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It happens on a Wednesday, fittingly enough. He’d never liked Wednesdays. They always felt like treading water in an endless deep end. His father had died on a Wednesday.
He’s three steps out of the door before he vomits in the street. He’s been shaking for two days, just hand tremors at first, then full body shudders that leave him curled around himself, too weak to stand. He isn’t sure why he thought he’d be able to tackle work that day, the cramps had started around midnight last night, and the cravings. Bone deep, like the need was carved into his guts. His knees buckle, but some last vestige of himself finds the instinct to grab the rail of his front steps, and he catches himself.
Elliot spits once, twice, ignores the stares of passersby. Not important. Nothing is important, his world has narrowed to the eye of a needle, and in the centre of it: morphine. Fuck, he’d take anything. He’s already torn his bathroom apart in search of anything to take the edge off, already run a spit-wet finger around the inside of his mortar in search of any errant grains of the drug. Sitting at his coffee table, finger in his mouth and sweating through his shirt he’d thought, this is it. This is rock bottom. If only he’d known.
His hand slips on the railing, sweat-slick, and a lurch of nausea leaves him blinking back tears. Half pain, half self pity. He’d never done well with illness.
The room tilts like the deck of a boat under his feet when he finally makes it back through the door of his apartment. Shayla’s empty room next door feels like more of an affront that it usually does. I wouldn’t be like this if she wasn’t-
He cuts the thought loose, paces on rubbery legs through to the bathroom as his trembling hands make awful work of his shirt. He gives up as he collapses thankfully to the cold tile floor, the cheap polyester sticking to his oversensitive skin in a way that makes him want to cry. He’s already crying, maybe, the side of the tub his face is resting on is wet, his breath is short. He can’t tell, there’s nothing in his head but dumb blind want and pain.
Time oozes, Elliot flushes hot, cold, back to hot. His shirt is sticking to his back with sweat, but he’s shivering so hard he can barely keep his head straight. He thinks he hears a knock on his front door, the distinctive rattle where the latch is loose, but dismisses it. He’s not expecting anyone, no one would come looking for him. Loneliness seizes his lungs, squeezes the last of the breath from them.
“Oh, shit.”
The voice jerks Elliot from where he was retreating back and back under the press of his want, familiar and low and shocked. He squints, the light too bright for his sensitive eyes, and he smells pot and cologne and something surges in his chest. “Leon.” He groans, and tries to right himself with weak arms. Leon helps him sit up against the side of the tub, and the shame is curling through him like a second bloodstream now, thick and hot.
“Elliot.” Leon sounds worried, words tight and clipped like he’s attempting to keep himself calm. “What have you taken?”
“Nothing.” Elliot mutters, drawing his knees close to his chest like it could help the pain in his stomach. He feels dangerously close to throwing up again, and slits his eyes open to judge the distance between himself and the toilet.
Leon’s hand is on his face now, tilting his chin up to see him better. Elliot knocks his hand away, then regrets it immediately. Between the pain and the aching sadness, all he wants is to be held. Cared for, looked after. Everything he’d managed to bury deep down is slowly drifting back to the surface, and he yearns for Leon’s skin on his oversensitive skin like he yearns for the morphine.
“You can tell me, Elliot.” Leon is saying, and Elliot tunes back in just as the throbbing in his head spikes. He grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Tell me what you’ve taken.”
It clicks into place then, understanding a slow creep through his clouded mind.
‘I’m not-” Elliot tried to sit up straighter, tried to look a little less like he wasn’t about to shake into a puddle on the floor. “Haven’t taken anything. That’s the problem.”
Understanding blooms on Leon’s face, and he drops his hand from Elliot’s face before making a move to turn the overhead light off. The only light now is from the tiny window above the sink, and Elliot sighs, tips his head back against the side of the tub. His head feels like someone is attempting to jam an icepick through it, like it’s swollen too big for his skull. God, he wants a hit, he can smell the pot on Leon’s jacket, knows that he probably smoked half a joint on the way to Elliot’s apartment.
“What’re you doing here?” He asks, finally, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Leon is still crouched in front of him, his mouth pulled into something concerned. Elliot searches his face for any sign of disappointment, or judgement, and drops his eyes to the tile floor when he finds none. Leon. His constant, a good thing from a terrible place.
Leon’s mouth quirks into a nervous smile, and his eyes dart away and then back to Elliot’s face, like he isn’t sure if he wants to look. “Thought I could hole up here for a few hours before you got home from work.” He wobbles a little, puts a hand on Elliot’s knee to steady himself. He can feel the touch through to his bones, and closes his eyes as tears prick at them.
“‘M not going to work.” Elliot manages to get out, before his stomach suddenly twists, red hot pain, and he’s scrambling forward to vomit into the toilet. Leon’s hand settles immediately onto the middle of his back, rubbing slow comforting circles as Elliot coughs. “Fuck.” He chokes, and Leon doesn’t say anything, just presses his forehead to Elliot’s back.
They sit like that for a second, silent, breathing. Elliot times his breaths with the slow rub of Leon’s hand against the sweaty centre of his back, closes his eyes and wills the nausea lapping at the edges of his consciousness to fade.
“How d’you always end up like this, man?” It’s barely a question, they both know how. It’s a constant cycle; Elliot detoxes, he stays clean, he has an episode, he relapses. It was Shayla’s death this time, and he’d used and he’d used until he had nothing left.
When Elliot doesn’t reply, Leon squeezes his side once before standing. Elliot can barely lift his head to watch him go, and his stomach sinks lower with every step Leon takes away from him. He watches him cross through to the kitchen, but then his stomach lurches and he has to drop his head back onto his arms. His head feels tight and hot, like it could pop. A hot flush goes through him, and he groans against the skin of his arm.
“You should’ve called me.” Leon calls, and Elliot can hear the noise of the tap, a glass being set down. He doesn’t know how to express why he couldn’t do that, the shame and the guilt and the feeling of letting Leon down. No one wants a stupid fucking junkie, and so it’s up to Elliot to deal with it. Leon’s footsteps enter the bathroom again. “C’mon.” He says, and Elliot lets him help him sit on the edge of the bath, lets him press a glass of water into his hand. It’s wet on the outside, slick, and he almost drops it as his hands shake. Leon closes his big hand around Elliot’s, guides the water to his mouth like Elliot is a child. His throat hurts with unshed tears.
“Are you high?” Elliot asks, voice rough as he watches Leon set the glass down by the bathroom sink. At some point, he’d closed the bathroom door, and Elliot feels distinctly less anxious for it. He shudders, suddenly freezing.
“You cold?” Leon asks, and when Elliot shrugs, and nods, he folds Elliot into his body without a second thought. He’s still sweating, stinks like puke and anxiety and sweat, but Leon puts his palm to Elliot’s cheek to hold his head against his chest with no hesitation. It’s only then that Elliot allows some tears to slip out, the haze of withdrawal making everything seem so foggy and distant that Leon’s touch shines through. Elliot can hear his heartbeat, slowed his breath to it just as he had done with his hand before. Leon, his totem, the calm pillar in the seastorm of his life. “Let’s get you in the shower.”
Elliot lets Leon tug his shoes off his feet, undo the buttons that had evaded him so spectacularly earlier. Undershirt over his head, pants thrown to the corner of the bathroom. It’s a little different to how this usually goes, between them. Usually Elliot doesn’t feel like he’s dying. Usually.
The water is blessedly lukewarm, and he tips his face up into the stream like a baptism. Leon shuffles around outside of the shower curtain, the toilet flushes, Elliot hears the clink of his belt as Leon tidies up. After a minute he sits on the floor of the tub, his legs too weak to hold him up. He closes his eyes, concentrates on the feeling of the water hitting his back and not Leon’s vague figure past the curtain.
The part of him that doesn’t want him here is shrinking under the feeling of being cared for, but the shame still lingers. Shame that Leon has to see him junk sick and helpless, shame that he’s letting himself be cared for like a baby, shame that he can’t do this on his own. His mother’s voice cracks like a whip through his sore head, pickyourselfup, pickyourselfup, pickyourselfuppickyourselfuppickyour-
The shower curtain opens, and then Leon reaches across to lower the shower head a little. The sleeve of his sweater gets drenched, shiny wet, and Elliot finds he can’t tear his eyes from it. Pick yourself up, he thinks, his own voice. He catches Leon’s hand as he moves away, brings it to his cheek and holds it there, lets his eyes slip closed.
“You’re burning up.” Leon says, caught between worry and affection. His big dark eyes are soft when Elliot looks, the corners of his mouth downturned. Gently, he traces his thumb over Elliot’s cheek, his lips. “When was the last time you showered, babe?”
Elliot turns his face into Leon’s palm, and shrugs. “Week?”
“How long’ve you been without a hit?”
It’s this, this knowledge of his addiction, that makes Elliot the most uneasy. It’s like a taboo between them, and whenever Leon tries to bring it up Elliot shuts down. It’s been around in his life far longer than Leon, and will be there after he’s gone. This detox means nothing, because it always means nothing. The pit of his stomach aches, more deep sadness than nausea.
“Four days.” He says, barely loud enough to be heard. Leon scratches his fingers through the bristly hair on the back of Elliot’s skull.
“You wanna joint?” He asks, and Elliot bites down on the disappointment that wells up in him. Leon’s utter refusal to enable him is a bitter pill under his left molar, cyanide. He’d thank him for it later.
“Yeah.” He says.
Leon washes his hair for him, first. He squeezes a generous amount of shampoo into the palm of his hand, gets the front of his sweater wet to match the arm when he leans in close. Elliot closes his eyes and tries to will his tensed up muscles looser as Leon works the shampoo into his hair. Tender, careful movements, wiping the soap away from his eyes. It’s a bottle that Darlene had left at his place, the same scent she’d used since she was a kid, and Elliot lets it wrap around him. Confusing mix of home and comfort and childish fear, his nose pressed to the crown of her head while they hide from their mother. Leon rinses his hair, and Elliot thinks, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Afterwards, Leon hangs his sweater up to dry, and Elliot shakes and sweats his way through a joint that manages to take the edge off a little. Leon kisses his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks, big hand cupped around his jaw.
“Getting skinny.” He murmurs, and Elliot just tucks his face against Leon’s neck to hide his face. The loneliness is setting in again, and all he can is press as close as he can to Leon and ride it out. He wants to crawl inside his chest cavity, set up a home between his heart and his lungs. He knows Leon would let him, too. Elliot knows he’d take advantage of that.
Pick yourself up, his father’s voice, warped from years of forgetting. The room twists around him, and Elliot squeezes his eyes shut so he can’t see it happening. This isn’t even the worst of it, yet. Leon’s fingers play through his wet hair, sweetly oblivious.
“It’s a means to an end.” He comments, out of the blue, and Elliot wishes he had a dollar for every time he’d told himself that. “We’ll keep you clean after this.”
“‘S impossible.” Elliot mumbles, and Leon snorts.
“With that attitude, sure.” He’s silent for a long moment after that, as though he’s waiting for Elliot to counter with something. When Elliot doesn’t speak up, he says, “You just gotta pick yourself up and keep movin’.”
The words are like a slap to the face, enough of a surprise to make Elliot laugh, a short, shocked noise. Leon is looking at him like he’s crazy.
“What?”
Elliot laughs again, and the room is spinning around him, sweat rolling down his forehead. Maybe he is crazy. “You’re right.” He says, and covers his face with his hands, grits his teeth. “I’ve been hearing that my whole life.”
Leon sounds concerned when he mutters, “Elliot?”
He’s crying, he realises. At some point the laughter had turned to that wracking, hopeless sobbing he saves for when he’s truly alone. It’s mortifying, but he can’t get himself to stop. He feels Leon’s hand settle on his back, and the touch only makes him cry harder. It’s the gripping loneliness, it’s the pain, the guilt, the shame, it’s the deep well of love in his chest and the knowledge that even that isn’t enough to save him. He puts his hand over his mouth, digs his bitten-short nails into his cheek hard enough to hurt, and meets Leon’s gaze.
Leon’s pulled his hair into a knot on top of his head, strands sticking all over the place, and somehow that is enough to calm Elliot. The mundanity of it is striking amongst everything else that this day has crumbled into: Leon’s dreads, the red hair tie, the concerned tilt of his head.
“Tell me.” He says, and Elliot opens his mouth, and he tells him. Everything; Shayla, Vera, that car trunk out of a nightmare, scrabbling for dealer after dealer before coming up dry like he always does. The morphine that’s meant to help the loneliness but only deepens it, how Leon’s presence is the only one he can stand, how he can’t let him see him stoned.
“The problem is,” Elliot says, breathless, throat raw, “You can’t help me.”
Leon’s brow furrows. “Says who.”
“No, it’s,” He drags his hands down his face, smears tears and sweat to his mouth. “It’s fine.” Clarity is as blinding as the dim sky outside. He shifts to lean his forehead against Leon’s shoulder, breathes out shuddering slow. “This is all mine.”
The silence that follows is unsure, heavy. Leon, who talks a mile a minute, always filling the space, seems lost for words. “It doesn’t have to be.” He says, finally, and Elliot presses his nose into the sleeve of Leon’s t-shirt. Sweat and pot and detergent, clean and not-clean at once, comforting.
“It does.” He says, so oddly calm despite the stomach pain and the shivering and the splitting headache. Leon’s hand comes to cup his jaw, rubs his thumb through Elliot’s three-day stubble. His lips graze Elliot’s forehead, and Elliot thinks that this is what real love must be like. It makes him feel flushed and over-warm, and he squeezes his eyes shut as his stomach twists. Pain, nerves.
Minutes pass, and then Leon heaves a sigh. He pinches Elliot’s cheek, mock-playful, “Fine.” He sounds resigned, not entirely pleased, but relenting. “God knows I can’t convince you to do anything you don’t wanna.”
Elliot bites his tongue to keep himself from telling Leon how he doesn’t even want to detox, really. Let Leon believe that this is some half-baked attempt at cleaning himself up, and not what it really was. Leon puts up with so much of his shit that he deserves Elliot cutting him some slack, sometimes. Besides, this was his now. His problem, his struggle, his way to claw back some semblance of himself from the pit his life had fallen into the past year. It’s the depression it’s the addiction it’s the fucked up shadowy thing he refuses to put a name to. It’s his, and not many things in his life have been so easy to put a hand on and lay claim to.
“Hey,” Leon says, and rocks Elliot gently by the shoulders. The shaking is back, the relentless shiver that makes him feel sore and exhausted and weak. “How about something to eat.”
“Thank you.” Elliot mutters, voice hoarse. It’s not for the food he’ll undoubtedly throw up in ten minutes time, and the way Leon’s eyes soften tells him that he knows that.
“Anytime.” Leon says, and Elliot closes his eyes as he leans in to kiss his forehead. It’s a sweet sort of pain to know that he has to quit relying on Leon like this, and he lets the feeling wash over him, some sort of nameless punishment. Leon kisses him again, and Elliot hopes to God the baptism in the bath was enough as he brings shaking hands to cup Leon’s precious, loving face.