MCA #0, Saturday Night

[needsaparrot]

After checking to make sure that the lobby was still dry and there was a fresh supply of towels and hot coffee out there, Xander retreated to his apartment in the evening. Guzzling coffee and munching twinkies all day had left him craving some real, people-made food, so he had water boiling on the stove for pasta. Because he was still a guy. Who majored in construction.
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[OOC: For oh guess]

Comments

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

There was something Bridge needed to tell Xander. And he figured, he probably shouldn't leave yet *another* phone message, so he decided to tell him the news in person. So he'd hopped a raft and paddled his way through the streets until he came to the apartments. Unfortunately, he'd hit something on the way and had fallen *off* the stupid raft, so he was rather covered in mud and sopping wet when he knocked on the door.

[needsaparrot]

Xander answered the door with a wooden spoon in one hand, still-cold pot of sauce in the other. "Hey. You're uh. Damp."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Uh-huh," Bridge says, making a face. "I've come to claim my shower." Which wasn't the *only* reason he was here, but hey, convenient.

[needsaparrot]

"..." Xander answers. "Your what?" Not that Bridge doesn't look like he could use one. Xander steps back to let him in.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"You owe me a shower," Bridge says, coming inside.

[needsaparrot]

"How d'you fig-- hey, you're dripping on the...everything." Luckily there's still a pile of towels on one of the arms of the couch. Xander hands him one. "How d'you figure that?"

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"It was on the email you sent me on my birthday five years ago. Uh, five years ago for you anyway. 'Coupon for one free shower, payable on demand'", he quotes. "I... didn't print it out and bring it, so I don't have an *actual* coupon or anything."

[needsaparrot]

Xander sent a lot of e-mail. But that one does ring a bell. "I... think I was offering to build you one."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge pouts. "I'll totally accept the *use* of your already-existing shower as fulfilling the offer," he says.

[needsaparrot]

There's water. And mud. And clothes that are not clingy because Xander is not looking at them, so it's kind of like Schrodinger's clingy except not the kid up at the school but the guy with the cat and the box and the radioactive isotope that made Willow go off into a five minute wide-eyed rant about how could anybody do that to a kitty even a theoretical one and then he had to promise her that if he ever walked past a box and heard a cat meow he would open it and let it out without looking at it so it'd be alive. Or, uh, in this case, not clingy.

"Yeah, okay," Xander says, not looking at the not-clinging, and points towards the guest bathroom. "There's more towels in there than you can shake a ... whatever you might shake around a towel at."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Thanks, dude," Bridge says, and heads off toward the shower. And emerges about twenty minutes later wearing nothing but his gloves and a towel around his waist.

[needsaparrot]

"Hey, you want your spaghetti with or without--" Xander comes out of the kitchen with a large bowl in hand, and...stares. He's not even quick enough to come up with an elaborate mental justification involving quantum physics for why he's not really staring. "...clothes?"

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Okay, so maybe Bridge knew perfectly well that this would happen. And *maybe* he could have stayed in the bathroom and explained his dilemma to Xander from there. And maybe he didn't. On purpose. In order to get exactly this reaction.

"Uh. Small problem..." he says, fiddling with the edge of the towel.

[needsaparrot]

Not all that sm-- A quick mental thwap later, that thought remains unfinished, let alone unspoken. Course, that took up all the mental energy Xander was going to devote to looking away. "Um?"

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge doesn't *actually* catch that unfinished thought, though he does quirk an eyebrow at Xander. "My clothes are all still wet and muddy," he points out.

[needsaparrot]

"I have a washer and dryer." Xander points to the little closet next to the kitchen containing them, without looking in that direction.

Then he shakes his head and blinks, a lot. "And a ROBE." He turns to head for his room to get it.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge does not outwardly do a victory dance. There is definitely an inner victory dance going on, though, as he heads back in to the bathroom and gathers up his uniform to go throw in the laundry.

[needsaparrot]

Which is good, because an outward victory dance might cause the towel to fall off, and that would be very, very mean.

Xander returns with a terrycloth bathrobe in one hand and...well, the bowl of spaghetti he hadn't actually put down in the other. He holds out the robe and shields his face with the pasta.

"Robe. Here."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge grabs the robe and lets the towel fall to the floor as he puts it on. "Thanks, dude," he says gratefully. And then, because he *is* a guy. "...Did you mention food?"

[needsaparrot]

Not looking not looking not looking not LOOKING.

Oh. Robe. "There's food. with or without meatballs."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Shower and dinner," Bridge says with a smile. "You're too good to me. With, please."

[needsaparrot]

"I was already making dinner," Xander points out, heading back into the kitchen for meatballs and silverware.

Not that he wouldn't have made dinner for Bridge, not that you couldn't eat with a friend and lend them your shower when they're half-drowned. It's just that saying it like that makes it feel like Xander planned it that way, or at least like it would look that way from the outside, and...erf.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Well, still. Thanks for sharing." Bridge says with a shrug. "Synthesized food just doesn't cut it, sometimes."

[needsaparrot]

"Some of it's microwaved," Xander admits, coming out of the kitchen again with two bowls and a can of parmesan cheese because he's classy that way. "Couch? or you want to actually sit at the table?"

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Pssht, tables," Bridge waves a hand dismissively.