Work Text:
"He-llo!! You've reached Pim Pimling! I can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I'd be delighted to call you back as soon as I can! Have a lovely day!" beeeeep
click
tap tap tap
"He-llo!! You've reached Pim Pimling! I can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I'd be deli-" click
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It was late. Past midnight, probably. Charlie didn't care to check. He'd already drank way more than he meant to tonight; he really was trying to cut back, just a couple drinks at Spaghetti Disco after work. But then he came home, and it was Wednesday, which is practically Friday, and there were three left in a six pack of Meep Beer with Extra Lime Essence in his fridge, calling him like a siren on the practically empty shelf next to a jar of pickles and something that may have been a vegetable at one point. So, he reasoned, he might as well finish it off over some Grand Strategy IV.
By the bottom of the last bottle, Charlie was very much drunk, and no longer in the mood for gaming. In the darkness of his apartment where he hadn’t bothered turning on the light and just tossed off his sweatshirt, the dopamine from poaching resources and plundering kingdoms ran dry. It mellowed out in his brain, sinking like tar into... something. Loneliness?
Ew. No. Absolutely not.
He logged off, leaning back in his computer chair and scanning his place. His movie posters hung proudly on the wall. Trash that he'd totally get to tomorrow, or the next day, or whatever, littered the ground. Next to his computer were the empty beer bottles, juxtaposed by his prescription blood thinners, and his gaze finally landed on some photos scattered in a loose pile across the back of the desk.
There were a couple of Smiling Friends group photos, one of Glep sleeping on the bean bag that just made him happy, but the majority... were of himself and Pim.
When Pim pulled him into the photo booth at the movie theater.
He and Pim at Dave Land.
Pim and Charlie at the beach.
Pim and Charlie in space (the flat earth and its dome covered by a sticky note for his own sanity, but the photo was also necessary for his sanity).
Charlie groaned and rubbed his eyes. "Gimme a fuckin break..." He mumbled to himself, looking at his phone to avoid the pit beginning to churn in his stomach. A familiar sensation he might call yearning, if that word were in his vocabulary. 1:17am. Pim was almost certainly asleep, the guy was usually in bed by 11pm.
Why did he know that again?
He stared blankly at the ceiling for a long, quiet moment, resting his hands on his belly. Pim was probably asleep, and Charlie was awake, unable to stop thinking about him. The bug-eyed, loud-mouthed, relentlessly cheerful ray of sunshine that reminded him more often than he liked that he was, indeed, bisexual.
His mind wandered, eyes closing as he indulged his imagination. If Pim was all he could think about, he might as well see where it went, right? His own thoughts couldn't hurt him, right?
In his mind, the room was dark. It was Pim's bedroom. Charlie crawled into the bed, Pim's form facing away from him. The satiny sheets were cool to the touch, but the semi-amphibious critter's skin felt even better when he sunk in and wrapped an arm around the smaller man's waist. Pim always had the softest skin, and he felt his heart flutter at the thought of cuddling up to him.
Imaginary Pim turned to him now, his buggy eyes half-lidded and a sleepy grin on his face as he gazed up lovingly. "Oh Charlie," the yellow man imagined him saying, stubby arms affectionately squeezing his belly. His own hands groped at his stomach to mimic his minds' theater. "You're so warm and snuggly... let's just stay here forever." Pim's cute little accent and hot breath on his neck… Charlie would twirl the exposed nerve ending around his finger, having brushed over it plenty of times by accident. He’d pretend not to notice how Pim shivered at the sensitive area being touched, so he wondered what kind of sounds a deliberate, gentle touch might coax out of him…
It was at this point that Charlie opened his eyes. His face was flushed, and the guilt and shame of the fantasy hit him like a freight train. "...I can't keep fuckin doing this." He murmured to himself, running his hands over his face. Standing, he paced around his apartment, the studio just big enough to make a circle, and that circle was just small enough to keep him from getting nauseated in his drunken state.
"Fuck, this is so fucking dumb..." He chastised himself, staring at Pim’s contact photo in his phone again. He felt like a freak, a weird lonely gooner, and at the same time desperate for affection. Before he could stop himself, Charlie pressed the call button and put it on speaker.
After what felt like an eternity of empty ringing, he got the pink critter's cheerful voice-mail message.
One more time.
And the same message.
Charlie cut it short this time. He had to get up for work in a few hours anyway. He forced some lukewarm water down his throat(damn slumlords needed to fix the pipes) and went to bed. He dreamt more of Pim that night, his unconscious dreams much more graphic.
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"Hey Charlie, are you alright?" Pim asked once Charlie got into work for the morning. He noticed the guy looked tired, but that wasn't too out of the ordinary on its own. "You called me really late last night but then you didn't text me back this morning."
Charlie wasn’t quite hungover, but he was dehydrated and had a headache. The lights in the office were too bright, Glep wasn't wearing headphones with his tablet, and Allan's rhythmic counting of office supplies was like a jackhammer to the migraine he was praying to the One True Catholic Gilbert Gottfried God wasn't coming for him. But somehow, Pim's buttery voice made it just a smidge easier. "Oh uh, yeah sorry about that," Charlie gulped dryly, taking his usual seat at the breakroom table. "I uh, must have pocket dialed or something, I don't really remember. I went to Spaghetti Disco after work with Tyler and got a little carried away..." He decided on the spot, glancing away as his face reddened.
"Oh, how is Tyler doing??" Pim asked with a bright smile, deciding to broach the subject of Charlie's drinking later. That must have been what he was embarrassed about, after all.
Charlie couldn’t help but smile back. “He’s doing great, man. I’ll tell him you said hey.”