"Hey... You okay?" a familiar voice inquired from somewhere above Tao. Hand over his hurt eye, the boy looked up with his good eye to peer at the source of the voice.

She looked familiar too. Where had he seen her before?

"I think so," Tao muttered, holding out a hand. "Help me up, buttercup?"

The blonde girl scrunched up her face in frustration as she once again squirmed around in her bed, trying to find a comfortable position to lie in. Her head was pounding so badly that it made sleep almost altogether impossible; but this was pretty much a daily problem by now, thanks to her drinking. Oh well. It was much easier to be a sleep-deprived drunk than to have a normal sleeping pattern but be sober.

Just then, Mao was startled out of her thoughts (where were those coming from, anyway? Hopefully a drink would make them disappear.) by a loud thud just outside her bedroom. There was some guy laying on the floor by her doorway looking a bit confused, and it was probably him falling down that'd been so loud. Mao imagined she looked pretty confused herself, as she sat there staring at him and searching her memory for anything that may remind her who the hell this guy was and what he was doing in her house. Considering that he had just fallen over and seemed to not know why he was here either, it was a pretty good guess that they'd been drunk together at some point that day. Or something. Maybe.

"Hey," Getting out of bed slowly, she walked over to where he was still seated on the hallway floor, only stumbling a little bit. "You okay?"

*Blub*

Tao wasn't sure if it was all in his head or if something was actually making that gurgly 'blub' noise. His head felt far too heavy to think clearly. It was as if someone had shovelled out the boy's brain and replaced it with a large brick wrapped in cotton balls: heavy and fuzzy.

Slowly, Tao opened his eyes... blinked once... blinked twice... and despite the heavy fog still clouding up his head, a dopey smile spread accross his face as his gaze landed on the source of the gurgle noise. That crazy flying goldfish.

He reached out to try and touch it, but the fish swam through the air and out of his grasp.

"Wait, ya damn fish...." Tao mumbled, pushing himself up on his elbow. "Get back here."

The bastard fish, however, chose to ignore Tao's request and started swimming towards the door. The Chinese boy slowly sat up and climbed out of bed to follow it, his mind not even bothering to question why he had been in a bed in the first place.

"I'll get you this time," Tao grunted, shuffling quickly across the carpeted floor in pursuit of the little fish. Not even realizing where it was leading him, he followed it out the door and down a hallway. He was gaining on it. So close... If he reached out, he was sure that he could grab it by the fin. Then he could prove that the idiot fish was not simply an drug-induced figment of imagination. He started to reach for it, when suddenly...

*WHUMP!* "FUCK!" *thunk*

Somehow, Tao had managed to walk straight into the frame of one of the open doors lining the hall. Surprised, he'd stumbled backwards and fallen right on his butt. In those few seconds, the fish had disappeared. And by the feeling of it, had managed to give Tao what would probably be a lovely shiner to the right eye later in the day.

"Goddamnit," Tao muttered, gingerly touching his eye. "It's going to take at least a line and a toke before I don't feel this one. Stupid fish gets me every time..."

((What's this? DL is being revived yet again? Indeed! Come on, you know we all missed it. And Kasumi deary, we all miss you too! :3 So, I guess I get to post first, whee. Here we go! ))

"Here we are," Katsuaki announced when the four of them reached his doorway, and he shifted the unconcious boy in his arms slightly so that he had a free hand to open the door with. The Chinese boy was actually rather cute, he realized, but pushed the thought from his mind as he gently lowered Tao onto the sofa.

'He'll be alright there, he thought. For now. There; one addict put to bed. Now it was time for the other one. Katsuaki sighed; at least this one was still capable of standing on her own.

After Mao was safely tucked in her own bed and well on her way to sleep, the redhead turned to Keitaro with tired eyes. As they headed for their own bed, they both knew that once again that there'd only be sleep going on in it that night. Before he drifted off to sleep, Katsuaki gave his lover a sad smile that he hoped looked like it seemed to say 'Don't worry, we'll get our time together. Soon.'