youngblood // p. hockstetter // 0.1

thirty-four//

"Did you bring th-" His eyes widened, his face splitting into a starlet grin as Rosemary wrapped her arms around his bare torso. "Rose!"

She hated to admit how much she'd missed him.

His fingers sifting through her hair, Jude glanced up at Robby and grinned. "Thanks for bringing her man"

Robby shrugged, "Tuedin was getting a little touchy after everything with Mark"

Jude physically tensed as Rosemary pulled away, looking up at his messy hair and shaven face. "Go put your bag down Ro" Stepping into Jude's room, she instantly felt her insides clench at how small it was, she hated it.

His bed, a small table where his radio was playing Nine Inch Nails, his clothes hung from a bending rack and a fish tank where all that occupied the room but atop the table was his 'preparation' kit.

Kicking off her shoes, she sat down in his bed and pulled her bag beside her, tearing open the bag of jellybeans as she glanced at the bedside table. A lit joint rest in the ash tray, roasted and pluming the smallest string of smoke which curled into air like white string.

When Jude turned back around, the joint was already propped between her teeth, the smoke already halfway down her lungs. "You know I don't like you smoking shit like that" Jude stated, running a hand through his hair. "You haven't taken it in ages, you gonna start feeling whack?" She released a long plume of smoke into the air, smiling.

Rosemary could feel the tension and strength in her muscles leak from her body into a pool on the ground. "You don't like me smoking-" She pulled the clear white package from her bag. "-but you'd give me enough coke to keep me on a high until Christmas?' Rosemary tossed the cocaine onto the table as she leant against the wall, taking another hit from the joint. Jude frowned, snatching the package sharply.

"Where the fuck did yo-?"

"You going to get it ready or what?"

Jude picked up the bag amd shoved it into his bedside table, his face pinched until he sighed deeply, "I've missed you"

She stretched slightly as the drug attacked her tainted system. "And I've missed this" She could hear bubbling like a soft rumble in the back of her head as she tossed the joint back onto the table where Jude dropped it into the tray.

She watched, transfixed as he pulled out a mirror and crushed some of the already fine powder harder before cutting into four even lines with his student card. He'd always been so much better at it then her, preparing at least. "Gimme a minute" Sat in her thoughts and ever so slightly nauseous, Rosemary waited.

I wonder what that weirdo is doing?

She thought of Patrick, about their confrontation the night he'd intercepted her running. He'd looked so vulnerable as they spoke and it thrilled her just to think about it. The wide, glassy state of his eyes as his hands shook, as though his brain was incapable of comprehending that she, herself, was like him.

Is that how he thinks? Does he truly think he is the only thing that exists in this world?

'You're lying' Those two words he'd uttered with such fear and devastation. Rosemary frowned slightly, was she really like him though? She understood at least that the beings in front of her lived, existed. Mark had existed. She closed her eyes and sighed, clenching her legs slightly as she thought of Mark at the bottom of the river.

She'd controlled it all. Him. His very existence. She'd held it in her hands and extinguished it with her strength and her cunning. It made her feel strong, empowered to say the least. The feeling of her muscles holding him down, feeling him squirm beneath her and then stop.