one more time, because IJ hates me.
Familiar smoke, familiar smell, familiar voice; Heroin’s head snapped up and he was lost in staring. Nothing had changed; his heart was skipping beats and he remembered. Backstage with Grunge, his guitarist fingers wrapped in Heroin’s hair. Pressed back against InternationalFountain’s silver sphere, Grunge warm and tight against him as the water shot out, all around them a rush of ice cold drops pounding like their very own Niagara Falls. The rumpled bed sheets and gray Seattle light spilling into an ancient apartment; Grunge’s breath warm on the back of his neck; the way their mouths fit perfectly together. Heroin’s heart stopped. Overhead, “Come as You Are” started.
“Grunge.” Everything was in that word; five years that had felt ten and neither of them exactly who they were. Heroin had been at each death, had stood invisible beside Kurt as he put the gun to his chin; had been inside Layne’s veins when his heart stopped beating. All of it, Heroin’s fault. He reached out, fingers brushing the edge of Grunge’s shirt, only a flicker of what they’d had.
Other genre gods and faithless musicians had passed though Heroin’s life in the time they’d been separated. New bands were rising in Grunge’s shadow; Nirvana still carried the anthem of disenfranchised youth. Things changed and remained; Heroin could almost pretend it was ’92 again, home in a Seattle coffeehouse, right before Nevermind topped the charts and everything began to build and spiral and crescendo. All he had to do was close his eyes to see it, remember, experience by drinking in all the other sensations of being right next to Grunge.
The waitress glanced over at them and frowned, making Heroin blink and look at his ex lover again. The cigarette, he smiled. A quick caress of power and she looked away again, confused. But it’d been enough to jog Heroin out of reminiscing. He couldn’t afford the joy or the pain; not with so many other hands plunging through his heart strings.
“Grunge.” Everything was in that word; a hope that died out of necessity and love that still hurt. “Why?”