BLACK TAR → madwheeler

five.

     ⋆｡˚ MIKE CLOSED THE DOOR OF HIS CAR, FLICKING ON HIS OVERHEAD LIGHT RESTING ABOVE HIM. He slowly gathered his duffel bag, unzipping the top as he finally revealed the contents that he had been waiting so long to see. 

     He breathed a sigh of relief as he began to count the balloons, noting that there were a lot more than his usual amount Xan gave him. As he finally finished counting, he breathed a sigh of relief as the final number came to forty. Forty fucking balloons, and probably more than he had ever had in a re-up before. 

     His breath came quickly as he unwrapped one, looking around the dark street of the random neighborhood he had pulled into. It was early, about an hour and a half before school started and before the texts from Xan started pouring in. He grabbed his spoon and his lighter, sliding the baggie between his teeth as he ripped open the top, slowly distributing the contents into his spoon. 

     The lighter came next, and as he heated up the bottom of his spoon, he ignored the slight tremble of his fingers, the twitch of his veins. Problem solvers came in different shapes and sizes after all. Fuck, why didn't anyone ever see that? 

     He pulled out his syringe, the baggie joining the rest of the contents at the bottom of his  duffel. It made him angry, how the world treated people like him and Xan and even Max. People living through pain every day, wanting just a sliver of happiness in a place that seemed gray around the edges. 

     Mike pulled on the top of the syringe, making sure the needle was getting every part of the warm liquid in the spoon. He yanked up his sweatshirt sleeve, barely glancing at the dozens of bruised, purple needle track marks stamped all over his skin. Instead, he found a decent sized vein, at the crook of his elbow. Barely a second later, the glint of the metal had plunged. 

     The dark-haired boy's head keeled backwards, his eyes rolling upwards. The lighter and the spoon fell to the floor of the car, but the syringe stayed cradled in his arms as he listlessly forgot everyone and everything but the pure bliss that had settled on every part of his mind.  

     Yeah, fuck everyone. Drugs kept you safe. 

𓂃 ֗ ִ ۫🎬ˑ ֗ 🕷 ִ  

     Max Mayfield knew exactly what drugs she had consumed that morning. Waking up and deciding to pop two of the small, white pills was so much easier than she had thought it would be, and God, did she feel so much better. 

     It was like everything that she had been so worried about before -- cheer, her schoolwork, Jane's too-harsh quips -- had all become just a blip in what Max now considered to be important. How the hell had she even let herself get to that point? 

     As she headed towards Hawkins High School, she glanced down at her backpack, making quite sure that the pill bottle was carefully secured between her History and Math textbooks, uncapping the lid every so often and recounting, just to remember how much she had left. 

     It was a morning thing now, the pill counting, the checking. It had only been five days, but Max didn't even really know how she had had the willpower to make it through anything without them. 

     She hadn't really spoken to Mike since the day Xan had admitted the boys were casual heroin users. She tried to reason with her thoughts, explaining that she didn't want to be associated with something like that, the horror stories she had heard countless times of the needle and the vein sending you into a spiral. 

     But it was excruciatingly hard when she knew she had a meeting that very afternoon, surrounded by all of them. Harder still, when every time she popped a pill, Xan's voice lingered in her ears; the excited dance in Mike's eyes when he had asked her to give them a chance after school.