3pipeproblem | One month later...

Thank god. No more web camming until 3 in the morning.

Why were you sleeping in the kitchen?

YAY!!!!! :D

YAY!!!

And the verdict on the new digs is...?

The gas pedal's stuck and their speed is climbing. Alan experimentally lifts his foot off the pedal a few times; there is no deceleration. The brake pedal produces no result either. A glance in the rearview mirror reveals the clones are gaining. Alan gives Liza, seated in the passenger seat, a deeply apologetic glance.

"I'm sorry. It's the car's fault."

Liza looks in the passenger side mirror at the multiple Bill Clintons behind them. She shrugs, turns her dark eyes back on him, and reaches across to unbuckle his seat belt. Somewhere between her kissing him and the car seat changing to a beach, a beach still tearing down the freeway with an army close behind, her smile turns to Tara's and her eyes to Sally's and Alan feels himself waking up.

He grimaces into his pillow, mouth working to try and get rid of the thick taste of waking, and twists under the sheets, trying to drift back into sleep before he comes fully conscious. There's a soft sound in the room that isn't quite right, and Alan reluctantly surrenders. Head off the pillow and eyes blinking slowly open to peer around the darkness of his bedroom.

Paul Smecker's standing at the side of his bed, taking off his coat.

Alan closes his eyes hard for a few moments. When he opens them, Paul's still standing there, draping his suit jacket across the back of the chair. It takes Alan a ridiculously long four seconds to find words.

"...what are you-- no, how did you get-- Paul, it's three-forty two in the morning." This confirmed by the red glow of the bedside clock. Alan feels the roughness of his own just-woken voice in his throat.

In the darkness of the room, he can't see Paul's face clearly; a brief glance of light over the other man's unforgiving cheekbones, then his face is shadow again as he pulls off his tie. Paul says tonelessly, "Three fifty-five. Your clock's slow. Move over."

Alan closes his eyes again because he's tired enough that his eyes actually hurt. He finds the palpable irritation that weariness brings easily and bites out the words.

"Paul. I'm in court today at nine. I went to bed an hour ago-- give or take your thirteen minutes-- and I have to be up at seven. As complimentary as it is to my sexual ego that you feel the need to, presumably, break into my hotel at an ungodly hour just to get near my irresistible manly and virile self, if you honestly think you--"

"I'm not here for sex. Move your ass over, Alan."

The statement is unexpected enough that Alan experiences the moment of the witness springing a new fact on him in court. The requisite few seconds to regroup.

"You're here to use the pool then, I take it? Towels in the bathroom. Have fun." Alan rolls over so he doesn't have to watch the flicker of Paul's hands in the shadows unbuttoning his shirt with precise machine-like motions.

There's no answer, and Alan's gotten used enough to the rhythm of trading snappy retorts with Paul Smecker that it's enough to make him arch a curious brow, almost enough to get him to open his eyes again.

The mattress sinks and shifts. Alan gives up and turns his head to look at Paul. He can hear the exasperation in his tone when he says, "What are you doing."

"Going to sleep. You should too. Nine o'clock case and all that."

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beware my fluff