Time Hangover

Ao3 Link

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Russ saying “fuck this” was what woke Niall up, but if their horny swearing was enough to keep him awake, Niall would only be able to sleep on work nights. No, the things that kept him up were Russ’s foot on his face, the burning on the small of his back, and the crackling, spiraling migraine in his entire head.

“Fuck,” Niall agreed.

“Yeah,” said Russ. Some time passed, during which hurt. “Ow.”

“I think the world ended.”

“Uh.” Russ didn’t say anything until they did. “Yeah, maybe?”

“This is definitely your fault.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Niall’s foot was next to Russ’s face, so he kicked them. “It is.”

“I’m not responsible for the time hangover,” Russ complained. “It’s Daylight Savings, not me.”

“That’s not how time changes work,” Niall told him, though actually he did often wake up the day of the change feeling like a sack of meat wrapped around some bones. “But it is how lethal amounts of alcoholic beverages work.”

“Obviously not lethal, since you’re alive to bitch about it.”

Niall sighed, trying to shut his eyes before realizing he hadn’t opened them yet. Then he tried to open them, which was a mistake that made him nauseous, so he rolled over, noticed a door leading to a bathroom. He got up, hurried to it, and managed to throw up near the toilet, which was close enough.

In the bathroom, he managed to rummage through the medicine cabinet and found some aspirin, which he took even though his brain was screaming at him not to take more pills. Yes, that was right. It hadn’t just been alcohol at the Eastern Standard Time Change Party Russ had insisted they go to. There’d been drugs. Weed, ecstasy, Niall thought. Other stuff, probably. He thought he remembered snorting something.

He stumbled back out into the bedroom, where Russ was still lying in place. “You’re a bad influence,” Niall accused.

“Uh, go fuck yourself?”

“I probably did last night,” Niall muttered, looking at Russ. Even with a hangover, their hair a disaster, drool on their face, they were posed alluringly. “It’s not fair that we’re so hot,” Niall decided. “Everyone else must be jealous.”

“Probably not, because they get to fuck us, which someone definitely did last night. Oh,” said Russ, hand on their stomach. “My turn to barf, oops.” They got up and raced past Niall into the bathroom, and Niall heard them vomiting. Hopefully they didn’t miss the toilet.

“Your fault,” Niall reminded them, as they came back.

“Worth it. We had fun.”

“Did we?” Niall asked. He thought he might have, but it was a blur.

“It’s always fun if you can’t remember it.”

“That’s not true, it’s disrespectful to victims of trauma, and also it’s potentially humiliating if we can’t remember it.”

Russ kissed Niall’s cheek, which, gross, and pulled Niall back to the bed. “Come on,” they said. “What happens in the missing hour stays in the missing hour.”

Russ rolled onto their belly, and Niall blinked. “Uh. Not everything,” he said, reaching out and poking Russ’s ass. And specifically the tattoo on Russ’s lower back.

“Huh?” Russ looked over their shoulder. “Oh, shit! I’ve always wanted a tattoo! What’s it of? Is it super trashy?”

“It says ‘fuck me?’ but it’s in really nice calligraphy, so no,” Niall said, looking at it. It looked nice. Hot, even. “There’s a…is that a QR code?”

“I don’t know, is it?”

Niall rooted around for his phone, found Russ’s instead. He took a picture to show Russ, but also scanned the code. It brought him to a website. “Oh, fuck.”

“What, what, show me?”

“You’re talking way too fast for someone with a time hangover,” Niall muttered, flopping down beside Russ to show them the site that had loaded. It was full of pictures of them, advertising rates, giving contact info, everything.

“Oh, wicked!” Russ said, stealing their phone from Niall. “Oh, wow. This is so fucking fancy. Who made this? Did Drunk Us really set up a whole website and get the advertising stamped on my ass? There’s no way we did that in one night, right?”

“What happens in the missing hour also apparently doesn’t only have to take an hour,” Niall muttered, looking at the tattoo. He sighed, feeling the itching in his back, knowing what he was doing to see when he looked over his shoulder. “Fuck,” he muttered, head in his pillow like it was Russ’s ass. Tattoo removal was probably really painful.

“Oh man, you got one too!” Russ sat up, snapped a picture. “It looks so hot, holy shit.”

“This is so awful,” Niall muttered, burying his head under the pillow like it was Russ’s balls. He was going to die.

“No, don’t worry! It’s exactly the same as mine so we still look the same.”

“I’m not worried about our identicality!”

“Identicality isn’t a word.”

“It is now,” Niall whinged. “Nolan is going to kill me.”

“Oh please, like he’s not going to be the first, second and third client we both land,” Russ said, rolling their eyes. “Besides, you own his entire dick.”

Niall did own Nolan’s entire dick, ever since he’d realized Nolan wanted to fuck him and had let him, giving him two lifetimes of blackmail material. “He hates tattoos,” Niall muttered. “He’ll find a way. He’ll tell my dad.”

“He’ll tell your dad what? That he was taking pictures of his son’s ass and just so happened to discover that he was a cheap whore?”

“Hey!” Niall took his head out from under the pillow, glaring at Russ. “I’m an expensive whore.”

Russ grinned, then kissed Niall’s ass. “I know you are, and I have the credit card statements to prove it. I wonder what happened to Doggy and Buck.”

“Don’t remember,” Niall muttered. He still couldn’t find his own phone to text them, so he swiped Russ’s and used that. “I remember seeing Sally leave with that football player.” Sally had only gone to that party because he’d had a dream that he’d been given a quest, and he’d fulfilled it, so good for him. Niall texted him too.

“Oh, yeah,” said Russ, contemplative. “What a slut.”

“Right?”

“Speaking of which, though, whose house is this?”

Niall looked up, around the bedroom. It was nice, spacious, had its own bathroom. Quiet street outside, looked like a nice area from what he could see out the window. He’d never been here before. “Uh. Good question?”

“Thanks, I’m a genius,” Russ agreed, getting up and poking around. “I also don’t see either of our clothes.” As they said that, they opened a closet, pulled out a blue button-down and some grey slacks. They threw them back in the closet, gagging, which was unlike them.

“Or my phone,” Niall pouted. “Plus who’d sleep with us and then fuck off in the morning? Rude.”

“There was a payment option on our site. See if someone paid us.”

Niall sighed, navigated through the site, got to a login page. He frowned, trying to decide what he would have used as a password while drunk and high and in a Daylight Savings Time fugue.

It only took him two tries to figure out that the password was “Russ’s left nut” and then he was in, and he looked around, found that the site was linked to the joint bank account that Russ had opened for them. “Well, someone gave us ten grand last night.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know. Anonymous.”

“Well, that was nice of them,” Russ said, stretching. “I still feel like shit. Want to use their shower?”

“Okay, but we’re not fucking in the shower.”

“Fine, over the tub it is,” Russ said, pulling Niall to his feet. “It’s one of the nice ones with feet. You know what I think?”

“Nothing.”

“Ha. I think we’re still in the missing hour.”

Niall rolled his eyes. “It has to have been more than an hour.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Russ. “Maybe an hour can take days, if it’s the right one. Time isn’t real, you know.”

“It actually is.”

Russ kissed Niall again. “It doesn’t have to be.”

Niall sighed. There was no point in arguing with Russ when they were being stupid and he had a time hangover. Maybe after they showered, found some clothes that showed off their codes and found out where they were, he’d circle back around to telling them they were wrong about everything.

Or maybe not. Just in case they were still in the missing hour.

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