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Rain tapped against the window, slow and persistent, as Beer’s apartment filled with the golden haze of a single lamp. The apartment had the tired, lived-in hush of a place that had stopped pretending to be tidy. The AC hummed quietly, filling in the spaces the rain couldn’t. Empty bottles lazily lined on the coffee table like they're awaiting their execution.
Coffee stretched out on the couch, one leg hanging off the edge. “You really know how to live it up, huh?” he said with a small smile. “Five bottles and counting. And here I thought I was just coming to give you food and keep company.”
Beer laid against the cushions in a way that suggested he was about to sleep rather than him relaxing. His limbs were loose and uncooperative, the kind of slack a body gets when it has spent itself. Coffee reached for a beer to have for himself with a practiced hand, Beer watching the motion as if cataloguing it.
“Didn’t call for company or food.. Called for someone who knows how to open a new bottle when I can’t feel my hands.”
“Ah, so I’m a servant now.” Coffee sarcastically rolled his eyes.
“An unpaid one.”
“You sure you’re not just lonely?” Coffee teased, grabbing another bottle and taking a drink.
“Maybe,” Beer said quietly, eyes tracing the edges of the ceiling. Right where the walls met the plaster of the roof. “Maybe I like having someone else in the room when it all feels… heavier.”
Coffee tilted his head, completely oblivious. “That’s poetic for ‘I like your snacks,’ isn’t it?”
Beer didn’t answer, letting the silence stretch. The rain drummed a steady rhythm, and Coffee’s easy laughter occasionally broke through it, warm and careless.
Coffee looked around, then asked, “You ever think about cleaning up in here?” Breaking the silence that hung in the air.
Beer let his head fall back against the couch, eyes half-lidded. “You ever think about shutting up?”
“Constantly. Never succeeded.”
For a while, they drank in silence, listening to the rain and the occasional background noise of the AC and some random movie that Beer chose. Another round. Beer, obviously more intoxicated, and his voice softer now, almost confessional. “You’re too… too bright for this place,” he murmured.
“What?” Coffee laughed, leaning back, clearly missing the weight in Beer’s words. “I’m just here for moral support and food. Brightness isn’t in my contract.”
“You make everything… feel lighter,” Beer said, his voice low, almost lost to the hum of the AC. “Even when I don’t want it to.”
Coffee didn’t quite catch it at first. He just shrugged. “I guess I can annoy you into happiness or something.”
Beer gave a small, crooked smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah. You do. And it’s… unbearable.”
Coffee laughed again, leaning over to ruffled Beer’s hair with a practiced affection, and the action was casual enough to seem like habit but gentle enough to be its own kind of confession. “You’d say that about anyone you aren't close with, you gloomy man-child.”
But Beer’s next words came slower, heavier, and just slightly trembling. “No. Not anyone. Just you.”
Coffee froze mid-laugh, but only for a fraction of a second. Coffee fumbled with the proper response, the way people do when the rules of their friendship shift an inch to the left. “Huh? What? That’s… flattering? I think.”
“I mean… you make it… better,” Beer murmured, leaning against the couch cushions like he might melt into them. “I’d be… lonelier without you.”
“Oh um… really?” Coffee wasn’t exactly too sure what to say to that confession
Beer's only response was a lazy hum. “Don’t tell anyone. ’s embarrassing.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Coffee said, shaking his head with a small smile, despite his internal awkwardness. “Pinky promise I won’t, or whatever.”
Beer’s head lolled against the cushion, his voice growing slower, quieter. His sentences blurred into the kind of honesty that arrives under the dulling influence of too much liquor and the bright honesty of small hours. “If you didn’t show up every now and then, this place’d start eating itself. You make it… less empty.”
“Since when did you learn to be sentimental about this stuff?”
“I don’t get sentimental. I get honest, I guess...”
Coffee laughed a tad, “That’s what sentimental people say.”
Beer lifted a hand weakly and waved Coffee off. “Whatever you say, bucket-apologist.”
“...You’re still on about that, seriously?” Coffee groaned, mostly in embarrassment.
“Pff.. yeah. You literally apologized to a mop bucket after you tripped over it like it was a person. Why wouldn’t I let it go?” Beer clearly tried to hold in his laugh, but clearly failing to.
“It— I was distracted! At least I don’t have several month old coke under my couch.” Coffee (at least attempted) to shoot back.
“God you’re so dramatic about it.. You’re acting like it's gonna come up and kill you or something…” Beer couldn’t help himself from snorting a little bit at Coffee’s pretty weak attempt at getting back at him.
“I still don’t know how you live like that…” Coffee almost shuddered at the very terrifying thought of himself ending up doing drugs like Beer did.
After the small bit of laughter faded, Beer did get a little serious again. “Yknow…uh,” He spoke up, his voice a tad quiet again, “you’re the only reason why I don’t just… sleep all day sometimes.” There was no demand in it, no plea. Instead it was an ordinary, wretchedly human fact: company kept him from dissolving into his bed and staying there.
Coffee blinked, completely caught off guard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“...Dunno… Your company is nice, that’s all… Can you get me a blanket.. please...? I'm sleepy.” Beer asked, kind of pathetically.
“...You really are drunk. But sure.. better than you falling asleep on me.”
Coffee moved to oblige, half-laughing at how pathetic Beer seemed, half-listening to how genuine the plea was. By the time he turned back around with a blanket, Beer had already drifted off, one hand still loosely holding the bottle, head tilted to the side.
Coffee carefully set the glass down and draped the blanket over his shoulders. The rain outside softened, like even the sky didn’t want to wake him. Whatever hung in the air, confession, comfort, something unspoken, was enough.
“Dumbass,” Coffee murmured fondly. “You could’ve just said you liked having me around.”
As the rain continued to fall in its quiet rhythm, Beer slept curled against the edge of the couch, and Coffee, completely unaware of Beer’s true feelings, letting presence speak where words had faltered.