Mantarou cursed loudly as he fell out of the elevator. He used the wall for leverage as he made his way to the appropriate door. He knocked and waited for an answer. He adjusted his askew glasses and hoped his favorite human Hida was there. One thought kept coming, he needed to drink something... and he needed to take a leak soon.
Iori frowned at the sound of someone trampling down the hall and actually dragging against the wall. Some people were so rude. He relaxed when it stopped, but jumped as someone apparently attempted to break the door open.
He paused the television and looked around slowly until his eyes where in the same direction as his partner's, trying to drill through the door.
"Do you think that's Chikara or your mom?" Armadimon asked.
Iori shook his head.
"I doubt it. Right now they should be on the Shinkansen for Nagoya..."
Iori got up noiselessly from the couch, his partner treading after him, and walked to the door, all muscles tensed. He leaned in and looked through the peephole.
"Iori-kuuuuuun!" Mantarou yelled. "Are you in? I gotta take a piss."
Jut as he spoke, the younger man was sticking his face against the peephole in an attempt to look through. Faced with the shout and a close view of Mantarou's front teeth, Iori jumped back and tripped over his partner, loudly falling over onto his butt.
"Yeouch!" he grumbled through his teeth.
"Iori!" Armadimon whispered. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," the teen answered, "no need to whisper. It's just Mantarou-san."
Armadimon glanced at the clock. It was 9:30 already and they were supposed to go to sleep soon. He turned toward the door with an intrigued look.
"Mantarou? What is he doing here so late? Is their toilet broken?"
"No idea,"Iori said, rubbing his bruised butt cheeks. "Would you open, please?"
"Oh, sure. No problem!"
Armadimon pushed himself to his hind legs and toddled over to the door. His paws grabbed at the handle and pulled back. As the door opened, Mantarou decided to help it along and pushed it all the way open.
"Iori, Armadimon!" the boy said happily, pushing his way inside. "I came to see you! How are you guys?"
"Gyah!" Armadimon exclaimed, rolling into a ball to avoid being smushed against the wall.
Iori got up and somehow managed not to glare (too much, anyway) at the overly cheery man. More surprisingly, he managed not to faint and fall back again at the stench of alcohol in the other's breath.
"What brings you here, Mantarou-san?"
Mantarou paused before answering that one. Why did he come, again? Something to do with sobering up before going home. Maybe.
"I don't know," he answered earnestly, "I think it's because you're cool and all my sisters should date nice boys like you..." His thought unraveled as he spoke. "Water, yes... Nausea, no."
Mantarou looked at the two others with him, faces, they were making funny faces. Had he done something wrong? He didn't think he was THAT drunk... Iori turned his attention to Armadimon, who was still vibrating from the aftershock.
"Didn't you say you needed to 'take a piss'?" he asked in hope to get rid of him for a few minutes.
He regretted that almost immediately. Would Mantarou-san even manage to aim properly for the bowl? Mantarou nodded and made his stumbling way to the bathroom, readily knowing where it was. He started unzipping his pants before he was even halfway there, but fortunately had enough presence of mind to wait until he was in the bathroom to do more. He closed the door and did his business as well as a small mess. He took his time with the entire process before he went back to see the one he considered his "foster son". Meanwhile Armadimon unfurled himself with lick clicking sound that betrayed the effect of the crush.
"Geez..." he said, his voice trembling from the physical effects. "What's with him?"
Iori sighed and patted his partner lightly, trailing his hands across the shell to check for cracks. Just in case.
"Mantarou-san is drunk," Iori explained.
Armadimon's eyes widened.
"Does that mean he's going to break out in songs any time now?"
Iori shook his head and blushed furiously. His grandfather was a singing drunk. He liked lurid and explicit songs which usually involved far too much explaining to his digimon.
"He better not..." Iori grumbled.
Mantarou emerged from the bathroom and began to hum, softly and poorly. He walked into the wall and kicked it for moving into his way.
"Why won't the world stand still like I do?" he asked, wobbling back and forth.
Iori stared at the man. It was amazing, he thought, that Mantarou had not just crumbled into place yet. He walked up to him, not-so-closely followed by Armadimon and grabbed at his side so his body would stop moving.
"World moving less now?" he asked.
Mantarou looked the teen and glared.
"Get your hand off me!" he yelled, snapping his arm away and falling to the ground. "Stupid," he mumbled at nothing in particular.
Oh, nausea was a bitch. That fall was making his small supper threaten to reappear in a less appetizing form. He clutched his stomach, hoping it wouldn't happen. Iori took the situation into his hands and pointed at the bathroom.
"Get back in there, and try not to make the situation worse than it is. I'll be right back with water."
Mantarou moaned and made nonsensical sounds as he half-rolled half-scooted back into the bathroom.
"Imm fnn," he mumbled, leaning against the toilet and trailing in some of his spilled urine.
Iori turned around and went in search of water, ice and a large glass. Armadimon followed the man in the room and slipped bathroom slipper in his front paws when he noticed the liquid on the floor.
"Yuck."
He jumped into the shower, turned on cold water and began to rinse the bodily fluid toward the drain in the middle of the fully waterproof room.
"COOOOLD!" the man screamed. "Bad, bad dog!"
Iori walked back in the room just in time to see the water flowing and Mantarou panicking. He dropped the (fortunately unbreakable) glass he was carrying, adding further ice-cold water and ice chunks to the mix and immediately went to stop his partner, but tripped over Mantarou's twitching legs and crashed over Armadimon and the still open shower head.
"Gyah!" he yelled.
He reached over in a panic and, instead of turning off cold water, turned on the warm one and completed soaking the trio. Finally managing to cut the flow, he glared at the digimon.
"What in the name of the kyubi's nine tails where you doing?"
Armadimon crossed his arms in protest.
"He made a mess, not me! I was just cleaning up. And besides, it helped me, why wouldn't it help him?" he said resentfully.
Iori glared, then sweatdropped.
"I had hoped we could just forget about that," he commented.
Armadimon had turned out to be a nauseated drunk. A nauseated, brooding drunk. The event had certainly, to Iori, confirmed his pet theory that digimon's stomachs contained pocket dimensions. The water flowing on Mantarou tricked his drunk mind into thinking that he was showering, so he began to strip. He took off his shirt and started with his pants. He looked around and saw the teenager and digimon in the room, for he had momentarily forgotten them.
"Iori? Why are you in the shower with me? Do you need one too? I don't like you like that..." he slurred.
Having been distracted with chastizing the digimon, Iori whirled around at the mention of "being in the shower with Mantarou". Armadimon clasped both paws over his muzzle and did the best to keep himself from exploding with laughter. Before the teen realized it, he was standing next to Mantarou and holding his pants up firmly.
That's when he realized what he was doing. He blushed a wholly new shade of red and looked up at Mantarou, his hands brushing against the skin of the other's stomach and side.
"Stop touching me!" Mantarou demanded, wiggling away. "Get out of my shower! Bad boy!"
In his flailing, he shook too hard and lost his balance. Iori looked in with a mix of horrified embarrassment and astonishment as Mantarou, forgetting his undone pants, flailed widely. The unsupported garments happily flopped around his ankle, causing the already less than stable biped to trip forward and fall into the bathtub, hitting his head on the wall with a loud noise. He remained immobile there, his butt raised inappropriately. Iori had covered his eyes at the falling pants, but had to look after the yelp and crash.
"Oi..." he desperately sighed.
Armadimon somehow avoided exploding again.
"Is he... Pft Okay?" he giggled.
Iori glared harshly at him.
"This is all your fault. You do realize I'm stuck drying him now?"
Armadimon had the good sense to actually looked contrite, although Iori could teel that deep inside he was actually thinking "better you than me," which only made the situation all the more frustrating.
"Get out. Just get out before this gets worse."
Iori awkwardly wrapped his arms around the unconscious Mantarou and pulled him out of his embarrassing position. He had to be thankful that the other wore boxers, and even more that they miraculously remained dry, although he could have done without knowing that his best friend's brother had a soft spot for mid-nineties Astro Boy underwear. Turning around, he propped him on the toilet and first proceeded to slip the soaked pants over his shoes, then decided with a sigh that Mantarou might as well do without them and his socks by now.
Reaching over, he grabbed a towel from the heated rack and began to dry the other off with it, seething mildly when he began hearing cupboards opening and closing in the other room.
"He's not going to eat now?" he roared mentally.
Mantarou's head was aching so he slowly reached up a hand to feel his head as he slowly opened his eyes.
"Ow," he moaned.
Why was he wet? Was that blood? And more importantly, why was he mostly unclothed? And not in his apartment? His brain slowly put the night together, too slowly.
"Oh, crap," he said, struggling to stand.
He failed and fell to the ground anew.
"Ow," he repeated himself. "Make it stop!" he whined much like his youngest sister.
He remembered why he hated being drunk now. Iori tried to catch up the falling man, but failed.
"Stop getting new pieces of clothing wet!" he protested desperately as the other tipped over and landed on the watery floor.
"I could have done without having to strip you so I could properly dry you myself," he deadpanned, pulling himself together and the other back on the seat.
"Now stop moving or you can try to figure the working mechanism of this towel all by yourself," he warned, returning to drying the other's thighs.
That felt good and bad and funny and his head was swimming.
"Make me not drunk," he whined, then "Stupid."
He half heartedly pushed away Iori.
"I'm a grown up, I can take care of myself!" he protested.
Damnit, that shouldn't feel good. Mantarou decided he needed a girlfriend. Luckily, he had too much alcohol in him for his body to respond properly.
"You look as able to take care of yourself as wet noodles right now," Iori stated as evenly as possible given the situation. "The more you stay still, the sooner we can get this sea of embarrassment over."
"Stop," Mantarou insisted, trying to be sober, trying to find his head. "I don't like to be touched, unless you're going to give me a hand job, stop." Stupid alcohol.
"You're about as likely to manage to finish drying yourself," Iori countered, finishing to dry his arms, "as you are to strangle yourself with the towel."
He stepped back and pulled the other to his feet so he could wrap the towel around him.
"We're hanging your clothes to dry. Since I doubt they'll be any time soon, you're staying here for the night."
"Sure, sure," the man teased, "You didn't want my sister, just me. I told you, I don't feel the same way."
Mantarou leaned heavily on Iori as he stood and enjoyed the body heat on his cold skin.
"Think of it this way: Would you prefer to show up there drunk and in soaking wet clothes, drunk and in underwear only, or not drunk and clothed?" Iori said as he wrapped the towel as tight as possible in retaliation before leading the way out of the room.
"I'm not tha drunkk," Mantarou slurred.
He followed the younger boy, not careful of anything. He again used the boy and walls for support, but the floor did little to help. No, the floor willfully hindered. Mantarou walked on the glass Iori had previously dropped there, was thrown forward and grabbed at the closest object, which happened to be Iori. More specifically Iori's pants. As Mantarou came aground, Iori's pants came along for the ride. With his pants unexpectedly made a severe hindrance to proper walking motion, Iori's face was brought to a sudden, painful meeting with the floor. The crashing brought a concerned Armadimon into the mix, who froze in the doorframe.
"Oh..." he said, looking at the two half-naked males inside. "I'll... Just be waiting outside, okay?" he concluded with an uneasy smile.
He reached for the door and closed it. Iori began to rhythmically hit his head on the floor. Somewhere, a God was fiddling with a remote control and laughing at him. That had to be the only explanation. Mantarou gave up entirely. He just lay there, tired and nauseous. He didn't try to move or speak. He only thought of one thing: no more alcohol. Iori got up and grumbled as he got his pants fixed. Then he looked at Mantarou and noticed the stillness.
"Oh great. Now he's dead, just rich," he sighed.
He couldn't even work himself into a proper panic. Then the corpse twitched and he knew his trouble was still not over. With a loud groan, he hauled the man to his feet and leaned him against his shoulder so the could more-or-less carry him in the kitchen. He first considered dropping him in a chair but remembered how successful the toilet seat had turned out to be, and directed them to the living room instead, where Mantarou proceeded to unceremoniously sprawl across the couch. He was barely rubbing the sweat off his brow when Armadimon walked in with a tray and a glass of... well, it looked like liquid.
"Drink," the digimon told Mantarou.
As the human took the glass, Iori suddenly had a suspicion and grabbed the digimon by the ear to drag him to the kitchen. There he didn't get to ask any question.
"I don't want to know what you needed heavy fermentation oolong tea, Iron Stallion, prune juice and pork ramen noodles broth. I don't. But if it kills Mantarou you are grounded forever," he sternly warned his digimon.
"Don't worry, dagya, if that doesn't put him straight, nothing will," Armadimon answered with a knowledgeable smile.
Mantarou didn't even think, he just drank, too tired to do otherwise. He took a large gulp, ignoring protests from his stomach, and almost spit it out for its horrid taste. The only reason he didn't was because he had had worse and had been taught to never waste food.
"What's in this?" he asked, making faces at the strange, gritty consistency. Mantarou was still mostly drunk, so he drank more, dehydrated as he was.
"Oh, crap!" he exclaimed before running to the bathroom.
He tripped and crawled and almost didn't make it in time. There he threw up to his stomach's content and then some. His throat and mouth burned from the acid. He slumped in the bathroom when he didn't think his stomach had anymore and waited with a sigh. Vomiting always woke him up, though it didn't usually make him less drunk. Iori heard a storm of footsteps behind and something that might have been Mantarou disappeared inside the bathroom, rapidly followed by loud retching noises. The teen and his partner poked their head inside slowly to look at the panting man.
"Told you so," Armadimon said.
Iori rolled his eyes.
"The next time, I'm forcing you to self-test these," he warned the digimon.
Mantarou slowly made his way back to the living room.
"What did you just give me?" he asked, glaring at the digimon.
Armadimon sweatdropped. Honestly, he had been making stuff as he went, and couldn't remember half the ingredients that had went into the recipe. He waved a conspiratory claw in front of his mouth.
"Industrial secret, dagya! But hey, it did stop you from walking into walls, didn't it?"
"But it caused me to loose half of my intestines," Mantarou countered.
He crossed his arms, annoyed and back to his usual cranky self.
"Where are my clothes?"
"Still in the bathroom. And still wet," Iori stated calmly.
Cranky Mantarou. That Iori could deal with easily enough.
"Armadimon, get covers and a pillow for our guest while I hang his clothes to dry, will you?" he asked his partner as he walked back to the bathroom.
"Way ahead of you, dagya," came the digimon's voice from the linen closet.
"That would be nice," Mantarou shivered.
He wrapped his arms around himself, looked around and blushed. He felt exposed and tried to remember exactly what happened while he was drunk. Why did something about hand jobs come to mind? Iori gathered Mantarou's shirt, pants and socks to the living room, and kicked the shoes in the general direction of the entrance. Once he was done pinning the clothes on the ropes near the balcony, he looked around and noticed Mantarou's quizzical looks.
"Ignorance is bliss. Don't ask," he told him with a shake of the head.
Armadimon came back and handed the necessities to Mantarou with a yawn. Iori glanced at the clock and was amazed to find out it was only 10:00, and that this whole ordeal that seemed to have lasted hours had in fact only been going for thirty minutes. Mantarou wrapped the blanket around himself and gravitated towards the couch. He lay down, exhausted.
"We never speak of this again," he said, settling in.
Iori gave Armadimon a warning glance.
"You won't find me disagreeing..."
The pair wished Mantarou good dreams and turned off the light before going over to Iori's bedroom, leaving the man bathing in the surreal glow of the lit television set.