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Harry knows he has to stop. What he is doing to himself is bad, he knows it is. He should have never taken that first pill from his mom’s cabinet, never should have asked Campbell for help with anything, but it’s too late now. Everything feels so bad, and it’s just gonna keep getting worse. He needs it, something, to cope, because everything is falling apart.
He remembers looking at the ends of his fingers, and his toes, after the first Xanax, and thinking they looked a little blue. They tingled. It was scary, like his hands and feet belonged to someone else. Coming down was just hours of him moaning into his blankets, rubbing his hands down his face, through his hair. The back of his throat was red and raw like it was burned, so sensitive it hurt to swallow. He bites into a Ding Dong and sobs at the way the waxy chocolate glues to the roof of his mouth. Campbell gave him a list of vitamins to take for next time, so it would be better, told him to go easy. Harry got the vitamins. He did not go easy.
The thought lives in the back of his head the whole time, ever since that first pill, but he senses it’s becoming a real problem when he starts to need a bump of something just to start the day. He can’t bear to simply be awake sober first thing in the morning, has to ease himself into it. Maybe all the coffee in his own fucking kitchen being gone helped speed that process along. He has a system for uppers and downers, too, based on how he feels when he wakes up. Casual drug users do not establish “systems,” internal or otherwise. Like it happened overnight, he’s a fucking junkie.
Every single work shift, all he can think about is going home and getting high. He counts the seconds, waiting. It is all he looks forward to in the day. Sometimes if he thinks about it too hard he gets worked up, tears stinging in his eyes, that’s how desperate he is for it. It doesn’t take him long to spiral. After that there aren’t many hours of the day he’s sober at all.
Harry misses his dad, which is fucking stupid, because even if they were back home he’d still be dead. He wears his signet ring, on his left hand like his dad, and spins it on his finger, angry at him for leaving him alone, even if he didn’t leave him here. Swigs cocaine water out of his father’s mug. Disgusting. What would his dad think? What would he say to Harry, if he could see him now? It’s useless to wonder, to torture himself over, but he still does. At every searing snort and bitter pill, he does.
But the drugs run out. Campbell stops responding to his text messages. He’s just gonna let Harry rot? Fucking bastard. Harry deserves it, he guesses, for relying on him in the first place. But he cleared the pharmacy, and Harry’s mom’s stash ran out months ago. Campbell made sure he was Harry’s only choice, and he could withhold whenever he wants. Harry won’t pretend to understand Campbell’s whims. He’s too weak to do anything about it, anyway. This first denial should have been a red flag, but Harry's never been great at spotting those.
The few days sober feel like someplace else, just a little, if Harry ignores the loud strangers in his house, eats what’s left of his dwindling rations alone in his room. Work isn’t an option, even if he wanted to go, which he doesn’t. He feels awful, cold and hot at the same time, sweaty and aching. Is he going through withdrawal? He does it alone, and it’s okay, because he spends most of his time alone, now. Why should this be any different?
But then Allie comes, brings Jason and Shoe, the latest dicknose to join the Guard, to take his food away. She touches him, just a little, before she leaves. Holds his hand. It’s the first time he’s touched anyone in months, he realizes, and he desperately returns the touch, cries when she takes her hand away.
‘Feel better,’ she says. Harry would feel better if she’d just lie down with him, let him put his cheek to her chest and listen to her breathing, her heartbeat, let him touch her more. It’s not about liking her, or sex, or whatever, even though he misses that too; he just wants to hold someone. To be held, by someone. He wishes that person could be Allie. He wishes they lived in a world where he still gets what he wants, even sometimes. Just sometimes would be enough, but it’s always, always never. Harry used to get everything he wanted.
So he sleeps through Thanksgiving. What does he have to be thankful for, now? His twenty awful new roommates? He hates them, sometimes especially when they’re nice. Mickey, for example, left him a little plate of lemon bars outside his door, even after Harry snapped at him earlier in the kitchen. He refuses to be mean to Harry, no matter how mean Harry is to him, and he hates him for it. Annalie did some laundry for him, which Harry desperately needed but felt absolutely pathetic to accept.
Kelly comes to tell him about the poison at Thanksgiving, rips the blanket off him and throws his clean clothes at him. Makes him take a walk with her. He shouldn’t hold onto any hope that they might get back together. He makes his desire clear and she shows no sign of reciprocating, but it’s nice that she won’t give up on him, that she keeps taking care of him even when it seems like lately she hardly likes him. Brings him his favorite breakfast, even though they fight.
He knows Campbell is manipulating him, too. He does, he knows it, and he can’t bring himself to care, because he’s still getting what he wants in the end, isn’t he? First of all, Campbell will give him more drugs if he does what Campbell wants. That's priority one. He’ll get his own house back. He won’t have to do the shitty work he doesn’t want to do.
Harry doesn’t want to hurt Allie. It sucks that he has to, so he can get what he wants. She hurt him, too, when she had to. That’s a stupid justification because it’s not even close to the same, not in scale, not in degree, but Harry will use it. He’ll justify himself however he has to, every time, because he’s just so tired of feeling bad.
He just wants to have fun, again. Sacrifice is hard, it hurts too much, Harry doesn’t understand how to do it and it feels like it’s too big to learn by himself. Who here will help? No one has, in these five months, except Kelly, who won’t give him what he needs. There is no help for him, so he can’t do it. He won’t.
Campbell’s smile is not nice, when he looks at Harry, begging for a pill on his floor with pathetic tears in his eyes. He likes seeing Harry this way, helpless, needing him, takes pleasure in having power over him. But his leash is longer, with Campbell holding it as opposed to Allie. Besides, there on the floor, rolling his fingertips together as the drugs hit his blood and blast his pupils wide, Harry can admit to himself that he likes it, too.
He likes having someone to tell him what to do, as long as that person gives him what he wants, too. He isn’t stupid; Campbell will screw him over, he knows, and he won’t be able to see it coming or stop it when he does. His power here is illusory, just like it was back home. They don't have a plan, apart from whatever Campbell is brewing, and there's no chance it will be more functional than Cassandra's. But it doesn't matter, because Harry doesn't want to anymore. He's sick of it, so he'll take the quick relief.
Before that, before it all gets taken away again, at least Harry can fucking get high.