A/N: Hey again! SO, operation Revive This Account is underway and becoming successful. If you've ever read my leading fic, Frost, you may or may not be pleased to know I've *finally* uploaded a chapter six. I've wanted to continue it for a while, so now I'm doing it I feel all fluffy and warm inside. Feel free to stop by and have a read of it!
Just to let you know, the title of this fic was inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe (one of the best authors ever) quote, which I'll post at the end. I felt the whole thing was inspired by that. Please R&R because I will love you for it! :D
Pairing: Gwevin (Gwen/Kevin)
Plot: In a more modern take on Gwevin, Kevin's battling drug addictions and Gwen doesn't want to sit back and watch him dig himself and early grave.
POV: Steve the Narrator, follows Gwen
Summary: It wasn't a relapse, although she almost wished it was. He'd been doing it all along. Rated T for everything, basically.
Rated: T
Inspiration: Please Don't Leave Me by P!nk, the quote I mentioned above and one of my favorite Little Lion Man covers by Tonight Alive (originally by Mumford and Sons). R&R for a virtual cookie :)
It was late one summer evening, and the setting sun glinted off every rooftop for miles, painting the sky all different hues of purple and red as it did so. Gwen Tennyson strode along the sidewalk semi-confidently, raking a hand through her long red tresses.
Karate had begun to become more pressing since she'd turned eighteen and started the senior's program, and she had a bruised hip from falling on her side so many times. All she wanted to do was go home, flop on the couch in front of the TV with some of her mom's best cocoa and moan down the phone to Kenny about life.
But instead, she'd dolled up and set out to sit down and have a talk with Kevin. Ever since the heated argument and electrifying ultimatum she'd screamed at him over three months ago, things hadn't been quite right between them. When they did talk, it was to discuss things that were an absolute necessity to discuss, like how to pick up Kevin's mom's drugs from the chemist's or what time Kevin should pick up Gwen from school. And even then, Gwen had started taking a public bus home from school and they ignored each other's calls a lot.
It wasn't good for either of them, so Gwen was walking down to Kevin's garage to talk it out. She wore a white camisole and a black jacket, and black skinny jeans. The converses she wore were old, black and Kevin's. They were a size too big for Gwen, but he had left them at her's one day and she'd never remembered to give them back. They felt comfy to walk in.
Gwen approached his garage, hearing the Nickelback tracks he played so loud from halfway down the street. She turned the corner, smiling, then stopped dead as she saw Kevin.
Oh, Kevin, you fucking asshole.
She ran back around the corner and flattened her back to the brick wall, tears prickling behind her eyes.
In the garage, a muscly figure in a black hoodie and dark blue jeans sat on the hood of a green-and-black car. Kevin's figure and Kevin's car. And Kevin's stupid fucking actions, too.
Balancing a joint between his teeth, Kevin lit the end and hunched over even further, drawing the poison down into his lungs. Next to him on the hood, sat a clear plastic bag, and a white pot with the lid removed. Gwen didn't even need to look again to know what was in those containers.
Slowly, then all of a sudden, Gwen felt her gapingly wounded feeling boil into a hot, blazing rage. She collected her thoughts and marched around the corner. Kevin froze, mid-smoke.
"Here we are again," she spat, and her voice carried a thousand different degrees of hurt and anger. It dipped in the middle and wavered at the end, and she gripped the bottom of her jacket to stop her hands trembling.
Kevin stood up, his eyes as wide as the moon, and the joint went flying onto the floor.
"Gwen! Gwen, Gwen..."
"No, shut the fuck up. Just fucking shut the fuck up, Kevin."
His brow crumpled and he darted forward, desperate to hold her and sob into her and explain; apologize; rewind the last minute. But Gwen raised her hands in front of her, blocking Kevin from moving any further.
The sweet, sickly, disgusting rock-bottom scent of the joint burning out filled Gwen's nostrils, and her fingernails dug into her palms as she brought her hands back down to her sides again.
"When I said what I did," she said shakily, "did you think I was joking?"
"No, Gwen, I... I-"
"DID YOU THINK I WAS JOKING?!" she screamed, and her whole body shook violently with the words she was saying, and the stake through her heart that Kevin had so strategically placed there. She bit down on her lip until she could taste blood just to shut out the tears. She closed her eyes, waited a beat, and opened them again. Kevin stood before her, crumpled, weak and pathetic.
"Because I wasn't joking. I meant what I said, Kevin." Her voice was suddenly much quieter, and solemn. The more she screamed the less control she had, and she felt at least one of the two in the room need to retain a little control.
"I know that," he cried desperately. "I know that. But, Gwen, it was - I was -"
"I said, me or this. Me or the drugs, I said. And I should have known. I should have known what you would've chosen."
"No," Kevin howled, and that was what it was. The howl from a distorted, singed animal's soul. "No, I didn't chose this, I chose you, I chose -"
"You chose this!" screamed Gwen, and thunderous tears erupted and flooded down her cheeks. She couldn't stop them. The walls of her world were crumbling down, and all she could do was scream and cry. "You chose this, over me." The sincerity of her words sunk in and a sob escaped her lips. It felt like she was yelling to the world that she was an idiot from the top of Everest.
"Gwen," Kevin whispered pleadingly, the tears on his face matching hers.
"So this is it," Gwen whispered so quietly it was barely audible, each syllable adorned with its own earthshaking blow to Kevin's stomach.
"No, Gwen, please, please, no..." Kevin grabbed onto Gwen's wrist but she shook him off, sobbing.
"I have to go now."
"NO! Gwen, I need you."
His face fell apart, contorting in odd inhuman ways. Gwen looked at him, really looked at him, and then looked again. His greasy unwashed hair; pale, desperate face; the bags under his eyes; the old and still visible scars on his wrist as his hoodie sleeve shifted up a little.
"I need you. I need you. I need you to help me, help me, fight it. Help me, I need you to help me, please, please, please don't leave me..."
Kevin's speech came out in hiccups and jolts as tears dribbled helplessly down his cheeks. He was suddenly ten times smaller, looking so so young and lost in this big world. The screaming pain that he emitted froze Gwen in the moment, in a garage with the boy she'd risked everything for several times over.
Kevin's addictions had been prominent for over a year now. She first found out through finding him exactly like this - holed up in his garage, hunched over a joint. She'd never asked, but she knew it was more than just joints. Sometimes he'd called her in the middle of the night, as high as the sky, telling her he wanted to run away and marry her. Other days, he sat shaking in a corner, pleading to be left alone.
Gwen had tried to get him help more times than she could count, but whatever she did, Kevin would object profusely.
"I can beat this! If I can beat addiction to electricity, I can beat drugs," he'd always remind her, and she'd eventually cave in, believing him.
He'd seemed to be getting better in the last six months; that was, before the argument. She'd actually believed he was fighting it, that he could beat it on his own, when all the time he'd just gotten better at hiding it. The thing that pissed her off the most was that he didn't even seem like he wanted to beat it - he could see how it was eating her alive, and yet he'd just continued. He didn't even look like he was trying to beat it, but now Gwen wondered if he'd been secretly, silently struggling with it all along.
She couldn't be a doormat, though. If he needed a wake up call, then this would be it.
Gwen wiped tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand and dug her other hand into the back pocket of her jeans. She pulled out a white business card and threw it onto the hood of the car as Kevin stood next to it.
"Call me when you've had two sessions," she told him, her voice thick with emotion, "and I'll need proof," - he picked up the card with a shaking hand - "and then I will talk to you." Then, whilst Kevin was still focused on the card, she turned and ran from the garage.
"Gwen!" Kevin called after her. He ran out to the sidewalk, but she was already halfway up the street and still running, red hair flying out behind her, hand clamped to her mouth to stifle sobs.
Kevin looked down at the card in his hand. He kept looking at it until his vision blacked out around the edges and it was all he could see.
Then he grabbed his cell from inside his car and dialed the number on the card.
"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom." ~ Edgar Allan Poe