The drugs aren't working anymore.
My salvation, my hope when all hope is lost, my ticket to the sweet paradise of forgetfulness, and even that's abandoned me to the sticky mass of your hair beneath my fingers and the hissing sound of synthetic equipment moving in time with the rise and fall of your sunken chest. You haunt me no matter what I take, no matter what combination of toxins and chemicals I choose to numb myself into oblivion.
It's ironic that the Baltonian metabolism that I always cursed for keeping me so inhumanely small would keep me alive even when I no longer wanted to keep trying.
So when the drugs won't work and you won't leave my mind I cry and scream and throw things at the walls, and then I collapse into a sobbing incoherent heap in Keith's arms.
Yes, Keith. I stood outside the hospital for hours, or maybe days. I forget which. It came to me then that I didn't know who to call. Lance, maybe, but what good would that do? He was days away, and even if he was sober enough to remember my name and why I was important how would he ever get here? I have all his money, or at least I did, before that last rush of heat and air gave way to coldness and the uncomfortable knowledge that I was stone broke and friendless on a world with way too many cops for my peace of mind.
Seventeen and at rock bottom. I'll drink to that.
So I found enough money for an off-planet connection and called Keith. I didn't quite know what to expect, but let me tell you I didn't find it. He came to get me, no questions asked, and it actually took me a couple of days on Pollux to put my finger on the problem.
He was sober.
All the time.
It was almost more than I could take. Still, he didn't press me when I snuck out to the courtyard or locked the door of my room all night. He didn't stop me from cruising the bars and clubs. He never once lectured me, no matter how out of control I was. He just held me in his arms each time I collapsed, kissing me and rocking me silently while the demons inside my head screamed for my blood.
He never said a word that I can remember until I asked him why, and then he only told me that the answers he was looking for weren't in the bottom of any bottle. He looked so sad when he said it, and for a moment it struck me as familiar and I started whispering something about second chances, although I don't really remember what exactly. Whatever it was, it was the wrong thing to say because I made him cry, so I just held him back. I even tried to rock him, but somehow I couldn't make my arms work right through the haze and we fell over in a heap.
He stayed with me that night, but it wasn't like before the end came and swallowed us all up. Before I can remember heat and passion and frenzy and the erotic drug that the electric taste of someone else's skin can be on your tongue, but now it was only loneliness and sadness with a dash of desperation. Somehow I couldn't quit seeing your face as your eyes flickered open, the chocolate brown glassy under the weight of drugs and pain and sleep and too many years for someone so very young.
Afterwards I couldn't sleep, so I went out into the garden courtyard in the weightless caressing air and watched the stars dance across the evening sky. Somehow every single one of them had your voice as they sang to me, lulling me into real sleep for the first time in years.
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