Author's Note: I'm still going. Why?! Why am I still writing this?!
The following morning…
Arthur woke up with a pounding headache and a strange taste in his mouth that he could only describe as yellow. Rolling over with a groan, he lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling for several minutes while he attempted to collect his wits.
"All right," he muttered. "Angry Birds themed bedroom. Stink of nacho cheese in the air." Arthur reached up with a tentative hand to touch the top of his head, which he discovered had a lump the size of a goose egg welling up on it. "A possible concussion…Yes, I'm definitely at Alfred's. Fuck my life and call her Debbie."
Sighing, Arthur attempted to push himself off of the mattress only to be met with a sudden wave of dizziness upon lifting his head. He grit his teeth. "Let's try this again," Arthur muttered, and, with a great effort, managed to roll off the bed and onto his feet. "Okay, I'm standing." He nodded to himself. "Good, good…Now to just take one step forward and-
He'd barely lifted one leaden foot when another wave of dizziness, more intense than the first, washed over him, sending him sprawling face down onto the floor. "Ugh, what the bloody hell happened last night?" Arthur grimaced when a quick glance down at himself revealed that he was clad only in his underwear, which just so happened to be, embarrassingly enough, a pair of boxers with a decorative pattern of Peter Pan's Tinkerbell. "Okay, maybe I'd rather not know," he conceded.
His reverie was interrupted by Alfred bursting into the room, flinging open the door so hard that it not only rebounded off of the wall but left a sizeable hole in it as well. "C'mon Iggy, it's time for breakfast! Get your ass downstairs or else no Captain Crunch for you!"
Groaning, Arthur grabbed the comforter from off of the bed and pulled it over his head. "Go away you stupid wanker," he mumbled, burying his face into the carpeting. "You can take your Captain bloody Crunch and cram it up your prick hole for all I care…"
Alfred, however, was undeterred. "C'mon, up and at 'em!" He shouted, causing Arthur's already aching head to feel as though it were giving birth to a melon. In just ten long strides, he'd crossed the length of the room, snatched the comforter off of Arthur, and flung open the drapes, causing the sun's rays to concentrate off of the window panes to a veritable laser which immediately proceeded to burn Arthur's forehead.
While Arthur rolled around in an attempt to put the flames out, Alfred pumped his fist. "Fuck yeah, my magnifying glass windows work!" He cheered.
Dunking the leftover contents of the glass of water standing on the night table onto his head, Arthur affixed the taller man with a look so full of hate that protest marches would later be held on the remains of Alfred's face. "Who the fuck does something like that?"
"This guy," Alfred said proudly, pointing his thumbs at his chest.
Arthur raised a finger in the air as though he were about to make a profound statement, then put it back down, evidently thinking better of attempting to reason with Alfred. "Yes, indeed," he agreed. "Only you would think to do something so obnoxious and unnecessary."
Alfred simply shrugged. "You're just jealous because you didn't think of it first."
"Yes, whatever would I do without magnifying glass windows? My life, it is empty and will remain so until I fill its void…With magnifying glass windows," Arthur replied in a monotone. "On another note, did I ever perhaps hold your head beneath the tub water for too long when you were a baby? I'd just like an explanation as to some of your…Eccentricities."
Shaking his head as though to clear it, Alfred blinked confusedly at him, as though he weren't quite sure how Arthur had gotten there. "What was that? I kinda just started tuning you out after a while. No offense, but you're really fucking boring."
"And there goes the answer to my question," Arthur said dryly.
"Okay, cool. Anyway, come down to breakfast or you won't get any. Matt's really going apeshit on the pancakes. I think he's still got a case of the munchies from last night," Alfred added, laughing.
Arthur furrowed his brow. "Wait, we were smoking marijuana?"
Alfred folded his arms behind his head. "Oh yeah. And then some. The five of us went through a few pounds of the stuff in here before we went outside and hot-boxed the car on the way to the liquor store. Then, we drank our way through a few dozen bottles of whiskey before hitting up a strip club." He laughed some more. "Speaking of which, you might wanna check your jacket pocket."
"Wait, what-Arthur began, but Alfred was already heading out of the door.
"See ya downstairs, Tinkerballs," he said as he ambled out into the hall and began pounding down the steps.
"Dumbarse," Arthur muttered. Turning to his jacket, which was slung over a chair, he sighed and began to rummage through its pocket. Pulling out a scrap of paper with a very suspicious stain smudged on its corner, he unfurled it and read "For a good dirty time, call 555-493-1293." Arthur raised his eyebrows. "What. The. Fuck?" Then, furtively looking from left to right to make certain that no one was watching, he carefully refolded the note and slipped it back into his pocket.
When he finally stumbled into the kitchen, still clad in only his boxers, Arthur noticed that everyone looked like utter shit. Matthew's eyes were wide and bloodshot as he shoveled bite after bite of pancakes and bacon into his mouth, looking as though he weren't even tasting it. Juan, who was only semi-conscious, teetered back and forth several times in his seat before falling face forward into his cereal bowl with a grunt. Lolita, who was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest had dark circles beneath her eyes and looked decidedly twitchy. On closer inspection, Arthur noticed that Alfred, who was attempting to stick a grapefruit into the toaster, was in fact trouserless and had the right lens of his glasses missing. Odd how I didn't notice that earlier…
Deciding that greetings were in fact not in order, Arthur pulled out a chair as quietly as possible, dropped heavily onto it, placed his head onto his folded arms , and wished that the room would stop spinning.
The room was silent but for the sound of Matthew's fork and knife scraping against his plate, and Arthur found himself about to drift off to sleep just like Juan when the whining blare of the smoke alarm began to sound.
"Fire, fire," a mechanical voice chanted. "Fire, fire."
Shocked into sobriety, Arthur jumped up from his seat just in time to the flames licking down the side of the toaster, onto the counter, and finally began creeping up the cabinet doors.
"Oh, COME ON!" Alfred shouted as he began to gather tap water from the running sink into his cupped hands in order to pour onto the fire. The flames hissed and fizzled momentarily before flaring up higher than ever. If it hadn't seemed so incredulous, all those present could have sworn that the fire gathered itself up into the shape of a middle finger.
"Wha-Whozat?" Juan said groggily as he pulled his face out of the bowl, bits of Lucky Charms hanging from his forehead. Then his eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. "Holy shit, fire! Quick, every man for themselves," he cried, shoving himself away from the table and running out of the door. A few seconds later, he returned in order to grab his bowl and spoon. "Almost forgot these…"
Matthew, who obviously hadn't quite regained his faculties from the previous night's madness, began to swipe at the fire with a broom, only for the bristles to burst into flame at well. "Maybe not my best idea," he decided as he dipped the broom into the sink.
"Not quite, lad," Arthur admitted as he attempted to break the emergency case of the fire extinguisher with a nine-iron that he'd found in the refrigerator, of all places. Seeing that he'd only managed to cause a small, spider web-like crack to form, he frowned. "Damn it, I need something harder…Alfred, get over here!"
"Huh?" Was all Alfred managed to say before Arthur grabbed him by the collar and shoved his head into the case. Ignoring the glass slivers gathered around his bare feet, Arthur snatched up the fire extinguisher, dragged it over to the fire, pulled back the pin, aimed the nozzle at the fire, which was now clawing at nearly the ceiling, and squeezed the lever.
Unfortunately, he wasn't prepared for the force with which the firefighting agent would be expelled, and, when he attempted to sweep the stream of foam from side to side, Arthur found himself launched into the air from the pressure and spraying the foam in every which direction.
"Why the hell do you get to have all of the fun?" A completely unharmed Alfred demanded before grabbing Arthur's ankle in order to drag him down. When Arthur hit the ground with a thud, Alfred snatched up the fire extinguisher and began to repeatedly squeeze the lever, only for nothing but a sad little drizzle to seep out. "Aww, man!"
Rolling his eyes, Arthur pulled himself to his feet in order to survey the damage. Besides the fact that the kitchen wall and several of the cabinets were blackened and the paint on the ceiling blistered, the room was mostly unharmed. As for its occupants, Matthew and Juan were standing beside him, looking more annoyed than anything at the interruption to their breakfast and Lolita was…Nowhere to be found.
"We've lost the little one," Arthur sighed. "Why is it always the little one that winds up lost?"
Alfred looked up from his desperate attempt at extinguisher-induced flight. "Because small things and people are easier to lose, duh," he said.
"Yes, well-
"What'd I miss?" Lolita asked, strolling into the room looking freshly washed and groomed and carrying a laptop underneath her right arm.
"Just a fire," Juan said casually.
"Cool," Lolita answered, sitting down at the table and placing the laptop in front of her. "What?" She demanded when the other three continued to look at her.
"Where were you all this time?" Matthew asked, scratching his head.
"Shower." There was the soft clicking of computer strokes before Lolita looked up again. "Yes?"
"You don't wanna hear about our crazy adventure?" Alfred asked.
"No, not really." Pushing herself away from the table, Lolita tucked her laptop beneath her arm once more. "I must go now," she said blankly, and walked out of the kitchen.
Alfred narrowed his eyes as he watched the door shut after his fellow North American. "She's hiding something…" Without warning, he pulled open a cutlery drawer, took a laptop out of it, and pressed the power button.
"What the-Do you have a laptop hidden in every drawer or something?" Arthur asked him.
"Maybe," Alfred said distractedly as he began to type. Eyes wide, he leapt back from the screen as though it had burned him. "I FUCKING KNEW IT!"
"Knew what?" Matthew asked.
"LITA FRAPED MY FACEBOOK PROFILE!"
Snickering, Juan pushed Alfred aside in order to get a better look. "Hah. Apparently, your sexuality is necrosexual, your interests involve masturbating into sock puppets and calling your mother's name during sex and your profile picture is now a photograph from the inside of a colonoscopy."
Matthew shook his head. "This Facebook war is still going on?"
"Hey man, you're just pissed off because you gave up last week," Alfred muttered as he furiously worked to bring his Facebook profile back to normal.
"Yeah well, I guess there's only so many times that I can change your name to Big Gay Al before the whole thing starts to lose its charm," Matthew said dryly.
"Bloodyteens," Arthur muttered.
"Yeah, well, you're old, Grouchy McPubeBrows," Alfred countered.
Arthur leveled a dirty look at him before slapping him upside the head so that Alfred's face smacked into the computer screen. "Respect your elders."