Love Song (LGBTQ+) (COMPLETED)

12. Supporter

Quietly, I lied on top of the roof as I listened to the music that pumped into my ears. It was as though the music was coming from every angle and in that blackness around me, I had become the notes themselves. So beautiful, so calming as I let numb serenity take over my body. I could lie alone and breathe, I was able to feel like I owned myself, even if it was only momentary. There was no fear or pain, just the ever so calming numbness that the drugs in my system provided me.

Opening my eyes, I was somewhat unsurprised to see Nathan sitting next to me. Mostly because I invited him to this roof just bit earlier. He had always been there for me. Whenever I called, whenever I came to his window, he was always there. Ever since that night a year ago, he acted like I was a frail piece of glass and treated me like some kind of royalty. While I was likely the former then, I was far from it now. I hadn't been royalty, either, nothing near it. 

I was simply a drug addict with nothing else left to lose.

Nathan pulled out my headphones and dropped them on my shirt, all while his bangs hung over his eyes. After that night, he had changed. He became so much quieter, so much more reserved than what he was before. He had let his hair grow a little and now always hid his eyes behind the long bangs he adorned. Even if it sounded dumb coming from me, I tried talking him out of quitting football. He was talented. He shouldn't have had to quit because of me. In hindsight, it was obvious why he quit. I just refused to think about why.

"What are you on right now?" he asked, likely catching the small smile I wore while I had been listening to music.

"Special K and a Bar." I muttered, burying my finger into his ripped jeans. "I want some Apache, though."

"I'm not letting that happen. Not after what happened." Nathan stared at the ground. "I'm already letting someone I care about hurt herself with all this bullshit, can't that be enough? Just don't do that shit again."

A lot of shit happened over that past year, and that hadn't been an overstatement. Drugs had become a mainstay inside my body, and I spent all my time away from the people I loved. I ran away from everything, that much was obvious to even me. As Grace's life slowly burned away, I was out burning a fucking bowl and giving my soul away. My life had become so simple, so predictable without her in it.

The drugs had become my life support.

The numbness I felt was like the moments I could actually fall asleep without nightmares, beautiful. Those were the moments I could take a full breath and not be choked, those were the moments I thought about everything else, and those were the moments I found myself happy. In my high, little wonderland, I was able to find peace. I finally found the very numbness I was looking for and decided to keep it.

Nathan's room had been always been the place where I would smoke or snort something, where I would shoot myself up. His room was also the place I cried myself to sleep on so many nights. The bed he slept on had absorbed just as much of me as it had him, and maybe that was what Nathan wanted. His room had been my home and release for so long. If I was sure of anything, that was it.

I felt alien to the people around me, the people I had once been so close to had become so distant. My parents felt like distant relatives and my friends only laughed at me, like the loser I had been and become. It only went to show that people didn't know what being alone felt like. They never had the slightest idea of what the darkness of being alone felt like. They hadn't known the loneliness of the darkness that held me so tightly.

"Fine. I'll just do some H later, then." I pushed myself off of the ground and onto my feet. "Buzzkill."

"I wish you wouldn't." Nathan, somewhat hypocritically, lit a cigarette. "Benzos should be enough for you."