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Before he’d left the hospital, the nurse had given him a pamphlet and a short, memorised speech about how it was hard to adjust to augmentations and there was a helpline Adam could call if he ever felt like it was all too much for him. She even admitted to calling it herself a few times, when she’d been late with her Neuropozyne dose.
The whole thing would have been more effective if her gaze hadn’t constantly slipped between his face and his augmented arms, like she couldn’t decide which was worse to stare at. But he’d given her a polite – if tight – smile, and thanked her on his way out.
He’d unpacked enough to survive. Some books. A bowl. Some cereal boxes, because they were cheap and easy and one of the only things he could keep in his stomach. And then he moved like a ghost, flitting hazily through golden-tinted afternoons and gloomy black nights, not wanting to be awake and not wanting to be asleep, either.
The nightmares were supposed to wear off, they’d said. Augmented brains didn’t usually bother with things like dreams. But every time he closes his eyes, he just sees Megan’s face. And the blood – so much fucking blood.
Sarif calls him daily – he thinks it’s daily – to make sure he’s alright. Adam lies. He’s breathing, isn’t he? So he must be fine. The calls are the only interruptions to the endless – the endless shit he feels like he’s wading through. Every step is an agony, his new metallic limbs not cooperating properly. And it hurts, the places they join to what little remains of his human flesh. There are rivets in his chest and his spine is made of fucking metal and he’s not sure what it’s like to take a step without suffering for it.
He’s been in his new apartment for two, maybe three, weeks, when there’s a knock on the door. Authoritative. Not like the delivery guys who flinch away when Adam opens the door, their apologies for disturbing him fading away under Adam’s augmented stare. He wears the shades most of the time, now. Better to hide a face that no one wants to see, isn’t it?
He shuffles to the door and then considers not opening it.
“I know the code, Jensen,” Pritchard says archly, tapping his finger to Adam’s door. “And if you’ve changed it, I’ll hack it.”
Adam sighs, bone-weary and exhausted, and lets Pritchard in.
“You look like shit,” the other man says cheerfully as he steps into the apartment and shuts the door behind him.
“Hello to you too, Francis,” Adam grumbles, running a hand over his beard. Damn, it is getting long. But he’d broken the mirror the first day he’d woken up and seen his face, and he doesn’t trust himself to trim it if he can’t see it.
“Sarif told me to come check on you.” Pritchard is wandering around like he owns the place, his sharp grey eyes not missing a single detail. “Not a moment too soon, it seems.”
“What?” Adam growls, putting his arms over his chest, then wincing as one of them digs a hard line into his ribs. He’s still not used to the metal protrusions.
“You know that augmented bodies require more calories, don’t you?” Pritchard is poking his way through the kitchen and Adam wants to grab him and shake him. “You can’t survive on cereal, no matter how many boxes you eat.”
“Didn’t feel like grocery shopping,” Adam mutters. “Spare me the lecture.”
“Well lucky for you, I borrowed a company car.” Pritchard twirls the keyring around his finger. “So go get dressed.”
“I don’t want to,” Adam says, petulant, which just makes Pritchard shrug.
“My orders are to get you out of the apartment. Play nice, or I’ll recalibrate my taser just for you.”
Adam does not want to be tased by Pritchard. He grumbles under his breath the entire way back to his bedroom, wondering if he even has anything to wear outside.
The best he can come up with are some sweatpants and a ratty hoodie he doesn’t even remember owning. The sneakers don’t quite fit right around his new augmented feet, but he doesn’t want to start unpacking boxes to find another pair. Not when the last one he’d opened had resulted in Megan’s face staring up at him from a photograph he still remembers taking, their smiles wide and happy.
Ten minutes later, he’s in the grocery store with Pritchard, who makes him push the cart.
“Can you even cook?” Pritchard asks, glancing back towards him. “Or is it just microwave dinners and takeout?”
“I can cook,” Adam mutters. It had been one of the ways he’d won Megan over. She was so busy most nights, forgetting to eat much more than a granola bar. He’d loved watching her face dissolve in pleasure at a new sauce, some recipe dug up from an unexpected cookbook. It had made the meals even more exquisite. “I just don’t like to.” Not anymore, at least.
Pritchard scoffs and leads Adam through the aisles, tossing this and that into the cart. More cereal – despite his earlier scorn. Keeping up an idly amused running commentary, as though he doesn’t notice the way people are staring at Adam. The way nervous mothers move their children out of their path, as though Adam is the monster from under their beds made real, haunting the grocery store and prepared to devour them right between the flour and sugar in aisle six.
By the time they make it through the checkout, Adam just wants to go back to bed. His skin feels scraped raw, as though the hoodie he’s wearing has barbed wire on the inside, not soft worn fleece.
At least Pritchard pays, though it doesn’t escape Adam’s notice that the card he pulls out is a Sarif Industries company card.
“Sarif’s buying me groceries?” He mutters as they make their way back outside into the afternoon sun.
“Well I’m not paying for them,” Pritchard says archly. “And you didn’t bring your wallet.”
He hadn’t. He hadn’t even realised. “Oh.”
Adam had hoped – futilely – that the grocery shopping would be the end of it. But Pritchard is moving around the kitchen – his kitchen, Adam thinks dully – putting groceries away and even unpacking a box or two of cooking utensils and cutlery.
“What’s next, Francis, a toothbrush in my bathroom?” Adam scoffs as he steps past Pritchard to get to the bottle of whiskey he’d slipped into the cart and Pritchard hadn’t slipped back out.
He gets his hand smacked for his efforts, and even though he can’t really feel it through the metal, Adam still pulls his hand back. Pritchard smacked him.
“You can drink after you’ve eaten dinner,” he says mildly, setting down a stack of bowls on the counter. “Go have a shower. And trim your beard. You look like you’ve been dragged up from the swamps.”
Adam blinks. “What?”
“The swamps, Jensen.” Pritchard rolls his eyes as he puts the plates in the cabinet. “Shoo.”
He’s never been shooed out of his own kitchen before. Adam turns and rubs at his face. A shower does sound good, though. Maybe he’ll feel a little more – he grimaces at the thought, too late to stop himself – human afterwards.
When he comes out of the bathroom, he can smell something cooking. Something that makes his mouth water. He had been living on cereal and takeout, and the smell of something homecooked makes him get dressed just a little faster than usual.
He didn’t even know that Pritchard could cook.
When he gets to the kitchen, he realises that ‘cook’ might be an overstatement. Pritchard has made a mess. Adam’s not even sure the man had unpacked that many pans, but they’re stacked up in the sink.
“Pritchard,” he says, stepping closer and feeling a thrill of satisfaction as Pritchard jumps. “Why are you making a mess in my kitchen?”
“Well, you haven’t been using it,” Pritchard says, poking at the meat sizzling in the pan on the stove. “Someone had to.”
“Move,” Adam grumbles, elbowing Pritchard away from the stove. The poor steak deserves to be rescued.
He does not miss Pritchard’s faint smile as he steps away, hands in the air.
Adam is smart enough to know he’s been outplayed, but he’s hungry enough to finish cooking the meal Pritchard started.
He’s petty enough to serve the mountain of food onto a single plate, obviously not sharing. Except Pritchard seems to have been prepared for that, too, as he idly taps at the screen in his hand as Adam devours the steak and mashed potatoes like he hasn’t eaten for weeks.
Technically, he hasn’t.
“I sent you an email,” Pritchard says, finally looking up. “Nutritional requirements. You might not want to eat, Jensen, but Sarif didn’t go through all that trouble just to watch you waste away.”
Adam has a mouthful of steak and can’t reply as Pritchard slides his jacket back on and makes obvious steps to leave.
“Also, you’ve got steak sauce on your chin. See you next week.” Pritchard pulls the door open.
“Wait.” Adam hurriedly swallows and tries not to choke. “What do you mean, next week?”
Pritchard grins at him, the kind of grin that usually results in someone, somewhere, having a very bad day. Adam doesn’t like when that someone is him. His days are bad enough already. “No more wallowing, Jensen. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor,” he protests, but Pritchard leaves, the door closing firmly behind him. “And I’m not wallowing,” he adds for good measure.
He doesn’t like having Pritchard coming over every weekend to take him grocery shopping against his will and forcing him to cook dinner for them both. But the routine – the break in the endless haze of miserable days – helps.
Not that he’ll ever admit that. Especially not to Pritchard. It would make him even more of an insufferable prick, if such a thing is even possible. But he’s grateful for the company. The reason to get out of bed on a Saturday. And the grocery shopping morphs into days spent doing other things. A movie, a trip to the aquarium, a rainy afternoon spent in a bookstore, each of them enthralled by completely different sections.
If he’d been with Megan, he’d almost consider them dates. But Pritchard always leaves after dinner. Never overstays his welcomes. Snaps at him at work when he’s irritated, which is most of the time.
When he asks Sarif about it, weeks later, why he’d sent Pritchard, of all people, to his apartment, David shakes his head.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Adam,” he says, sounding weary. “But you should tell him I’ve noticed him messing with the company cars. He has his bike; he doesn’t need them.”
Adam turns the conversation over in his mind all week. And then when he leaves the office on Friday afternoon and Pritchard tells him that he’ll be over tomorrow, he realises the truth doesn’t really matter.
What matters is having Pritchard as a friend. Even if he is a prick who shows up before 8AM with a coffee in each hand, telling him that they’re going on a hike today, because the weather is wonderful and he wants to stretch his legs.
Adam would have saved himself from the despair eventually. But he’s glad Pritchard reached down and offered him a helping hand out of the darkness.