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Once it was over, I promised myself, it was over. No slipping up; no relapsing. I was going to commit to moving forward, whatever that would take. If I had to move. If I had to cut ties with everyone I knew. I wasn't going to let some drugs eat the rest of my life away.
"You hungry?" he asked, sounding like he already knew the answer to it.
My stomach was in knots. Some of it was from nerves, sure. But more of it was the withdrawal- the precursor to the vomiting that would be coming sooner rather than later.
"I think I am going to be holding off on the food for a while," I admitted, taking the bucket from him.
"Alright," he said, calm. He was so damn laid-back about everything. Instead of comforting me, I found it almost irritating. "You go settle in; I am going to take care of all this," he said, waving to the bags.
Glad for the escape, I hightailed it to the bedroom, putting the bucket down beside the bed and getting the blankets out of their packaging, spreading them out on the bed in layers. With nothing else to do, I grabbed for the remote and turned the TV on to old sixties reruns and climbed into bed, waiting for the misery to truly start.
In the other room, I could hear the occasional rustle of plastic bags and closing of cabinets, the running of the sink, the ring of a cell and then the slow, smooth cadence of his voice as he answered.
There was comfort in that- in his presence, in his understanding of a bad situation. I didn't know him. He was holding me captive. But I was glad he was there at the same time.
On that, I floated in and out of sleep for an hour or two, rest my body desperately needed before the full withdrawal set in- waking me up with barely a minute's notice that had me flying out of bed, slamming the bathroom door, and heaving into the toilet, almost painfully aware that I had an audience and more than a little embarrassed by that fact.
I got up, noticing the pile of clothes by the sink alongside two bottles of mouth wash and a wrapped toothbrush. I rinsed. I brushed. I rinsed again. And by then, my head was back in the toilet.
Over.
And over.
And freaking over.
My stomach was in a vice grip from both the cramps and the after effects of the vomiting. The chills had set in and when I was sure there was nothing left in my stomach, I rinsed, brushed, rinsed and went back out into the bedroom, crawling miserably under the blankets, curling up on my side, and shaking.
I wasn't sure how much time passed, focused only on trying to breathe through the urge to throw up again, rocking to try to keep warm, the sweat covering me seemingly everywhere, and the pain that shot across every nerve ending from the bottoms of my feet to the scalp on top of my head.
I was only half-aware of the bed depressing until I was momentarily pulled from my misery when I felt the blankets lift and a strong body slide in behind mine, his legs cocking up behind mine, his arm going over my hip to settle on the mattress beside my belly.
"Can hear your teeth chattering in the other room," Laz explained, voice low, soothing as it could be to my frazzled nerve endings.
"I'm... all... sweaty," I managed to object between the chattering, almost hyper aware that his whole body was plastered to mine and he was going to be soaked through as well as me soon enough.
"It's fine," he said, genuinely sounding like he meant it, but well... I might have been in the midst of genuine torment thanks to my own addicted body, but I was still 'me' enough to be completely disgusted at the idea of sweating all over some random hot guy. "Stop," he said, arm tightening around my stomach when I tried to pull away. "You need to warm up before you crack a fucking tooth at this rate."
He wasn't wrong. And while it was painfully bruised, my pride wouldn't let me stay in the bed. "I'm gonna be sick," I lied, making his arm release me immediately as I flew into the bathroom, slamming the door.
The bathroom floor felt like sitting on ice to my freezing body, made worse by my clothes that were soaked through with sweat as I brought my knees to my chest and tried to not cry.
Tried.
It was all of two minutes later before I was a complete blubbering mess. And it was about then too that the door opened and I could hear Lazarus moving toward me.
He didn't stop beside me though, he kept moving toward the shower, reaching in and running the water. I could hear the water filling, almost obnoxiously relieved at the idea of a hot bath, anything to help the fever and chills.
