Sorry, I'm Not Into Bestiality

Chapter 1 -- You alright, mate?

Chapter 1

Danny's POV

The clamour of peak-time foot traffic carried me to daylight as I skulked up the subway steps, sunglasses perched precariously on my nose and a lukewarm macchiato clutched in hand. I breathed in deeply, relishing the icy air for a few short moments before a wave of self-imposed nausea washed over me; the sickly smell of candied nuts wafting across the crowd from a nearby vendor's cart.

Grimacing in disgust, I escaped the gathering underground and wobbled down the busy New York Street, tepidly sipping the mediocre coffee as my stomach churned in protest. I wish I could say that it was due to a particularly nasty out-of-season stomach bug, but the two empty bottles of red wine and several embarrassing text messages sent from my phone last night would beg to differ.

The weather was bitterly cold and indifferent to my fragile disposition, the long woollen coat I'd had the decency to grab this morning providing little respite as I dragged my poor frozen feet in a pair of ill-chosen sling-back heels. Silently fuming, I chastised myself as to why I thought drinking on a Wednesday was a good idea.

After miraculously surviving a day of office work through the combined effort of elongated bathroom breaks and inconspicuous desk napping, I was finally ploughing my way home through the big apple and back to the warm haven that was my apartment. This was the worst hangover I'd had in years, and as punishment, my body was making sure to retell my idiocy unrelentingly.

The crowd walked by without a glance towards my dishevelled appearance, a mixture of middle-aged businesspeople charging alongside gaggles of loud young twenty-somethings; no doubt off to spend the evening repeating the same mistakes that I'd made only fourteen hours prior.

Moving from the English coast to a massive place like Manhattan was a bit of a shock to the system on any given day, but it never felt more prevalent than during that chilly walk home after work.

A couple of blocks away from sanctuary my pocket began to rhythmically vibrate, and with a quiet groan of dismay I shifted the coffee to my other hand to access the little outdated box. After an embarrassingly long fight with my coat pocket, I finally managed to retrieve the flip-phone.

"Hello?" I answered pathetically, a particularly unattractive yawn escaping my mouth.

"Well, you sound positively delightful," The annoyingly sober voice of my sister teased on the other end of the line, my weak attempt at covering my mouth with the coffee cup doing nothing to protect my fragile dignity from the general public, "Regretting that second bottle?"

I groaned pitifully, side stepping a pair of older Turkish men feverishly arguing in the middle of the pavement, "Never. Again."

"A blatant lie."

"No, Lill. I'm serious. Something was in that wine-- I haven't been this bad since school. I was honestly going to projectile vomit on Terry at one point," I explained, the mere image of my colleague's open-mouthed donut chomp enough to induce a strong gag reflex even hours later, "Never has a strawberry donut looked so vile."

"I'm thinking maybe we should've thought about that 7am call time before deciding that drinking on a weekday with Ruby was a good idea," She teased.

"It's the Eurovision quarter-finals," I whined, rather illegally glancing down both sides of the road before throwing the law to the wind and hurriedly jaywalking across, "and you can't not drink with Eurovision, it's the best part."

"You're a nerd," She sang mockingly.

Rolling my eyes, I stumbled on my reply as I accidentally bumped into someone whilst manoeuvring by a newspaper dispenser, "Oh, sorry. Anyway, enough about my mistakes. What do you want? I'm almost home."