Or: the morning after
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Cellbit finds himself getting rattled awake by the sound of an unfamiliar cell phone ringing. His pillow is lumpy, he doesn't have a blanket- or does he? His legs are bare, but his shoulders feel warm enough.
Grimacing, Cellbit squints his eyes shut and desperately shoves his face into his pillow in the hopes of drowning out the noise. Why does his pillow smell like alcohol?
What happened last night? The last thing he remembers is slipping away from Bagi and Tina and finding himself a seat at their hotel's bar, and then? Absolutely nothing.
But the phone keeps ringing.
Cellbit is mildly alarmed to feel his pillow vibrate beneath him as it groans- oh, God, it's alive. He's even more alarmed when his pillow moves and pulls him with it as it rolls onto its side and buries its face in the crook of Cellbit's neck and, fuck, this isn't a pillow is it?
Cellbit forces his eyes open and nearly has a heart attack as he discovers that he is not, in fact, in his hotel room. This isn't his bed. That isn't his window- his room isn't nice enough to have a fucking balcony attached to it.
...Those aren't his pants strewn carelessly across the floor just inches from the bed. That isn't his shirt, either.
Oh, God.
Cellbit's pillow, now Cellbit's blanket, which is probably an actual, real, living, genuine, breathing human person, nuzzles their nose into Cellbit's skin with a pleased, sleepy hum.
Cellbit absently looks down at the hands wrapped around his middle, and his stomach sharpens as he sees a shiny gold ring.
Fuck, they're married?
It's then that Cellbit notices the shiny gold ring on his own finger, his hand splayed next to his face carelessly. He stares at it in both shock and horror and an equal measure of mortification.
Fuck, they're married?
The phone is still ringing. Cellbit can see it on the floor next to his... spouse? Next to his... next to the person's pants. Its screen is lit up, showing off a wallpaper of a man and a woman and a child. Oh, God, what has Cellbit done?
He stares at the phone. He desperately tries to remember where he left his own. His pants are off, but his shirt is on. It's the same shirt he went out in, and it's really uncomfortable to be sleeping in, and the coat he wore with it is gone. Or, at least, it's out of sight, and that's where he was keeping his phone and his wallet and his hotel room key and- oh, fuck, Bagi. She's going to kill him!
The person clinging to Cellbit like a koala seems to settle down (how are they sleeping through the noise??), their breaths evening out and their grip relaxing.
Okay, Cellbit thinks, Escaping from a person can't be worse than escaping from prison. (Granted, he had "escaped" from "prison" at the bright age of eleven, and him "escaping" was him climbing out the window and watching the sunset from the roof of the juvenile hall he was trapped in, but the point stands.)
Carefully, he pries the person's arms off of him. He rolls out of bed and onto the floor and immediately gets onto his knees and ignores the rattling in his skull and the exhausted protesting of his bones and shoves an actual pillow into the person's arms.
He hesitates, just briefly, as he takes in his spouse's face for the first time that he can remember.
He's beautiful. Creases in his face from sleep, bags under his eyes, hair plastered to the side of his head, tiny bit of drool escaping from the corner of his mouth as he snuffles and buries his face into his new teddy bear.
Well. Drunk Cellbit has good taste.
Whatever, cell phone.
Cellbit doesn't think he could stand without vomiting, so he crawls over to where he thinks he vaguely remembers tossing his coat and his pants last night... or, rather, that morning. Something tells him it was entirely too late when he and his... person finally went to bed.
Blackout drunkenness be damned, Cellbit is still a detective, so his clothes are right where he thought they'd be: slung over the hotel room's desk chair.
First, he grabs his pants. He looks at them, considers the fragile state of his stomach, and decides that it probably isn't too smart to move too much. He doesn't know how much it'll take for him to throw up everything he's had over the trip so far, but he doesn't think it'll be that much.
So he abandons his pants for the moment and grabs his coat, instead. A brief search of the pockets finds all his things, plus a handful of stolen poker chips and a crushed pink flower.
Cellbit looks at the flower. What is it, amaranth? Is that it?
Whatever, cell phone.
He turns his phone on and is immediately met with a brand new wallpaper: a clearly drunk him, and an even drunker... husband(?) with his arms hung around Cellbit's shoulders. They're both smiling widely, their cheeks are both flushed, Cellbit is giving this guy a piggyback ride, and the Vegas lights are so bright behind them that it's giving Cellbit a headache just looking at them.
But that isn't what makes Cellbit sick. What makes him sick is the absolute mountain of texts from his extremely pissed-off sister. It starts with a simple, "Where are you?", and it ends with, "FUCK YOU DON'T COME BACK ME AND TINA WILL HAVE A GREEEEAT NIGHT TOGETHER BY OURSELVES WITH PAC!!"
Cellbit, deciding not to subject himself to any more torture, shuts his phone off and collapses backwards onto the floor. Even the carpet smells like alcohol; what did he and this guy do last night? ...Besides get married.
Cellbit raises his hand above his face and squints at his ring. Fake gold, he can tell. Cheap ring, glass jewels. Probably sold at the place he and the man got married at. Probably someplace cheesy with an Elvis impersonator acting as the officiant and a couple of equally-drunk tourists acting as the witnesses.
Groaning from the bed. Seems Cellbit's new husband is awake, then.
Cellbit keeps staring at his ring, anyway. It's... weird. He'd always dreamed of a big wedding, and now that he is married, he doesn't remember it. But it's fair, he supposes. He'd stopped believing he would get married years ago. Makes sense he wouldn't remember it happening.
The man in the bed swears and rolls around noisily.
"Fucking kill meeeee," he moans. "Son of a bitch!"
His voice is rough. Cellbit's probably sounds rougher. His entire body hurts.
The man keeps swearing. Cellbit listens, and he stares at his ring, and he quietly panics as the reality of his marriage sets in.
Are Vegas weddings even legal? Fuck, he's a detective, he should know this! But he's a detective in Brazil, he doesn't know American laws.
Abruptly, the man's complaining stops.
"Oh," Cellbit hears. "Hello."
Cellbit tears his eyes away from his ring and looks at the man. Their eyes meet, and, suddenly, Cellbit realizes why they got married.
If this man was beautiful asleep, he's absolutely stunning awake. His eyes are just so... and his jawline? What the hell?
Bagi always likes to tease Cellbit about his extreme romanticism. She says it's almost obsessive, but what does she know? What he and Pac had going on in high school was normal.
Cellbit just knows handsome when he sees it, and he supposes that Drunk Cellbit saw it and decided he had to put a ring on it.
It's a shame they're married. He doesn't think he'll be able to talk to this guy ever again after they sign the divorce papers.
Because they have to get divorced, right? Or annulled? Or... reversed? Whatever it is in Vegas, they'll have to do it. They don't know each other. Cellbit lives in Brazil. This guy seems like he has a family. It wouldn't work, no matter how pretty he is.
Slowly, Cellbit sits up. He winces, gags, props himself up against the desk's leg. He lets his stomach settle down. Tries not to smile back as the man smiles at him.
"Vegas," the man whispers. He sounds slightly awed. Cellbit feels the same way, but probably not for the same reasons. He's in shock over this man's beauty; this man is probably shocked that the Vegas stereotypes are true.
"Vegas," Cellbit agrees. He holds up his hand, and his ring. "Good morning. Can we get a divorce?"
The man gasps and looks down at his own hand. His eyes widen comically as he sees his ring.
"What the fuck?" he shouts.
Both he and Cellbit flinch at the volume. Ouch.
"A divorce," Cellbit repeats once the pounding in his head has subsided. "Because we got married."
The man's phone is still ringing. Cellbit kinda wants to throw it off the balcony, but he's probably already ruined this guy's life enough. (His family...)
The man, somehow, ignores it.
He crawls down the length of the bed and flops onto his stomach, head tilted just slightly as he takes Cellbit in. He props himself up on his elbows, and Cellbit can't help but admire his biceps because he's. He's shirtless. And he isn't wearing pants. He has boxers on, thank God- Cellbit doesn't know what he'd do if it turned out they'd done things last night after the wedding.
"You want a divorce?" the man asks. He shrugs. "I mean, sure, but... why?"
Cellbit stares at him. "We were drunk. I don't know you."
"Yeah but you did last night, and we liked each other enough to get married after a couple hours. That's gotta count for something, right?"
"I mean. Maybe? But- you don't even know my name!"
"Sure, and you don't know mine." His smile is blinding. "I'm Roier."
Roier... it settles around Cellbit's brain like a warm sweater.
"Cellbit," Cellbit responds. He swallows and forces his eyes away from Roier's arms. "Look, I'm sure you're a nice guy-"
"I am."
"-but we can't be married. My sister is supposed to be getting married next week and she'll kill me if she finds out I got married before she did. And we don't know each other and- dude, can you pick up your goddamn phone?"
Cellbit groans and throws his head back, eyes squinting shut from the pain in his head.
"Shit," the man swears, "hold on..."
Cellbit tunes him out as he finally answers his phone. He's a loud talker, but he's still quieter than his phone was.
He... has a nice voice. Cellbit can almost imagine hearing it daily, but that's literally just. Stupid. This is all stupid, they should be divorced already. And then Cellbit can go back to being single and miserable like he's used to.
With his eyes still shut, Cellbit flounders around for his pants. Once he has them, he starts pulling them on, desperately trying not to vomit as he does so. Fuck, his stomach...!
Bagi would be laughing if she heard about this. She'd be pissed, but she'd be laughing about it. She's been the one trying to get him to sign up for dating apps since he realized he's asexual and he stopped dating altogether. She's been trying to set him up with friends for years. She'd be furious if she found out that Cellbit went and married the first guy to flirt back with him. While drunk. In Las Vegas.
Cellbit manages to get his pants buttoned up just as Roier finishes his phone call. Out of breath and exhausted, Cellbit cracks an eye open and offers a weak smile at a very concerned-looking Roier.
"You don't look too good," Roier comments. "You can stay here until you're up to moving, you know."
Cellbit frowns. "Wouldn't that be awkward?"
"Why would it be awkward? We're married. Married people share rooms all the time."
"We aren't-" Cellbit tries to stand, immediately decides against it as the room swims around him, sits heavily back down. "Fuck. We aren't actually married, you know. We're Vegas-married."
"I know, but I'm not a dick. You look like shit, I'm not just gonna let you pass out in the hallway."
Oh, and he's nice, too. He's handsome and he's nice. Of course he's a package deal, what the fuck?
Only slightly annoyed, Cellbit lets himself flop to the side and lay down on the floor again. It isn't comfortable, but it feels better than sitting up does.
He looks up at Roier. "You're being awfully nice to a stranger."
Roier waves him off. "Nah, it's fine. If I trusted you last night, I can trust you now. I'm a very good judge of character."
"Really?"
"No, I'm actually kidnapping you."
Cellbit huffs out a laugh, a genuine smile growing on his face as Roier looks genuinely proud of himself.
"You're an asshole," Cellbit says. "I can't wait until we're divorced."
"Me, too," Roier agrees. "No offense- like, you're a really nice guy-" (Cellbit blushes.) "-but I kinda wish I got to, like, take you on a date or something before we got married."
Cellbit chokes on his own spit. "What?"
Roier's eyes widen and he sits up, alarmed. "What? Is that-"
"No!" Cellbit waves his hands frantically. "No, it's fine! I'm just... are you sure? You could still be drunk."
"I don't feel drunk."
"Maybe I'm still drunk, then."
"Maybe." Roier nods, faux serious. "We are in Vegas."
"Can you even date in Vegas? What can we even do?"
"Eh, I'm sure there's something we can do. Maybe we can get divorced this afternoon and get dinner?"
Cellbit almost turns him down. This is a bad idea. He's in Vegas. He isn't... they don't know each other. Roier doesn't know that Cellbit doesn't really do anything past kissing. That could be a problem, right? Maybe, but...
But Cellbit trusts himself to know that, even when drunk out of his mind, he would explain everything before engaging in any kind of intimacy with another man. He and Roier hadn't taken their underwear off, after all, that has to count for something. Roier seems like a nice guy. Cellbit thinks he can trust him to not be a total scumbag later on if it comes down to it.
So Cellbit swallows his hesitance and smiles and replies, "That sounds nice, actually."
(And if their divorce date could later turn into a real marriage? Well, Cellbit wouldn't complain.)
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