Hangover - Auggie

August Anderson felt like he rode a nonstop Tilt-a-Whirl for hours with nothing but chili in his stomach. The nauseated feeling he got tripled when he tried to stand up on his own. His oldest brother was in town and allowed the seven years older Anderson to ply him with liquor at a tiny bar in Dupont Circle. The result was less than desirable for the blind CIA techie; he could not hold a candle to his former drinking prowess. It was not a matter of Auggie not drinking while his big brother was not around, it was a matter of how much Auggie drank on a regular basis. While he occasionally crossed the line from tipsy into drunk at the tavern, it had been years since Auggie was what his girlfriend would so charmingly call "three sheets to the wind." In fact, the last time he was anywhere close to this level of intoxication was when the eldest Anderson visited him in DC three years prior.

"Less'go," Auggie slurred to his older brother. Aaron Anderson only laughed at his youngest brother; for all that Auggie was well muscled, he was still on the thin side and still could not hold his liquor. The older Anderson chuckled because family pride would not allow Auggie to slow down his alcohol intake despite knowing he sorely outmatched by his seventy pounds heavier older brother. Sibling rivalry was going to kick his butt. None of the Andersons could believe the youngest's relatively low alcohol tolerance as a CPA. Most CPAs went out drinking on an almost daily basis. Auggie was always slightly reserved, but Aaron did not fully understand until the thinner Anderson tried to get up from the table.

"Where next?" Auggie asked as he tried to slide his chair back. On the second try, he was successful in putting six inches between his admittedly fit abdomen and the table. Auggie's fingers grasped at air a couple of times until he could find the edge of the table to push himself up. He must have weighed more than it looked he did, because when he levered himself up out of the seat the entire table rocked onto two legs. The forgotten gin and tonics - well, cups of gin with a slight splash of tonic was more like it - slid across the table and onto the ground. Lucky for the boys, the waitress had switched them from glasses to plastic cups three rounds ago and the drinks simply sloshed onto the concrete patio.

"Home, little bro," Aaron laughed as he slung an arm around his brother's waist to keep him upright. Even with his eyesight, a drunken Auggie could barely stumble his way out of a paper bag, let alone far enough down the street to hail a cab. "Ooof," Aaron mumbled as Auggie let most of his weight on his brother. "You weigh a ton."

Auggie flashed him his trademark "oops-but-I'm-not-really-sorry" grin and took a few steps. His footsteps thudded heavily down the center walkway of the patio and Aaron's cheeks stained red. It was his own fault for tacitly challenging his brother and although he was embarrassed, it was worth it to see Auggie let it all go. After three of the gins-with-a-hint-of-tonic, Auggie opened up about his love life. It was the first time since the ugly break up with Natasha that Aaron heard of any woman, and from Auggie's description she was pretty much perfect. While Aaron looked for a cab to take them to Auggie's apartment, where he was crashing for the night, Auggie slipped a hand into his pocket and snagged his phone.

Hitting just two buttons, he slurred "Annieeeeeeeee," into the phone loudly. Aaron was momentarily mortified for Auggie. His little brother, at twenty-nine, was drunk dialing his new girlfriend. Drunk was not the word for it. He was shit-faced dialing his girlfriend at midnight during the middle of the week. Aaron should have known better than to let Auggie keep his phone as this was not the first time a severely inebriated Anderson brother tried to call the girl of his dreams. Lucky for this particular brother, she seemed to like him back.

"Hello?" Annie answered sleepily. Auggie knew that he told her that Aaron was in town, but highly doubted he forewarned her of the consequences of another Anderson male in the same city. "Aug, are you drunk?"

"Noooooooooooo," he drew out in response. He heard her sigh into the phone and shift it from one ear to the other. "Yeeeeeeeesh," he giggled a moment later. In the morning, he would bury his face in the pillow as Annie reenacted his slobbery affirmation. Even in his altered state, he knew she was shaking her head on the other end of the telephone.

"I'll be over," she replied and clicked off the line before he could tell her know. Flashing his brother a grin, he explained to the claw marks on his arm, "She's coming over."

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Annie's little red car was sitting out front of Auggie's apartment when the taxi cab pulled up. After the first corner, he started getting the spins and had to hang his head out the rolled down window to alleviate them. He stumbled out of the car and into Annie's waiting arms as Aaron paid the cabbie for his services. He could feel her struggling with his weight when he landed directly on her chest to chest. Placing a sloppy kiss on her cheek, he threw an arm around her and tried to pull her along with him.

"Aug, you can't even stand. How about you let me decide where we're going?" she asked. Her words sounded off to the blind man, but he could not place why. He squeezed her tighter, hoping that would make the nausea go away. Her hip kept bumping the side of the his thigh, momentarily distracting him from the dizziness assaulting him. When he had his eyesight, he would make it a point to keep his eyes open as much as he could when he had the spins and stay upright. Neither of those things seemed possible at the moment.

"Annie," he whined, "my stomach..." He felt her shudder under his shoulder and walk him to the house more quickly. He was glad that she was comfortable shoving her hands in his pocket looking for his keys. At another time, he may have teased her about just trying to get into his pants but the spinning sensation would not die. He heard a jangle and felt her pull his wrist across the threshold.

"Bathroom, Aug, we're going to go to the bathroom," she told him in what he picked up was the voice she used with Katia and Chloe when they were being particularly childish. He followed her meekly, listening to her direct his big brother to the kitchen. He also heard her curse under her breath in Russian about "drunk ass boyfriends" and "ridiculous".

"C'mon, baby, let's sit down in here," she told him as she gracefully pulled him to sit next to her on his bathroom floor, back against his overly large bathtub. He ruefully thought this was not how he wanted to get Annie on his bathroom floor but his drink-addled mind quickly let that go. He felt Annie's soft fingers on his forehead as he leaned his head on her shoulder. Quickly making the decision to never drink again, the nausea hit him even harder this go around.

"Aug? You're probably going to want to throw up. It's fine, don't fight it," he heard Annie murmur as she continued rubbing his hair back off of his forehead. Auggie knew in that moment that he had the most wonderful girlfriend he could ask for. Here she was, on a Wednesday night, sitting with him on the cold tile of his bathroom rubbing his head because he drank way too much. He opened his mouth to tell her this, but unfortunately he did not get the words out. Quickly, she started rubbing circles on his back as he emptied his stomach of all the remaining gin.

She kept rubbing circles on his back as he laid his head against the toilet seat. "So cold," he murmured, half asleep. Annie shook him, and handed him a glass of water Aaron must have brought her from the kitchen. She instructed him to drink it slowly and to chew the small pill she put into his hand. "What's this?" he asked.

"Chewable Flinstone vitamin. I swiped some from the girls when you slurred you were drunk."

"Why?"

"Silly Auggie. It will help with the hangover I know you are going to wake up with."

"Thanks, Annie. You're the best."

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Auggie woke to a number of striking sensations. The first was something cold and hard under his body, the second soft under his head, the third pushing against his feet, and the fourth a weight across his waist. And the pain. Oh, the pain, followed by another wave of nausea.

Sitting up quickly, he felt soft hands directing his face to where he could relieve himself of the last bits of his drinking binge the night before. He felt Annie's breasts against his back when she reached over him to grab what he thought was a glass and press it into his hands. Gulp, swish, spit. Gulp, swish, spit. "Thanks, Annie."

"No problem. You wanna try this 'sleeping in the bed' thing again?"

"What?" he queried. Then he put together the earlier sensations - the cold, hard object under his body was the tile floor of his bathroom and the softness under his head was a pillow he assumed his girlfriend swiped off his bed. He was curled into the fetal position with the bathtub at his feet and Annie draped over him, holding him on his side and cradling his battered, hungover body with her own as he slept. "Yeah, let's do that."

He heard the rustling of Annie's clothes and the gentle pull on his t-shirt. T-shirt? Annie must have changed him some time after he got home. Checking his watch, it chirped mechanically "Three twenty-four AM!" He let her lead him to his bed, refilling the glass with water from the bathroom sink on her way. She pushed him onto the right side of the bed, onto "his" side, and he heard her slide the pillow back onto the bed. A dull thunk let him know she put water on his night stand. He was embarrassed when he heard her feet creaking on the floor board and returned a couple seconds later to place something under where his face pointed. "Just in case," Annie murmured as she rubbed her hand through his shaggy hair.

He grabbed her wrist and placed a kiss on its palm. Smiling sleepily, he let go and felt her pat his shoulder. Instead of walking over to her side of the bed like normal, he felt his side of the mattress dip and Annie's taught stomach slide over his hip. Had he been in his right mind, he would have rolled onto his back along with her and run his hands up her body... She snuggled up behind him, effectively becoming the big spoon, and threw her leg across his hips. Her pelvis tilted him further over onto his side; he was balanced completely on his side with Annie pressing herself against his back in this manner.

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Auggie woke up to his alarm beeping obnoxiously and a massive headache. Fumbling for his alarm clock, he felt Annie's leg hitched over his hip, impeding his ability to stretch to the alarm clock on the far end of his night stand. Wiggling, he hit the "off" button and inched his fingers over to the glass he remembered Annie putting on the table. Switching the glass to his other hand, he gently slid her lithe arm from where it was wound around his chest and carefully rolled her onto her back. He sat up and chugged the glass of water, cataloguing his slightly queasy stomach and headache. Truth be told, it was not the worst headache he had after drinking.

Placing the glass carefully back on the night stand, he reset the alarm clock for a half hour later and snuggled back into bed. As he laid onto his back, he felt Annie's leg shift up over his side and her head on his chest. He twined his fingers with hers and pulled her in as close as he could get her. Kissing her forehead, he knew he could not let her go today, not just yet.

"How do you feel?" she asked sleepily. If Auggie managed four hours of shoddy sleep, she could not have gotten any more taking care of him. Smoothing her hair down, he answered her thoughtfully. "Hungover," he began, "but not nearly as bad as I should. Someone took very good care of me last night."

He felt her nod her assent into his chest and then rub her nose across his chest. It was something he noticed she did when she was trying to show him that she was close to him, he thought, or maybe just a sleepy burrow of her head. Either way, it made the hangover significantly less intense knowing that the gorgeous, sweet woman in his arms would still rub her nose on his chest after taking care of his drunk ass all night.

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A/N: I do not know what it is like to be blind and extremely inebriated. I do, however, know what it is like to be extremely inebriated and how your motor skills and dignity slip away. The bar that the Anderson boys are at does exist and it is known as one of the heaviest pours in all of DC by the locals. Many a wise person has fallen due to their famed "mixed" drinks.