The low groaning from the body beside her on the bed was Aubrey's warning that Stacie was finally waking up. She glanced over, shook her head, and turned back to the report she was reading.

After several long, groan-filled minutes, Stacie finally grumbled, "Why am I alive."

"Good morning." Aubrey greeted pleasantly.

Stacie turned her head to face Aubrey, drearily looking up at the seated blonde. "Is this heaven?"

Aubrey chuckled. "Would you feel like you do if it were?"

There was a pause, and then instead of answering, Stacie groaned. "Please don't make me think."

"I warned you."

"You didn't use the safe word."

"I said 'scat singing' like four times." Aubrey corrected. "You just kept saying you know all the ways to make me make music with your mouth."

Despite her raging hangover, Stacie chuckled. "I'm awesome."

"You have mascara smearing my sheets." Aubrey replied blandly.

Stacie glared at her. "How are you human right now?"

"I didn't drink the neon stuff."

Right. Stacie remembered now. She also knew where to pin the blame. "I hate your friends."

"Too bad, they really liked you." Aubrey knew she should be more sympathetic to the plight of the hungover, but she had warned Stacie – repeatedly – and her girlfriend had chosen to ignore those warnings. "And for someone who hates them, you sure enjoyed drinking with them."

Stacie moaned, grabbing the edge of the blanket and throwing it over her head to cover herself. "But I didn't get carded."

No, she really did not. And Aubrey was one day going to be able to look at many of her friends and not want to hit them on the back of the head. Repeatedly. And maybe eventually forgive them for plying Stacie with alcoholic drinks. "Stace?"

She was greeted by an annoyed growl.

"Full disclosure, but remember Kel?"

"The bartender?"

"Yes." Aubrey feigned nonchalance as she inquired, "Did anyone tell you Kel's also a forensic pathologist?"

There was a pause, and then a slow, grudging, "No."

"Yeah." Aubrey grinned at the blanketed lump that was supposed to be Stacie. "So as you can see, she has a very clear sense of just how much alcohol the human body can stand."

Stacie groaned again. "I hate your friends."

Aubrey laughed, and gently pat the blanket-covered head of her girlfriend. "Do you want anything for that hangover?"

"I don't think sex can help with the dying."

"Aspirin?"

"Please."

"Bedside."

Stacie swat Aubrey's hand away from her head. "You couldn't tell me that right away?"

"But this is more fun." Aubrey replied. She glanced at Stacie, who had extricated herself from her blanket cocoon to reach for the pills and the glass of water. "And when you feel human, we can go out for lunch."

Having swallowed the pills, Stacie gave her a wary look before she lay back down and once more burrowed into the blankets. "I'm never leaving this bed."

And while Aubrey knew Stacie was talking about her inability to do anything else but simply remain conscious until the painkillers kicked in and the hangover started to abate, the words still filled her with warmth and longing. Maybe some hope. She shook her head. "Food will help."

"Dying will help." Stacie muttered.

"Your dying would be detrimental to my dating life, though."

Stacie frowned up at her. "Who said you can date when I die?"

"I'll miss you dearly." Aubrey assured her.

"I'm going to haunt you and ruin all your future relationships." Stacie declared flatly.

"You know that if you die we can't have sex anymore." Aubrey reminded. "Regardless of the cancer-induced hallucination Grey's Anatomy asserted."

"Ugh." Stacie grunted. "I guess I'll have to live."

"Your consideration is noted."

Glad to have that settled, Stacie shut her eyes, and instructed, "Now stop talking until the drugs start to work."

Aubrey acquiesced, flipping the page on her reading material.

After a few minutes, Stacie grumbled, "Hugs help cure hangovers."

"I don't think that's a real thing."

"It is." Without opening her eyes, Stacie lazily – unsuccessfully – tried to reach for the report Aubrey was reading to toss it aside. "It's like Science."

She was still doubtful, but Aubrey wasn't about to refuse an invitation to hug Stacie, so she set aside the folder she was reading to do as Stacie requested and lay down beside Stacie, who had turned to face away from Aubrey. She grinned at this new development.

"Yes, you get to be the big spoon, shut up." Stacie told her.

"I didn't say anything."

A few hours later, once Stacie felt slightly more human and less like reanimated roadkill, she was seated opposite Aubrey in a restaurant whose dark interiors and natural lighting system allowed its diners – most of whom Stacie felt a kinship with, if their dark glasses and gaunt expressions were anything to go by – to be awake in the middle of the day and consuming food that wasn't laden with grease.

Aubrey – blond, bright-eyed, finding-this-too-hilarious-to-be-cute Aubrey – was probably the only person in the room who wasn't part of the staff who wasn't nursing some kind of hangover.

Noticing that the waitstaff addressed Aubrey by name, Stacie frowned at her girlfriend. "Come here often?"

"I used to go out with their sous chef," Aubrey replied. Before Stacie could turn to look at the kitchen doors, Aubrey added, "Before he left for LA." And: "They like me more than him, so I got this place in the breakup."

Stacie frowned at her. "That's not funny."

"It's a little funny," Aubrey admitted. "It's like one of very few places that doesn't take Sunday brunch as a sunny occasion. I don't really drop by that often, but if I want to meet anyone on a Sunday, this is the only place I know they won't object to."

Stacie bit into her French toast, and she allowed herself a moment to appreciate the fact that there was a place in the world that served French toast alongside a salad and (offensively expensive) grilled cheese sandwiches. Whatever reservation she may have in dining at a restaurant where Aubrey was known as someone their former sous chef used to date, all was forgiven in their haphazard approach to a brunch menu.

Stacie sighed. She's been hungover before, but the one she was currently suffering was off the charts. "Are your Saturdays usually like that or was last night special?"

Aubrey smiled wryly. "Except for the part where you took the phrase 'unlimited drinks' as a challenge, that was a typical night out with Dan's friends."

Stacie lifted an eyebrow at the qualifier.

"Dan's my friend. I don't really hang out with most of them without him." Aubrey explained. She shrugged, smiling weakly. "Honestly, usually it's just us going out for dinner."

"No karaoke?"

Aubrey laughed softly. "If we're drunk enough."

Stacie smiled. "Touché."

"I don't know how I'm traveling back to Atlanta like this," Stacie bemoaned, a little while later.

Aubrey's thinly-veiled amusement immediately faded into concern, being reminded of the fact that Stacie was only visiting and would be on a plane in a few hours. "They serve a hangover cure here that actually works, but your sense of taste will be shot for at least a day, a day and a half. Do you want to try it?"

Stacie frowned at her. "Why didn't you mention this sooner?"

"Because your sense of taste will be screwed up for a whole day?" Aubrey reminded, already calling over their waitress. "And you ignored my warnings about the drinks last night, I'm warning you about the cure now."

"I have classes tomorrow."

Aubrey pursed her lips, but shrugged. "It's your funeral."

"I'm already dying." Stacie reminded.

And in hindsight, maybe she really should have taken Aubrey's warning to heart.

Aubrey watched placidly when Stacie made a face when she caught the smell of the drink she was given, and when Stacie shot her a glance to question the wisdom of drinking it, Aubrey only motioned to the grey-colored mixture. "Just make sure you drink that s-"

"Yeah, I know." Stacie cut her off, before she picked up the glass and sighed. Might as well get this over with. "Bottoms up."

It was disgusting. It was like pouring cement into her mouth – both in taste and texture – and her girlfriend, the girl who was supposed to provide unconditional love and support – only watched with an unreadable expression.

Stacie's made a lot of questionable decisions – and she's had a few questionable things in her mouth in the past – but Aubrey's hangover cure had the distinction of burning itself into her sense memory for taste and smell.

If she ever tasted or smelled anything ever again.

When she finished the glass, she turned back to Aubrey, who had their waitress standing by, and they both stared at her with expressions that were a strange mix of awe and horror.

"You were supposed to sip that," the waitress managed to say through her shock.

Sure, but Stacie seriously doubted anyone would have managed to drink the concoction in small increments.

"Are you okay?" Aubrey asked in concern.

"I'm—" Stacie started to say, because her head actually was already starting to clear up, but her statement was cut off when the aftertaste burned through her tongue, and she turned away, resisting the very strong urge to gag.

"There it is." The waitress sighed. "Girl, do you need a barf bag? Girls' room?"

Stacie nodded, and blindly took the hand she was offered to be led away from the table.

Nothing comes up (thank God). But her mouth makes her feel like she's a superhuman version of Typhoid Mary, that just breathing on people would cause them to die, and she momentarily allows herself to freely hate Aubrey's friends for a moment because she knows she can't kiss Aubrey with the taste of that hangover "cure" on her mouth, not to mention doing anything beyond kissing.

Which is unfortunate, because on her way back to the table, she stops short when she sees that some douchebag has occupied her seat across from Aubrey.

And he is. A douchebag. Or he looks the part. Hundred-dollar haircut, big-label clothing logos, a watch that even from a distance looked like it was so expensive it should tell time in at least two other countries…

Actually – and Stacie knew she had to be objective here, because she knew Aubrey had a weird taste in friends now – there was nothing necessarily sleazy about him, nothing that should have set off red flags in Stacie's brain, but that was before she glanced at Aubrey, and the stony mask on her face told Stacie just about everything she needed to know.

Including the part where Aubrey would probably not welcome Stacie interrupting, if the way her glare was drawing a bead on the guy's face was any indication.

Stacie inched closer, hoping to eavesdrop on the conversation.

"…I didn't even know you were doing the scene again."

Aubrey let his non-question hang in the air for a minute before she told him evenly, "I was out with friends. We were hanging out."

"Is that what you're calling it?"

This time the pause was less heavy. "What do you mean?"

"Come on, Aubrey, you're gonna pretend you didn't have that fine piece of a- arm candy hanging off you last night?" Wisely, Stacie thought, he had picked up on the glare Aubrey shot at him for what he was about to say.

"That's none of your business." Aubrey replied.

"I'm your friend, and you know as well as I do that girl's trouble."

"You're not my friend. And you don't know anything."

"Aubrey, she's a kid."

"She's not a kid."

"Tell that to her alcohol tolerance."

Aubrey frowned at him. "Even you've been drunk off your ass, Dean."

"Is she the quarter-life crisis that has you avoiding my calls?"

"I've been avoiding your calls because I don't want to talk to you." Aubrey replied flatly. And then added, "Ever."

"Babe, you know you've said that before."

"And I'm not the girl who didn't know any better anymore." Aubrey answered. "And you're pissing me off."

"I've heard that before, too."

Aubrey sighed in exasperation. "Find a new girl to mess around with, Dean. I'm done with your crap."

"You know, you say that, and that kind of hurts my feelings."

"Oh, those exist?" Aubrey retorted.

A retort he took in stride. "But you know what? When that chick stops being fun, or breaks your heart, or gets grounded and has to get home for curfew, you'll need a distraction and you still have my number."

Aubrey scoffed in derision. "I really don't."

He gave her a skeptical look. "I know girls like that, Aubrey. And girls like that get bored."

Aubrey gave him a withering glare. "Because you're such a stable and dependable person?"

"I never lied about why we were sleeping together."

Aubrey's glare never wavered, but she knew that what he said was true – he'd been straightforward and honest about their relationship, even when he had been a major jerk about it – and once upon a time, she had willingly bought into his spiel. "Leave. Now."

He had apparently said his piece, and he followed the instruction, getting up from the seat and leaving the restaurant.

Stacie gave Aubrey a few minutes to recover before she returned to her seat, smiling pleasantly at Aubrey.

Aubrey didn't buy it for a second. She glanced at Stacie with a resigned smile. "How long were you hiding?"

Stacie blushed in chagrin. "Long enough." She glanced down at her food, and then at her glass of juice, and realized that between her mouth feeling like death had crawled in and made a home there, and hearing that whole conversation, she wasn't feeling very hungry anymore. She glanced back up at Aubrey. "Who was that?"

"That? That was a mistake." Aubrey answered honestly.

"One time?"

"I wish."

Stacie regarded Aubrey carefully. "Did you love him?"

Aubrey eyed her warily. "I barely liked him, half of the time."

Not really an answer, but Stacie could understand Aubrey's reluctance to discuss the subject. But something bothered her. "Bree?"

Aubrey looked at her.

"Why didn't you just tell him we were together?"

Aubrey sighed. "Because I didn't want to."

Stacie frowned.

"Dean…" Aubrey sighed again. "Dean is a jerk. But he's nice to look at and was fun to date. But he's still a jerk, and he's the kind of jerk that can play the good guy well enough to convince you that there's a nice guy underneath."

Stacie's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Just now? He left because he's sure that I'm going to come crawling back to him. He's so sure of it he can't even be bothered to think of you – of us, our relationship – as a threat." Aubrey continued. "He couldn't even be bothered to find out your name."

Stacie watched as Aubrey sat back in her seat, seeming to deflate.

"He knows I'm not much for dating." Aubrey admitted. "The Aubrey he knows isn't someone who can last very long in a serious relationship. If I had told him we were together? That you're not just some girl I'm hooking up with for fun?"

"He'll take it personally." Stacie surmised.

Aubrey nodded. "This way when Monday comes around and we're not seen together anymore, he'll lose interest and order is restored."

Stacie had to smile. "Until I show up again next weekend." Because now that she knew Aubrey was in the radar of such a douche, it was her good girlfriend duty to keep Aubrey away from him. "And the one after that."

"Oh," Aubrey shook her head, "I'm traveling."

"Time to save the big conglomerate infrastructure again?" Stacie queried.

Aubrey smiled. "Close. Corporate training."

Stacie frowned, her plans thwarted, until something occurred to her, and she tentatively ventured, "Southeastern region?"

Aubrey's smile grew. "Yes."