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They make it two of Charlie's steps through the doorway before flopping onto their backs on the carpet of Pim's apartment. If they'd kept going they'd have been able to see the company car smiling radiantly up at them from the street, where it would remain for the rest of the weekend like a perverted pulsar.
Charlie and Pim lay spread-eagled beside each other for a long time, thinking of nothing. Somehow neither of them fall asleep amid the silence.
As usual, Pim is the first of them to make attempt at regaining propriety by heaving himself off the ground. He switches on the desk lamp by the door, keeping the ceiling lights dark.
"Do you need a drink, Charlie?"
"Mm-hwhat?" Charlie grunts from the floor.
"I can get you some water. Or a snack. Nothing too heavy, otherwise it'll keep you up."
Like Charlie needs to be reminded. But then he understands the worried pruning of Pim's face as he steps up to the kitchen sink with a glass. He knows it too well—their line of work serves them bullshit on the regular. Or maybe that's just the terms and conditions of living on this disc of a planet.
Not that Pim has ever really settled for those terms, over the years Charlie has known him. Usually, he would be running his mouth as he knocked about, trying his best in his own way to fix their shit, but judging by the way he's hunched over the sink, he's at the end of his tether. Even his nerve ending is limp against his scalp.
The silence rings in Charlie's ears. Once he begins to anticipate no further help, he makes a noise he hopes sounds grateful and drags himself to the dining table. He tugs off his hoodie and cap and drapes them across the back of the chair.
Pim sets down two glasses of tap water on the table, but doesn't join him there.
Charlie hears the word "bathroom" amongst a string of slurred gibberish. He suddenly remembers how grubby he is and wonders how much of it he's dragged around the apartment. And then he quickly decides that he doesn't really want to know what they brought back from that spaceship—there's no point. The darkness comforts him, almost putting him to sleep, but he forces his head up, making an effort to appear thankful for the hospitality and not just become a pile of slop in the kitchen. And he is grateful. He's just not sure how it's coming across tonight and he's almost too tired to care.
Charlie stares into the bottom of his glass and blocks out the sounds of illness coming from the bathroom. Then he recalls Pim's offer and goes to sift through the cupboards for food. Over time he's developed a good sense of the dimensions of these shelves even without light, but not their contents, and so he knocks over a half-eaten bag of rice crackers and nearly a jar of jam. Swearing under his breath, he gathers the crackers that had fallen onto the shelf in one hand, grabs the bag with the other, and brings them back to the table. He starts with the ones he spilled, chewing slowly. Seaweed.
Pim returns in wrinkled pyjamas the same red as the (seaweed?) cracker bag, and a bandage across his nose.
Charlie squints forward then pinches the bridge of his own. "Shit, sorry I forgot about that, man. You good?"
Pim gives him a tired but sweet smile as he seats himself across the table and rests his chin on his hands, staring into… well, space was problematic these days, so maybe into the laughing face of God, who very much exists at least from the neck down. Probably. Charlie scrunches his eyes shut, blotting out the sight, then leans back and downs the rest of his water.
He lets his throat relax for a moment before saying, "Hey, you got any peas? Peas are pretty good in a pinch. N-not that this is a pinch or any kind of emergency, because this place is pretty well-kept. You have a nice place."
"I'm fine, Charlie. Was that a compliment?"
"Was it?"
"Was it?"
"You want some crackers, man?"
"No, thanks."
Charlie nods towards the crackers in his hand. "I only dropped these ones."
"Not on the floor, was it?"
"Just the shelf. You'd better not have mould."
"Oh, good. There's no mould, last time I checked. One less thing to worry about."
"Hey, you know what these crackers remind me of?"
"What?"
"The Earth. This dog of an Earth. You know, globes aren't Earth-shaped, anymore. We can't say 'around the globe' now, unless we're talking about, like, the glass dome, and that's only half a globe. Or Venus or something."
"The goddess of Love," Pim murmurs, to drive out the image of the flat Earth.
"Whatever floats your boat, lover-man. You sure you don't want any?"
Charlie holds out one of the uncontaminated crackers. Pim considers it before reaching across the table to take it. He clamps his teeth around its edge but doesn't really go at it.
Despite his own exhaustion, the sight makes Charlie's legs restless. "You want a different flavour or something?"
Pim gives him a slow, noncommittal shrug. Charlie looks past him, across the apartment, to the bedside table. The light from the doorway extends far enough to suggest the shape of a book with some sticky notes between the pages and a pair of reading glasses folded up on top. Finally, something familiar.
"Alright, you wanna wind down? Read a book like a nerd? You want me to pull up some opera on YouTube or ASMR or something."
"I dunno. I feel like a bad host."
Well, he wasn't wrong. Pim hadn't offered the use of his bathroom after using it himself, for starters. Then again, Charlie would have proven himself a bad guest by refusing, deciding instead to sit his ass down and make a mess of the kitchen.
Usually, whenever Pim starts fussing over him and everything else when their jobs go south, Charlie dreams of that prison break, both from his colleague's energy wastage and the lingering sting of their failure (but mostly the former). Only when things get really bad does Pim switch off entirely. Charlie vaguely remembers seeing it on the bridge of the frat-alien spaceship before he'd filled the space with his taunts.
After staring straight into Hell for the second time in his life and pressing that fucking button, the high of riling up those crater-faced assholes had been legendary. Now the silence begins clamping itself around Charlie's neck.
He inhales through his nose. "Dude, am I bothering you?"
"What?"
A stupid question. Going through a hazing would knock the bones out of you, if it was a proper hazing. Somehow their inebriated bodies had gotten them through the night's madness, and likewise their hijacked craft had been on autopilot.
Being chauffeured back home from their fuck-up had been an unusual luxury, even if it had gifted them terrible knowledge in exchange. There had been no use in them learning that. None at all.
What was he doing here, again?
"Um. Thanks for driving. You've done enough. It's all good."
Charlie has barely considered what to do next when Pim lurches forward with a sudden violence that makes Charlie jolt. Pim seizes Charlie's forearm with both hands in a vice grip that doesn't match the bags under his bug eyes.
"I don't want you out on the street tonight," Pim whispers urgently. "We went through a lot."
So, he was still able to mother him.
"Chill out," Charlie says, heart racing. It's probably the drugs. Nothing he can't sleep it off. "Don't hurt yourself. You don't need to babysit me."
"But I need—you need... ugh."
Charlie feels a fresh wave of sweat down his back. After sneaking a look at the black veins still bulging up Pim's arm, he eases himself free, still feeling the imprints Pim's fingers have left in his arm. "You need to sleep. Come on."
"Okay," Pim says in a small voice.
The instantaneous evaporation of resistance nearly knocks the wind out of Charlie. He clears his throat and reaches for his glass, before remembering that he's already drained it. Ugh. This comes first. He won't have to wait long.
"Easy does it," he says, resting a hand on Pim's shoulder as he guides him to the bedroom. The carpet seems to shift slightly under his feet but he grounds himself. If he's gonna take something seriously for once, now is a great time.
Charlie pulls back the bed sheets so Pim can wriggle underneath. Pim shuffles over halfway across the queen size bed and lets out a satisfied sigh that nearly tempts Charlie to do the same. Charlie leans over the edge to make sure he doesn't wriggle right over the other side in the darkness.
After ensuring that Pim is properly settled on the bed, Charlie says, "Alright, I'm leaving. Night."
In the dim light he hears a noise that disarms him.
"You don't have to leave," Pim murmurs, eyes half-lidded. With unexpected ease he props himself up on his elbows.
Charlie gives Pim his back, stopping just short of standing up from the bed. "I don't wanna make a mess of your place."
Too late for that.
"It's fine," Pim insists. "A lot of crap happened. You can relax."
Charlie ignores how Pim is patting the mattress gently. "I'm good, man."
"We don't even know what we took tonight. It might be safer for you to uh, set up camp here."
Something in Charlie's gut unclenches as Pim reveals that sliver of humour. But it's short-lived.
"And we saw a guy's disemboweled corpse and… They took Bill. They effing... they fucking ate my friend and the ship is gone, Charlie. I might never eat again."
Charlie coughs in surprise at the foul language and feels the crackers adhere to the walls of his throat. "Alright—God I need a drink. Okay, to that earlier stuff, you literally drove us back in the company car. It's fine. We're fine. You're not my mom."
"That's unexpectedly childish of you, Charlie. Can you—you should stop resisting, just settle down. Please?"
The phrasing ignites a flare of anger in Charlie's chest but he swallows it down.
"And to that other stuff, uh," Charlie manages, "maybe Bill will come back."
Pim doesn't react well to that meaningless hope. He turns away and draws the covers over his head.
Charlie has a decision to make.
"Fine, but I'm warning you, dude."
In his head he hears Pim say, "I've handled a lot from you," but when he turns back around, Pim's already asleep.
"Are you serious?" Charlie mutters.
It's just his brain he can argue with, now.
You, shut up, Charlie tells it.
He eyes the empty space next to Pim before easing himself down onto the mattress, trying not to disturb his friend.
He'll humour Pim, he supposes, even if only one of them is conscious to enjoy the shared company. Just for a little while, to make sure Pim stays asleep and doesn't go into cardiac arrest or anything.
Charlie pulls the sheet back down underneath Pim's chin before laying on his back on top of the bed sheets, staring at the ceiling. He takes note of the time on his phone and spends a few minutes scrolling.
Then time lurches forward and his heart skips a beat. He opens his eyes to blessed darkness and his phone on his chest. The glaring screen shows that probably twenty minutes have elapsed.
That's probably enough.
This is one night where he doesn't want to be a burden.
Pim is silent and breathing evenly. That's all that matters. Though he might panic when he wakes up to an empty bed.
He'll get over it.
Charlie lifts himself off the mattress.
Coward.
He grabs his hoodie and locks the door behind him.
~ :-) ~
Charlie forces himself into the shower when he gets home and forces out the image of Pim sleeping peacefully in his bed. His clothes end up half inside in a bucket for quarantine. He pulls on fresh underwear and doesn't bother with anything else except to blindly texting Pim to get his arm checked the next day.
Only when his head hits the pillow does he remember.
A hand flies to the top of his head.
"Fucking shit, I left my hat there…"