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After a morning of painful coffee burns, a busted car engine, and a smugly condescending email from Maellard, Benson had zero energy to deal with slacker shenanigans.
“Rigby!” He stomped down the hall, his footsteps thundering through the quiet house. “I know you’re here!” Shoving open the raccoon’s bedroom door, he seethed. “Why do I even bother.”
The sound hit him first, a repulsively melodramatic instrumental with broken, twanging guitar riffs. Benson gritted his teeth. The terrible music, the inability to show up to work if his life depended on it– why had Rigby picked up all of Mordecai’s worst traits? He squinted, eyes adjusting to the pitch darkness of the bedroom.
“Benson! Hey, man.” Rigby popped out from underneath an indiscernible mound of trash. He winced at the stream of bright hallway light, shielding his eyes. Benson scoffed.
“This room is like a dungeon! Turn on the light, for God’s sake,” he spat, flicking it on.
Rigby hissed, retreating under his trampoline. “Hey! Turn that off!”
“You’ve got some nerve, pal! This is the third day you’ve missed work this week! What, you think you can just show up whenever you want? We have rules here! I-”
He trailed off as his eyes adjusted to the light.
Rigby stared at him from beneath the trampoline. Dark shadows lined his eyes, his pupils unfocused. His fur stuck out in wildly unkempt clumps. Empty cans littered the floor, crunching beneath Benson’s feet.
“Wow…you look awful.”
“Hello to you, too,” Rigby slurred, scrambling to his feet. He nearly tripped over his tail.
“I can’t believe this!” Outrage sparked in Benson’s chest. “I thought you’d work better without Mordecai around, but here you are, drunk on a Wednesday morning!”
“Hey! I’m not drunk!” Rigby spat. He then proceeded to faceplant after tripping over nothing. Which considering the amount of junk cluttering the floor, was impressive. Dizzily, he looked up. “Benson? When did you get here?”
Benson inhaled slowly. Count to ten.
“Look, I’m sorry.” Rigby crawled back to his feet. “I slept through the alarm. Again. I set like five of these things!” He chucked his phone across the room, where it landed on Mordecai’s pillow.
Benson assessed the tangled sheets. “Have…you been sleeping in Mordecai’s bed?”
“What? No! Well…” Rigby crossed his arms, “...so what? Beats sleeping on that stupid trampoline. And he’s not using it, anyway.”
Benson sighed, fury dwindling as he assessed the pathetic drunk creature in front of him. “Look. I know these last few weeks have been hard for you. But you can’t just hide in your room now that Mordecai’s gone.”
“Why did he have to go back to stupid art school, anyway?” Rigby growled. “Five months after returning from space, he ditches me in this shithole! Uh…no offense.”
Benson frowned. “You should know how big a deal it is to go back to school. If anything, you should be proud of him for pursuing his passion.”
“I am proud of him! I just…” Rigby’s eyes rounded. “Why did he leave me?”
Benson stepped back, unnerved as the raccoon burst into tears. He’d heard Rigby cry countless times. But never quite like this.
“This is how it starts! First, he goes to art school. Then he’ll meet a girl and they’ll move to New York or something, and then he’ll have a career and a family and…” Rigby choked, pain wracking his eyes as he stared at Benson. “I’ll never see him again!”
“Hey, slow down.” Benson held up his hands. “Do you really think Mordecai’s just going to forget about you?”
“That’s how this works, Benson!” Rigby retorted. “I haven’t seen him in three weeks. That’ll turn into months, and pretty soon I’ll just be the idiot he slacked off with before he actually made something of his life.”
Desperation radiated from Rigby in waves; he fixed Benson with panic-stricken eyes. Benson winced. “Where’s Eileen?”
“She’s on vacation with her mom for the next week.” Rigby collapsed onto the trampoline, his hysteria drained. He threw his hands over his eyes and sighed. “Sorry, Benson, but I’m taking a mental health day.”
“Day drinking in this garbage pile is not a mental health day!”
“Whatever, man.” Tiredness pulled at the edges of Rigby’s voice. He lay limply on the trampoline, his usual obnoxious energy sucked dry. Watching him, unease crept through Benson’s skin.
He snapped his fingers. “Get up.”
Rigby pulled a pile of wrinkled clothes over his head. “Benson-”
“No.” Benson swept the clothes to the floor. Grabbing his hand, he yanked Rigby to his feet. “I’m gonna show you how to take a mental health day– the right way.”
~
First, the song had to go.
Benson popped the tape out of the radio, whipping it at the overflowing garbage can. “Burn that.”
“But that’s Mordecai’s mixtape.”
“It’s awful. I heard it enough when he broke up with Margaret. Let me show you some real music.” Grinning slyly, Benson popped in another tape. A frenzied guitar riff blasted through the speakers. “Hair to the Throne, baby! Now, let’s clean up this mess.”
Together, to the band’s screechy vocals and Benson’s fiery drum beats, they cleaned. This proved more taxing than Benson expected; beneath every grimy layer lay another mess in need of vigorous scrubbing.
“Ughh, we’re never gonna clean this all,” Rigby groaned, hauling a bulging bag of trash toward the stairs. “Why can’t we leave it? I don’t mind trash.”
The overhead light caught his face, accentuating the pinkish veins in his bloodshot eyes. Between his tangled fur and tired features, he blended right into the room’s dingy, pitiful gloom. Benson took the bag from him. “We’ll get through it,” he said, a rare pang of softness sparking in his chest. “It just needs a little TLC.”
Rigby rolled his eyes. But for the next half hour, as they mopped and scrubbed and organized, he didn’t utter a single complaint.
“Now what?” he asked, wiping his forehead. He and Benson stood in the doorway, admiring the spotless room. Rigby would never admit it, but Benson could tell he was relieved.
“Well, I say we get food. Lunch is on me.”
“No need,” Rigby brightened. “I have just the thing.” Opening the nightstand drawer, he rifled around before pulling out a beat-up, discolored package. Benson frowned.
“What’s that?”
“Pizza pouches, baby!”
“Give me that!” Benson wrestled the box from him. As he examined it, his eyes widened. “These expired three years ago!”
Rigby shrugged, taking a wrapped pizza pouch from the box. “So what? Adds to the flavor.”
“Hey! Don’t you dare eat that!” Benson ripped it out of his hands before he could take a bite. “You weren’t even gonna cook it first? Come on! This room, the food– why are you hellbent on treating yourself like garbage?”
“Well, Mr. High and Mighty, maybe some of us like garbage,” Rigby spat. He made a grab for the pizza pouch, but Benson held it out of reach.
“You don’t like garbage. You just haven’t experienced the good stuff. Come on.” Benson threw the offending box to the floor. “Let’s get you some decent food.”
~
Sunlight dotted the roof in specks, the usual afternoon glow hidden by thick clouds. Chewing his boursin grilled cheese, Benson frowned. He hadn’t quite cooked it to perfection. Well, anything was better than giving himself botulism from those sickeningly expired pizza pouches. He glanced at Rigby, hoping he felt the same. The raccoon was strangely quiet.
“Is this good or what?” Benson asked. “Old family recipe. Add some boursin to a regular grilled cheese, and suddenly you’ve got a gourmet meal. That’s what my dad said, anyway,” he coughed. “He had some good advice…every once in a while.”
Every once in a while was generous. More like once or twice every twenty years. But fathers were a sore spot for Rigby, too. Benson had learned that when Maellard locked them both in the office for a day, demanding a letter of resignation. Was that really four years ago?
Studying Rigby in the half-light, his body shrouded in cloudy shade, Benson noticed now how old he looked. The day he and Mordecai wormed their way into the park was still fresh in Benson’s mind. How things had changed since then. Now Mordecai was gone, and Rigby displayed none of that youthful exuberance.
Three years in space had truly sucked everyone dry.
“Hey,” Benson prompted again, “what’s the deal? Is it not cooked enough?” He frowned. “I knew I used too much garlic. But that’s what the recipe called for! What, am I supposed to ignore the recommended serving size? If you can’t trust the serving size, you can’t trust anything in this world.”
“It’s good,” Rigby said quietly, like a downtrodden child. “You’re pretty good at this stuff.”
“Thanks. I mean, it’s not microwave wings, but it’ll do. Beats those stupid pizza pouches.” Benson took another bite.
The sun dipped behind a thick cloud, plunging the two into a haze of gray. Rigby fiddled with the remainder of his sandwich. “Benson?”
“Yeah?”
“...Do you still have that dream? The one about flailing in a futureless void?”
Rigby’s eyes were wide and nervous. Looking into them, Benson almost didn’t have the heart to tell the truth. That the dream wasn’t just a dream, but a state of being. A constant feeling of dizziness and dread that only spiraled as you aged.
“Yeah, I do,” Benson admitted. “I thought I had it under control when I met Pam, but then we went to space. I guess it was just dormant.” He sighed, leaning back on the roof. “Like the rest of my hopes and dreams.”
“Whoa.” Rigby shifted. “That’s heavy, man.”
“I’ve tried to get back into the groove of things, but…” Benson shrugged. He looked up at the gray sky. “I can’t shake it. This feeling that I’m headed towards a downward spiral of despair.”
Pops’s death. That’s when it had careened out of control. Benson glanced at Rigby, then the empty space beside him. God, they could all certainly use Pops’s light…
“You sound like Mordecai,” Rigby murmured.
Benson gave a mirthless laugh. “Do I? That’s a first.”
“He kept talking about doom and despair before he left.” Rigby hunched his shoulders. “He went back to art school to escape it. Mona…mon-”
“Monotony,” Benson confirmed. “Boy, if that isn’t the word of my life.” He stared at the swirling gray clouds above, mixing together to create the perfect slog of tedium. “At least Mordecai had sense enough to break away.”
“To break away from what? A chill life in the park with his friends?” Rigby snapped. “Why is that something to break away from? That’s…all I ever wanted.” He snapped his mouth shut, seemingly having said too much.
Benson gave him a glance. The whole time he’d known Rigby, he’d never quite known how many lights were on upstairs. Sure, he’d graduated high school and maintained a great relationship with Eileen. But his low intelligence and childish worldview often preceded any accomplishments. Still, with a comment like that, Benson wondered if he’d misjudged the raccoon after all. Rigby was content with a simple life. Something the rest of them couldn’t figure out.
“Doesn’t Eileen want to leave?” Benson inquired. “I’m surprised you haven’t already moved in together.” He thought of Pam and smiled. At least his apartment wasn’t as lonely these days.
“We’re getting around to it,” Rigby said. “I just wanted to be here to help Mordecai with his art school junk.” He sighed. “It’s not that I’m not happy for him. It’s just…Mordecai’s been around all my life. How am I supposed to live without him?”
Things had been weird with Mordecai gone. Benson could only imagine how it felt for Rigby, who’d been joined to him at the hip. Benson sighed. “When Hair to the Throne replaced me with that drum machine, my whole life fell apart. Suddenly I was working as a dead end park manager, putting in long hours for little pay and even less respect. But it wasn’t all bad.” He smiled, memories floating back to him. Winning games as the Park Strikers. Telling scary stories every Halloween. “It took me a while to find the silver lining, but it was always there. It’ll be there for you, too.”
“How do you know?” Rigby shouted. “There’s no silver lining if Mordecai and I grow apart.” His voice broke. Tears leaked from his distressed eyes. This was consuming him, in such a visceral sense that Benson couldn’t even comprehend. He’d never had a friendship like Mordecai and Rigby’s; he’d spent most of his life alone.
Rigby gave a soft whimper. With his tail curled around his body, he looked completely dispirited. Anxiety radiated from him in crashing waves.
“Have you talked to Mordecai about this?” Benson asked.
“No,” Rigby muttered. “He’s in college. He’s out having the time of his life. I don’t want to hold him back.”
“Well, you should call him.”
“No! You don’t get it.” Rigby buried his head in his hands. “I can’t mess this up for him again.”
Oh. Right. The college rejection letter fiasco.
“Well…” Benson chose his words carefully. “You should still call him. There’s no way he doesn’t miss you.” Benson was surprised how much he missed the two being a constant thorn in his side.
When Rigby didn’t respond, Benson sighed. “Maybe we’re all thinking too much. I mean, we survived three years in space and a standoff with an evil overlord. This should be the easy part.”
“No kidding.”
The sun poked out from behind the clouds. A soft breeze ruffled the tree leaves. Benson gazed out over the park, surprised by its peacefulness. This place had carried them through the galaxy, but nothing about it had changed. Nothing but the people inside.
God, he missed Pops.
Rigby caught his gaze, giving a soft nod. As if sharing his grief.
“You know…maybe I will call Mordecai.”
The raccoon’s voice sounded stronger. Maybe he’d just needed the reminder that they’d been in worse places, both physically and emotionally. As Benson looked over at him, this deadbeat slacker turned unlikely friend, a sense of hope bloomed in his chest. “Rigby, I’ll make you a deal. If you show up to work and keep your room clean for the next week, I’ll give you a paid day off so you can visit Mordecai, alright?”
Rigby’s ears perked up. “Really?”
“Really. But you’ve gotta commit to it, alright? No more day drinking, no more neglecting your life and leaving things a mess.” Benson sharpened his gaze. “And especially no more expired pizza pouches.”
“Deal!” Rigby shook his hand. As he drew back, he paused. “Hey, Benson? Thanks for everything, man. I hope you still have that mug, because you’re really the best boss ever.” Gratitude brimmed in his haunted eyes. He gave Benson a hesitant smile.
“Hey, what can I say? That’s just how I roll.” Benson grinned. “Now, what do you say we get some work done?”
“You say that like it’s exciting.”
“Well, it’s gotta get done. Come on. You have to do something or else I’ll have to fire you.”
Rigby snickered. “Yeah, right. You’d never fire me. I’m your favorite employee.”
“Far from it.”
As they climbed back into Rigby’s room, their banter carrying through the window, Benson admired the spotless space.
Yep, just a little TLC.