hostile veins (h.s)

Chapter Thirteen

Harry weakly leans his head back, looking woozy as he unscrews the white lid sealing the bottle of antidotal liquid. It's a cloudy white, translucent, with the viscosity similar to that of a thin smoothie. It sloshes around in the glass vial as he tilts it forward against his lips.

"All of it," I tell him. "Plug your nose if you don't like the taste."

He takes a sip and almost yacks it back up, his body lurching forward. He coughs and lowers the vial to his lap.

"It-t burns," he coughs, teeth chattering. "Oh, my God, that's so disgusting."

"You have to drink it," I plead. "Please, Harry."

"I will, I will," he mumbles. He attempts to drink it again but stops when his hand touches his mouth. "It can't be injected?"

I shake my head. "You have to drink it."

"I can't," he whispers.

"You can," I argue gently. "You have to."

He brings it up to his mouth again and quickly gulps down a third of it, again coughing violently afterward. The curls on his head bounce wildly as his chest constricts over and over.

"That's a start," I breathe. "Try again."

He downs it all the second time. I breathe a sigh of relief, smiling at him.

"Why?" He asks in a soft tone.

"Why what?"

"Why are you smiling at me?"

I pause for a second. "You drank the antidote."

"And..?"

"And... and you're not going to die."

Harry puts all his effort forward into smiling at me. It's a small smile, but I know he's exhausted.

"You enjoy my presence after all?" He asks.

I shake my head and drop the smile when I'm reminded of the message demons have been yelling at me.

He leaves or he dies.

He almost died today. He almost died today, on my terms. By my hands. Because I'm surrounded by demons, and he decided to befriend me. He came into my room once and his death accelerated more than half a century forward within the first half hour of entering the threshold.

I can't let him know that I care about him. I can't let anymore ideas gather in his silly head. This is it. This is the last time I'm speaking to him for a while. Our friendship stops here, for his sake. He won't survive in my world.

"What?" He asks in response to my sudden change in expressions.

"Nothing." I shake my head.

I lean my head back against the hard walls, making sure that I'm aware of every detail of this moment. It's the closest I'll ever be to Harry for the rest of my life. His warmth, something I didn't expect from someone so ill, feeds straight through my sweater and attacks the freezing temperatures of my scars. It's a weird sensation.

We sit there for hours, silence absorbing the majority of the time. My back and bottom begin to ache from the solid surfaces beneath us but I'm happy I'm next to Harry. It's the last time and I'll gladly suffer through it.

Harry wasn't in as much pain as his dog was when we injected the antidote. I think it has something to do with the method of ingestion. He was lying on the ground, groaning in pain from wicked cramps, but that was the farthest extent of the pain.