WARNING: MENTION OF DRUGS, NEGATIVE THOUGHTS, AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR
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Dan's POV
Patrick led me to his apartment, which I had never been to, although we had known each other for a long time because of my drug history. He probably didn't let everyone in here either, since he certainly didn't want to risk that some crazy junkie would break into him and steal from him.
Luckily, as it is so often the case, he threw one of his famous parties in the scene and the cocaine that I had just bought from him flowed again through my veins.
I looked around, with a glass full of the hardest alcohol I could find, and struggled through each caustic sip as I eyed the guests one by one. If I searched long enough, I would find someone.
Long, dark hair caught my eye.
Yes, she would be my victim for that night and I went up to her, tapped her on the shoulder and smiled at her. She replied and silently brought her glass of champagne to her mouth to sip on, without taking her eyes off me.
"Good evening." I greeted her in a deep voice and she turned completely to me, which was enough for me as a sign that she would at least engage in a conversation with me in which I could let my charm play.
"Hey. Are you a friend of Patrick's?" She asked somewhat cautiously and I grinned a little wider.
"Can say so." I replied and her look told me that she was interested. Maybe she had the same plan I did tonight.
Some time and a lot of flirting later we sat together on a couch between all the other party guests who were dancing, had also taken a seat, or just stood around and talked while I put my hand meaningfully on her knee.
"You have very beautiful eyes, you know that?" She complimented me and I swallowed hard.
"Thank you." I said hoarsely and cleared my throat unobtrusively. "You too." I added without further ado, although it was only then that I really looked into her eyes. They were light blue, so it looked almost gray, just like Phil's.
"Do we want to sit around here any more or will you kiss me sometime?" She asked me indirectly and I gathered myself, trying not to show anything. I took her face in my hands and gently pulled her closer to me, pressed my lips to hers, concentrated.
"I have to go for a moment. I'll be right back." I told her and buried my trembling hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt jacket.
I got up quickly and disappeared into the toilet to provide supplies. At the same time I tried to displace Phil.
I stumbled out of the bathroom and bumped into Patrick, who was pouring two of his guests. My mind blurred and I took the bottle away from him, took a long sip of it before I saw his horror.
"Sorry, you will get it again." I said, slowly floating in other spheres and looking for my acquaintance to disappear with her from here.
I pulled her by the hand from the sofa on which she was talking to another young woman, but if she didn't want to come too, she was just annoying.
"Come on, I want to show you my apartment. It's not far from here." I said and she followed me in amazement, but amused. Seemed to be a romantic gesture, although this had nothing to do with romance.
As I said, sometimes it was almost too easy.
And only the moment I heard a keychain fall to the ground did I wake up from my intoxication, remembering the here and now.
I was lying in my bed with the brunette from the party, naked, her painted fingernails buried in my skin. We were in my apartment. Where did the sound come from?
As far as I could in this position, I turned my head back and saw Phil, who looked me straight in the eye, his expression of shock and infinite pain. My mind was still lagging behind, far too many drugs clouded my brain. Alcohol, cocaine, in addition to the endorphins that sex had triggered with my conquest, distraction, whatever. But I already felt that this should have fatal consequences.
The effect abruptly wore off and I landed on the hard ground, but even if I had broken all the bones of my body it could never have hurt as much as Phil's sight at that moment.
He didn't have to say anything, I knew I had shredded him into a thousand little pieces.
I immediately rolled off her and hurriedly got out of bed, but Phil didn't wait a second
Nothing made sense anymore, but nevertheless I put on my clothes as soon as possible, ignored the outraged shouts of my bed story and went after him without thinking.
Phil's POV
I didn't know exactly what had brought me here. It was a subconscious feeling, something that pulled me here. Only when I was standing in front of Dan's apartment did I realize where I was.
I didn't ring the bell, he wouldn't open to me anyway when he was actually in his apartment. Fortunately, I had Oliver's key. I didn't know what I wanted to find in his apartment. Some even told me that he wasn't alone in there. If he wanted to do it with Tyler, what's stopping him from taking advantage of someone else?
Dan had to count on me looking for him here. He knew that Oliver had a key to his apartment, he would probably assume that he would give it to me.
What if Tyler was right and he just wanted me to catch him, so he broke my heart and I finally left him alone?
In the end, I decided to unlock the door, went up the stairs, and entered the apartment without causing a stir. But the moment I stepped into Dan's hallway, my breath caught, my veins tightened, and I knew Tyler was right.
I heard a woman moan from the bedroom, I wanted to cover my ears, but I had to go through that now. My fucking mind didn't really want to realize it until I saw it in front of my eyes.
Slowly and carefully I opened the ajar bedroom door, felt the nausea that increased from second to second and then they were in front of me. He was in front of me.
Dan in his bed, with some dark-haired woman, naked, and I almost choked, but in the end it was just the incredible pain that closed my throat that made me watch the two paralyzed until the key noisily landed on the floor.
No one in my life had ever hurt me as deliberately, knowingly now, even though he looked at me so apologetically and remorsefully now that he had noticed me.
I had watched that for far too long to ever forget what I had seen and to ever close the wounds that were so fucking deep that I wondered why I did not tip over and just die. Bleed to death like a cut animal.
I had lost Dan.
I wouldn't stand this for a second longer, waiting for it to kill me, the disappointment, the love that was about to turn painfully into hate when I turned and ran out of his apartment.
I never wanted to enter them again, never to be inside these four walls.
Now I was only empty, unfilled, and every free pore filled with the pain that I could hardly bear.
He had done it. Hadn't let himself be stopped, hadn't been deterred, hadn't bothered to do it in bed with a stranger. He didn't care what he did with it, or at least not important enough to leave it. He had done it, despite what he did to me. Maybe he had no idea how deeply it really struck me because he just still didn't understand what he was for me.
He was just everything.
And now he had turned against me after leaving all my principles behind to be with him. After changing me so much. Made me a better person who only became perfect through his love and learned to give up his selfishness.
He had made me brave, strong, made me fight for his trust, and now, now, it was me who had been too naive.
Had believed in our love far too much that I had ever expected it to be no one other than him who rammed the knife into my back.
And I gave up. He had won.
It was still raining like buckets, for hours now and it was so typical. So disgustingly typical that I couldn't see anything now because the raindrops were driven by the wind into my eyes, which were already flooded with tears.
"Phil, wait! Please." I heard Dan's voice, not sure if I was hallucinating or if he had actually followed me. Was he going to examine what he had done now? Did it have the desired effects?
While I was firmly convinced in my head that I was guaranteed not to wait, but to keep walking and ignore him until he turned around to leave, my body acted differently.
I stopped dead still, clenched my fists, and waited for Dan to stand in front of me to justify myself pointlessly. But he didn't come, seemed so surprised by my abrupt standstill that he also stopped a few meters behind me.
I felt his presence in my back as my fists tightened. He was silent and I boiled with rage, burned inside, like the hot tears on my face that mixed with the cool rain on my cheeks.
"Phil?"
Dan approached me silently, but I felt his every move.
"I'm so sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. I'm just so fucking confused." I heard his sobs interrupting his speaking and said nothing, breathed in long, deep breaths and waited. "I know I was only making it worse, but you have to understand me."
That was the moment when I was absolutely out of control, turned and gave him a hard slap across his face. His head slipped to the side and he paused briefly in that position and I saw him flinch as I moved another inch, but I just couldn't feel sorry for him.
"I need to understand you?" I asked aggressively, watching Dan straighten up. "I have to understand that you want to fuck Tyler who won't let you in and then you pick up some poor girl instead? I have to understand that?"
He remained silent for a moment and the lapping of the rain around us grew louder, making you feel like yelling at it.
"Phil-"
"No, Dan. I always understood everything. I understood that you left me here in London when I begged you to stay. I understood that you still took drugs after I found you and you promised me you would stop taking them. I understood your mistrust, your outbursts of emotion and that you were never there for me because you couldn't. But that. That you're cheating on me. Just because. That you could just sleep with somebody else after all this-" My voice gave in and I looked up into the dark sky, let the tears run down, heavy raindrops falling on my face. Everything didn't matter anyway. "I can't understand that with the best will in the world." I added, preparing myself mentally to leave.
"Phil, Philip, please don't go." He said hurt and I saw him reach for me with his hand, see it shiver and never reach my hand.
My heart ached so incredibly, consistently telling me that I still loved him more than anything, I just wanted to hold on to him, but my mind was wondering how to love someone who dared to do such a terrible thing.
"God, you're pissing me off." I scolded him, shaking my head. "Push me away and still want me to stay. You don't really know what you want. You want everything, but you can't have that. "
He swallowed hard and pulled his hand back and his eyes got angry too, but only because he realized that I was right and he didn't want to admit that at the moment. He didn't want to be aware of it. He wanted to win, but actually we were both losing.
I took a deep breath and stroked the soaking wet hair from my face, the strands of which kept dropping thick drops of water in my eyes.
"If you care." I continued amazingly calmly. "Your emotional state, your impulsiveness, is due to the medication."
Dan's gaze changed again to a confused expression. He was wearing an open shirt, which he could not possibly button up in a hurry, and his boxer shorts peeked a long way out over the jeans that were too tight. His hair was also completely soaked and his eyes red. He looked as drained as I felt. And yet when I saw him I only saw the reason why he had to get dressed so quickly and the pain spread again through my entire body.
"Are you serious?" He asked incredulously, while the knowledge tore him apart. We were still facing each other at exactly the same distance as at the beginning of the conversation, and none of us even started to change that.
"Yes. Should have read the side effects. It was never you or me or whatever you thought." I explained and Dan swallowed hard. We were standing right under a lantern and I saw him better than I liked at the moment. I took a small step towards him and he immediately backed away.
"How high are you right now?" I asked.
"High? I'm not high." He said skilfully ignorant.
"You can stop denying it now. I was at your doctor's and he told me that you hadn't been there for a while. Tyler also told me about your little confession."
Dan looked guiltily to the side of the street.
"How long has it been?" I continued. "How long are you taking drugs behind my back again?"
He swallowed and then suddenly looked me straight in the eye.
"For a week." he confessed in a way that was difficult to understand.
"Where did you get that from, Dan? We were together all the time, except for your escape a week ago. Did you get some right there or what?"
"No. I still had something."
I bridged the short distance between us and came very close to him so that I could see the lines on his face where the rainwater ran down from it. He didn't back away, just looked at me wearily. As if he didn't care what I would do to him. I deepened our eyes, but it was the first time since we knew each other that I didn't know if I could ever look at him lovingly again.
This was not an argument. This was a day that changed everything.
Friendship, trust, control, fear, love. All of that stood between us, played such a big role, and yet it was only sheer disappointment and aching certainty that remained. No longer granted any doubt.
It was over and at that moment I wondered if what I already missed had ever really existed.
"You lied straight to my face? You had something there all the time? In the same apartment where you pretended that it would be completely impossible for you to ever relapse? It was always there, right under my nose?"
Our soaked bodies were so close together that I imagined I could feel them, but we didn't touch each other, still being the last inch apart that we might never bridge again.
He said nothing, but his eyes answered for him. I knew how much he hated himself at that moment, and I also knew that in some sick way it was a success for him. A reason to continue to annihilate himself. Only that I was hanging on his hook a lot more than he ever understood.
Could I still say that he loved me? Had ever loved me? Was it worth what this relationship had ultimately done to me, if his love had never been real but just a deceptively real symptom of his addiction?
The longer I thought about it, the more I realized that he had never really proven that he loved me. That he had always left when the going got tough and his trust was in demand. He never said it. Did I fight alone all the time without realizing it?
"What the fuck did you do to me?" It left me in a shaky voice and his eyes filled with pure despair. "Why didn't you throw them away? Have you ever really planned to never take anything again?"
I tried to take a step back, but his hand faintly gripped my forearm. He was still silent.
"What did we fight for? What did you fight for? What has all this brought you? I don't understand it. Was it really just the control you needed or what the hell did you want? What do you want?"
"You. I want you." He answered resolutely and looked at me imploringly.
"Well, you must have lost that fight." I replied, trying to loosen up again, but his grip tightened.
"If you go now, we've both lost." he said, and I snorted.
"You provoked it to end like this. So, congratulations." I replied, whereupon his face froze.
I took advantage of his rigidity and finally freed myself, only to be quickly caught up by him again after the few seconds in which he had not moved. He grabbed me and turned me to him one more time.
"I don't give up that easily. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, that I'm such a broken asshole and I'm going to ruin you with it and I have no idea how, but we have to stay together. Please give me another chance and this time everything will be different. No drugs in the house and I trust you, okay? I promise it. I trust you. I can't do it without you. "
"No!" I suddenly shouted into the rainy night and my scream faded into the empty streets. "Just leave me alone! Find someone else who you can exploit according to all the rules of art, but I have nothing more to give you!"
"I'll never get away from it without you." he stammered, letting his hopeless eyes wander around the area.
"You don't want that at all. And that's not my problem anymore. I can no longer save you because I have to save myself from you." I determined determinedly, although my heart rebelled by all means.
"Don't leave me alone." he begged, only now seemed to understand what he had started, because he was getting more and more nervous and suddenly he held my head and kissed me with his wet lips. Again tears came to my eyes when I noticed that he was kissing the passion and vitality that I had missed in the past few days. That desperate will to keep me that he had lost and found now when it was too late.
His hands clawed at my drenched shirt, but I rudely pushed him away.
"Stop it!" I choked out tearfully. "It is your fault, that you are alone now! I don't care about your shitty drugs! You dead to me!" I hissed, ignoring my aching chest, which almost prevented me from walking when I finally made it and moved away from him more and more.
I turned off at the end of the street and saw how Dan had dropped onto the sidewalk and was now kneeling before he was out of my sight
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me reading all the comments, where everyone hopes shit is gonna turn out fine, while i well know that this will happen. lmao.