He knew it was wrong, but he kept doing it anyway. It wasn't that he didn't care—of course he did. He constantly felt guilty about what he was doing to himself, but it never stopped him. The guilt of it was always outweighed by the need, that most basic and primal of urges.
He could remember exactly when it had started. It had been one of those days where he felt abandoned when Ollie didn't show up at all that day. He felt so trapped, so confined inside of the house—big as it was—and without warning he felt a strange longing for the open skies of Arizona. This was impossible to find in the city, but he did the best he could. Though it was nearing sundown, he left the house and went to the nearest park. He sat under a tree, watching the other people in the park. There weren't many, as it was becoming rather late. He hadn't been there for long when someone approached him.
It was someone he hadn't ever seen before, a tall man who appeared a few years older than himself. The man was wearing jeans and a jacket with the hood pulled up, blocking his view of most of the stranger's face. He leaned against a tree quite close to his, and said those words that would lead directly to his downward spiral: "You here to buy?"
At first he was genuinely confused. He wondered what on earth he would want to buy at a park, and before giving it much thought he responded, "Excuse me?" This earned him a roll of the other man's eyes.
"Don't be cute with me, kid. Are you or aren't you here to buy?" He saw the other man pull out a small plastic bag filled with a powder. Realization hit him almost as rapidly as the need for space had back at the house: he was being offered drugs.
He wondered what he should do. Should he just say no? Should he say yes, and then hand the drugs over to the police or to Ollie so they could bust the dealer? He only thought about his choices for a few seconds, but that's all that it took for that deadly seed to be planted: curiosity. He knew what the outcome of both of those options would be. But taking the drugs and keeping them for himself… what would that be like?
"Yeah," he said slowly, hesitantly, "yeah, I'm here to buy."
Less than an hour later he was back at the house, in his room with the door locked. He had everything he needed at the ready—he had even gotten a few syringes from the dealer when he'd admitted to being a first-timer.
Staring at the powder and thinking about what it would be like to shove the needle into his arm, he began to think about why he shouldn't do it. What would Ollie say if he found out? What would happen to his career as a superhero? As Ollie's sidekick? He wouldn't ever be trusted again.
But the curiosity he had felt at the park began to overwhelm him again. He wondered what it would be like not to feel sad or lonely. On a whim, he decided that if Ollie came home within the next hour, he would hand over the drugs and tell him he had intended to bust the dealer the whole time. He wouldn't ever have to mention that he had almost done the drugs himself.
He stared at the clock, waiting for the hour to be up. He didn't know which outcome he preferred. Did he really want to risk turning into a drug addict, all for the sake of curiosity? Did he really want to break Ollie's trust like that? Then again, he thought, if Ollie loved him at all, wouldn't he want to be with him, at home? At least for a while?
The hour came and went without any sign of his surrogate father. For another half an hour he waited, and when Ollie still didn't come home, he decided that his guardian was probably spending the night at a bar or some woman's house. At the thought of Ollie choosing a night with a stranger over a night with his son, he became angry. He decided he didn't care what happened if Ollie found out, and he followed the dealer's instructions and prepared the drug.
Once more he hesitated as he tied the tourniquet, listening for some other sign of life in the house. There was none; he really was alone. Without any more hesitation, he managed to find the vein and push the needle in. Trying not to think too much about what he was doing, he pushed the drug out of the needle and into his body.
What followed was an incredible feeling. The loneliness melted away, and he felt sort of numb. The world seemed stuck in slow motion while he moved at the speed of light. He thought vaguely that it did justice to his other name.
He wandered through the house for a while, noticing for the first time how little his presence had impacted its appearance. There were few pictures of him, though that was easily overlooked because there were few photos at all. The house was neat, and none of his things were lying around. There were few signs that a teenage boy lived there at all. It occurred to him that this would have bothered him had he been sober, but under the drug's influence it had almost no emotional impact on him other than a slight twinge of annoyance.
Again he found himself locked in his room. He opened his window and sat on the ledge, watching the cars go by. Sometimes their lights would turn into streaks from going to quickly and sometimes it would seem to take an eternity before they passed by him.
He never noticed the sky slowly changing from black to the first lighter hues of dawn, and he didn't hear the garage door open and Ollie finally coming home. The high faded from him slowly enough that he never truly knew when it had ended, only knowing that the drug had worn off when everything slowed to normal speed and he realised that he was hungry.
He saw Ollie in the kitchen when he went in for breakfast. His guardian looked at him and said, "You're up early."
"Yeah," he answered, "I went to bed early last night; didn't feel so good." That was true, he thought, he hadn't felt very good.
"Mm," murmured Ollie, and he wondered why he didn't ask if he was okay now.
It was then that he knew that he would do it again.
And he did do it again. He started using the drug every night that Ollie wasn't there, which was rare. Slowly, it progressed from a need for release from his negative feelings to an addiction, and when he finally realised how much control the drug had over him, he found that he didn't care.