Dave Henderson (devotee) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2009-12-20 19:52:00 |
|
|||
Current music: | the needle and the damage done - neil young / song to say goodbye - placebo |
You were mother nature's son/someone to whom I could relate.
Who: Dave Henderson, Marijuana, Heroin; partially complete thread to be finished via comments.
What: A little part of it in everyone/but every junkie's like a settin' sun.
where: Dave's apartment, ending in the Highway sub-basement under the stairs.
When: Sunday evening.
Warnings: Language, hard drug use, drug overdose, mortal character death.
Dave's usual dosage, already higher than the typical heroin user, simply wasn't enough to give him the usual euphoria. Unknown to Dylan and warily watched by Marijuana's presence in the back of Dave's mind, the mortal had been gradually upping the dosage, chasing that blissful high. Chasing, chasing, but never really catching, not anymore. It was to the point where no matter how much he shot up, all he was doing was avoiding the withdrawal symptoms. And after so many stressful days, so many days spent looking over his shoulder for Death, so many days spent fearing Hell, so many days simply spent fearing, Dave simply wanted to feel good again. The flare of the lighter, that made him feel a bit better, applying it first to the joint between his lips and then to the bottom of the spoon and watching powder bubble into liquid. Keeping an eye on the slowly filling needle, Dave didn't think too hard about the fact that there was more liquid in that needle than he'd ever injected into his veins.
After all, he desperately needed to feel good. And, oh, fuck, it felt good. The drug shot through his system like wildfire through a forest and Dave groaned loudly, shifting on the couch, running a hand through just-newly-sweat-dampened hair. When his hand came out shiny with perspiration, Dave glanced down at his fingertips, swallowing hard when he saw that they were slowly turning blue.
He knew what that meant. Already his breathing was slowing, slowing far more than was usual, and he reached for his cell phone. After a moment, though, he dropped the cell to the carpet floor, already feeling Marijuana stirring in the back of his mind and knowing, hoping desperately, that his boss would arrive in time.
------------
Across the street, Marijuana's head snapped up from his dinner plate, eyes looking not at Heroin, but through him, as they turned green instead of blue and, for just a moment, black seemed toseep out from the iris. "Dave." Marijuana's voice was tight as he stood, barely paying any attention to his movements and it was that lack of attention that had his chair falling and his elbow sending his plate crashing to the floor. Instead, his attention was was on the mortal across the street, Marijuana burrowing deep within his system, watching as the heroin did its damage too quickly for Marijuana to try to fight it.
Withdrawing his consciousness from Dave's bloodstream, his eyes actually focused on Heroin this time, Marijuana looking like all he wanted to do was tear across the street at that very instant, instead of wasting time asking if his husband was coming along. But, still, he managed to force out the words.
"You coming?"
If Heroin took more than a moment to answer, Marijuana wouldn't wait. He needed to get across the street and he needed to do it as quickly as was possible.
Heroin had shut his eyes as he felt the last of his substance forced from the syringe into Dave and known it was too much. And even as Marijuana felt it too, as he looked at Heroin, the Opiate felt himself being pulled by the power of an imminent death. Sacrifice. It wasn’t a word that he allowed himself to speak, but it was a tie all the same and for this death, this sacrifice on his alter, Heroin would be there in flesh and bone as well as spirit and substance. A slight shiver ran down each vertebra in turn, cold and taut, as he slipped from the chair and followed in Marijuana’s shadow. Dave’s death was looming. Heroin’s mouth filled with the flavours of the life lived; the weed strong and so very identifiable that Heroin’s glance turned sharp as he stared at this husband’s back. Every moment had been borrowed, months had been borrowed and they had been called in – Heroin embraced the cold that was his own Shadow rising underneath his skin. Chocolate mixed with weed as they barreled through the doors of the apartment building; every step turned the sweetness bitter. This was an end; this was the end; Heroin could barely swallow as the heroin in Dave began quieting his lungs.
The door was closed again, perhaps it had never been open, Heroin couldn’t say but he and Marijuana and Dave seemed more than the apartment could hold. Hundreds upon hundreds of deaths pressed down upon Heroin, all those words, all those promises, and all the pain he had ever taken in the last moments. But this time, he lingered back and waited for Marijuana to take a place near Dave. As Heroin paused in that moment, the tilt of his head and the quality of life and perseverance of memory painted another image onto the room – and Dave was taller and thinner and it wasn’t just heroin in his veins that weighed against a body destroyed. Heroin swallowed the familiar grief and lurched to his user’s side, laid his hand on Dave’s shoulder and let Death’s approach add radiance to Heroin’s own appearance.
This would be one point in time when Marijuana wasn't fully focused on Heroin. In fact, he didn't - couldn't - look at Heroin past that first glance. This was his Dave, dying, laying on that couch with his lungs incapable of drawing enough air and Marijuana, looking back, wouldn't remember any of the panicked walk over to the apartment, wouldn't recognize shoving the door so hard that it almost broke, wouldn't remember the steps it took to him to falter in front of the couch and then kneel, reaching for one of Dave's hands. Heroin's hand on Dave's shoulder made Marijuana's head jerk toward his brother and for a horrible moment, he wanted to beg his brother-husband to make it stop, to save his best friend, to save the mortal who had given Marijuana so much. For another horrible moment, he wanted to scream at Heroin in anger, in anger for taking his Dave away from him so abruptly and cruelly, but he swallowed that urge. What was important at that moment was Dave; not Marijuana, not Heroin. Squeezing the mortal's hand tightly, Marijuana's eyes were green as he stared up at his mortal. Dave, who was trying to control the muscle spasms wracking his body and stop that horrible gurgling sound welling up from his throat, spent only a few seconds gazing up at Heroin. Heroin, while the god personified his addiction, he didn't personify his love.
Dave only had eyes for Marijuana, as comforting as Heroin's presence was. Dishwater-dull, panicked mortal eyes fixed on Marijuana's, pleading, wanting, wanting something that Dave knew Marijuana couldn't deliver. "Dave." Marijuana's voice was rough, ragged, and, yet, had a touch of calm. He needed to be calm for Dave at the moment, even if his eyes were welling up with tears. The words he spoke, well, he had spoken them before, too many times to count, but they had to be said. "Dave. You gave yourself over to me. You have been my employee, my second, my lover, my best friend, my Dave. You've served willingly and freely and with all of yourself and as you find yourself being released from my service, know that I am thankful, grateful, for all that you have done for me. Know that I love you with everything I am. Know that you will always be remembered, always cherished, always have a place in my heart." Dave bit a blue lip, forcing out words. "Heard the blessing before. Heard it as Jake bled out. Want you, real words." Tremors wracked his body, breaths came with more difficulty, Dave closing his eyes briefly.
Fear shot through Marijuana as Dave's eyes closed. Not yet, not yet. "Dave, I love you with everything I am." He hadn't forgotten that Heroin was in the room, not completely, but... almost. This was his Dave and the fact that he was married didn't stop Marijuana from surging up, taking Dave's cool cheeks in his hands and, nuzzling against the corner of Dave's mouth for just a moment of consideration, pressing his lips against the mortal's softly. "Out of all of them, I- you're- you're everything." Marijuana's calm voice cracked and he shook his head uselessly. There was nothing more to say but Dave, just nodded, trying to draw enough air as he reached for Marijuana's hand again. Slowly, he also reached for Heroin's. "Scared." The word came, gasped out, and Dave started to cry silently as the muscle spasms increased, his eyes half-open, looking between the two of them, almost like he was pleading for them to make it stop, to stop the pain, the death he knew was coming.
They couldn't and Dave knew that, but it didn't stop the sobs, little gurgling gasps of air and tears, from coming. Marijuana's tears fell as well and he let go of Dave's hand to shift up onto the couch beside him, holding Dave's back against his chest and wrapping his legs around the mortal's waist as if that could hold Dave there with him. "Love you, love you, love you." He whispered repeatedly. Dave could barely form words "Love y-" His voice was cut off by another wrenching gasp for air and Marijuana knew that his second only had a few short minutes of life left at most.
There were a hundred years of deaths which Heroin had been part of; one hundred years and so many more, filled with overdoses and diseases and pain, oh yes, more than names or faces, he remembered the pain. The final hours of his acolytes where their god stood before them, flooded their blood and their mind and took and took and took were not always private moments. Heroin had grown used to company. Death was a familiar acquaintance, for all his distance, and Pestilence who cracked jokes and laughed as Heroin tried to ease the pain of his while their lungs slowed and their immune systems decayed. There had been Glibt, in the eighties and it had been Grunge’s musicians that took a toll on Heroin in the nineties; Phaedra had come for him in Layne’s close room and Coke had distracted him as Belushi died. But none of them, none of them, had ever been closer, dearer, nearer to Heroin’s disciple than Heroin himself. Until Marijuana. That was a refrain Heroin was too used to singing and now the familiarity of it was suffocating. Until Marijuana was love, stable, and complete; until Marijuana was happiness in safety; until Marijuana was trust, deserved and unreserved. And now, of course, it was loss; for all Heroin’s power was useless before this love, this addict and this OtherGod.
There was a voice whispering from the cold. It called to Heroin, wound out of the shadow that lurked underneath his skin and reminded him, for all those who stood with him in these moments, the hours of death, they all had secrets to keep. Only Heroin and the dead knew what he did, in the final moments, and neither would speak of it. He could turn away from the need, from the pain; let Dave suffer – for what? For loving another God? For loving Heroin’s own husband? He shivered from the touch of the voice like snow in his spine. Then let the cold melt, as much as it could, and drew the winter’s pain from Dave through the hand on his chest; Heroin could not change what was to be, but he could make it easier, make the breathing that slowed and stuttered less weighty, less hurt and blessed Dave with the numbness of pre-death Heroin.
There was a moment in every death when the Shadow slipped from underneath the breath of glass that protected it, Heroin, acolytes, Opiates from the world and it unfurled and spread beneath the veneer of icy skin to take its pound of life from the dying. It soaked in the tastes that flooded Heroin’s mouth with every passing second and fed. From the first kiss of the needle to the vein, to the final, great death of the overdose, each acolyte lived a life claimed by Heroin. And now, he was collecting. For Dave and for Marijuana, Heroin subdued the hungry dark as he pressed a feather-light kiss to the hand he held. “Easy,” the voice could steal a Siren’s lover, “easy,” Heroin repeated and the lungs that could not take in air relaxed, the ribs relaxed as the overburdened opoid receptors gladly accepted another command. For a moment, sheltered in his aspect, Heroin was able to look at Marijuana with eyes a burning, brilliant, bone white. “Hurry.”
Dave shuddered at the words, eyes drawn from Marijuana to look up at Heroin. For a moment, dishwater grey fixed on bone white and Dave, who knew that trying to speak would be futile, merely nodded weakly, trying to let his eyes show his thanks as his breathing eased, as the tremors diminished slightly and as the constant flashing between too hot and too cold became less unbearable. He still shook as blue spread down from his fingertips, as sweat soaked his hair and as his stomach seized. He still shook, even when Marijuana, not sparring a glance in Heroin's direction even with the word 'hurry' ringing out between the three, gently shifted him. Dave ended up with his back resting against the couch again, head tipped back toward the ceiling and Marijuana practically glued to his side.
Gently, Marijuana reached up to push Dave's hair back from where it had matted against his forehead and even though his movements were slow, they had a quiet desperation to them, as did the kiss Marijuana pressed to the mortal's cheek. "Dave. My Dave. You've been so good. So good to me. So good for me. And I tried to be good to you. I really did but-" Dave lifted a shaky arm, simply pressing the tip of his forefinger to Marijuana's lips, shaking his head. He didn't need more words from Marijuana, he just wanted those green eyes to keep looking at him, those hands to keep smoothing his hair back. With the next bout of muscle spasms, his left arm jerked, falling out over Marijuana's lap and displaying the weed leaf tattoo on his forearm. It wasn't necessarily glowing but it was too green to seem normal and it wasn't; it was the anchor for their mental connection.
It was bleeding a mix of sap-brown and tar-black.
Marijuana swallowed hard and the fingers that reached down to the tattoo were tipped with stem fingernails. They touched the mixture dripping down Dave's arm and, slowly, Marijuana opened his mind and began to recall all the power he had poured into Dave. He couldn't disconnect, not completely, so the power he drew into himself came with just a bit of Dave with it. Not enough for the mortal to lose any brain function - not that it mattered now - but enough for Dave to feel, for just a split second, being in Marijuana's psyche. It was a flash, a flash of how chaotic it was to live with so many aspects and just how much mental order and compartmentalization Marijuna had done in order to keep sane. A mere glimpse, really, and then... Dave was alone in his own mind, alone and naked before the ghosts of his past and it was then that he looked up at Heroin, looked up with a plea in his eyes even as Marijuana filed the Dave-power away into a secret corner of his mind.
"Dave." With Marijuana's voice, though, Dave's head instantly snapped back to Marijuana, knowing that if his boss had taken his power back, the end was coming. "Dave." The repetition came as a heartbroken whisper as Marijuana leaned in. It was like he had forgotten that, really, he shouldn't be kissing anyone other than Heroin because his lips crashed against Dave's, who could only give a pained moan in response as Marijuana's hand gripped his hair tightly. After the first, brutal moment, the intensity lessened a sliver but the kiss remained deep, Marijuana pouring every single emotion he felt for his second into his movements and Dave doing his best to reciprocate through the pain even as their tears lingered together on flushed cheeks.
Dave shuddered underneath Marijuana.
Marijuana's fingers tightened desperately in Dave's hair as the movements of the mortal's lips against his began to slow.
Dave's heart beat, stuttered, seized.
Marijuana let a strangled noise escape from between his lips as he bit down into Dave's lip hard enough to draw blood, as if it would keep him there.
Dave's heart stopped. His lips slipped away from Marijuana's. His head fell back against the couch with a dull thud that seemed to echo throughout the room. Marijuana followed like a moth to a flame, pressing a gentle kiss to Dave's cooling lips. Then another. Then another.
It would have continued like that, Marijuana pressing kisses to dead lips for all eternity, had it not been for the other presence in the room. When Marijuana straightened, stood, he simply stared down at the dead body that was once his friend, his lover, his Dave. He stayed like that for five minutes, blankly staring down, feeling horribly hollow as his mind sunk down into the depths of his being. It was a coping method of the worst kind, the kind where Marijuana wasn't choosing to lose himself in blank apathy, his psyche was doing it for him because if Marijuana felt, it would tear him apart.
Absolutely still, barely breathing, he licked his lips and tasted Dave's blood.
It snapped him from his reverie just enough for him to jerk his head toward Heroin, empty eyes staring past his husband's shoulder. "I have to prepare the body for burial." His voice sounded as dead as Dave was as he pushed past his husband, careful not to touch Heroin in any way because that would have been a betrayal, and he disappeared down the hallway to Dave's room.
When he returned, he had a pile of sheets in his arms. One was laid out on the floor and, gently, Marijuana reached out, arms shaking, to gather Dave in against his chest. Just as gently, he laid his mortal - so mortal, too mortal for Marijuana to truly grasp what had just happened - out on the sheet and began to wrap him tightly in the white fabric. There was the walk back to the Highway to consider; it wouldn't do for someone to see him transporting a dead body.
Once the body was firmly bound, Marijuana, still shaking but still feeling hollow and empty, knelt to pull Dave into his arms. When he stood again, he had his Dave cradled against his chest protectively. "I have to-" Marijuana broke off. There were no words for this. Avoiding Heroin's gaze, he possessively tightened his grip around the deadweight in his arms and simply looked lost as he headed toward the door to take Dave to his final resting place.