Little Pills

The first time I saw him I wondered if he was really even alive.

He was one of us, but at the same time new and unfamiliar, just like the rest of us unwanted children slipping through the bruised shadows of the club. His eyes were watery blue and glassy, like a landed fish, staring up vaguely unintelligent from his face into the neon-bright lights above.

Like anyone new, rumors swirled from lip to lip. Some said it was heroin. Others said schizophrenia. Another suggested he was a sociopath.

I would have merely called him desperate.

Then again, I didn‘t have much room to talk. I was just like all the rest of them, fed on a diet of coffee and cigarettes, too young to really be at a club like that but almost too jaded to care. The place was a home away from home, where we all met to melt into the each other and maybe found a mouth like our own to talk to and touch. Outside life was a taboo subject-- nobody liked to talk about it because, after all, didn‘t we come here to get away from all that?

Even so, the mouths always buzzed with curiosities and rumors, punctuated by the dull amber glow of cigarettes.

Someone came over and told me with a half-drunk grin that the new one, that boy, was so strung out that he’d go home with anyone for a ten dollar bill. I didn’t believe him, perched on a stool and taking a sip from a drink I had found abandoned on a table, feeling the alcohol swirl in my stomach in the same slow, dull burn as the thoughts in my head.

I probably wouldn’t have done anything if he hadn’t approached me first.

Something in his dilated eyes was ultimately unsettling as he looked me over, a drugged smile flirting over his lips. I felt uneasy, caught in his vapid stare, looking away to stare into the green liquid of my drink. He moved in closer like an animal on the prowl, not noticing my discomfort as he wrapped his stick-thin arms around one of mine and propped his bony chin on my shoulder.

“Take me home…” His voice was not much more than a sigh, sounding tired and pitiful.

My cock stiffened and my eyes opened wide, and before I knew it we were in my car kissing like preteens.

His mouth was bitter and slow moving, only making me feel that much more frantic as I fisted into his stringy hair and ran my tongue across his teeth. I didn’t care about how old he was, his gender, or any of his problems; long ago I’d found that any warm body willing to have me was all I’d ever need to keep living.

Eventually he broke the kiss only to slump into the passenger’s seat, his head tilted at a painful-looking angle but his expression blissfully glazed. I started the car and licked my lips, knowing that I had been drinking but too eager to care. Being reckless was part of who we all were, the drugs and drink and sex all an attempt to fill our hollow bodies with something more, leaving us utterly unconcerned about the consequences and, more often than not, doing entirely idiotic things, like driving drunk.

I was honestly surprised when we made it home safe. It was the place I ultimately wanted to avoid the most, the small, lonely apartment reminding me of my small, lonely existence, bought off by a mother who had me too young and had moved on without me. She bought off her shame, like we all do, paying my monthly bills at the promise I would never disturb her and her beautiful new family. It was her I blamed for all of it; when she stopped caring about me, so did I, and the only good thing she ever gave me was a place to live out the rest of my pathetic little life.

At least it was relatively clean and had a bed, which would make due for us. I looked over and thought for one frustrated moment that the pale creature besides me had fallen asleep or, worse, overdosed on whatever drug that was running through his system. I pawed at his shoulder and it seemed enough to bring him half to life, and I got out from the car to guide his slow steps towards the building.

Once inside, I turned, kicked off my shoes, flipped on the light, and got my first real look of him. He looked like he might have once been beautiful, but was now washed out, like a photograph left to bleach in the sun. The only things dark about him were the pure-black, huge pupils staring from those empty eyes and the deeper stains of purple under his white lashes, as if he hadn‘t slept in months. The rest of him, from hair to skin to eyes and lips, were all so fair that he seemed to fade into himself.

He was leaning against the wall just inside the doorway, his breathing slow and shallow and his eyes watching me in that way that made my stomach twist into knots and my mouth go dry. I leaned in to kiss him again and he hesitated, though I couldn’t really understand why.

It was only then I remembered what I’d heard in the club, and though I didn’t even know if it was true, I drew out my wallet and pulled out a crumpled up ten dollar bill from the warm pocket of leather. He took it from me in a movement that seemed far too rehearsed, swiftly pocketing it before his cool hands were on either side of my face and he was pulling me in.

I was so excited that I barely knew what to do with myself, and I still wasn’t sure why. I knew sex better than I felt like I knew a lot of things, and I’d been with bodies far more attractive than this before. But he had me straining against my jeans painfully and my tongue seeking out his in in an urgency I had never felt before.

I took him by one fragile wrist and led him towards my bedroom, turning on the lamp and pushing everything I had left on my bed carelessly to the floor. I placed him against the mattress a little more carefully than I had treated my own belongings, feeling if I did anything more violent with his body that he’d shatter to pieces in my hands. He let me do as I please, followed me with a detached obedience, his lips set with that curve of an empty smile as he settled against the pillows.

I rid him of his shirt first, and he barely moved to help me with it. As I tossed it away and looked over his bare chest, I swear I could almost see his heart fluttering against his ribs. Seeing his arms then, completely unharmed, with his veins still a perfect lavender under his thin, pale skin, gave me a sense of relief. We’d all seen the ugly holes of needles to skin, children turned into waify, skeletal creatures with track-marks from forearms to fingertips. Usually they melded quiet and numb into the background, staring out from their dark eyes until, one day, they just dissolved, never heard from again.

They were sometimes missed but always replaced, with boys like this one, with all their different poisons of choice. Knowing he wasn’t one of the syringe-children was a rather surprising relief to me, especially considering I didn’t really care about him in the first place. I kissed him again, far more gentle this time, feeling his teeth lazily tug at my lip in an estranged form of impatience. His hands were clumsy against me, one in my hair, the other at my back, his fingers kneading in a rhythmic beat that matched the awkward clashing of our differently-paced mouths.

I pulled away from him if only to take off my own shirt, a soft murmur of pleasure pulled from his lips when our chests met. The contrast of his cool skin to mine, already so overheated, was enough to draw a gasp from me as well, kissing him hard and pressing him into the mattress as my heat started to warm his chilled body.

I would have been more than happy to have stayed like that forever, chest to chest and lip to lip, but soon enough I felt clumsy, restless hands at the waist of my jeans, struggling to find the zipper. His forwardness sent another shudder down my spine and I lifted my hips up if only to help, though it seemed to take him an eternity to tear the front open, his hand brushing against my stiff cock almost in afterthought. I felt myself throb against his fingertips and he made a soft noise of amusement below me, nudging my pants down to my thighs and leaving them there, taking off only as much as we really needed.

His hands fell passively to his sides then and I broke the kiss only to sit back and tear his loose jeans off from his hips, feeling that sudden, frenzied urge to have him well up in me again. My member, free of any confines, strained towards his body as I tossed away his faded jeans, hearing them rattle as they hit the wall next to the bed. The sound of it was a little strange and I looked towards his fallen clothing, but he brought me back to him just as soon before I could see what the noise was from, his fingers clutching to one of my shoulders and pulling me back towards his naked body.

I felt sharp nails dig into my back as he clawed at me mindlessly, writhing with slow rocks of his hips, his cock stiff against my own as I began to arch and grind against him. As hard as I was, he was just as wet and eager in turn, head tilted back and eyes eased shut as he gasped for every shallow breath and thrust his sharp hips towards mine. I could see every tense muscle strain under his translucent skin as he tried to get closer, legs wrapping around my waist as we pushed our bodies flush together, and it still wasn’t enough for either of us. I didn’t know how much foreplay was needed and I started to lose care, his lips sucking slowly around my tongue and his cock pulsing against mine until my head was spinning and I thought I would burst out of my own skin if I wasn’t in him soon.

I had to practically pry him off of me so I could roll over towards the bedside stand, scrambling through the drawer before I came out with a condom and lube. He watched me from under lidded eyes as I tore the little foil package open, the latex stretching around my cock as I rolled it down. Only once it was on did I return back to him, watching as his limbs twined in his dazed excitement and his cock leapt in interest between his spread legs.

“…how?” He asked through a simple exhale of breath, his voice rough and low through barley moving lips, and I felt a smile pull at my own as I moved in closer again, not really bothering to answer but rather showing him, taking a hold of his waist and flipping him over. It was easy, with how bony and compliant he was, his face pressing into the pillow as he propped himself up on his knees and clawed his skinny fingers into the blankets.

With him bent forward like that in front of me, his back arched and his shoulders trembling with every breath, it took everything within me not to take him as mercilessly as his body seemed to ask for. I coated my fingers liberally with the lube I had grabbed before, leaving it besides us and knowing we would be needing more later. His skin was hot and pliable when I rubbed fingertips over his entrance, hearing him sigh out as my first finger pressed forward.

He was so tight that it was hard to believe that he found any pleasure in what I was doing, my finger forced into his reluctant form but his mouth murmuring out in what could have only be a moan of encouragement. I leaned over him further and watched his spine curl as I began to thrust my fingers inward, inch by inch sinking in, his body clenching around me like the slow pulse of a heartbeat. My cock leapt forward in interest again, and I rubbed myself against his thigh if only to relieve some of the pressure that was building with every shuddered breath and rock of hip he gave.

Two fingers then and he was fisting into the sheets, thighs so tense that it seemed like the muscles beneath would just as soon snap from the strain. I scissored inside of him if only to stretch him, starting to feel almost panicked with my own need, and the little sobs he was making in the back of his throat were only urging me on. I should have known well enough, strung out as he was, that it wouldn’t take much to prepare him-- it was hard to tell if he could even feel pain at that point, his eyes cloudy and his lips rounded around each soft murmur. I had only had fingers in him for a few moments and, foolish as I knew it could be to continue with so little preparation, I was sure he was ready when he clenched around me purposefully, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

I took my cock into my hand, coating it with the rest of the lube I had left over, taking more from the tube if only to be sure. I guided myself towards him and let the head rub firmly against him, his breath catching in his throat as he held completely still. Both my hands found his hips then, gripping on as I gave that first careful push, my heartbeat thrumming loud in my ears now that I was finally doing what I ached to ever since he first came up and spoke those few dazed words.

Just as I started to enter him, blinded by the heat of his body, he slumped forward into the pillows, shoulders hunched and breath stilted. I paused, my cock half-way inside of him, to lean forward out of curiosity, placing a hand on his back before shaking slightly. For a second, I wondered if I’d killed him, but I could hear him breathing, even, slow and deep.

The little fuck had the audacity to fall asleep on me.

I might have killed him right then if I didn’t find it almost funny, if I wasn’t simply pressing my hips forward even more until I was buried to the hilt.

His body put up a little resistance but eventually gave in, and I paused to soak up the warmth his body gave off. For being so cold on the outside, he was almost hotter than I could stand on the inside, and I dug my fingers into the his sides if only to keep a hold to the real world that was quickly slipping away from me.

Rocking forward into him was almost surreal, his body opening then in compliance, taking me in deep, and it didn’t take long for me to grow careless, fucking him with rough, uneven bucks that made the mattress creak beneath our bodies. Where I usually didn’t care to look at lovers while we had sex, usually unable to see them in the dark of a room or car, I watched his body all the while, how even the most subtle thrust of my body made his back arch in compliance or his face burry further into the pillow before him.

He didn’t wake up until I was just about done. I had almost forgotten about him by then, really, concentrating on how good it felt, arching into him as deep as his body would take me and grinding roughly against him. Quite suddenly he hissed and grit his teeth, his hips pulling away from me and his thighs clenching.

“Nnh, not so hard…” He murmured into the pillow, his lips leaving a damp mark on the soft cotton. I didn’t slow down in the least, readjusting my grip on his waist before thrusting into him with hard snaps of my hips. He felt too fucking good and I was too far gone to pay heed to his complaint, and he didn’t say anything else after that.

I rolled my hips forward and couldn’t help but relish in the hitch of breath taken in past his teeth, watching as his spine curled each time I took him, how his body stretched to compensate for my hard cock. I found myself fascinated with him, scratching red lines down his white skin, my heart hammering hard as I buried myself inside of him, watching him as his skin crawled with goose-bumps and he struggled to hold still.

I was honestly surprised that he came first. I was getting close myself, overwhelmed by my own approaching peak, when his arms scrambled frantically, clawing into the pillow, and I saw as a violent shiver ran through him in that very last moment. He came hard, I could tell if only by the way he clutched around me, but he didn’t make a sound, only letting out a soft, strangled sob when he finally finished, collapsing into his own mess.

I pressed into him more frantically, closing my eyes and just feeling him, around me and beneath me, his skinny body still trembling as I shot off deep inside of him, smoothing over his now bruised hips with my hands as I rode out my orgasm with a few more firm thrusts. I pulled out fast if only to toss away the condom, not caring if it landed in or near the trash can at the moment. It was too easy to let the world slip by when I felt like I did then, everything seeming cloudy and tranquil in my afterglow. I was still breathing hard when I collapsed besides him, his form still laying face down flat on his stomach so much that I couldn’t even see his face.

We fell asleep like that, him barely breathing into the down of the pillow, face down in his own mess, me stretched out and wondering just what it was that just happened but too relaxed to question my own luck. At the last moment before sleep I asked him what his name was, but he was long gone.

-

He was gone when I woke up, too. It was hard to tell what time of day it was when I finally did wake up, the room lit up in a strange blue that could have either been dusk or dawn. He wasn’t besides me-- all I was left with was a dirty sheet, a used condom, and a sloppily written phone number on a scrap of paper on the pillow.

For all I knew the number could have been real or fake, but I stuck it on the fridge door just in case, stumbling around the apartment aimlessly and curious if he had stolen anything. Not that there was much to steal either way, and I’d been robbed blind a good few times before, but the only things that looked rummaged through were the kitchen cabinets, a leftover box of cereal and a dirty bowl serving as a reminder of the culprit’s last meal before he ran off.

Honestly, I figured I’d never see him again. The thought of that made me a little nauseous, but that could have just as easily been attributed to a hangover, and I drank down some orange juice if only to resolve the pounding in my head. It was a shame things like that were over and done with so soon, but I saw no use in lingering on the thought, though it seemed like every time I passed the refrigerator I found my eyes tracing the barely legible numbers left for me.

Once or twice I almost called, typing in the numbers over and over across the bright screen of my phone, but I never had the guts to press send.

-

I caught him hovering outside my apartment building three days later.

I was just getting home from buying a pack of cigarettes when I saw him there. He didn’t seem to know where he was or why he was there, but that slowly spreading grin of recognition passed across his face when I came towards him. He was weaving back and forth on the balls of his feet, and even a few steps away I could smell the alcohol on him.

We stood staring at each other dumbly for a moment, his eyes glazed, mine searching his face over as if it would offer me an answer. After the pause he finally piped up, his voice rough as if he had either not spoken all day or had been screaming too much.

“…aren‘t you going to invite me in?”

I didn’t feel like he gave me much of a choice.

He tagged along, nearly stepping on the back of my feet as we wound our way up to my room. Once we were inside, he collapsed onto the couch as if he was boneless, not seeming to mind that he had only been there once, or that he barley knew me at all. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what to do with him, wandering around a little aimlessly through the room before I felt him pulling me down to the couch by the sleeve of my shirt.

I went down easily, figuring that I couldn’t put up much of a fight either way. I landed half on top of his stretched out form, his bony knee hitting me in the back of the ribs and his fingers winding distractedly into my hair. He seemed to be gripping out for anything he could, his head rolled back limp over the arm of the couch, eyes shut and mouth slack open as he curled his hands into fists through my hair, tugging hard enough each time that it almost hurt.

I moved carefully until I was laying on top of him, my chest between his legs and my head propped on his chest. I could hear his heartbeat, a frantic hammer inside his ribs, much faster than it should have been beating. I leaned further into him, feeling it flutter against my cheek, nuzzling in and earning a quiet murmur in return.

After a moment I moved a little higher, feeling one of his nipples hard through the thin material of his shirt. I brought my lips to it, biting gently with my teeth,, and when he didn't protest I closed my mouth around it through the cloth and sucked until his shirt was damp and his nipple was pert and sensitive. He started to get hard, jeans tenting and hard-on rising against my chest, and I ran my hands up his sides as his fingers scrambled down my neck.

"...what's your name?" I asked him, and he laughed softly.

"...names don't matter." Was all he dismissed, his words stumbling over his breath as his hands found either side of my face, guiding me up to his own as his lips swallowed me up in a kiss.

Unlike the first time, we were much more slow and leisurely, taking our time to tease and taste, learning just what and where and how to touch. I found that his eyelashes would flutter if I licked across his lower lip or that his thighs would tremble if I sucked one spot on his hip. He quickly learned just how to make me scream with a well placed bite to my stomach and that a few firm tugs at my nipples sent me reeling.

I don't know where he even got the lube from, but once we were completely naked I felt slick fingers wandering between my legs. They were long and agile when he pushed them in deep, two at once, making my back arch hard and my lips fall open for panting breaths. He was still clumsy, drugged and drunk, but watched me with an attentive, lidded stare as he added a third finger and carefully prepared me, far more gentle than I would have imagined him to be.

He pulled out a condom from his shed clothing, putting it on only to lean forward and enter me in one smooth thrust. I threw my head back against the arm of the couch, reaching a hand down and circling my fingers loosely around my cock as he buried himself deep, his chin resting against my shoulder as he grasped at my waist and began rocking against me.

It was fascinating, seeing him move with sinuous arches above me, and I reached up for him and ran my nails down his back. I watched as his brow furrowed and he pressed into me harder, lips panting ragged breaths as he pushed me down into the couch. I started jerking myself faster if only to match his pace, feeling myself grow startlingly close when he adjusted my legs with clumsy hands and started grinding into me in earnest.

I came so hard I saw white flash behind my eyelids. He hit me deep inside, just where I needed it, and before I knew it I was fisting my cock through tight fingers, clenching around him as I crashed into my peak. With nothing to prevent me from it, I spilled messy and hot between us, staining his chest and my own as he still arched and bucked wildly. I felt his eyes on me and I clenched my own shut as he grasped at my waist and came hilt-deep inside, his breath falling as a strained whimper before he collapsed on top of me.

For a moment, I thought he might have fallen asleep on me, just like he had the first time, but after a few minutes of laying there with uneven breaths he pushed slowly up on his elbows, a stupid, self-satisfied smile gracing his pale features. I snorted softly in good humor at him as he pulled out, the both of us hissing as he left my body. He tugged off the condom and, after staring at it dangling limply from his fingertips, he carefully placed it on the ground just besides the couch.

We ended up curled up on the couch as if we'd known each other forever, as if we were much more intimate than a continuing strain of one-night stands. For how awkward and bony as his arms were around me as he spooned against my back, I was strangely comfortable, leaning my head back and tucking it under his sharp chin as he murmured quietly in the first states of sleep.

Even though the sun was just beginning to set, I let myself fall asleep, knowing that he might be gone again by the time I woke up.

-

I did wake up alone, but not so much as before. In the background of my apartment I heard the shower running as I sleepily opened up my eyes, still curled up naked and messy on the couch . Blearily I looked towards the VCR on top of the TV set, watching as it blinked nine forty eight in my direction.

I stumbled towards the bathroom and opened the door, seeing his body through the curtain as if it were some distorted mirage before me. If he knew I was watching he didn't act it, apparently still washing his hair.

The shower curtain felt slippery with soap and water when I pulled it open, and he turned on his heels and looked at me in dazed curiosity, as if I were a stranger invading on his personal time. His smile returned when I stepped into the shower, still a little clumsy myself as I tried to rouse myself from our mid-day nap.

He took a handful of shampoo and reached up to wash through my hair, the large amount far too much for my own shorter, coarser locks. It didn't seem to bother him as the suds ran down my neck and his wrists, his spidery fingertips making lazy circles over my scalp in a way that made my skin tingle and my body finally start to wake up.

We took time slowly soaping each other up, teasing over slick limbs and wet lips. It was far more platonic than anything we'd ever done, somehow innocent as we licked over bare shoulders and caressed down soap-soaked spines. We ended up cleaning up more thoroughly than I thought possible, and I felt cleaner than I had ever been in my life when we stepped out and languidly dried each other off.

It wasn't much longer after that that I found out just what his poison of choice was.

Wrapped up in large, fluffy towels we walked back into the living room, and the couch that we had just abandoned looked terribly comfortable. Before I reclined I first picked up the condom from earlier, walking around into the kitchen to toss it in the trash.

When I returned he was crouched over his own clothing, rifling through his pockets which produced a strange rattling noise every time he moved. I watched, curiously, as he drew out an orange prescription bottle, twisting off the cap and tilting the rim towards his mouth. With ease, as if he was drinking from a glass of water, he swallowed down what looked to be at least a dozen little red pills, glancing at me from the corner of his eyes as he worked them down his throat.

I didn't ask what they were. I doubted I really wanted to know, but at the same time I felt a slight wave of relief-- I had started to question if it was something harder he did, something snorted or smoked, and the pills jangling in his pockets seemed harmless in comparison to some of the stuff I'd seen or done myself. He was popping the lid back on and still watching me as I sat down, and for a few seconds he remained crouched above his discarded jeans before he scrambled onto the couch and propped his head up in my lap.

We spent the rest of the night lounged only in pale yellow towels, a remote in my hand as I flicked through the channels filled with mindless infomercials and risqué cartoons. He fell asleep like he was, head resting heavily against my thigh like a worn out child, and when the clock struck four a.m. I scooped him up and moved into the bedroom. As small as my bed was, it still fit us both easily, and this time I spooned up against his back, wrapping arms around his skinny body. It wasn't hard to fall asleep, naked and entwined like we were, and I nuzzled my face into his hair before I drifted off.

-

It was hard to tell when he'd be back again, but he'd always come. At first, it seemed to happen about once a week-- I'd find him curled up at my door, or hovering around the apartment complex like a moth to a flame. As much as he acted like he couldn't help himself, he always found his way back.

Then he started coming more and more often, spending days at a time passed out on my kitchen floor or stretched over my couch. He never came with more than the clothes on his back and his pockets full of pills. Once he'd brought a half-empty bottle of vodka, another time with a bag full of sex toys that he seemed confused to be carrying, but otherwise he spent his nights either in the clothes he came in or some of mine hanging loosely off of his bony shoulders.

I started to wonder if he had another place to stay, others like me that couldn't help but take him in, but that thought spurred jealous pangs in my gut. Instead, I figured, he could only be what I saw, living day to day with only hand-me-down clothes and bottles of pills. I'd question sometimes, never out loud, where he went all those times that he wasn't there, when he walked out without a word and came back just as easily, but most of me knew that I didn't want to know.

Over the course of a day I would see him swallow down hundreds of pills, of all different shapes and colors, and I always lost my count and my breath when he looked at me with those dazed eyes and beckoned me in closer.

Some days he let me try them, would give me a taste of plasticated pills in candy-coated colors spilled from their marker-scribbled orange bottles, the labels scratched out with messy sharpie censor bars obscuring the names, dates, and, more often than not, the original contents.

I was desperate for him, and the pills became a part of him, so integral to the make of his being that I ate them down, if only to have him a part of me, too.

Once I knew the jittery, sleepless and hungerless night of Adderall that we used to stay up thirty hours straight, spent sucking each other off and doodling restless, crazy spirals over sheets of off-white paper.

Another time I knew the slow lull of Valium, giving me the sensation that there was a gap between my brain and my body, my limbs heavy and keeping me grounded but my brain floating up and up, miles away. We spent that night slumped together at the shoulder like Siamese twins, sharing dozens of cigarettes as infomercials flickered over my tiny TV screen.

There was even the time that he came in with a lazy smirk pulling at his lips, pushing an already half-used trial pack of Viagra into my hands. The little blue pills went down easy and within a few hours we were almost painfully stiff and impatient. We fucked each other for hours until we were both raw and sore, going on even after we came and struggling to find the limits between ultimate pain and pleasure.

Other days he fed me things he called ‘drug cocktails’, three or four pills at a time all swallowed at once, sometimes even taken with alcohol when he assured me that it made everything so much better. I trusted him despite any common sense that scratched at the back of my skull, swallowed down anything and everything he slipped past my lips with a blind, stupid trust that I was unable to shake off whenever I was around him.

The results of those were always so much stranger, the mixed affects mingling in my body, chemicals swirling and leaving me some days dizzy and laying over the bed, numb from the waist down, other times unable to stop moving and running down the street in a manic state with him at my side. Even the days we spent crouched over the toilet, heads tilted together and lips wet with bile, were turned into absolute bliss.

My favorite time was the mix of uppers and downers rinsed down with whiskey, drugging me out to the point that it almost made me sick but left me stretched out over the bed in a daze. I could feel him over me more than I could see him, his spidery fingers weaving strange patterns down my chest, lips leaving a web-sticky trail over my skin.

When his tiny teeth bit into me I swore I could feel it-- right there, the twinges of poison, the chemicals from every pill he‘d ever ingested, numbing me even further and lulling me in to his trap. It was scary in its intensity but I loved every minute of it, wanted to be pulled in to him, and I almost looked forward to the thought of him wrapping me up tight and keeping me safe and all to himself.

He unzipped my pants and nuzzled against my cock and I came within seconds, not really thinking, entirely too absorbed in him to have any restraint over my strung-out body. I remember seeing him smile then, coming into focus through the haze that had taken over my mind, cum threaded into his pale hair and arms surrounding me from all directions. After that I must have passed out, watching him as I slipped away into myself, his mouth covering mine as my eyes rolled back into my head.

Regardless of what I swallowed down, the affects always wore off. He didn’t share them too often with me, always murmuring that he ‘needed them more’ than I did. But on those nights he did I was given just a peak into his world, and it helped me understand that glazed look in his eyes as he swallowed down more.

I often wondered what they were for him though, if they were the things that held him together or if they were the things tearing him apart. Sometimes he'd cough up blood. I once watched him pull out a tooth without even wincing, tossing it in the trash unceremoniously before he kissed me softly.

There was never a time that he wasn't on my mind. When he was there, I couldn't get enough of him, drank him in on those long nights of rapt conversation and passionate embraces. When he was gone I thought I'd go crazy without him. The only things he ever left were half-eaten boxes of food, discarded liquor bottles, fine silvery-blonde hairs on my pillowcase and the empty pill bottles that piled up in every room.

-

By the time I started to realize I'd fallen in love with him, he left me as fast as he had come.

It started off in progression-- he started spending less time, seemed constantly distracted, and then suddenly the days started chipping off. I had no right to question but I started to notice his fingers constantly fidgeting and his eyes darting back and forth as if he was restless and paranoid. Our conversations were whittled down into nothing, and even when I tried for those twisted, in-depth tirades that we used to indulge in so easily he never held up his end, shrugging his shoulders in general disinterest and swallowing another handful of pills.

Then, one day, he stopped showing up at all.

The last time I ever saw him, it was the first time he'd come over in three weeks. I had almost given up on him but my hopes were refreshed when I opened my door to see him there, slumped against the frame and looking demented. His lips were grinning in the strangest way and I could just see, could smell that something was off.

He stumbled in right past me, brushing against me in his haphazard way. He walked right into the kitchen, beginning to open cabinets as if he was looking for something. I asked him if he was hungry as I leaned against a nearby counter but he didn't answer, trembling hands rifling through what little food there was as if in a trance.

Suddenly, as if he just realized I was there, he reeled towards me and kissed me so hard that it nearly split my lip. He pinned me against the counter, clawing sharp nails into my face as he kissed me with a wild desperation, the kind of kiss that made me feel sick and hard all at once. His lips were strangely acidic, like something I'd never tasted on him before, and I didn't like it. I kissed him back like always, though, my body still aching after not having seen him for so long.

He ended up fucking me hard and without a condom against the counter, clawing up and down my chest and back as he pounded into me. He didn't even bother to prepare me and it hurt like hell for days afterwards, but with him I never really knew how to say no. All I could do was grip onto the countertop and hang my head, trying to hide any sound of pain that built up in my throat.

When he was finished he pulled back, murmuring something that sounded like an apology in tone but didn't sound anywhere near English in meaning. He stormed off with heavy steps, half-dressed and stumbling. I tried to stop him, but part of me knew there was no use. Part of me later was ripping me up on the inside for ever letting him go.

I waited for him hopelessly. Barely eating, barely seeing, I waited for anything, stared out my window for hours or strained my ears to hear a tentative knock on the door. He'd ripped through my world like a storm, uprooted me from anything I thought was familiar and safe. The lonely little apartment I'd been so used to now seemed so haunting and empty, littered with the tiny corpses of orange pill bottles.

Losing hope is a terrible, disgusting thing. My last hope remained in a scrap of paper, stuck to the door of my refrigerator, scrawled over in messy digits. My fingers trembled as I pressed them in, sitting and staring at the number for what could have been days or seconds.

I was almost afraid to know. What would I do, if he even picked up? I wondered if he was too far gone to even answer. And what if someone else answered? Jealousy welled up in me again, barely quelled as I tried to unbend my mind and think logically. What if he was dead, overdosed and foaming in some alley somewhere? Then I guessed I'd never know.

I put pressure on my thumb slowly, watched as the send button moved under the weight of it, giving a definite click when I'd done it.

I held my breath and raised the phone.

It blasted the screech and electronic monotone of a phone out of service.