I saw the guy coming but didn’t really care. I’d be up soon, but at the moment I was low, low and empty and bleeding into nothingness after all the things I’d been last night. But I had the ups in my belly and nothing else, so it wouldn’t be long until -

He had me pinned up against the wall before I knew what was happening. Both of my wrists fit in one of his hands - I knew that already, but to feel it like this, when I was empty like this, it was different and I didn’t love it. He pulled my arms up and over my head, and I turned my gaze away, unwilling to meet his eyes. His body pressed close to mine, his knee sliding between mine. “Coop,” I think I heard the roommate say, but he wasn’t listening to him. He was looking at me. Looking with that same look, that same danger that he’d worn all over his smile the night before.

I wasn’t sure I was as game for it as I’d been back then. But give it 20 minutes, and I’d be on the up, and then. Well. Then I’d be game for anything.

He was looking me over with an intensity that was making me squirm. “I’ve got ten minutes while you’re still sober,” he said quietly, and for some reason those words made me very nervous, I think, because my stomach started doing flips.

“Coop.” The roommate was right there, sounding more annoyed than anything else. “He’s never going to be sober. I told you. Fucking junkie.”

I turned to make a face at him but the man up close to me grabbed my chin hard. “What did you take.” His voice had dropped low, and smooth, and I felt bits of me melting - shit, why was I always melting for him? - even as other parts of me spiked at the question.

I knew I shouldn’t push him. I could feel it in the way he held me, in the cold that he was - cold, I suddenly remembered. That goddamn ice cube. Fuck him and his cold, and his controlling me. “Aspirin,” I quipped.

The hand on my chin tightened for a moment, then let go. Immediately his lips were there, tickling my skin, his tongue darting out for tastes. He worked his way down my chin, making me moan and sending my breath from my body in little gasps, until he was just above my neck.

Fuck, I love it when people touch my neck. I tilted my head back and waited.

“What did you take,” he whispered into my skin. I shuddered and his teeth scraped lightly against me. “Tell me, or I’ll stop.”

I didn’t want him to stop. I needed him not to stop. “Whites,” I heard myself say.

“And those are?” His tongue was flicking against the bottom of my chin. I thought I was going to fly apart - I could feel the ups beginning to spread through my system, the tingling in my arms, the way my body was beginning to want to bounce.

“Uppers,” I told him, not caring anymore if he knew. I needed this. I needed him.

“Uppers,” he repeated, and it was in a completely different tone than he’d been in. “Speed?”

I nodded, trying to get him back to me, my body starting to shake.

“Jesus,” I heard the roommate mutter, but those green eyes never left mine. I was trapped in them, desperate for them, for him, his lips and teeth and hands and anything he would give me.

“How many did you take?”

“Baby,” I moaned, arching up and offering my neck. “Baby, let’s just have a good time.”

His hand pushed me back into the wall, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to pull me out of whatever head space he’d been pushing me towards earlier. Shit, I thought. What the fuck had that been? “How many?” he repeated. He sounded angry, or annoyed.

I was annoyed. I was angry. Who did he think he was, to know how many of anything I had taken? What kind of man was he, to keep me from getting what I wanted? To take me home and leave me, clothed, on his goddamn couch, then throw me up against the wall and demand to know what I did with my life? I’d been totally open for him; why hadn’t he just fucking taken me last night? What fucking games was he playing? I wanted to piss him off, wanted to show him that he wasn’t in control of me, that I could do whatever I goddamn well pleased. I wanted to slam myself into the feelings that were rocketing up in my stomach and get him to fuck them all out of me. Maybe if I were lucky he’d hit me, hit me until that’s all I felt, and then he wouldn’t be so goddamn high and mighty, try to act so fucking good, because he was just like the rest of them when it came down to it. They all were the same.

When I’d popped the ups I’d also pocketed one, slipping it between my gum and my cheek. I love the feeling of it, love the acid taste and the quick way it gets into your blood, but I’d give that up if it meant fucking with him. I shifted my tongue over and grabbed up the white disk, then pushed my tongue into his face, letting the pill sit obvious and ragged in his vision. Then I pulled my tongue back into my mouth, smirked, and swallowed. 

***

I don’t know. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have done it the way I had, but I just knew, knew he’d tell me if I did. Knew that his neck was the one thing I could use against him, that he’d push himself to get touched. But I hadn’t expected this. I mean, X is one thing, and K is another, but speed?

“Junkie,” Bren said behind me, and I watched him swallow the pill and something inside of me just dropped.

Maybe it was the thought that if I had tried to kiss him, I would have gotten speed into my system. Maybe it was watching him so cheekily take something so fucking dangerous. Maybe it was that Bren was right, and he was a fucking junkie, and no one in the goddamn bar had seemed to notice or care.

Whatever it was, I fucking snapped.

I had him by the hair and was pulling him toward the bathroom before he had time to react, which was probably good because I apparently didn’t know what the fuck he was capable of. “Coop!” Bren shouted, but I slammed the door in his face and locked it before getting the man in my hands over to the toilet.

“What the -” he had time to say before my fingers were in his throat and he was puking.

He fought against me, which was fair, but I was way stronger than him on a good day and this was not a good day for him. “It’s alright,” I whispered into his hair, trying to get him to calm down, “let it up. It’s happening, let it all up.”

I don’t know if it was my words or the exhaustion of last night and this morning that did it, but he did stop struggling. His hands, which had been slapping and pulling at mine now simply gripped the sides of the toilet like he was afraid he was going to fall in. I let go of his chin when it was obvious he wasn’t going anywhere and stroked his shuddering back, apologizing internally.

He was done pretty quickly. I don’t think there had been much in his stomach to start with. I looked down and saw a lot of foam and four tablets floating in the bowl.

I reached around him and flushed, holding back any anger. Unless speed had gotten a lot weaker since I’d been around, four, in the morning, on an empty stomach. That was serious. Like “I take speed on the reg and I no longer really feel it” serious. He was leaning back into me, his body spent, his arms shaking. I let go of my grip in his hair and his head found its way to my shoulder.

****

I hadn’t even known I had a gag reflex anymore, but I guess the stupid man surprised me and up came what little I had left. I had a lot of practice puking - I had very little practice puking at someone else’s hands. Even in the violence of the motion, as my body fought to rip apart my insides, as his hand was tight and hard against my scalp he was talking me through it, and his voice settled against me, soothing, soft and gentle in the face of everything else and I found myself leaning into that, letting myself be lulled into believing whatever lies he was telling me.

My exhausted body did what it wanted when I was done, and what it wanted was to be close to him. My head settled next to his, and he wrapped a loose arm around me. It felt so good, to just be like that. To let myself rest. To let someone catch me for once. My body shuddered without my consent as he pressed a kiss just behind my ear.

“Never,” I heard him say, and his voice was quiet, and his words were law, “take speed in my house again.”

In that instant, I suddenly remembered what he had just done and how fucking fucked up it was. “Shit,” I shouted, pushing away from him. He let me move my body which just pissed me off even more. If you’re going to control me, fucking control me. What was this shit? “Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can and can’t take?”

“I’m not,” he said quietly. “Just don’t do that shit in my house.”

I glared at him, unsure why him saying that he wasn’t trying to stop me from taking drugs made me just as pissed as when he did. “Fuck you,” I finally said, and whirled out of the bathroom.

Or I would have, if the creep hadn’t locked the fucking door. As it was I spent a good minute fumbling with the lock before finally getting the door opened, where I practically slammed into the roommate.

“Fuck you too,” I told him, and this time I did manage to whirl from the room.

***

I sighed as I watched him go, frustrated with myself. That hadn’t been the best way to handle that. I should have just thrown him out, let him swallow what he wanted to swallow. There was no need to add in all this hands-on shit. I mean, Jesus. Talk about over the top. I hadn’t needed to go that far.

Except I’d wanted to. How fucked up was that? Like, seriously fucked up. Way past the things I should have been doing, the ways I should be acting with a stranger, with anyone. I shouldn’t have been trying to control his life, and if he wanted to fucking take drugs, that’s his life, and yet. I’d wanted to get those drugs from his system, wanted him to just have a moment where there was a consequence for his actions. A swift, immediate, consequence.

No one had ever done that for me. God fucking knows I’d needed it, and there’d been no one. I mean, there’d been so many people, so many fucking people in and out of my life and they’d all just let it happen, let me go until I was so far gone that -

Bren’s figure entered the doorway. I didn’t bother to look up.

“So how’s your morning going,” I tried.

“What,” he repeated for the third time, “the shit.”

I laid back against the cool tiles and tried to pretend that everything was going to be alright.