I Can't Tell You From The Drugs

[JONATHAN NATHANIEL CLARK]

In which we discover the origins of David and Jonathan.

<sub>Stay with me. You're the one I need.
You make the hardest things seem easy.
Keep my heart somewhere drugs don't go.
When the sunshine slows
Always keep me close.


It was lucky that Jon had been a fuck-up for the better half of his life. He knew all the signs, and what they looked like and what to do about them. Somehow, though, he didn't feel less helpless. The nineteen year old knelt over the prone body of his friend, tucking two fingers beneath the boy's jaw and feeling for a pulse. It was there, faintly, tapping like a listless snare-drum in the vein. The kid's expression was far off, his eyes glassy. Jon swore, slapping his face on one side, shaking his shoulder. Wake up.

The needle was right there on the floor, next to David. The belt was still still looped around his arm, though it had been loosened. Jon ripped the thing off, scooping the boy's head off the ground. "Come on, Dave. Stay with me. --Fucking idiot." He continued to try and drag him into wakefulness, slapping him, shaking him, cursing.

It was cold in the garage. They were surrounded by dusty equipment. Drums, a bass, some decrepit amps. The acoustic David usually left in it's stand was lain on it's back, on beside the sagging couch. Posters on the walls. A bag of chips getting stale on the tool-bench. This place felt too regular and lived in to be the place where one of his best friends died.

"Come on, man. Wake the fuck up." He cradled him close to his chest, childlike. He didn't have his cell-phone, was scared to leave him on his own to call an ambulance.



If only you could see. The stranger next to me.
You promised, you promised,
You're done...
But I can't tell you from the drugs.</sub>

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>In his head, David was in the quiet place. There was warmth close to his body. This was the womb. No light, no sound, no effort. In his brain, he as pressed against the soft, warm body of the Venus infernal, resting his head on her navel, clinging to her by her hips. In his dreams, she stroked his hair, held him, kissed him, assured him.

There was something wrong, though. The press of her thighs around his neck. He choked, fingers clawing at her honey skin. She knotted her fingers in his hair, and squeezing tighter the pressure on his windpipe. David's mouth gaped. Her finger tips the traced the 'o' of his his lips. His world spiraled. She kissed him, and his veins burned.

The goddess Heroin pushed deeper into him, filling his lungs, and he didn't breathe. Filling his belly and his chest. He felt her nails in his skin, his back against the wall.

And a voice called him. "Dave!" His opiate goddess dove deeper inside of him, choking out thoughts of retaliation. David felt his world growing smaller. He curled deeper into her womb -- he with her, she with him, too close, to far. It was a fit of confusion.

The voice came again. Something like ice held him by the wrists, by the shoulders, by the face. "Stay with me."

His mistress dug her claws between his ribs, piercing his heart with her poison, clinging to him.

The ice entered his belly, and fire into his head. The voice was there, prying the high away from him. He needed to scream, to tell this intruder to let him go, but he was too full up of her sickness.

The voice called him again, and again, insisting, probing.

He blinked, and the world was white.

He blinked again, and there was a figure there, somewhere. The seductress in his veins scolded him, trying to draw him back. He blinked, and the figure was a face.</sub>

[JONATHAN NATHANIEL CLARK]

David blinked.

Jon drew what felt like the first breath in years. He spoke again, trying to force the boy's eyes back open, and to keep them there. The guitarist came and went, blinking, his fingers curling and uncurling. Jon sat back, still holding onto him.

"That's right. Just stay awake, man. Come on." If he could at least get him lucid, he could get away to call for help, somewhere. David's pupils were like pin-pricks in a sea of gray-blue. His skin was white. Jon cast his eyes to and fro. All of the hairs on his arms were standing on end, raised in a field of goosebumps. At least the cold in the air would help to keep David from going further under.

He pinched his band-mate's skin, in the crook of his arms, the back of his hands, on his neck. He slapped him again, shook him, cussed him out.

"You'd better stay the hell awake, Dave, or I'll fucking murder you. I'll break your guitar and your amps and that stupid fucking record player. I'll throw that fuck-damned Project 86 album out a window, I swear to Cain I will."

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

David came closer to the surface. His breaths came quicker, in small hisses from his mouth and nose. He was aware that he was being held, that someone familiar was doing him some sort of violence. His eyes opened, and this time were slower to close again.

There was a room he remembered, with smells that registered in his brain. There was a face, just inches away, hands shaking him.

What the..? His hands were sluggish as they moved to intercept what ever was intruding on his high. Long fingers wrapped around a wrist. "Wh..." His voice was a croak, and then nothing at all. There was a knife wedged into his eye-socket and a desert in his throat. His tongue darted out, wetting his lips, and he tried again. "What the f-fuck are you.." His words were swallowed by an explosion of pain in his middle. His arms dropped to cradle his middle and his body turned without his bidding, heaving as a sea of nausea overtook him.

He wretched, and then the vomit came, rushing up his throat and out through his mouth in an acidic swell. The guitarist's entire body jerked, seizing as the muscles in his abdomen went taut.

"F-f-uck that..." He felt the carpet beneath his face, smelled the vomit, just inches from his nose. A tremor rocked through him, and blood roared through his ears.

[JONATHAN NATHANIEL CLARK]

Jon skipped back as David turned on his side, depositing a sea of stinking bile on the floor. His hand rested on the boy's shoulder, the other dropping to hold his head up from the floor, lest it rest in the pool of vomit. The smell was stomach-turning. Jon gagged. ""Jeeze. --It's fine, Dave. Just stay awake, man."

He rubbed the boy's skin, trying to urge some color back into it. The blue lips, the blue fingernails... He looked like the living dead. His pulse was returning, his breaths regulating, but Jon knew he wasn't out of the woods. Vomiting wasn't a characteristic for heroin overdose, that he knew of, and it was no secret that David mixed highs. He looked around the room for the culprit -- or something to wipe the puke from his guitarist's chin -- his brain racing.

"Just once, man, couldn't you do this shit near a hospital? Or someone else's garage?" He got stiffly to his feet, pulling his friend's body away from the puddle. What a fucking mess.

Jon found a rag his father used to polish his car with. Fair enough. He propped David from the ground, letting the boy rest against him, and wiped what he could of the vile substance from his face and arms. "What else did you take, David? --What a clusterfuck."

He laced an arm around David's middle, carefully pulling him to his feet. "Alright. We're getting you to a hospital. Let's go."

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>The words of David's future bassist registered, and the young man lifted his head, listlessly resisting Jon as the man tried to lead him away.

"N-no man... I'm fine. Just need some..." He lost track of his words, staggering and slumping against Jon. He was tall and awkward enough as it was, even before he was shit-faced, and against the sturdy build of the Weekend Warriors bassist, he looked like a wind-blown fabric. "You just gotta let me rest."

Another wave of nausea overtook him, cutting off any attempt at talking Jon out of taking him to the hospital as he bent over at the waist and heaved a stomach-full of vomit out onto his band-mate's sneakers.

He pushed away from Jon, gagging, hands on his quaking knees. He heaved again, feeling the acidic burn of bile on the back of his throat.

He was a mess. The slop was on his shoes now as well as Jon's. It speckled his jeans and a thin film of it had made his arm and the bandages on his wrist slimy. It was pooled on the rug and he'd tracked a bit of it as Jon had tried to lead him away.</sub>

[JONATHAN NATHANIEL CLARK]

Jon gagged as he felt the warm sludge from his bandmate's stomach slop out onto hi shoes. He danced back, his stomach fluttering as he saw David bend and vomit more of his sickness out onto the floor of the garage.

"Fuh-huh-huck me, Dave." His eyes were streaming. "If this is your bid at getting my sympathy..." He centered himself, going to the guitarist as he saw that he was about to lose his strength again. He wrapped his arm around David and started easing him towards the door again.

He lead him out into the winter air, shivering, limping, and then into the place that Jon called home. In the bathroom, he sat him down on top of the toilet-seat, running the shower-water. "Alright, let me see your arm." He wished he could call Anya over this, but he didn't want to give the girl a reason to think about drinking again, so soon out of rehab. The bandages that protect David's healing cuts were slimy and stank. Jon wiped them off the best he could and then peeled the gauze strips away.

"Man, Dave. Couldn't you think about something other than your fucked-up head for a while? Look at this shit."

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>David gave a shrug, suddenly aware of an intense desire for cigarettes. It occurred to him to request a pack from Jon, but he decided it would be unwise to do anything else to piss the man off, at least until he was positive he wouldn't be assaulting him with another mouth-full of bile.

His eyes wandered down to Jon's progress in re-applying guaze to his wrists, where the stitches hadn't yet been removed. When had Jon become the home-maker? "The fuck do you know how to do this sort of shit, anyway?" The guitarist drug the heel of his palm into his eye-socket, willing the headache away. He felt Jon's grip shift, pressing the self-inflicted wounds the wrong way.

"Ouch! Fucker." He took his arm back, taking matters of the gauze into his own hands. "You gonna tell people about this bullshit?"</sub>

[JONATHAN NATHANIEL CLARK]

Jon watched his best friend slowly re-dress his wounds, feeling like helplessness overcoming him from the inside out. Dave was obviously on a path that ended in in a ditch or a city-funded grave, and he liked it that way. There was no way to fight the descent an object who's natural tendency was to hit rock-bottom.

"How many more times am I going to have to fish you up off the flood, Dave? I can't do this fucking bullshit anymore. I don't have the energy. I'm trying to keep my own fucking problems in order. I can't handle yours, too."

The relationship between David and Jonathan dated back into the pages of the bible. It was a friendship knitted out of something more lasting than flesh, and Jon couldn't fight his love for David or how deep it went. The first time he'd tried to kill himself, Jon's world had almost exploded. It was frustrating and unmanly by so many standards to lose your cool over your best friend, but Jon knew for certain if David's idiocy ever truly finished him off, Jon wouldn't be able to stay sober.

"Just.... Clean yourself up or something. I'll try and find you some clothes." Everything he owned was too big for David, but that was true of almost anyone's clothing these days.

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

Didn't look at Jon as he was dismissed and the boy left him to his own devices. He examined his clothing. Vomit had soaked into the fabric of his shirt, and drops of it had fallen onto his jeans. He swore, stripping both of them off. He unlaced his chuck-taylors and kicked them into the corner, away from the soiled clothing. He glanced at himself in the mirror, catching sight of his ribs bony ribs and the concave nature of his belly. His eyes were just blue-shelled beetles, skuttling in unison in his sockets. David frowned, slipping out of his socks and boxers adn stepping into the shower.

Jon's place was the only house out of all his friends where taking a shower wasn't so awkward that he couldn't bring himself to perform the task. He'd only met him in rehab, but the connection between the two boys was solid and damn-near unshakable.