here was some kind of thrumming inside his skull. He laughed; he was laughing, he realized, at the sound of Charlie’s voice drifting in from the other room. But the glint of lamplight on the metal edge of the tub felt sharp as the edge of a knife. He found himself looking down at the drain, at something like rust encrusted round its edge. He licked his lips; his mouth was dry and tasted of smoke and whisky and blood.
He‘d been about to get up. “Ah,” he said, at the muffled sound of shifting and creaking from the couch. He heard a pair of feet padding across the floorboards, then stood on his aching knees and poked his head back in.
Charlie was over past the counter. He caught his eye and made a dismissive gesture with one long white hand.
The boiler’d kicked on behind him; all the same, he took a deep breath, oddly relieved to put it off a little longer. He caught a whiff of himself as he picked his way back over to the bed and wrinkled his nose, but he was happy enough to sink back down against it. Charlie was shuffling about in the cabinets, and he could hear the gurgle of liquid into cups. The other man was a languid, narrow shape against the lamplight; he watched him get a third cup down through half-lidded eyes, then shut his eyes.
He opened them again at the brush of Charlie’s field, moving past him round the workbench to – the bird cage in the corner, he realized, raising his brows. Tippy’s cage, he amended. He blinked, squinting: he watched the little white shape inside hop closer to the door as Charlie took the food dish.
He stayed still, watching, for a moment oddly mesmerized. There was a funny sort of smile spreading itself out on Charlie’s face, lopsided, with just a hint of his crooked teeth. The bird’s eyes were peering back at him. A strand of dark hair had fallen over his cheek; there were a few warm little lines round his clear blue eyes.
The smile vanished in an instant, and so did his.
He grunted, shifting up off the bed. As Charlie bent to get the food, more hair fraying out of his wet-and-drying mess of a ponytail, he padded to get the drink Charlie’d left him. There were two of them; he’d poured him a glass of water. He sucked at a tooth, looking down at it uncertainly.
He shook off the funny feeling, whatever the hell it was. He took a long drink of water, then took up the battered tin mug and took a long drink of – whatever that was. It might’ve been Low Tide; it was heavy on the liquor, and went down about as smooth as sandpaper. He looked uncertainly at the bottle, cloudy-dark and unlabeled, and poured a tiny bit more.
“Thank you,” he said matter-of-factly, looking at one cup and then the other, and then over his shoulder. He took a deep breath, setting the mug down on the table, and disappeared into the washroom again. Best not waste time, he kept thinking. Just don’t think about a damn thing.
He went quick. The water wasn’t quite warm; it got warmer. He hesitated once before taking off his shirt, then took it off, and peeled his trousers and underthings off for good measure and set them in a neat pile to the side.
He didn’t look down as he washed, and nor’d he bother to let the old tub fill up or soak. He washed thoroughly and quickly, and he might’ve scraped his skin ragged. He made the mistake, once, of looking down at it – at all of it – and felt a surge of anger. It turned to something else in the buzz of what Charlie’d poured him; he shut his eyes then, and he scrubbed harder.
When he finally shut off the tap, he sat waiting for the water to drain. He was breathing hard, his eyes still shut. When he opened them, he looked down at his hands on his lap in the low light.
He shut his eyes and smiled bitterly.
He found an old robe. It was short in the arms and in the waist, and a little too narrow in the shoulders; he hesitated, tying it up double at the waist, then stepped out, shivering. His hair dripped a little on his shoulders.
“I, uh…” He reached up and scratched the back of his neck, feeling pinched and raw. “I’m out,” he grunted. “Whenever you, uh.”