HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 172

Author's note:  SURPRISE! Hope you guys enjoy this chapter! It's actually two chapters in one!  Stay tuned and look forward to the rest!

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Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Two

Nearly getting hit by lightning the night before the trial felt a little like a bad omen to me.

Okay, not even a little, a lot.

It felt bad. Bad vibes. Bad Juju. Whatever you wanted to call it. Don't get me wrong, the amount of statistically impossible coincidences that had been happening around me lately were pretty much crazy to fathom, but at the point we were at, nothing would surprise me anymore.

Luka, at the very least, came around only three minutes after losing consciousness.

"What happen?" he asked me groggily, staring at me with droopy ears from where I'd moved him to a sitting position against the wall, courtesy of Sebastian's suggestion to not move him much.

"You fainted, Buddy," I gently replied, leaning forward and patting his cheek. "You straight up fainted. I'm pretty sure the unexpectedness of nearly getting hit by lightning was the cause."

"Ah... ah, yes," he murmured, rubbing his face and shaking his head quickly, as if to turn his brain on. He sniffed, then leaned forward and pushed himself off the ground, rising to his feet. I rose from my squat in front of him and steadied him when he stumbled a little, holding his arms.

His eyes, still quite dazed, looked around the Inn's corridor for a few moments.

Then they landed on me again. "Luka sorry, did not mean to."

"Dude, honestly?" I chuckled, biting my lip when he cocked his head. "I nearly shit myself when it struck since I thought a bomb had gone off. I was lightheaded, too, so yeah, it's okay. A lot of people probably would have fainted after something that unexpected and scary."

He seemed more lucid by the time I stopped talking, thankfully, and he shivered.

"I still be wet," he mumbled, looking down at his legs. "We go do cleaning wash now?"

"If you want, sure, we can go rinse ourselves," I said, because I was also admittedly still very much soaked and dripping water onto the wooden floor of the inn. "The hot springs were for soaking, anyway, not cleaning. The water smells too much like sulfur to try bathing in."

"Mr. Pap!" Luka hollered, loud and clear. "Big Horst and Luka be going to have proper bath time now for grooming! Come! Come!"

I jumped when a distant crash met my ears, followed by a series of thuds that came from the direction of the stairs. I heard my dad cuss something vulgar at the top of his lungs, but within thirty seconds he appeared on the stairs in his boxers, grumbling a little, pants and shirt thrown over his right shoulder with a syntheplasti trash bag full of stuff clutched in fingers. 

My face went blank when I saw that one of his knees was bloody and healing.

"Pop, what happened?" I asked, insides jerking with the instinct to run over and help him because of the blood. "Are you okay?"

"Fuckin' tripped over my own underwear as I was pulling them on and fell," he muttered, looking very flushed and rather humiliated. "Luka called me and it caught me off guard."

"Eh? Ah, uh, sorry!" my brother burbled, clutching his ears in horror. "Not meaning to--!"

"Oh, hush, you, it's not your fault, I'm just smashed," he slurred, waving a dismissive hand; he motioned with his head. "C'mon, boys. The locker rooms will be a better place for us to do this grooming stuff."