The Morning After (Anon X Lyra, slice of life)

>Be Lyra. And the goddesses must hate you.
>You're face-down in your pillow. Your mouth tastes like cats have done their business in it.
>And then they died there, and somepony buried them in your mouth.
>Your head is spinning. Your stomach is a sickly boiling pot of acid you could use to smelt mithril ore. You attempt to raise up, but your face is stuck to your pillow. "Auuuugh..." you moan.
>You stick out a hoof and touch something...warm, smooth, slightly fuzzy. Oh. Right, Anon. Okay.
>"Morning," you hear. Your head throbs with every word. You clap your hooves over your ears, which are flattened against your head in a desperate effort to keep out the noise.
>"Oh Luna...kill me, please," you moan.
>"Hangover?" you hear. He sounds weirdly amused. Bastard.
"YOU'RE BREATHING TOO LOUD!" you hiss, your voice muffled. 'STOP BREATHING!"
>You stumble out of bed, the pillow still glued to your face, and stumble blindly into a wall headfirst. Oh, right, maybe you should have tried to pull it off before getting up. Just a thought. "Owww..."
>You fall over. "Hold on," you hear. A second later, you feel hands grabbing the pillow, and it's gone. You blink, your eyes watering at the sudden glare.
>It's actually fairly dark in the bedroom, but to your light-sensitive eyes, it's like staring into Celestia's sun, and it sends icicles of agony into your head. Your stomach lurches.
>You're not sure how you got here, but you're over the toilet and Anon is holding your mane away from your face while your body tries to rid itself of everything you've consumed in approximately the last six months.
>You glance at the hideous mess (when in Tartarus did last eat carrots?) smell the stink of liquor and half-digested Neighponese food, and suddenly you're vomiting again. You finally finish and fall back onto the floor, moaning.
>he offers you a glass of cold water, and you wash your mouth out and spit into the toilet

>You lie there against the porcelain, shivering, while Anon simply strokes your back and mane. It's soothing, almost enough to make you forget you're sicker than you've ever imagined it was possible for a pony to feel.
>"Ahh luna, I'm dead," you moan. "I'm dead and this is Tartarus..."
>"You're not dead," says Anon. "You just wish you were. You're hung over. Like, epicly hung over."
>"Nuh uh," you say, swallowing. "I've been hung over. This is like a punishment from the Goddesses. Oh god..." your stomach shifts queasily, in time with your screaming headache. Every muscle feels like it's been beaten individually with a hammer. Even your TEETH hurt.
>And your horn...oh Celestia preserve you...
>Anon disappears briefly. A minute later, he's back, with a glass of something. He hands you some pills. "Aspirin. Drink it with this. Slowly."
>You dry-swallow the aspirin and then sip your drink. It's orange juice, it's ice-cold and sweet and...you detect just a touch of salt in it.
>It's the most delicious thing you've ever tasted.
>"Slowly," he says. "Don't bolt it or you'll lose it. Just sip it. It'll put some of your fluid and salt back. You're dehydrated."
>you sit there on the bathroom floor, sipping your ice cold salted OJ for a few minutes, your headache slowly easing in slow increments. Your memory of last night is a blur.
>"What happened?" you ask.
>"Before or after you climbed the table and started air-guitaring 'Goldfish Warning?'" he asks.
>"....uh...after?" You don't remember that. But.."I DO remember something--a fight?" You have vague memories of an argument with a very short pony.
>"You got into a fight with a fire hydrant," says Anon. "You declared yourself the winner, and then you climbed on top of it and pronounced it the sovereign property of the nation of Heartstringia. Then you tried to take it home with you."
>You still don't remember. "Oh maaaaan...what else?"
>Anon ticks them off on his fingers.

>"You also tried to tackle a tree, you climbed into a dumpster and declared your intention to live there, and then you tried to prove you could write your name in the snow.."
>"Oh Luna..."
>"And it turns out you totally can, which was...interesting, because you peed in an ice machine. Then you got your head stuck in a lampshade and panicked, leading to a fifteen minute chase through two stores and some mare's house..." He pauses. "I have pictures," he says, and you can hear the amusement in his voice.
>You cradle your head in your hooves, wishing you could melt into the floor. "H-how many?" you ask, shakily. "How many did I have?"
>"Just the one," he says. "One Quadruppel."
>No. It had to have been like a thousand. It had to have been gallons. "Nooooo..." you say.
>"Yep," he says cheerfully. "Just the one. You ponies are lightweights. I drank like, six."
>You look at him sullenly over your delicious glass of salty-sweet OJ. He has no right to look this good when you're dying here. "I hate you," you say darkly. "With lasers."
>He chuckles. "I love you too. Now let's get some more fluids in you, sweetie."
>it's a dead, do-nothing-and-recover kind of day.