Chapter 8: Dawning

"--Hnnh?" Baekhyun's eyes flashed open suddenly as a shiver cracked him from sleep's cocoon and dropped him trembling into a cold, unfamiliar darkness. a sharp, tremulous breath, he curled his arms under the blanket and blinked widely - then his blood froze.

Where was he?

Turning his head ever so slowly to the left he took in the innocuous expanse of a wall and window, and a pale yellowed curtain bearing a small, old print. Rolling his head to the right, he blinked several times, til his eyes adjusted to the darkness. It swam nonetheless, but faint outlines of furniture and decor came into view - aided by the grey light of morn and the sliver of illumination shining from under a door across the room. Dark blots on the wall morphed from nebulous shapes into guitars, tall hulking shadows revealed a dresser, and an anomalous cluster of shapes nearer the bed remained indiscernible as his eyes drifted closed against his own will.

The bedding was warm beneath his right arm, Baekhyun noted, significantly warmer than his body felt. His eyes flew open again as he pressed his hand to the sheets and his breath came quicker, his heart pounding in his ears. He bolted upright in bed, and winced, nearly crying out as lancing pain barbed through his skull. He crumpled against the wall and whimpered softly, drawing his arms around himself as he shivered again. Only then did the dawning horror of realization hit him - he was unclothed. Shock overrode pain, he shied down under the covers and quickly drew them up to his neck, staring out into the room with fists balled under his chin, shivering faintly.

Where was he? How had he come to be here? Who had been in bed with him? Was that them in the shower? What had he done?

And quieter, beneath the rising bile of panic - was he where he thought he was? Had he done what he feared he might've?

Faces swam behind his eyes and thoughts whirled circular in his head. He groaned, huddling closer to the wall under the shelter of blankets. 

At least he wasn't in a gutter.

When Baekhyun came to again, it was to a warm, buttery light streaming in through the window just over his head. The floor heating was on and his body was comfortable, if tense, ensconced in a roll of blankets. He slowly lowered his hands from under his chin and blinked long and slow at the ceiling. He was afraid of what he might find if he turned his head to the right, and for a long time hid behind shuttered eyelids.

Then he heard it - the thin, metallic strike of fingers over strings of an electric guitar plugged into headphones. He knew the sound well and felt a tug of memory at the back of his mind. Daring to open his eyes, he turned his head slowly to seek the source.

Strewn over a chair that was comically small for the length of his frame, sat Phoenix, a leg outstretched, the other bent at the knee, foot propped on the lower rungs of another chair. In his arms was a guitar - the guitar - and over his ears were fat noise-canceling headphones. A look of concentration furrowed his brow beneath a fall of deep auburn - the color richer and redder than Baekhyun recalled - and he bit his lower lip as he strummed semi-silently through a riff twice over. Half his hair was pulled up into a floppy bun at his crown and the rest coiled down his nape to brush the tops of very bare shoulders.

Baekhyun lay in silence, barely breathing. Now you've really done it, he berated himself. He'd managed to not only get drunk and pass out, but land up in another man's bed. There were so many things wrong with the slowly congealing evidence of the night before that he considered closing his eyes again - in hopes that he might wake up in his office or, by some miracle, in his own bed.

"Hey, you're awake." 

Baekhyun's eyes widened as they snapped back to Phoenix, who was looking at him as he pulled off his headphones and unfolded his long, lean body from the chair. He set the guitar on a floor stand beside him and hopped - nearly tripping - over the wire as he crossed the room to the bed.

"How do you feel?" Phoenix crouched down beside the bed and draped his arms over the edge of the mattress, setting his chin on his forearms to look up at him. Concern riddled large, expressive brown eyes that were so much fuller and brighter than Baekhyun had realized. Phoenix's lower lip jutted slightly as he blinked up at Baekhyun, who was at a loss for words.

"I--" he started, and found his voice replaced with a cracked, dry whisper. His fingers came up to his throat and he hid behind his eyelids for a moment. When he opened them again, a glass of water was before him. Hesitantly, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, releasing the blankets to pull his shirt closed over his chest. He reached for the glass and took a few swallows, then exhaled as he lowered it and looked down at the blankets pooled about his waist. 

"Did I-- did we--" he floundered stiffly, biting down on the inside of his cheek. "How