, a place of friendly colors and rather good room service. The Dominators seemed only a little bit out of place between pleasant pastel walls.
They had the TV turned on, showing some rather ridiculous love comedy, that nobody seemed to pay extended attention to, despite some eyes being fixed on the screen.
David had found the spot farthest from Jake and therefore was situated on the chair that belonged to the obligatory hotel room desk, staring displeased as a fiction secretary found out her boss, who was also her crush, was also secretly a popstar, who turned out to be alibi dating her best friend and had a dramatic backstory connected closely with her grandgrandmother. David's brother Gigante was on the floor, leaning against one of the beds and read a book, completely ignoring the events on TV. Both were dressed in their nightclothes already, but it wouldn't be apparent to a passer-by as they slept in black t-shirts and pants.
Odin was much more spectacular in that term and not only by comparision either, because, as anybody would have to admit, he seemed to be made for that dark blue long robe he was dressed in. Very unsuitably for his role in the group he had layed down and curled up slightly, only half-way keeping his eyes open to look at the TV while he relaxed.
Next to him was Glen, who'd robbed the snick mini bar of almost all its contents and now regarded the movie with a surprisingly high amount of attention.
The single bed was occupied by Sting and Jake. The latter apparently had missed the point of an all-boys sleepover completely. Next to him were a hairbrush and various hair accessory and he was busy toying with strands of Sting's silver hair.
Sting didn't seem to mind, he was laying on his stomach, playing with his legs in the air and smirking at the second hand embarrassment provided by television. Kneeling next to him, Jake hummed contently as the silky hair ran through his fingers.
It was one of the rare moments at which they all got along rather well. The Dominators were by no way a team build on friendship and their only common interest was power and the suffering of other people. It didn't serve for a purely harmonic life together, but they managed. Occasions like this, however, were almost creepy in their calm. A calm before the storm, very likely. By the time the girl on TV got to kiss her boss and start her own career as a police officer – much to everybody's surprise -, Sting had braided pigtails and Glen just started snipping the last peanuts left at goals made of lemonade bottles.
Jake yawned. "Sappy happy ends are just so unexciting. Bleh. I'm much more interested in causing a bit more misery in this city."
The word 'misery' pretty much brought everyone's attention on him in the blink of an eye, even Odin opened his eyes and sat back up again – it turned out he hadn't been asleep after all. It was generally agreed though that they weren't going to leave the hotel anymore, due to a general lack of hairstyling –excluding Sting- and an even more general unwillingness to get back dressed properly again.
"Let's play tricks on the other hotel guests then", Jake finally suggested and Sting nodded with a grin.
Odin sighed. "Child's play, you shouldn't waste your time like this."
"It's not wasting time though!", Jake protested, "We don't have anything to do anyway, so come on! Where's the harm in it? I mean, the harm for us."
Sting gave another nod and snickered. "We should go and let them know fear before we leave, it's… appropriate."
"It's got nothing to do with Beywheelz and it's none of our business."
The protest went almost unheard as Jake and Sting rushed out, dragging Glen along. Odin felt himself obliged to follow begrudgingly for the sake of protecting the Dominators' bad reputation. He motioned for Gigante to come along –it was always good having some muscles when trying to look intimidating-, so David remained alone in the room. For a moment he contemplated following them on their merry way, but then he decided to just leave it at that, leaned back and closed his eyes.
Out in the hallway the Dominators had the pleasure of getting to see Jake's surprising professionalism when it came to breaking into other hotel rooms. They didn't even know how he did it, it was all computerized after all and Jake wasn't even any good with computers, but within moments they had made their way into the suites of people who were unlucky enough to not be home yet.
They didn't even know what they wanted to do, but Jake sure as hell seemed to have a lot of fun calling the room service to order the most expensive and ridiculous things imagineable. Odin stood in the doorway, shivering as his bare feet got cold, and rolled his eyes.
At least they were intimidating enough, even despite being in their nightclothes, as they figured out when meeting some families in the hallways. Sting might or might not have given them the fright of their lives. Glen had to admit all this was rather fun, but he kept it down, not wanting to upset Odin any further.
They were an odd group running through the hotel. The tall Gigante, Sting in his way too long pyjamas and still with the braids, Jake and Glen in their boxers shorts –Glen with a T-shirt and Jake with a tank top though-, followed by Odin in his royal robe. As they walked past, people turned around and stepped aside.
(Later on Marche Ovis, unfortunate enough to be at the hotel that day, decided that clearly he'd just been dreaming, because there was obviously no way he just actually saw that.)
They returned to their room after roughly two hours, when Jake was almost exhausted from laughing so hard. David didn't even look up as they walked in and upon further inspection he turned out to have fallen asleep on his chair. Only Gigante's extremely warning look was able to keep Jake from somehow taking advantage of that.
Odin took a look at the clock.
"It's midnight already… We should go get some sleep before tomorrow's plan."
"Awww, you're tired~", Jake teased immediately, brain-to-mouth-filter turned off as ever so often. It earned him a look from Glen.
"There's nothing cute about being prepared for a battle properly, Jake."
"Admit it, you don't want to go to sleep yet either, that's just not your style."
"What now, next you're gonna suggest we play spin-the-bottle?"
"Well, why not? If we're already at it, heh."
At this point Odin's voice interrupted them. "Stop that. There will be plenty of time for further amusement tomorrow."
He'd already climbed into the bed, warming his feet under the covers. It was hard to take him serious like that, but he was respected enough to not have anybody question him when he was using this tone of voice.
"Over to your room, David, Gigante, Jake. Especially you, Jake."
Sting wasn't surprised when later, after Odin fell asleep, Gigante and the poor reawaken David returned, carrying their blankets, just to be able to rest in a room without Jake.
Sting was even less surprised when, only 40 minutes later, the door opened once again. Almost mercilessly someone jumped next to him on his single bed and he didn't have to ask who, because he knew. Jake didn't have to ask if Sting was awake either, because he knew just as well.
"It's boring alone. Hey, Sting, you know what we should do tomorrow…"
He kept talking as he slipped under the blanket, but not too loudly, because he didn't want Odin to throw him out again.
Sting liked Jake when he was like this. Not exactly his non-existent consideration in terms of personal space –he didn't care about that though, because this was Jake and there was no use-, but when he was planning the cruel despair of other people with just a smile.
As Jake fell asleep, Sting took his time to leave the room again and as he retuned he wore a smirk that would have been pure nightmare fuel, had anybody actually been awake to see it.
When Odin woke up, he blinked in surprise upon finding all of his teammates back in the room again. Gigante and David in their improvised beds on the floor, sleeping peacefully, which seemed odd to him because after all they had real beds next door.
Sting was already awake, which was rather creepy, but kept in place by Jake who was somehow placed halfway over him on their small bed. Odin would never understand how and why Sting kept up with this. He'd also never understand Sting in general and he definitely didn't want to figure out what Jake did in this room or Sting's bed at all.
Next to Odin, Glen hung half-way from the side of the bed. Odin woke him up and tip-toed to the bath. Anything to get there before Jake woke up. It was a habit that was hard to shake, after having had to wait for that impossible hairstyling to get done three times already.
Jake began to move fifteen minutes later. His hair hung down over almost his entire face as he raised his head from Sting's shoulder, not in the slightest bit startled by their unintentionally intimate position.
"….'mornin'", he murmured groggily and Sting used the opportunity to get out of bed. Before Jake even could manage to fling his legs off the mattress, Sting was already dressed.
As Odin and Glen left the bathroom, Jake immediately snuck in, much to the displeasure of David and Gigante who woke up and now would have to wait literally forever just to brush their teeth.
Gigante violently knocked at the door. "Hey, hurry up in there! Be a little considerate for once!"
Jake laughed behind the closed door. "We're Dominators. The C-word shouldn't even be included in our vocabulary."
"I'll show you another very interesting c-word if you don't get out there in 5 minutes."
"What now? Care? Cuteness? Come on, now you're getting embarrassing, hehe."
Before things could escalate further, Glen crossed his arms and stepped between Gigante and the door.
"In case you missed the memo, we've got a second bathroom in the room that you guys should technically have slept in."
The table they got for breakfast was surely cosy and private, even if only due to the fact that every other person in the room tried to be as far from it as somehow possible. Some of the people looked like they had had the worst life of their lives, which was actually quite likely to be correct.
It was the beginning of a nice day. It was a relatively normal breakfast, too, even if Jake unsuccessfully tried to convince Sting to eat something as well –"Come on, every enemy's gonna blow you over like this or are you maybe just scaaared?", an incident which led to a fork getting stuck in the opposite wall in a quite threatening manner. Aside from that, it was all quiet.
As they left the hotel, Odin sighed.
'Let's never ever do this again', he thought to himself as they walked down the street and everyone got out of their way in respect and far. He looked over at his team's faces. Jake was sucking on one of these free lollypops from the hotel entryway.
The and Dominators and sleepovers, huh?
Those didn't belong together.
