HaHA! I can't force myself to write SMHA, so I've put something else out. Whether it stands as a oneshot or deserves chapters really depends. So, enjoy. I think I'm going to go let KH2 eat up more of my life now.

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I never was one for alcohol. The stuff just made me sick, there never was such thing as a pleasant hangover, and I was pretty sure it killed my insides little by little.

Therefore, who better to be the designated driver almost every night we went out? I was the only one who ever stayed sober. Of course, rounding up a bunch of drunk, sexually active friends wasn’t my favorite job in the world, but I couldn’t honestly say no.

However, there is a lot to be said for what happened that night.

“Aram! Aram, are you in there?” I opened the door to the third room casually, and immediately slammed it closed again. Last time I checked, he wasn’t a Hispanic lesbian. As amusing as the thought was, I paused only for a moment and moved on.

As it turned out, my keys were missing. My first lead, being the smarmy bastard that he was, was Aram. I just had to track him down first. Which proved to be a lot more fucking difficult than I had originally thought.

I didn’t know a lot about Aram, besides the fact that he stole things for kicks, liked to get blitzed, and loved sex. I suspected he was a kleptomaniac, but seeing as he gave most of it back, I couldn’t really find a basis for my accusation. Though, I wouldn’t be above framing that dick if he had taken my keys for a laugh. Nice little designated driver persona be damned.

The highlight of my night must’ve been when I ran in to a large girl in the hall with pink hair, only to have her call me a blind girly fag and dump whatever drink she had been holding on my head. Beautiful. It smelled like vodka, but since I guessed off the top of my head (pun not intended, honestly), I couldn’t be sure. Well, seeing as I didn’t want to smell remotely like that, I wandered off in search of the bathroom. As soon as I got cleaned up, I could continue my search, I figured.

Seeing as I wasn’t significantly shorter than the large girl and the thought of being thrown down the stairs didn’t appeal to me, I didn’t say anything as she pushed passed me. Sigh.

I found the bathroom, as it turned out. What floored me was when I saw Aram sitting on the bathroom carpet, writing on some girl’s stomach. From what I could tell, she was passed out comfortably and had no clue she was being defaced.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I heard myself say.

He looked up at me, looking innocent and lost. I had this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach as he looked at me like that. Like worms or butterflies or some ghastly mix of the two. I didn’t like it. It made me feel vulnerable.

“I’m signing a petition to have hobos who sell condoms to social security watermelons thrown in zoos in Argentina,” he stated, then smiled like he was proud of himself and drew a penis on the girl’s stomach.

I snorted. See what I had to go through? Though, I’d never gotten an answer quite as entertaining as that.

“You haven’t seen any hobos trying to sell my keys, have you, Aram?” I quipped. He stopped and turned to me, a wide grin on his face. Damn him. I knew what he was saying without him even having to say it.

His expression changed to a thoughtful and diplomatic one, and he leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. “Nope. I saved them for you, love. What will you give me?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but stopped as his face fell. I watched in confusion as he turned a nice shade of pale green and launched towards the toilet, promptly emptying the contents of his stomach. I could only watch as his body heaved and heaved and heaved, unable to decide on what to do. Did I help him? Did I leave him there and make the long walk seven miles to my apartment to get my spare keys? Fuck.

He drew back and I could see the tears running down his face, the way his body shook and the way he cried pitifully.

My sudden need to throttle him left me. I mean, when you see a guy like him puking his intestines out in to the toilet and then sobbing like a child, you can’t really remain cold and angry. Well, I couldn’t. Call me a softy for big teddy bears who needed to be patched up. And that was all Aram was, really.

A well-muscled, kleptomaniac, nympho teddy bear.

“Aram?” I whispered. He fell back away from the toilet, hitting the wall with a sickening thud. He looked at me before fishing around in his pocket and tossing something to me.

My keys. I should’ve been jumping for joy, really. I had gotten what I wanted back. But then why did looking at that bastard make me feel... dare I say it... guilty?

“Just go. You’ve got your keys back,” he murmured and laughed bitterly, hugging himself. When I didn’t leave, he glanced at me and scowled. “What? Is there something I forgot? I’ve returned your other things to you, haven’t I? The hobos have nothing more of yours to sell.”

I frowned and shook my head. “Are you just going to stay here?”

“Probably.”

I wasn’t satisfied with that.

“Let me give you a ride, then?”

He let out a downright fucking scary, hysterical laugh and I was ready to make a run for it. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? You let us get totally wasted and act like the nice guy you are by giving us a ride home.” He slowly stood and took a few steps towards me, examining my alcohol-saturated hair. “When are you going to stop letting people walk all over you?”

I couldn’t answer that. “Do you want a ride or not?”

He smiled. “Of course.” And he leant against me on the way out, my arm around his waist to support him.

We got in to my car, Aram more or less falling in, and I started it. We sat there for a moment, listening to some woman on the radio singing about needing a hero. Strong, fast, and fresh from the fight. In my head I heard Aram singing the words, smiling like a dumb drunk and performing a strip tease.

I was snapped out of my fantasy when Aram leaned across and clumsily pressed his lips to mine. The smell of alcohol was so overwhelming I shoved him away and coughed in to my hands. Disgusting. And it had kissed me. Utterly beautiful night it was turning out to be.

He looked a little offended, but I handed him my cellphone to play with and he shut up for the rest of the ride home. The feeling of dried alcohol in my hair and on my neck was becoming an unpleasant one, I noticed as we pulled up to the Pyramid Apartments and I punched in the necessary numbers to open the gate. I pulled forward and make a series of turns to get to my apartment building. Aram made a rather interesting noise between a moan and a grunt every time we hit a speed bump. In return, I went faster over them than I should have. Serves him right for making me feel bad and go to all this trouble.

He uncurled from the fetal position as we pull in to a parking space. Looking around, confused, he opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again. We sat there for a minute, a song I couldn’t place playing softly on the radio.

“Wait... we’re not at my apartment. Why?” he asked, rubbing his head.

“You have a little sister, loser. If she sees you like that, what’re you gonna say?” I said softly. I didn’t have any reason other than that for bringing him here. I just felt like I had to keep him near for a bit. That way, I could take care of him and make sure his little sister could remain innocent to his drunken stupidity one more day.

“What about the others? They’ll be pissed you left them... them...” I looked at him curiously, wondering what he was going to finish that with. Immediately, I turned away and close my eyes. Aram had his head out the open window and was puking the remains of whatever he had drank or eaten all day. The sound of his choked gasps in between heaves made me sick, and I warily reached over to rub his back, flinching whenever his body shook fiercely.

After a minute or so of his final dry heaves, he quieted and pulled himself back. He looked terrible, tears streaming down his pale face and a tired expression on his features. He wanted to say something, I could tell, but trying to talk only made a dry, incomprehensible sound come forth instead of words.

Watching him try to get out of the car was pathetic. He stumbled and lost his balance trying to just stand up for more than a few seconds. I sighed and pulled his arm over my shoulders, placing my arm around his waist. We walked to my door that way, earning a glance from my artist neighbor which clearly read ‘Oh look, two wasted homosexuals; I always knew that kid next door was a little weird.’

It was around four in the morning, I realized, when I pulled Aram through the door. We had gone to that particular party at eleven. So somehow, in the space of five hours or so, he had managed to get completely wasted, steal my keys, make me feel guilty, puke his guts out twice, and end up at my home, laying on the couch with his head buried in a pillow, a complete wreck.

How do I manage to get myself in to these situations, honestly? How does he manage to get himself in to these situations?

I wander away from him after supplying him with two aspirin, a glass of water, and a cold, wet wash cloth for his forehead.

I go through things on the counter. Mail from the day before sat there unopened, daring me to face the big, scary bills I’m sure are there and waiting for me to pay them. I cringed at the thought and moved to the computer room, where I found my computer was already on. I tilted my head to the side and thought. I hadn’t left it on. I never leave it on when I’m gone.

Sitting down, I glanced at the message on the screen. A small clown with large eyes stared back at me, wearing a shirt that reads ‘click me, okie dokie!’ I clicked it.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LITTLE BROTHER!” It screamed, much to my absolute horror. Right. My birthday. I had forgotten. “It’s Mars, your best big brother ever! I’m coming to see you around ten in the morning, so try not to party too hard! We’ll have some cake and celebrate you turning twenty-three.”

Well, that was a problem. I couldn’t make Aram leave. He was still feeling like shit, and as mad as he made me sometimes, I couldn’t kick him out. Mars wasn’t stupid, though. He’d notice the groaning lump on my sofa for sure. I quickly deleted the scary clown message from my computer and shut it down. I probably had something like six hours to make Aram feel better and get out.

Being a logical person, I knew there was no way I could pull that off. Then I got an idea. I walked out in to the living room and pulled Aram up carefully. He gave me a drowsy look and didn’t protest, going along with me as I moved him to my bedroom. He could hide out there; a brilliant, and nearly fool-proof plan.

“Hey,” he whispered, tugging on my shirt after I had set him down on the bed. I turned my attention to him expectantly, only to have a pair of dry, cracked lips pressed against mine. “Thanks, Matthias.” Then he fell back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

I didn’t say anything, just grabbed a blanket, threw it over him, and left the room. It had surprised me to hear my full name. Nobody besides my brother ever called me Matthias, only shortened it to Matt.

As I fell on to the couch to get some much needed sleep, it hit me. He’d kissed me. Twice in one night. That was one of those times where you have to stop and think, ‘Wow, maybe hell really did freeze over.’ It didn’t bother me as much as it should have. He was drunk. Drunk people do stupid things.

Right? Right.

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