"What time is it?" The man's words were sleepy and slurred. An arm, thick and gnarled with muscle, was cast over his face to cover his eyes from the encroaching dawn. The rest of his impressive bulk was splayed out across the bed, hogging it with his size. A wayward scrap of bedsheet had been tossed over his groin, covering the most delicate parts of his anatomy.
When no answer came, he repeated himself in a more exasperated manner. "What time is it?!"
Again, there was no response but silence. The arm dropped away and landed next to his hip with a thump. His bleary, shadowed eyes cracked open and he strove to lift his head. The sight of his own naked body brought a scowl to his brow. "What the - ?"
Footsteps, light and hurried, moved along the corridor outside the door. The man went still, watching the door, but the latch did not move. The footsteps faded away again.
His neck craned further still, though a pounding behind his temples made him groan from deep in his gut. "What've you done now, Wes?" he grumbled. On the table beside the bed were an assortment of bottles and cups, several of them overturned, and a few had rolled onto the floor.
Muscles rippled and clenched as he struggled to sit up, and with his beard nearly touching his chest, he spied an odd sight. A sort of bruise, red and purple in colour, decorated the swell of muscle on the right-hand side of his ribs. "Feck," he muttered aloud.
With his bare back propped upon the wooden headboard, he clapped a large hand over his face and scrubbed the palm roughly against his aching eyes. "Not again. Tell me I didn't do it again." The hand came suddenly down, and his fingers had curled into a fist which slammed into the mattress. He seized the sheet and threw it violently aside, standing to his feet.
His head swum nauseatingly, and for a few seconds it was all he could do to stay upright. A few, unsteady steps were attempted as he moved around to the foot of the bed. His gut twisted in complaint at the deluge of liquor that had assaulted it the night before, along with a lack of food. Grunting and clenching his jaw to hold down the vomit, he braced a hand against the wall and shuddered with the effort to draw steady, deep breaths.
The feel of something cool and smooth beneath his toes halted him from going further. Dark, ochre-coloured eyes lowered to find a vague lump of white small-clothes on the floor beside the bed. He drew back his foot as if he had stepped in something repulsive.
"Feck," he whispered again. His posture sagged with a heavy, defeated sigh.
At the same moment, another set of feet approached the door and immediately flung it open without pausing to knock. A woman, not especially young nor old, but pretty enough among the common, brown-haired Bree populace, grinned brightly at the sight of the naked man standing there.
"Awake, I see," she chirped and quickly stepped into the room, closing the door. Her figure, which was by all accounts very pleasing, was wrapped in a plain, threadbare dressing gown, and her feet were bare.
"What happened?" he grumbled, making no move to cover himself.
The woman was already flitting around him, scooping up her underclothes and humming like a sparrow. "What do you mean?" she giggled.
The hulking, bear-like figure turned to follow her with his gaze. "What happened last night?"
She stopped with a jolt and gaped at him. Her empty hand gestured towards the room with a sweeping motion, indicating the tousled bed, the empty bottles. "You don't remember?" she blurted in disbelief.
"I suppose I don't if I'm asking what happened!" he barked. A violent hiccup spasmed his throat and he once again bit back the taste of bile. He swung his head from side to side, seeking his own clothing, and spied a promising pile of dark cloth in the corner.
"What do you think happened, Wes?" the woman cried, and her voice followed him across the room. "You've woken in my bed, stark naked, and you don't know what happened?"
He felt the gentle collision of the garment she had been holding striking his bare back, then sliding to the floor. He bent down to find his trousers and said nothing.
"It's not as if this is the first time you've been here, now is it?" she went on. Her voice was typically sweet and caressing to his ears, but now it grated on them. She sounded as if she were about to weep, and this only served to stoke his irritation.
"Next time you see me, don't speak to me," he growled, yanking his trousers over his feet and struggling to work them up over his legs. "Don't sit with me. Don't drink with me. And don't bring me back to your fecking bed."
A quiet followed that rankled against his bare skin as if he could feel the hurt he had just caused seething out from her eyes. He did not turn around, but began to tug his shirt over his head.
"Ohhhh, it's my fault, is it?" Her voice was soft now. Soft in that way that womens' voices become when you've struck home and the venom is about to be unleashed. "I seduced you, did I? I forced you back here?" His fingers worked at the laces of his shirt while the volume of her tone increased steadily. "Did I drag you back here, Mister Thornstead?" He could tell that she was now standing directly behind him, and he half-waited for the blows to begin. "Did I?!"
"You know better!" His voice exploded like a thunderclap, and he whirled around to face the woman. "You know what's happened! You know why I've come here in the past!"
The sudden outburst had startled her, and she shrank back. Her light brown eyes stretched wide with alarm as the towering man advanced on her.
"You know better!" he shouted again, slamming his fist into his palm while spittle flew from his teeth. "I don't want you! It's not you that I come here for!"
Her face could not have radiated more pain if he had thrust a blade into her gut. Somewhere behind the white-hot rage that left him snarling through his teeth like a bear, he knew that he should feel regret for that look. And that he would feel it. Later.
"Get out," she whispered weakly, cowering against the wall and pointing a trembling finger at the door.
He wanted to say something to soften the wounds he had just laid open on her heart. Instead, he felt himself turning away, grabbing his boots, throwing his cloak over his arm. How much he wanted to stop and apologize! He felt as if he were inside the body of another man, or worse yet, a beast. And he was helpless to do anything but be dragged along as the thick fingers yanked open the door.
