The meeting wasn’t good, for anyone. Heroin had known that – felt it in his bones even as he had agreed – offered, even, to see his elder Bruder. He knew, perfectly well, what Kokain wanted from him and knew that he couldn’t give it. And that – that filled the inside of Heroin’s mouth with rotten leaves and cloying molasses, impossible to swallow that he was no longer the answer – just that the Answer; it had never mattered what the question was because Heroin had solved everything for his Bruder and that was now an impossibility and impossible to swallow. So Heroin had come. And he was hurting his husband-brother, his Marijuana, and for what? So that he could hurt Kokain in person, deny him everything and watch his pain. “I am an idiot,” Heroin hissed as he slipped inside the diner.
He didn’t need the minute he spent at the door, searching through the crowd for the person he already sensed. It was the last minute, the breath before the plunge and then Heroin fell. He glided through the dinner crowd, his messenger bag occasionally bumping tables and chairs before he finally dropped into the seat across from his Bruder. Kokain’s need hammered into Heroin’s carefully constructed barriers, the call of the addict to the god and he ducked his head as he tried to steel himself from it. Oh no, there would be nothing good coming from this. Heroin swallowed, dropped the bag under the table and offered a slightly shaky smile to his elder brother. “You do know that you’re actually supposed to eat the burger, right? Not just play with all of its parts.” His browns were drawn close and his eyes were worried, for the moment, he could be a brother and be sincerely concerned that Kokain was not taking of himself. That the heroin addiction was to blame for that, Heroin ignored. “You’ve been working too hard again, mein Bruder. I know Frank taught you that, but I had hoped you would have also learned to unwind – not even a god can go forever. You have to sleep somewhere that is not Die Droge.”