He grabbed another couple of towels, wrapped them around his hands, but they were pretty much soaked through in the matter of a couple of minutes. Cursing under his breath because the song wasn’t completely finished—and the muse was still riding him hard—he stumbled out from behind the kit and made his way to the bathroom.
Once there he turned on the faucet and filled the sink. Then he doused his hands in the ice cold water, watching as it turned red in seconds. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was used to playing ’til he bled—just a hazard of the job that few people ever talked about—but it had been a while since he’d messed up his hands this badly. He couldn’t believe he’d been so in the zone that he hadn’t noticed how bad it had gotten.
Then again, he admitted to himself as he emptied the sink and then refilled it, it wasn’t like he would have stopped even if he had noticed. The music had been too pure, too perfect. It had been a long time since he’d had something that pure in his life.
Poppy came into his mind again then, her bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and Renaissance Madonna face floating before his closed eyelids as he once again plunged his raw hands into the water. He cursed a little, tried to do the trick again where he compartmentalized the pain. But the music was gone, and he couldn’t do it without it. If he could, he never would have needed heroin.
When the bleeding slowed to a gentle ooze, he grabbed a towel off the rack and wrapped it around his most damaged hand, making sure to keep as much pressure on the wounds as he could. Then he crouched to rummage beneath the sink. He always kept a first aid kit in here for occasions just like this.
He found it behind a twelve pack of toilet paper and more soap than any one person could use—which made him wonder just what Jamison was trying to tell him, since she was the one who’d stocked his apartment before he got out of rehab.
Shaking his head in amused exasperation, he fumbled the first aid kit open. And found a lot more than bandages and antibiotic ointment.
One of his small, secondary drug kits fell out at his feet, and for a minute he just stared at it, almost too afraid to touch it. Too afraid, even, to be in the same room with it.
But fuck, it wasn’t like he could just leave it in the middle of the bathroom floor to keep tripping over, either—not if he had any chance of surviving—so eventually he bent down and picked it up. Turned it over in his hands. Ran his thumb over a random burn mark in the bottom left corner of the leather.
Every single brain cell he had shrieked at him to throw it away. To toss it out the window. To do anything, everything, but keep holding it, shifting it this way and that as memory after memory assaulted him.
He didn’t do that, though. Instead, his fingers seemed to move of their own volition as they unzipped the kit. As they pulled the spoon and lighter out of one side and the package of wrapped, unused syringes out of the other. As he did, he sank down onto the floor, rested his back against the wall, and tried not to think about how good it felt to get high. To nod out. To bliss out.
It didn’t work.
Suddenly, the heroin he’d been carrying around since he’d met Rollo at the bar last night was burning a major hole in the pocket of his jeans.
He hadn’t used last night, hadn’t had a drink. He’d gone to Poppy’s instead and let his need for her ease away his craving for smack. It had worked better than he’d ever expected it to.
But she wasn’t here right now and the heroin was. And he wanted it. Holy fuck, did he want it. Every cell in his body was practically breakdancing in anticipation.
He reached into his pocket. Pulled out the small bag with the off-white powder in it. Held it up to the light as he squeezed it between his fingers again and again and again.
His hands were shaking with the need to open it up. To put a little on his tongue, just to taste. Just to feel the way the numbness tingled and spread.
It would be so easy. All he had to do was break the little Ziploc seal, then sprinkle some on the spoon, heat it up, pull it into the syringe. Inject it.
And then he’d be flying.
For a little while he wouldn’t care about anything or anyone, past or present or future. He could just float. Could just be.
He turned his arm over, traced his fingers over his tattoo sleeve as he searched for a vein he hadn’t collapsed with years of IV drug use. He found it on the inside of his upper arm, closer to his shoulder than his elbow. He’d only just started injecting it when he’d gone to rehab, so it had a bunch of uses left in it.
He poked at it a little, plumped it up so it’d be easier to slide the needle in. It was all so familiar, watching his bleeding, busted open hands poking at his own skin. So, so familiar, and it took him back, had the endorphins shooting through his body in mere anticipation of the heroin.