These Last Days

5. In The Heart Of California, My Heart Is Lost

- some hours later-

Nick, once again threw his head back hard onto his lumpy pillow. His eyes welling up with tears, a sullen red in the darkness.

Sobriety getting the worst of him as his toes scrunched and head commanded utter relief. He thrashed and thrashed and wordlessly cursed at the ceiling. Somewhat careful not to wake Shawn, but he had his doubt's that Shawn wasn't actually asleep, his hand just kept settling on nicks back as if to calm him or something. He must've did this while he slept.

Nick continued on cursing sleep for not consuming him completely. Envious of those who could wrap themselves up in slumber and wake up with bright eyes, unscathed and unattached by the atrocities that lingered in between the realms of the human subconscious.

He was scorching hot, he was frigid cold.

His brain felt like a dam about to burst. He wanted it to burst. Anything to relieve the pressure bouncing off every thick piece of his skull.

Everyone had been so goddamn careful with keeping influences away from him and he fucking hated it. Hated them. In the moment, nothing else fucking mattered but pills and potions. He could unhate them later.

He got up from the not so mediocre sized bed and dragged his feet to the bend of the room where there was a small kitchen. He knew he had some change in his denim jacket; maybe he could get a quick fix from the medi-mart down the street. Even if it were just some cheap over the counter sleeping pills, anything strong enough to knock him out would suffice.

Nick rummaged through his jacket that lay on one of the bar chairs surrounding the small kitchen table, finding about 6 dollars. If anything, he could at least buy one pill or one beer. Depending if the cashier was compliant or not. It was completely dark in the loft; the only light was the neon colors fading in and out of the glass tech table Shawn had somehow managed to afford. It was a gift apparently. Dying relatives and all that. Nick knew too much of the subject of dying relatives. Another merciless thought driving through him like a savage Viking sword, ruthless thoughts that he could only understand when the sun was down.

He knew the lights would wake up Meadow who slept soundly on the couch, conjuring up her own nightmares to plague amongst her acquainted morsels. So he tried the locks on Shawn's front door completely in the dark.

On the last lock, nick couldn't wait anymore so he pulled on the door a bit too hard and then all of a sudden all 5 locks locked back again unison, the door pulling back to close taking nick with it.

"Manual system override. Front door locked. Security protocol: yellow." An automatic female response practically had nick petrified until another voice broke out of the obscureness of the loft.

"Where are you going?"

Shawn suddenly appeared as the lights to his room turned on, illuminating his shadow and making his front look all menacing and sinister.

He stepped out of the light and Nick saw the familiar doe eyes and worried complexion.

"I was just-I wanted to- get some air."

Nick rambled out. Lies spilling right through his teeth, the urge for a fix beckoning its tyrannical call. His veins felt like sandpaper rubbing against each other. He was gonna lose it. His thoughts on self-morality halted, built themselves up behind a wall and withered. A wickedness escaped along with his breath as his lungs grew heavy, mechanically pulling in and out in a senseless, now emotionally devoid demeanour.

Nick let out an inhumane vicious growl, the thoughts and wants and needs that floated in his head now weighing like tons adding a tremendous amount of pressure in his head as if they were cracking the base of skull, making their way through jagged bone and ripping away at countless nerves. He couldn't bare it. His fists slammed the wooden door with an extreme velocity, his knuckles splitting open, blood spilling and pooling in his closed palms still in the form of a pair of unpredictable fists.

"I just want some fucking air ok?! Something I just need... Something. Pills. A bottle, I need it. I need it. I ha-have to- I FUCKING NEED SOMETHING NOW."

The last words leaving his tongue like a slap of venomous acid, barren of emotion like the brown in his eyes that Shawn had tried not to romanticize.

Shawn stepped closer, slightly frightened at the looks of the boy that not even 10 minutes ago was curled up beside him, a child with the comforts of his teddy bear, away from the fears of reality. Or so he thought. But adamancy took hold; Shawn now dead set on resolving whatever it was that was going on. His stomach tying knots on their knots, tightening with every loose thought.

"I'll get you whatever you need, I just n-need you to relax, okay? I'll get it for you just come back to the bedroom."

Nicks demons took hold as he started to shake, his hands trembled and bent in a siege of hostility, his mind cut loose in an ocean of oceans, dark and thunderous. He didn't know what he was saying, he saw Shawn through shadows, saw a light in a sea of carnally raged monsters, through the thick vine ensnared valleys that ran through the northern hemisphere of his decaying brain.

He was engulfed into blindness, thrown into a mental maze with no way out. He didn't know he was on the ground 'til the cool wooden tiles rubbed against his paling cheek.

Shawn instantaneously had Nick cradled. Nick in between Shawn's massive legs, his head thrown back onto Shawn's right front of his shoulder.

Nick in a matter of minutes was an uncontrollable hurricane then nothing but a shallow recurring wave.

Passed out, again.