WHO: Therese Bonaccord and Axe!
WHERE: OH, who knows!
WHEN: Morning after Valentine's!
WHAT: He told her he would show her how to really party? Shit happens when Axe runs the party.



Therese woke up suddenly, taking in a deep breath through her nose as her eyes shot open. Her arms were curled around the extremely soft, white pillow and she wasn’t sure if her head wasn’t lifting because it was so comfortable or if it was because she was physically unable to do such a thing. It seemed like a combination of both, and it was a bit of a struggle---she didn’t have white pillow cases. Hers were blue and purple, with a design, and not nearly as soft and smooth and---

She bit the pillow as she recalled what day it was. February 15th. Why she could clearly remember what today’s date was and nothing at all about the previous night and what had lead her to this strange bed, she couldn’t tell you. There really wasn’t much Therese could tell you, as of right now.

And then---something moved beside her, and she jolted up, a cold breeze coming over her as the blanket fell and---merde! She was not wearing any--! Therese pulled the covers up to be at least some what decent, and as the blanket shifted forward a pair of very big, definitely-belonging-to-a-man feet appeared at the end of the bed. Her mind had to work to think about who was hiding under the blanket beside her, head completely buried underneath blankets, pillows, and something that looked like a carpet. Therese felt the pounding in her head get worse as she thought, and her face grew red as her very slow moving mind got her somewhat back up to speed.

She pulled up the blanket to make sure she was right (she better be! What a tart she would end up being if it wasn’t---), and sure enough the naked form she was expecting to see sound asleep underneath the sheets was there. Therese dropped the blanket and let out a breath, wondering if she should wake him. She assumed this was his flat, but----she really couldn’t be sure. With only slight hesitation, her foot moved under the covers to poke at him.

“Rupert,” she croaked, “wake up.” Je ne sais pas où je suis!

He was sleeping on a cloud.

Not that he would ever admit it to anyone, but he had wondered what that would be like on more than one occasion, and now he actually knew and it was such a wonderful feeling, except for the fact that there was a dull buzzing in the back of his head that was intruding on his happiness. There was also a stinging on some location of his body he could not quite identify, but he wasn't terribly concerned. Axe just wanted to go back to sleep on his cloud, but then someone was nudging him, and he was suddenly incredibly irritated that he was being expected to share this treat with someone else.

"Casse-toi," he murmured more groggily than angrily, still clinging to the vestiges of sleep. When he felt the nudging more insistently, he realized this was a futile endeavor. "P'tain," he swatted at what or whoever disturbed his quasi-perfect slumber, but found his hand tangled in something soft instead. Furrowing his brow, one eye squinted awake and he saw the brief fistful of Therese Bonaccord's hair he had, before slowly opening the other eye and pulling out a large feather from the back of her sleep-mussed head.

"What—?" His eyes focused and unfocused on the object held between his two fingers and he lowered it, blearily focusing on her face. Axe blinked in rapid succession and then took in the unfamiliar pillow on the unfamiliar bed in the unfamiliar room. "Hein — where did you take us?" And why was he naked?

Well, no, that wasn't as troubling as the buzzing in his head or the brightly colored, quite angry looking tropical parrot that was sitting on the headboard.

Therese was still rubbing her head, pouting greatly as she was quite sure that Rupert had pulled out a large clump of hair. The feather confused her, and she stared at it intensely. The pillows were white, the feather was red---

The parrot, which had gone unnoticed by the woman for the past five minutes, let out a little squawk, flapping its wings. It didn’t move from its perch, but Therese let out a terrified shriek and crawled quickly back and away, managing to tangle up in the sheets and slide ungracefully down to the floor on the side of the bed. What was that bird doing inside? Birds shouldn’t be inside, they should be outside! OUTSIDE!

“Get it away!” she shrieked, covering her head with the blanket, sure that the parrot was going to come and claw at her hair, as it had already left a feather stuck between her locks. Bird! What was a bird---a bird like that did not live in England, so how on earth had it gotten here, in England! Because they were in England, right---

As her thoughts grew more frantic, things actually started to fall into place. She didn’t recognize the room they were in, and neither had Rupert. They must be in...some sort of themed hotel, where people got their jollies off while wild animals flew around their heads and---what if there were more? Therese shot to her feet, managing to somehow not trip herself up more in the blanket. What if there were more wild creatures lurking around here? Why was this room so white?

Therese jumped up onto a chair, loosing the coverage of the blanket and allowing some skin to be revealed. She looked down to fix the sheet when she let out an even louder shriek than before. Right there on her hip was a tattoo of a topless mermaid and she now wished for the parrot to peck her eyes out.

If he had the presence of mind to reconcile the fact that there was a parrot flying around a room he did not recognize while a naked woman he was not currently ogling was sporting a new and insane tattoo, he might have been alarmed, but he was too appalled by the fact that he appeared to be suffering the ill-effects of a hangover.

Axe had never had one of those in his life. Maybe once in his wildly-spent youth, and it had been no more than a tickle of the brain. Now it felt like buzzing creatures had taken up permanent residence inside his head, and he was going to claw his face off. Une gueule de bois, pah!

What he needed to do immediately was submerge his head in a basin of ice cold water and pray he drowned or facial features froze clean off, because that would certainly leave him feeling better than he was now. He dislodged the bird in his angry yanking gestures, fighting with the filmy white covers that trapped him on the bed, sprinkled with a dusting of tiny white feathers that seemed to be leaking from a half-ravaged pillow. "Open the window!" he snapped as the bird squawked and flitted about him, waving his arms around his head in distaste.

Finally free, he stumbled five naked feet to the bathroom door, opened it, blinked, looked again, then yanked the door shut, turning to Therese with an expression verging on gawking. "Il y a—there's a—a mermaid in there!" he hissed, turning his head slightly to stare through the closed door. "Did you know there was a sleeping mermaid in there?"

Well, that explained the tattoo. Sort of.

Therese kept her eyes locked with Axe’s (maybe not so locked on his eyes, it was hard to just focus on his eyes--was that a Chinese Fireball tattoo on his torso? Was there one of those hidden in the linen closet?!) as they futility, silently, attempted to figure out why there was a sleeping mermaid in their bathroom (had she even---how did it--she--he--even get in there?), but that only lasted a second as the parrot squawked again, jolting Therese into action. She let out another shriek, because obviously that was the proper reaction to have and held the sheet tighter to her body as she made her way to the window...that was more of a door. A thin curtain covered the window-paned door and Therese slowed her run, not only because of the headache it was giving her but she’d never seen a door like this unless it was leading to a balcony, but it was too warm to be leading out into a balcony and...

It was definitely a balcony. Therese padded out, entranced, amazed, completely enthralled with her view. This was not England, this was not Wales, this was not Scotland, this was not Ireland. Therese was pretty sure it wasn’t even France, which would have been the logical place for them to end up. She stared, slack-jawed, and turned back to call to Axe when the bloody parrot flew like a---a fast flying thing, wings spread as wide as the door frame and straight at her.

Shriek, shriek, shriek was all she could do, and Therese dropped to the ground, losing the sheet and nearly her head. Her hands kept her from completely slamming into the ground, and her fingers grasped onto a pamphlet, a brochure. She flipped it over and groaned. They were in Spain.

He still was not over the mermaid, but for the time being, he had slumped against the door and was wishing death would come for him swiftly to put an end to this cerebral misery. "Arrête—stop screaming," he groaned, only half-bothering to check and make sure the witch he'd woken up naked with after procuring both a mermaid and a parrot and tearing pillows was not dying like he felt he was. Therese was engaged in her own battle with the brightly-coloured bird and Axe was happy to leave her to it.

Until there was a rapping at the door. "Senor Raimundo!"

The noise Axe emitted was like a wounded dog's. Who?. This was clearly the wrong room, and the infernal noise would abate.

It did not, as there was now pounding and more shouting, which the buzzing in his head did not appreciate and demanded he shut up at once. But any further movement on his part was impossible, given his head had not met a bath of icy cold water to shock the blighted hangover right out of his system. Or at least wake him up enough to stop fumbling around with one eye open. Getting to this point, however, meant displacing the mermaid. Axe was not opposed to this, he simply did not want to get near her, given he was not entirely sure what her temperament was or if she was rabid or had some sort of trident she could fork him with.

All the while, the pounding on the door had not ceased; it had, in fact, grown louder and more frantic, with the same man's voice rising in pitch. "SENOR RAIMUNDO!" Pound pound pound. " LA POLICÍA!"

Leaning away from the bathroom door he had all but sagged against, he opened one eye tentatively, eying the door. "La pol—" But before Axe could even complete the foreign-yet-familiar word, he heard a scuffle in the hallway, loud yells and stampeding feet, until the door was broken down and the doorway crowded with darkly clothed bodies.

"JE SUIS NU!" Axe hollered, though made no effort to cover himself, simply staring at the bodies now forming threatening stances before him before starting to advance.

This. This was why he never bloody celebrated—Valentine's Day.