Headache.
It wasn't an ordinary pain. It felt like someone was inside his brain, slowly and repeatedly banging two cymbals together. Every heartbeat was accompanied by a dull "clang—," the vibration making him see stars.
Shawn let out a pained groan and tried to turn over, but got tangled in the impossibly soft blanket. He forced open a slit of an eye. The morning sun streamed through the gaps in the blinds like sharp scalpels, mercilessly stabbing straight into his retinas. He slammed his eyes shut. His throat was dry and raw, as if he'd swallowed a handful of sand, and a strange taste—a mixture of beer, potato chips, and some unknown cocktail—lingered in his mouth.
Wait a minute... this blanket... this bed... this damn cedar smell...
This wasn't his dorm.
The thought, like a bucket of ice water, instantly sobered him up halfway. He shot up, a movement that jolted his ravaged nerves and made the world in front of him sway violently. He looked around. It was a room both strange and familiar, with simple, tasteful decor and a few incomprehensible modern paintings on the walls.
It was the guest room at Eric's house.
What happened last night?
Fragments of memory were chaotic, as if swept up by a tornado, and filled with a great deal of meaningless noise. He remembered the ecstasy of victory, the deafening music, his teammates pouring alcohol into his mouth as if they were irrigating a field. He had... jumped on the sofa and passionately recited a summary of the An Introduction to Sociological Theory textbook? He had... hugged Eric's cat, tried to teach it how to perform a perfect tackle, and gotten his face all scratched up?
And then?
A blank.
A huge, blurry, unsettling gap lay across his memory. His last impression was of collapsing on the stairs, and after that... he remembered nothing.
"Oh, God..." he buried his face in his hands. He felt a little embarrassed, but also couldn't help but find it a bit funny. So this is what he was like when he was drunk, like an out-of-control circus monkey. He swore he would never touch anything with alcohol in it again for the rest of his life.
He tiptoed into his wrinkled clothes and, like a spy trying to make a getaway, slipped out of the room on the balls of his feet. The living room downstairs had been cleaned up, all traces of last night's chaos gone, with only a faint smell of alcohol lingering in the air, proof that the revelry had not been a dream.
He just wanted to evaporate from the world without alerting anyone.
However, as he reached the top of the stairs, he heard the soft whir of a coffee machine from the kitchen.
Eric was standing in front of it, his back to Shawn, dressed in a grey sweatsuit. His tall figure looked especially straight and strong in the morning sun.
Shawn's steps froze instantly. To go, or not to go? It was a Shakespearean dilemma.
In the instant he hesitated, Eric turned around, holding a steaming cup of coffee.
Their eyes met.
The air froze. Time itself seemed to stop. Shawn could even hear the thumping of his own heart.
"...Morning," Eric spoke first, his voice a little hoarse, betraying no emotion.
"Morning," Shawn's voice was as quiet as a mosquito's buzz. He didn't dare to look Eric in the eye, his gaze uncontrollably drifting to a nearby potted plant as he began to feign a deep academic interest in photosynthesis.
"Awake?" Eric asked, picking up another mug and pouring half a cup of coffee.
"Yeah," Shawn nodded, like a wind-up doll.
"Headache?"
"Like our team is throwing a party in my head," Shawn tried to ease the killer awkwardness with a joke, but after saying it, he only felt more awkward. He wanted to bite his own tongue off right now.
The corner of Eric's mouth seemed to twitch, almost imperceptibly. It was hard to tell if it was a smile. He turned, got another clean glass, poured a glass of warm water, and walked over to hand it to Shawn.
"Drinking some water will help."
"Oh... thanks." Shawn reached out to take the glass, their fingertips briefly touching on its smooth surface. Shawn felt that Eric's fingers seemed hotter than usual. He flinched back as if he'd been electrocuted.
The water in the glass sloshed violently, and a few drops spilled out, landing with a crisp sound on the polished floor.
"Sorry!" Shawn quickly squatted down to wipe it, but because his sense of balance was off from the hangover, he nearly pitched headfirst onto the floor.
"It's fine," Eric's voice came from above him. He had taken half a step back, avoiding Shawn's unstable center of gravity.
Squatting on the floor, Shawn stared at the few rapidly evaporating water spots, wishing he could turn into a puddle himself and seep into the cracks between the tiles, disappearing forever.
He scrambled to his feet, drank the water in one go, and then carefully placed the empty glass on a nearby counter. Throughout the entire process, he deliberately avoided Eric's gaze, focusing intently on the wood grain of the counter.
"I..." Shawn cleared his throat, feeling like his tongue was tied in a knot, like a stiff caterpillar. "I didn't... do anything particularly stupid last night, did I?"
Eric was holding his coffee mug, about to take a sip. Hearing the question, his movement paused for half a second. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed the scalding coffee.
"Like..." Shawn probed cautiously, trying to read something from the other's face, "...harassing your cat?"
Eric's gaze, uncontrollably and very quickly, slid from Shawn's eyes to his lips, lingered for a tenth of a second, and then, as if burned, immediately darted away, landing on the innocent oak tree outside the window.
"...Something like that," Eric's voice sounded a bit vague, as if through a layer of fog.
"That's good, then," Shawn breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that apart from some harmlessly stupid things, he hadn't done anything too out of line. Harassing a cat was better than harassing a person.
"Well... I'll be going then," Shawn said, pointing to the door, his tone as urgent as a soul rushing to be reincarnated. "Thanks for... having me."
"Yeah," Eric didn't turn around, just made a monosyllabic sound from his nose, continuing to admire the scenery outside the window with great focus.
As if granted amnesty, Shawn turned and walked to the door as fast as he could, put on his shoes, and practically fled in disarray from the house that made him so uneasy.
Only after the front door clicked softly shut behind him did Eric slowly turn around.
He raised his hand and, with his thumb, gently and repeatedly, caressed his own lower lip.