Title: Real Wild Child

Author: mao

Disclaimer: Velvet Goldmine belongs to Michael Stipe, Todd Haynes, and a lot of other people, most namely not me. The title for this comes from Iggy Pop and the Stooges' song of the same name, as is the clip at the beginning. I'm just a poor college student not trying to make any money from this, and if you sue me, all you'll get is some soda bottles.

Author's Notes: I'm re-vamping this whole thing. This is now under the title 'Heroin,' and it's just a collection of little things I've written about Curt and his drug addiction that don't fit into a whole sort of 'fic' format. So...yeah. Enjoy.

Warnings: Graphic drug use, sexual content.

***

gonna meet all my friends

gonna have myself a ball

in a world gone crazy

everything seems hazy

I'm a real wild one

1969

He sits at the table, takes a drag off the end of his cigarette. He stamps it out, crushing the burning embers into nonexistence in the ashtray. With a practiced movement, he tlifts a syringe from among the beer bottles that litter the table, pushes the plunger into place, against the end of the syringe.

He lifts a beer to his lips, swigs, then sets the empty bottle down. Lights a small candle that sits on the table with a flick of his thumb. Around him, the din of the room is heightened by the arrival of a blonde stripper in a cowboy outfit. He watches her dimly, through the smoke of twenty-some lit cigarettes and more than a few joints. The coke from earlier is wearing off, and it's time for a fix in the other direction.

He turns away from the stripper, from the roomful of bandmates and adoring fans who have ceased to realize that he exists. The girl from last night - small, British with mousy-colored hair and a delicate accent - is cheering the stripper on with all the others there.

He takes the spoon and the powder and, upon a whim, pulls out a dollar bill. Scrapes the powder into a neat line with the edge of the spoon, then rolls the dollar bill into a small tube. Lowering his head, he inserts the tube in his right nostril, the snorts up the white line of heroin, sending the tiny crystals straight to his brain. In a moment, he'll be feeling better, and that should tide him over while he heats the rest of it to injection liquidity.

He swipes the back of his hand roughly below his nose, snorting at the sudden, slight pain of the powder going where it really shouldn't. His eyes water for a moment, and the inside of his nose is painful, then suddenly begins to compensate the dryness with dampness.

He drops the dollar bill to the dirty table-top as smack reaches his brain. For a moment, there's brief flicker of ecstasy, of otherworldly contentment and relaxation. He tilts his head back against his shoulders, feeling for a moment that hole in his chest filled by the heat, the incredible warmth of the drug.

And then it's relaxed, like the tide going back out to sea. Leaving him alone on the beach.

And he wants more.

He wants it so baldy he is quivering as he contintinues, and must press his palms into the table to steady his hands. He pauses, eyes closed, hands outstretched and fingers spread, pressing his hands into the table. Then it's passed, and he has recovered from the wanting - the beast that pushes him onward has recessed back into its cave.

He takes the bent spoon and drops powder into it, licking what's left on his fingers off quickly, in a desperate movement. He can do this quickly, he knows that. He just can't do it fast enough to satisfy himself. He has to go faster, hurry hurry get the smack and fill the plunger do it do it, please hurry, please rush-

He forces his hands to slow down. He has no water, so he drips some beer into the spoon, mixes the concoction with the tip of the syringe. He holds the bowl of the spoon over the candle, slowly simmering out the solidity of the powder, slowly dissolving it into a clear orange liquid that he can send straight to his brain.

When it's completely liquid, he lowers the spoon to the table as slowly as he can force himself to. He doesn't want to spill a drop - last time he did that, he found himself licking the table in desparation, trying to get it out of the cracks, praying he could have it back. But he's more careful this time, and the mission to set the spoon down is successful.

He forces his hands to slow down even more. He tells himself that this is the price he has to pay for the next six hours of divine ecstasy, a punishment for his habit. He lifts the syringe and gazes at it for a single, slow minute. The needle is his favorite part. The silver of it, the way it glitters in the dim light of the party. He lowers it to the spoon, dips the point into the bowl, and slowly - achingly slowly, so slowly it makes his teeth chatter and his gums hurt and his brain to scream at him to hurry up again - pulls back the plunger, filling the syringe cavity with the nectar.

When's completed that, he pauses, glances over across the room. He feels a moment of surprise as he sees the crowd, then remembers that they had been there earlier. The stripper is nude now, giving his guitarist a lap dance. He knows the heroin is hitting him because he remembers now seeing her come in, seeing the party move across the room, good-natured on beer and gin and pot and coke. He knows that when he looks away, he'll forget them again, will no longer hear the thumping beat of the music or the cheers of the crowd, so he focuses on this moment, as if it will remind him later of what was happening.

As if none of this will be blacked out later.

Then he turns back to the task at hand, the remembered plot to have his own private party. He grins slowly, a feral expression, unaware of his face changing on its own. He wishes there was someone there he felt as though he could like - someone he would enjoy shooting up with, someone who could push the plunger down for him. Better than sex, really. More intimate, too.

But for now, he knows he'll have to do it himself.

He takes the rubber strip, wraps it around his left bicep.He pulls it tight, wedging the loose end between his arm and his chest. He picks up the needle, picks up his world.

He gazes one more time at the perfect end of the needle, at the pricking end, where his universe begins. He lowers it slowly to his arm, clenches a fist with his left arm, and picks a vein he hasn't used too many times yet.

He breaks the skin quickly, waits a moment. He loves this moment of torture. He loves making it take as long as possible, loves holding it out, seeing how long he can last - one minute, two? - before punching down the plunger and drowning in the sweet seas of junk. How many terrible things he can think of that will vanish the moment the plunger descends and the needle pushes the heroin into his vein. How many thoughts can he have before he's too smacked out to think?

And then he pushes it down.