Powder [phan]

XXVI

WARNING: DEATH, SUICIDE (?), DRUG USE, BLOOD

***

Dan's POV

"Don't you want to get up sometime?" A voice I knew was asking and I opened my eyes clumsily.

My limbs were numb and aching after another night on Tyler's sofa, which was unsuitable for sleeping. Far from the fact that it was the sofa on which incredibly bad things happened.

And yet I accepted it if I could be here for it, not sitting alone in my booth day after day, where I wasn't safe from myself.

Tyler had taken me in, was the only point of contact, the last person who still stood by me after all my mistakes. Probably simply because he had no choice, because if he parted with me in an argument, he could never be sure that it was the last time for him to see me. Death lurked in every corner of his apartment, and what had been desirable for me for a long time, to finally turn my back on this life, seemed to make Tyler more and more afraid with each dawn when he was getting worse .

I just lived on, while Tyler appreciated every painful second of his remaining life.

I knew I didn't have to be as alone as I was, but I decided to do it. Voluntarily decided that no one else should be part of it. Neither Oliver, who kept asking me how I was doing, nor anyone else. I played the man who slowly but surely got over his lovesickness.

Heartache. If that was all.

I looked sleepily at the clock and found that it was already one in the afternoon. I hardly slept in the night because it wasn't just the heartache that bothered me.

Here at Tylers, I was only able to satisfy my addiction at night because I had to wait for him to sleep. Actually, he knew with almost certainty that my stay here didn't mean that I had given up the drugs, but I still didn't want to be caught by him. I could simply do without listening to another timpani.

So I had to do it when I was on the go or he was already in bed, which meant that the fresh intoxication at this late hour didn't let me sleep for half the night.

And once again it was worth it to me.

Today, however, I didn't even begin to feel able to work with this level of fatigue, so I had to find a way to get the energy I needed without Tyler noticing.

"Maybe." I replied a little late and tortured myself from under the covers to go to the bathroom while he was already putting on coffee. How difficult could it be to do it here as long as he assumed I was just freshening up?

As expected, he had at least not noticed anything about the action itself, but now it was a matter of not showing anything. Tyler knew what the signs were, better than anyone else. Phil could only tell from what he had heard, read, or seen in movies, but Tyler knew it by himself, which made it a lot more difficult for me to hide it from him.

I sneaked back into the living room from where I could see him and hid the bag in my pocket where I had brought the essentials.

"Are you hungry?" Asked my host when I came into the kitchen and I sat down at the small table.

"No, thanks."

The cocaine suppressed my feeling of hunger, shortly after I took it and while I could just eat anyway, I just felt as if everything I consumed didn't stay in my body for long anyway.

Tyler watched me suspiciously as he poured the coffee into two dotted cups on the table.

"You've been awake for a long time last night." he said, sitting down with me.