Chapter Text
BoJack swore to himself he would never open the box of Horsin’ Around VHS tapes that Mr. Peanutbutter stopped him from throwing away when he first moved in. He said something stupid along the lines of “You never know when you’ll want to look back on these”, BoJack told him he would rather walk into oncoming traffic than be reminded of this part of his life. He let Mr. Peanutbutter win in the end, his heart really wasn’t in it, once he gave him the puppy dog eyes. It surprised him how effective those eye were on him. He thought he had built a pretty good defense against the dog’s charm, but being invited so openly to someone’s house rent free is a good way to erode certain defenses. What surprised him even more was that Mr. Peanutbutter knows the type of person BoJack is and yet he still smiles at him even after two years of living together.
He thanked his lucky stars that Mr. Peanutbutter was out of the house by 6 a.m. because he didn’t want to face the Labrador right as he got home from being fired from yet another job. Maybe today was the day that smile is wiped away, when he finds a lazy mooch rotting into his couch. If Mr. Peanutbutter grew a singular brain cell, he would probably kick him out, finally burn this leech off of him. He probably wont, he took the ‘Mi casa es tu casa’ thing way too seriously.
He is still in his boxers and bathrobe, he didn’t bother to change after he woke up from his eternal slumber (he hoped it was eternal at least) he had fallen into immediately as he got to the house. An insatiable hunger woke him up, because he hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday when he was getting ready for work at around 7 p.m. Even then it was just some leftover stir fry Mr. Peanutbutter had made for lunch. He was planning on sleeping all day and eat nothing. Maybe then he’ll loose some weight, but he was such a fat piece of shit he had to go and ruin it. It was just on course for BoJack to ruin everything for himself, good to know nothing ever changes.
He dug his spoon into the tub of banana pudding ice cream that he had scavenged from freezer. It was the only bit of food left in the fridge that was edible, at least for BoJack. That was another reason for Mr. Peanutbutter to kick him out, for eating everything like the fat loser he is.
His hand traveled to his mouth delivering the spoonful of dairy free ice cream under his tongue, he let the spoon sit there for a bit. He waited for the uncomfortable coldness to turn into a nerve aching pain, but it never came. The warmness of his mouth ended up dissipating the cold after a couple seconds. He popped the spoon out of his mouth in disappointment and tossed it back into the half-empty container seemingly loosing his appetite as he stared at the fit young horse on the TV.
He has been dissociating for the past hour or so staring at the TV mostly out of focus, not wanting to associate any of the characters to real people. He was trying to build a distance from himself and the horse on the TV, that wasn’t him, of course it wasn’t him, he never looked like that, it was somebody else. Definitely not him. How could it be? It wasn’t him. It was not him. It wasn’t. He didn’t know who he was. Who was he?
Sarah Lynn pops up on the TV screen, he reaches for the remote and pauses. He stared for a minute, he knows exactly who she is. A child trying to impress the shitty adults in the room that did nothing to protect her from the jagged hole of fame. He turned it off. He watched as the color filled pixels all darken at once.
“BoJack?!”
BoJack almost jumped out of his skin when he felt the warmth of another person wrap their arms around his shoulders from the back.
“What are you doing down here?!”
BoJack let out an exasperated sigh out when he realized who the soft yellow arms belonged to.
“You don’t have yell in my ear, I can hear you just fine.”
He shoots a steely look to the dog that is a little too close for comfort right now. He could feel annoyance building up, even if he was used to it by now
“I’m sorry, I just got excited you’re usually asleep right now.”
Mr. Peanutbutter pauses for a second to think.
“Oh, I should take a picture to honor this!”
Mr. Peanutbutter unlocked his phone he was already holding, and outstretched his arm to snap a photo. Which had a very annoyed looking BoJack and a beaming Mr. Peanutbutter, what else was new?
Mr. Peanutbutter jumped over the headrest to sit right next to BoJack on his left.
“You could have walked around.”
“Who cares! What’s important is I get to see you.”
“You see me every day, PB.”
“Yes but only for two hours! You think that’s enough to hang out with my best-friend?”
“Plenty.”
“Don’t be silly, BoJ!”
Mr. Peanutbutter gives BoJack a playful push with his hand.
He peeked over BoJack where the tub of ice cream laid. “OH! So you did like the ice cream I bought you!”
He reached over BoJack to grab the discarded tub of banana pudding ice cream. He dug at it to pop a spoonful into his mouth. Mr. Peanutbutter’s eyes landed on the box labeled “Horse Shit” and the scattered Horsin’ Around VHS tapes on the glass coffee table.
“And you’re binging Horsin’ Around. Wow, this really is a party! What are we celebrating?”
“Nothing.”
‘Hopefully the end of my miserable existence.’ BoJack thought to himself. He got up from the couch, leaving Mr. Peanutbutter alone. He crouched down to empty the VCR, and with the VHS tape in his hand he took a miserable attempt to toss it into the box from his current position but missed. It ended up hitting and clattering on the rest of the tapes. Good job, moron. BoJack's body went slack into a sitting position, looking more like a ventriloquist dummy than a person. He stared at his hands before covering his eyes with them. He is so tired.
“Hey, are you okay? I usually can’t sneak up on you like that.”
BoJack can hear Mr. Peanutbutter wander his way over to him. His footsteps are quiet which is unusual for him, it was as if he was trying not to spook BoJack.
BoJack lets out a bitter laugh. “I don’t know… how can I be?”
BoJack drops his hands from his face to look at him, his eyes stinging from the amount of pressure he placed on them. Mr. Peanutbutter got closer and dropped down to BoJack's level, throwing caution to the wind.
“Hey, hey, hey.” He placed his hand on BoJack's shoulder in an attempt to reassure him. “Listen, whatever happened, we can figure it out. It’s going to be okay, BoJack.”
“PB, I got fired.”
“Oh.”
Mr. Peanutbutter’s tense demeanor morphed into a relaxed one. His brows were still knitted but it was more in a pensive manner, BoJack could almost hear the cogs turning in his head.
“I’m sorry, BoJack.” He offered a sympathetic smile to the sad sack of a horse. “It’s going to be okay. We all get fired once in awhile, it’s totally normal.”
BoJack returned one of his hands to his face, shielding his eyes from idiocy. He gave Mr. Peanutbutter the side eye from a gap in between his fingers. BoJack let out a sigh before he pushed himself up with much more force then he wanted to. Almost falling over in the process, but regained his balanced at the last minute. He began to pace around the living room, trying to distract himself from blowing up.
“No, it’s not.” He grumbled out in response to Mr. Peanutbutter’s perceived coddling. Why can’t he just tell him that he is a loser? Oh, that’s right. Because he is an idiot! A loser and an idiot living together, what a joke!
“But you hated that job?” Mr. Peanutbutter tilted his head to the side as he lifted himself from the ground much more gracefully than BoJack.
“That’s not the point! The point is I can’t hold down a stupid security guard job.” BoJack stopped his pacing to shoot Mr. Peanutbutter a frustrated look. “A job so easy a toddler could do it!”
“I think you’re giving toddlers too much credit, I doubt Ruthie could stay up that late.”
“Neither can I apparently!” He flops back down unto the couch and puts pressure on one of his temples with his thumb, trying to push down a developing headache.
“Why is it so hard to hold down a single job? What is wrong with me?” He asks, mostly to himself, but he knew Mr. Peanutbutter could hear him. You can’t beat those damn canine ears. His eyes are screwed shut now mostly to avoid the light in the room for his headache, but also to avoid Mr. Peanutbutter’s stupid saccharine stare full of genuine care. He hated it so much.
“Nothing’s wrong with you…” If BoJack's eyes weren’t closed they would have rolled out of his head. There is a plethora of things wrong with him, he is just too stupid to see any of them or he just ignores them which is honestly worse.
“You just need to give yourself some time…” BoJack felt the mid-century modern couch dip beside him where Mr. Peanutbutter sat down. “You haven’t had a normal job in decades, it’s totally normal.”
BoJack unscrewed his eyelids but his eyes still refused to land on Mr. Peanutbutter. “Really? Even after 8 jobs in a year?”
“Well, that might be pushing it a little bit.” Mr. Peanutbutter chuckled when BoJack finally looked at him with a miffed expression his face. BoJack clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes away from him when he realized the dopey joke.
“If it helps, I wouldn’t have fired you.”
BoJack snickered at that. “Yeah, maybe you should have been my boss for all my jobs then.”
“Exactly!” He snapped his fingers into a finger gun.
“Look on the bright side, you don’t have that awful schedule anymore which means we get to see each other more often.” His tongue emerged out of his mouth probably as a subconscious reflex.
“Yeah… Sure…. I just wish…” He stopped himself unsure of where he was going with that. He wished what? That he wasn’t so useless? He was already well aware of that just like everyone else in his life. Just shut up because he sure as hell doesn’t want to hear you bitch and whine. You already take so much, because that’s all you know how to do like a fucking leech.
Bojack dug his nails into his palm to ground himself in the dull ache and not his thoughts. He stared at Mr. Peanutbutter’s tilted head, he was waiting for BoJack to continue. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“Well, how about we go out to eat, to celebrate, there’s nothing in the fridge anyway.” There was, Mr. Peanutbutter just didn’t like to eat alone.
Mr. Peanutbutter got up and stretched out his back, a sliver of fur peeked out. BoJack caught a glimpse at some of the graying fur, It was scarce but still visible in the ocean of golden yellow. It was strange to see noticeable signs of aging on Mr. Peanutbutter, because for most of the time that they’ve known each other BoJack had always seen him as an intact symbol of what he could be and will never be. This whole roomie situation has humanized (doganized?) the Labrador beyond his wildest imagination, whether that was good thing or not the jury was still out in BoJack's head.
“I don’t think getting fired is a good reason to celebrate.” BoJack made heavy quotation marks with his hands to emphasize the ‘celebrate’.
Mr. Peanutbutter turned to face him. He placed himself in between BoJack's spread out legs and he reached out for his slouched shoulders that rested against the headrest. Bojack knitted his eyebrows, baffled at the dog’s boldness but he shouldn’t be surprised at this point.
“We’re not celebrating that. We are celebrating you!”