Chapter Text
Aðalbjörn had seventy-two hours left.
He didn’t fully understand what the doctor had told him; like, what? A man can live without a liver for seventy-two hours, Mr Tryggvason.
He didn’t understand it and he was furious. He was furious as usual. This emotion has never left him. Just like anxiety. The anxiety has never failed him, it has always been there by his side, his only inseparable companion in his life. Aðalbjörn would call him in different ways: sometimes it would be his monster, other times A Demon, another time he’d call it The Shadow. Because it has always stayed, just like his own shadow.
It didn’t let him down this time either: Aðalbjörn was terrified. The doctor’s words dumbfounded him. He sat down at the edge of a metal hospital bed. *Hvað?
His Shadow was trying to talk him into taking the bottle of whiskey which had been brought here by a befriended guy from a hospital room nearby. His name was Bárður or something like this. He was in rehab for the thirteenth time. Better than me, Addi thought ironically.
The Shadow was also trying to talk him into committing suicide. That wasn’t the first time either. But the dream of slit wrists or hospital pipes just wouldn’t come true. Aðalbjörn was still hanging somewhere between wakefulness and nightmare which his addiction was. And he couldn’t get out.
And sometimes, he didn’t even want to.
He ended up here two days ago, apparently, he mixed meds with vodka and they couldn’t wake him up. He didn’t remember any of this. Then, apparently, he was in delirium and was screaming his head off over the whole ward from five a.m. until ten o’clock. Whole five hours. But he didn’t remember that either. There was a black hole in his memory. No matter how hard he tried to make his ethanol-covered brain work, he couldn’t recall any of these events.
Now, he was sober. He was experiencing overwhelming terror. The Shadow was handing him whiskey, tempting him. Aðalbjörn couldn’t function sober anymore, he couldn’t deal with the reality. His hands were itching to take it.
His twelfth rehab meant that he should already give up on drugs and booze. But he didn’t want to. Somehow, thanks to them he felt better, he could forget about the reality which frightened him so badly. That was so much easier: just drink, forget, squash all the human feelings which stayed somewhere inside him.
It seemed as if he heard a creak of bedsprings. Besides The Shadow, there was someone else. His wife. The Loneliness. His lover and faithful companion. She sat right beside him, stroking his hair, shoving the bottle into his face. Addi didn’t want it, struggling, but he lost and opened the bottle. He took a few gulps and kept the rest for later. For a rainy day.
“I can’t sleep without it,” he excused himself, lying to himself.
He fell asleep but he woke up three hours later, covered with cold sweats, filthy. He fell on the pillows again and tried to look for the bottle again in the impenetrable darkness.
It wasn’t there. He got irritated and he got up. His brain said “**nei”, his labyrinthus said “nei”. He stumbled and almost bumped into the wall. He cursed quietly and switched on the light. Then he found his half-empty bottle, pressed it to his lips immediately. There was something left at the bottom. He hid it under the mattress of the bed.
The warmth spread all over his body, absorbing into his every feeling cell, into every smallest vein. He sighed with utter delight, his wife-Loneliness smiled at him and The Shadow sighed with relief. They lay down beside him when he got back to bed and fell asleep again.
***
The band manager was pissed off; they were in the middle of the tour, somewhere in the South-East of the US and the fucking vocalist and guitarist at the same time mixes booze with drugs and is unable to go out at the gig in Kansas.
“He’s fucked up,” he gnarled while Svavar, Sæþór and Gummi were watching him quietly. “What does he think he’s doing?!”
“Stop nagging,” Sæþór mumbled but too quietly, he didn’t have enough clout.
Svavar was chain-smoking. His leg was shaking and his hands were too. He was nervous. Furious. He felt like crashing a beer bottle on the fuckin’ manager’s head. It was tempting because the bottle was within reach.
“Shut up already!” he raised his voice and got up from the sofa. Suddenly, it went completely still. Svavar was a rather calm, quiet person, he had lots of patience and a sense of humour; that was the first time when the rest of the band saw him like this.
He rushed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
He slowed down when he was outside of the hotel. It was cold in Kansas at this time of the year, so he pressed the hat over his forehead and put his hands into his pockets. He didn’t want to be recognized, not then.
The situation in the band had been bad and rotten for quite a while now. Everyone knew about Addi’s addiction from the very beginning and it had never bothered anyone. When the situation got worse, Aðalbjörn would just go on rehab and he was functioning well after a few days. He would then stay away from alcohol for a week maybe, sometimes two weeks, once it was even a month.
However, the addiction would always prevail.
The manager had never any serious problems with him (unless Addi, completely shitfaced, was up to some mischief and beat some guys in a pub) because Aðalbjörn had always been ready to play the gig, regardless of his state, it didn’t matter if he drank a whole bottle of vodka or “just” over a dozen of beers. Sometimes, right before the concert. He was able to drink from the early morning and still be ready to give his best during the show.
However, this time something has changed. It was worse. And Svavar knew it.
Addi’s addiction went out of control when he added some drugs to it. It’s tranquillizers, he’d say and Svavar would never ask more. Nevertheless, Addi wouldn’t even tell him more. He just didn’t let anyone into his own, private world, he was too proud for that. No matter how hard Svavar tried to gain his trust, Addi would just withdraw at the very last moment and close in his shell.
Svabbi knew that Aðalbjörn was struggling with his demons. Just like everyone. But he couldn’t keep them on a leash. He was drinking his problems down, drugging them, and they would come back anyway. Just like a boomerang. With doubled hitting power.
Whether he liked it or not, Svavar had to confess that he was worried about him. He was worried as hell. But he had never said it out loud.
Besides, there was something more to it. Something that took Svavar long months to get used to it and only then, accept it.
He was unarguably and unconditionally in love with Addi.