Chapter Text
At the end of the day, Charlie is there in his neighbor’s apartment, on his knees with one hand gripping the toilet seat and the other wiping the vomit from his beard.
He can barely hold himself upright but he doesn’t need to.
Not with his neighbor beside him, letting him rest his temple against his hip when the vomiting shook his body a little too hard, a little too quickly. When Charlie lurches forward a third time, his Neighbor is there, already combing back his hair and rubbing soft lines down between his shoulder blades, talking him through it.
Don’t hold it, just let it out.
“Oh, fuck,” Charlie groans through it, spitting up the rest of the acid still in the back of his throat before he can finally sit back on his heels, his body still shaking.
“Y’okay?”
Charlie’s head drops like a weight, drawn back to his neighbor’s hip like a magnet, and he says nothing. He shuts his eyes and he licks the back of his teeth and says nothing.
“Charlie?”
“I think I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying,” his Neighbor tells him. “I think you alcohol-poisoned yourself.”
Again, Charlie stays in silence. He licks the back of his teeth, he squeezes his eyes shut a little tighter, and his temple presses hard onto his Neighbor’s hip. Hard enough to feel the denim on his skin and the warmth in his bones.
There are words there, floating around his brain in an incoherent brain-soup, but that’s all that they were. Incoherent. Charlie can’t pull them together into a sentence but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t need to. He just sits there, his head cradled in his neighbor’s hands while he forces down the bitter saliva welling up in his cheeks, and he stays silent.
When the bile comes up again and Charlie lurches, his Neighbor follows him. When it finally goes and settles back in the pit of his stomach, Charlie sits back, and his Neighbor follows again. His head tilts, his neighbor cradles him, and Charlie stays there with his eyes shut.
“Want to go to bed?”
Charlie swallows. He doesn’t need to speak.
“Come on.”
He holds onto him, his forehead glued to his neighbor’s shoulder and body shaking, his eyes shut.
“I’ve got you.”
In bed, Charlie is laid down softly.
He’s sat down and eased onto his back, propped up with the pillows from either side of the bed, not just his. The blankets are thrown over him with the soft sides turned inward but the unicorn is draped over him, hugging his shoulders the way he likes. He’s cradled in it, bundled up tight and warm, but he snakes a hand out from underneath the mountain of bedding anyway to touch his neighbor’s wrist, to make sure he’s there.
Charlie doesn’t hold him there. His fingers are moving, tracing the wrinkled skin of his neighbor’s wrist bent, holding him up at the edge of the bed. But Charlie doesn’t hold him there.
His neighbor stays anyway.
He stays until Charlie’s blinking slow and nodding off, until he’s slumping down in the bed and swaying back and forth like an old tree, and he stays even after Charlie’s eyes have closed, even after his breathing slowed. He stays for longer than he has to because the second that Charlie can’t feel him there, can’t feel his skin or the weight of him at his side, he’s wide awake again. It starts all over. So he stays.
“I love you, man.”
His neighbor laughs. Charlie doesn’t.
“I know.”
“No,” Charlie tells him, half asleep with his eyes rolling back and his breathing slow again, “No, man, m’being serious. I do. I really do.”
His neighbor’s quiet.
“I love you, dude,” Charlie tells him.
“I know, Charlie.”