Matthew was not having a good day, and it only got worse when he shivered his way into the kitchen - after banging the back door closed with an extremely loud slam - dripping muddy water all over the floor, and found Rico calmly eating an appetising looking breakfast. It made the Oberon native even more cranky, in fact.
He\'d been over to the manor to prepare its inhabitants\' breakfast, as was part of his usual routine. Ever since the first morning after Rico had moved in with him, that had been his job. He did breakfasts, Rico did lunches and they prepared dinners together. Matthew hadn\'t been certain why, but he\'d figured it had had something to do with the fact that Lam was suffering terrible morning sickness, thereby demanding very boring breakfasts (by Rico\'s standards). He also hadn\'t seemed to approve of the way that Lord Liari had fussed over his pregnant fiancée that first morning after he\'d moved out, probably because he didn\'t like her at all.
Matthew wasn\'t sure what that was about, either. He\'d asked Lam why it was that the Greek man constantly made derogatory comments about her, what had she done to him (for Matthew knew well that Lam could offend anyone, given half a chance), but she\'d given him an inscrutable look and said that he didn\'t approve of her marrying Kysis, because they were such close friends. She\'d looked like there was more to tell and he\'d asked if there was any more to it - if she\'d done nothig to Rico, why was he so set against her? It didn\'t make sense! - but she\'d said that, beyond those words, it wasn\'t her place to hypothesise and he\'d better ask Rico.
Well, there was no chance of that happening. In fact, his housemate had Matthew\'s lips so well bound from biting his tongue every time he said something nasty about Lam, that he\'d barely spoken two words to the newcomer. It was Matthew\'s opinion that Rico had every right to like and dislike anyone he wished, so he wouldn\'t try to convince him otherwise, when no-one knew Lam like he did, but it was becoming more and more difficult to hold back whenever something nasty and uncalled for was stated.
This morning, he simply couldn\'t any longer (though it wasn\'t directed at Rico when he spoke).
"Some people shouldn\'t be allowed to drive merchant caravans!" he greeted Rico from the doorway of the kitchen (he had stood there for almost a minute, deciding what to do, before he came up with following his feelings, rather than his head, for once), his voice louder than it had been in years, and quivering with anger. After that announcement, he moved into the kitchen and headed for the fire.
"I was minding my own business," he continued as he reached his target and removed his jacket - which was marginally covered with muddy water. It was his shirt, pants and face that seemed to have borne the greatest of the wash, "on my way to the markets from the manor," he explained loudly, positioning his jacket on the back of the chair from beside Rico (he\'d pulled it back to be near him), before he paused to whip his entire upper body\'s garments off over his head and throw them down onto the floor before him, where they landed with a wet slap.
There was muddy wetness clinging to his chest - which was a surprisingly nice shape, with firm pectorals and a narrow waist around a flat stomach. Though not ostentatiously hairy, there was a light smattering of blonde hairs across it, tapering down to the waistband of his pants, too, but they looked darker at the moment because they were wet. He was not an overtly physical man, but his body was trim and neat from all the housework and walking he did - he very rarely stood still or sat down from dawn to dusk on any day, after all.
"When I noticed this merchant caravan trundling up the road towards me. Very politely, I stood to the side - I was against a brick wall, I couldn\'t do much else except let it pass, quite frankly," he complained, glancing at Rico as he toed his boots off and began untying the string of his pants at the same time. Whether his companion was paying attention to him was not strictly relevant at that point, however, for he was too mad to worry about it. He needed to vent and Rico provided a welcome opportunity to do so (though the Greek man likely thought it was the most contained and stilted rant he\'d ever seen. Even when he was enraged as he was now, Matthew found it difficult to actually let his emotions take hold of him and simply vomit forth his feelings), whether he liked it or not.
"So I was standing there, watching it roll towards me, when the idiot driver decided it was a good idea to speed the horses up - on a side road! Well, next thing I knew, the bloody thing was flying past and there just happened to be a wheel rut right before me... filled with melting snow, mud, slushy water and.... and.... Talon knows what else!" he blustered, bending forward to yank his pants off. He threw his hands up for good measure when tht was done. This left him standing before the fire, slightly behind Rico, in only his underwear. Though the material went from his waist to his ankles, it was thin, wet and clinging across his muscular thighs and rather sheer in its whiteness, so that the shadows and and bulges beneath left very little to the imagination, with regard to his... benefits, so to speak.
Matthew flung his pants down on top of the shirts he\'d formerly thrown down, and placed his hands on his hips demandingly. "Now I need to bathe before I do anything else and I ask you, does that sound like the sort of thing a sane, rational driver would do? Hurl his van down a street barely wider than it, endangering the lives of innocent people?" He was staring at Rico now, a slight blush colouring his muddied cheeks, giving away how upset he was. His blue eyes flashed with anger and he thrust a hand out towards his housemate, as if the answer he was demanding might be placed meekly on his flattened palm.
Bathing wasn\'t how he\'d planned to spend his morning - he hadn\'t even reached the markets, after all that, he\'d had to turn home immediately. Technically, it wasn\'t the inconvenience of it - since Lam moved out, all of Matthew\'s belongings had gone up to her room and Rico had taken the one next door (he\'d taken her large bed, too, for Matthew was quite happy with his single one) when her armour and fighting paraphernalia was moved out, so they\'d made Matthew\'s old room beside the kitchen the bathing room, because it was closer to the water source and where they both spent the majority of their time - it was the fact of it. He shouldn\'t have to start off his day drawing his own bath simply because of some fool\'s ignorance to the safety standards everyone in a city was accustomed to, should he?
