A/N: Okay, so I couldn't help it. This follows "Bough". I promise the next will be totally random. ;) The Annie-character in my head wanted her side heard, though. Still to come sometime soon: Joan's POV, and Danielle's, too.

Disclaimer: Still not mine!

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Surreptitious

1. marked by quiet, caution and secrecy

2. taking pains to avoid being observed; conducted with or marked by hidden aims or methods

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Something was...twinkling. Slowly. In-time with her breathing, the light beyond her eyelids was rising and falling, and vaguely, Annie considered that that wasn't normal. Her head felt like it was full of cotton, though, and she thought that it might not be the best idea in the whole world to open her eyes. Or move. Or, come to think of it, consider any of the above. Never mind that her bed was not really comfortable, today. She stilled, willing herself to go back to sleep - it was still dark enough around the edges that it had to be night. The problem of flashing lights and apparently nonfunctional curtains could be dealt with whenever she woke up.

Somehow, she did manage to go back to sleep, too. Far less quiet a worry than flashing lights, her bladder awoke her next. Struggling one gummed-up eye open, she blinked blearily, and froze. Honestly, she had absolutely no memory of why she was currently curled up with one arm around a pan of water and the other hand fisted in red velvet. Oh, this was probably not going to be good. In the urgent-but-hazy space between sleep and true awakeness, she groaned, doing her best to squirm out from beneath what she was pretty sure was a Christmas tree without knocking anything over. Ornaments tinkled and rattled ominously, but miraculously, they all stayed in place on the tree. Fuzzy details replayed lazily in the back of her mind as she stood and made a beeline for Auggie's room and the bathroom.

Auggie's room and the bathroom. Oh boy. That was just an entire barrel of poisonous night-crawlers or some other radioactive worms that she didn't even want to get into. Not even a little tiny bit. Still. Nature called, and would not be denied, so she tried to ignore the wariness at the fact that she hadn't seen the apartment's owner, and did her business. Feeling immensely better, she stumbled back into the room and then the common space, squinting about with slowly-blinking eyes. Nope. No Auggie. Awesome. She'd awoken alone in his apartment. It wasn't the first time she hadn't headed out after an evening of gaming or movie-ing or drinking which made driving stupid and cabs were just expensive, but she was pretty sure it was the first time Aug hadn't kicked her out to go to work at, like, five. Was it even a work day? What had they been drinking? For pissakes, she almost never drank enough to manage this one.

Feeling thankful that, at least, she didn't have a horrible headache, she wobbled towards the coffee pot. Her whole body felt stiff and unhappy, every muscle tight and in knots from apparently passing out cold on the floor. The soles of her feet felt like hot pokers had been set to them, and with every step her leg muscles pulled uncomfortably. Was she really getting that old? Because seriously, this was silly. She could distinctly remember sleeping on beaches not that long ago and being perfectly comfortable when she woke up. It was making the half-formed plan of slipping out surreptitiously not too likely.

Maybe it'd been the half-bottle of spiced rum that had gone into their hot cider last night. It had seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time. Apparently not so much. Passing a hand over her eyes halfway to the kitchen, she paused to collect the tattered shards of her dignity. Yeah, this was so not turning out right. It wasn't even all that comforting that this was the first time she'd passed out here in a few months. That just made her sad in a vague kind of way. Staving off the warring weary unhappiness and dawning amusement at her predicament with coffee, she set back to the task of trying to move with new determination.

Two-thirds of the way there, her nose kicked in, and Annie might have kissed Aug had he been here. Fresh-brewed-coffee smell wafted enticingly from the machine, drawing her across the room like a soothing balm to the soul. There was even a mug set next to the pot with some sort of molecular item on its' side. Not really caring what might have been contained within the white porcelain previously, she filled it nearly to the brim with black gold and graciously dumped in the remnants of a dish of cream that had been left out. A little sugar, stirred, and she relocated to one of the barstools along the island to stare at the cup until it cooled enough for her to drink. One hand on each side of her temples, she stared tiredly at the mug, willing it to fulfill its' destiny quickly.

She was easily most of the way to asleep, still focused on the steaming mug in her pursuit of caffeine, when the front door slid open. " - If you'll check off my Christmas list, buh-boom-pa-boom~" Off-key singing preceded her coffee-maker, and she watched with tired bemusement as he sashayed into his living room with what looked like a bag full of something foodlike. Her stomach gave a plaintive gurgle. "Mmm hmm mmm I want a yacht and really that's not a lot..." He hip-bumped the door back along its' track and into place, still singing an overdone version of what she was pretty sure was Eartha Kitt's version of Santa Baby. Figured. "So hurry down the chimney toniiighh - Annie?" The non sequitor may or may not have caught her off-guard and possibly in the midst of watching him dance around like an idiot in his way-too-thick-for-the-weather coat and sweatpants that hung low on his hips. She really didn't need to be doing that. It was right there, though, and she wasn't anywhere close to coherent.

So she took a giant gulp of her still-way-too-hot coffee; and sputtered in pain for a moment. Auggie made his way over to his kitchen, brows furrowed now. "Woah, what - oh come on, Walker, you're how old now? Thirty? You ought to know how to drink coffee by now." Apparently in setting the bag down, he'd discovered that the coffee cup was missing, since now he was shooting the exasperated look in her direction. She grunted in a fashion that she was pretty sure sounded just as impolite and uncomplimentary as she meant it to.

The exasperated look turned to amusement, then, at least. "Uhuh. Well, I brought food. Bagel shop down the road has a Saturday special, and since you seemed pretty happy spooning my Christmas tree, I went to get it myself. Do you always sleep the day away on your weekends?" She squinted vaguely at her shaggy-haired friend, wearily considering the response that would take the least amount of words. The least amount of effort, actually, in general.

"Yep." Was what she settled on, wrinkling her nose when her poor abused throat let her know how disappointed it was in her for trying to scald it. Ow. Wait - "Spooning your tree? Aug, something you wanna tell me?" He may have missed her raised eyebrow, but he probably couldn't miss her tone. Maybe. Even if she did sound a little like she'd been gargling nails. Ugh; maybe he had some sort of medication that would make her head feel a little less like the nail gargling thing.

Mid-extraction of something that smelled heavenly, Aug snorted, tossing a look in her direction. It was a very Auggie look, and she was pretty sure that first-day-on-the-job Annie might have dived for cover. Hungover and caffeine deficient Annie met it with a snort of her own. "What? Feeling me up while I'm sleeping? Totally creepy." She shot back, and he laughed. "Actually, you had one of my feet. Don't ask me how or why, Walker, that's on you." He grinned impishly and slid the wax paper wrapped package down the counter. "Bacon egg and tomato bagel with extra bacon. Thought you might need something greasy to sop up whatever's left in our systems. Pretty sure the Captain should have stayed in his bottle and left the Christmas Cheer to singing along with the songs or something. I feel like I swallowed a whole cat while I was sleeping." Perfectly cheerful in spite of something that actually sounded horrible, he wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue childishly.

Annie tried to make a sympathetic noise, honest she did. It was slightly hard to focus on anything but stuffing her face and, in short order, drinking her coffee since it was at a nearly-sane temperature to do so. The combination of coffee and greasy-yummy bagel was enough to nearly send her to vapors, and apparently Aug felt much the same way, since they ate in near total silence. Only when she had eaten every single bite of that bagel and had chugged the whole mug of coffee did she finally sigh happily and slump to rest her face on the counter. "Thanks, Auggie." May have been muffled by the counter, but it was entirely genuine in spite of that. He grinned and slumped forward himself, resting his cheek on a palm and focusing one of those looks that she loved and hated in her general direction.

"Naw. That's just bagels. You're the one that made me mutant Rudolphs and brought me a gimpy tree to go with my gimpy-self." The words might have been teasing, but his tone was sleepily contented, and she had to laugh. He looked like he was going to fall asleep on the island. Not again. That was an unhealthy habit. Auggie was - well, honestly, she wasn't sure at all what had gone down in Eritrea, months ago, but he was off-limits either way.

Which meant that passing out on the floor with him was more off-limits than crashing on his couch. It just was. Never mind the whole 'logic' thing. "Dani and I have always done Christmas." She shared, smiled. It was, mostly, a happy memory for them. They had almost always gotten along while doing their Christmas decorating, at least. Auggie grinned sidelong at her. "Yeah, well, you should have seen an Anderson Christmas, Annie. Mom always forced us all to help decorate the tree. None of my brothers thought it was funny. I thought their not-thinking was hilarious."

He snickered into an arm, and she snickered with him. Five boys...no, she didn't even want to begin to contemplate that. She had been just fine, with one sister. Danielle had always been all she had needed in siblings, no matter how rocky their relationship had been as teenagers. "I bet that was crazy." She agreed, curious in spite of herself. "So you were totally the baby. Were you a mama's boy?"

This time, any smile he might have heard was totally there; she smirked broadly at his immediate indignant huff. He puffed up like a twelve-year-old, eyes narrowing huffily in her direction as he glared lazily. "Oh, you're one to talk. I bet you were." Aug laughed, and she rolled her eyes. She wasn't even going to go there.

Anyways, she had a better plan - which included doing some shopping at some point today, since there were only a few weeks left before Christmas. Currently, though, the plan stretched only so far as Auggie's coffee pot and maybe the couch. Never mind anything else, she wasn't nearly awake enough to be driving, and anyways she was pretty sure that TCM was running an It's a Wonderful Life marathon today. Maybe they could polish off the pot of coffee and watch that before she had to return to the rest of life and be responsible. It felt pretty great to, for once, not have to do anything or be in immediate danger of dismemberment or prison sentences. Not that she thought either of those would transpire; no matter what else was going on, Auggie wouldn't let that happen.

"Whatever, Aug. Want coffee? I don't really care what you're doing, but I'm going to steal your couch and watch It's a Wonderful Life until I wake up since it's your fault I feel like I got mauled by a jet engine." Logic: her favorite. Her logic was totally sound, and her favorite handler looked like he was tempted to agree with her, squinting lazily sidelong at her. "Yeah, coffee." He agreed with amusement. "That sounds good."

Now, if only she could get her undercaffeinated self up and get the coffee that might help her feel like doing so. Oh, circular reasoning. It was too early for that.

One step at a time.