More Than A Single Droplet

2

That evening Steve sits in his prison room in bed, James is sitting on his own bed, staring silently to nothing. Steve's looking from his eye corners to James, in the month they know each other they don't really talk much, it's at most just a question but silence is a thing that always remained, but Steve did notice something in that month, James is a kind guy who's suffering from guilt and heartbreak, he doesn't eat much and when he does it's mainly just forced by the guards. Steve remembers when James got there in the room with him that he was a healthy looking man but now there are bones that show and whenever it's dark and only a slight light of a small lamp is on, Steve often mistaken James for a skeleton or a zombie. 

James turns and looks at the wall, he pokes into the small holes between the stones with his finger, sighing silently.  "I've made a mistake." mutters he under his breathe.

Steve isn't sure what to say or even do about this. It's like a mantra that James often notes to himself at least once in a while. Steve never asked about it, never dared to, the murderer who pretends to be broken might just set up an act to leave this prison. It's something that can't be known, it's one of the rules: 

- don't trust anyone
- don't ask questions
- don't answer questions

breaking one of those rules could cost a life, but then again. Steve has gotten stuck here for years after drugs dealing so he knows what to do and what not to do. Nothing seems like it is. 

"I should die..." James mutters, a tears falls from his eyes onto his hand, Steve can't see but he knows his roommate is breaking.

It triggers Steve. "One day you will." he responses. It's a true fact, at the end, everyone dies. No-one keeps alive forever it just depends when death will come to get you. 

James turns his head looking over his shoulder at the blonde guy with the strong muscles filled with scars. "You'd know what I mean." he signs to the scars on Steve's arms. "They're cuts.."

Steve gives a nod. "You better not ask questions here, there are people who'd kill you for doing that." 

"I'm trying to get killed." James replies.

"I'm not the one killing you." Steve replies. 

"You made a deal with someone." James says suddenly.

Steve is surprised he noticed. 

"You got a notebook, a pen and my droplets are gone." James says.

"You're smarter than I thought." Steve says.

"I'm a nerd. You should have noticed." James nods towards a piece of the wall where he has written a mathematics formula. "You're gonna poison me." 

"Wrong." Steve replies.

James shakes his head lightly, looking down. 

"Tell me..." Steve is gonna break one of those prison rules. "What happened with your girlfriend." 

James twitches by hearing the word 'girlfriend' but tells the basic lines everyone knows. "I killed her by poisoning." 

"There is more behind that I need you to tell me." 

"I don't trust you." James says.

"No-one can be trusted but at the moment you can rather trust me than anyone else." 

"I was desperate to make her prettier than she was. it went wrong and she died. I did everything I could to keep her alive and stop the whole thing from happening, it hurt her. She changed. She was happy but also dangerously addicted.. her body couldn't held it. The whole thing would stop after a week but she never managed to reached the end of the week." James tells, muttering, not sharing a single look towards his roommate. 

"The formula on the wall?" Steve asks.

"It's the formula to calculate how the gain will go, when it comes to one droplet. I sort of figured out myself how to calculate it to do with some little information from that site." James replies.

"The site never existed." Steve says.

"It does or actual did exist. The person who made the site put it down so he wouldn't have gotten in jail. If it even is a he... I think there is a bigger story behind this, that he supposedly killed people and maybe even used their flesh." 

"You're disgusting." 

"Pain kills the heart - I've changed." James says fully depressive and even suicidal. This was in fact the longest conversation they ever had together.