Cian never even noticed falling asleep. However, he for sure remembered what woke him up – the smell of pancakes. The sound of the oil in the pan frying was also a sign that he wasn’t just dreaming. It felt like he had only slept for a couple minutes, and his body told him he hadn’t slept long enough. Or maybe his back was hurting because of the rough cushions of the couch.

The man opened his eyes, only to have an eyelash drop right into his eye, can he yelped, cursed, and abruptly sat up desperately rubbing his eye to get the little demon out of it.

“Morning, geezer,” a velvet-like voice could be heard from somewhere nearby, along with the sound of a page being turned. Cian’s vision was still blurry after finally getting the eyelash out of his eye, so he rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times to regain focus. The brown-haired man pushed his long – now nest-like – hair out of his eyes to look up. Silas was sitting on the kitchen counter, lazily looking through a newspaper. Cian cleared his throat before speaking.

“Morning, kid,” he begun. “Though, I haven’t seen anyone our age actually read a newspaper. You must be the old man here, let’s be real,” Silas peeked over the edge of the paper, raising an eyebrow at the other man.

“I like to think of it as vintage,” Silas stated, his tone of voice revealing a smile. “Anyways, you should go take a shower or something. Your hair makes it look like you just had a brawl with a raccoon,”

Instead of being flustered, Cian grinned and struck a pose after exaggeratedly flicking his hair over his shoulder.

“Like a work of art, right?”

“No, like a bird’s nest,” Silas hid his face behind the paper, trying to seem casual, but obviously flustered. “The food will be ready in ten, so chop-chop,”

“Alright, alright,” Cian laughed, and stretched after standing up, looking out the window. It was bright out, but the sky was still a blueish pink, so they had probably woken up before sunrise. “Jeez, you wake up early,”

“I never sleep long,” Silas replied absentmindedly, flipping a pancake. “Eight and a half minutes, slowpoke,”

“Okay, I’m going,” Cian chuckled before heading off to the bathroom. When he looked in the mirror, he realized his hair looked way worse than he had initially thought. Well, all of him looked much worse than he could have imagined. He had dark circles under his blue eyes, a nice contrast to his now pale skin. His hair was all tangled up, and for some reason almost more red in color than he remembered it being. The stubbles of his beard had been growing out, which needed a shave. Cian cussed at himself for looking so disarrayed in front of the cute black-haired man, and sighed. The shower he took was mostly conditioner – wow, a guy that actually didn’t only have 3-in-1 soap - Impressive – to try to untangle the nest on his head. He made a note to go get a haircut as well.