Dean trudged into the small, dark bathroom, his alcohol-addled brain still able to navigate his way to the sink without walking into the side of the toilet because he'd made this journey so many times before. He pulled the cord dangling from the light on the first go, because in the five years he'd lived in his cramped apartment it had never moved, and a sickly yellow light illuminated the bags under his eyes. He stared into the eyes of his reflection, as if looking for answers that he'd never find, and absently scratched at the crook of his left elbow where the faded track marks still lined his skin.
He'd given up eighteen months ago, but the temptation - no, the hunger - was still there. It was always there, eating at him from the inside.
He slowly unbuttoned his shirt, not tearing his gaze from the pale shadow of his former self looking back at him. Inch by inch of pale skin was revealed - skin that hadn't seen the light in two years.
It was the middle of summer, and the other gardeners he worked with kept asking him why he didn't just strip off instead of working in a sweat-soaked shirt all day. The didn't understand, of course. They didn't know his background because he kept himself to himself. The others would all go out for drinks at the end of the week, but Dean made his excuses every time until they eventually stopped inviting him to join them.
He shrugged the shirt off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor at his feet, and reached for the razor blade that sat next to his toothbrush. He pressed it into the skin just below his left pectoral muscle and paused.
He'd lost his muscular build when he'd started injecting and stopped working out, but he'd been building it back up over the past twelve months and now he looked pretty good - so long as he kept a t-shirt on - but he just couldn't shift the softness that was building up around his stomach.
He broke the skin, a thin bubble of blood oozing up, and he cut a straight line diagonally down, only about two inches long, cutting through several silvery lines of scar tissue. He cut another below it, parallel like train tracks, and he felt some of his hunger for a fix leave him. It was bad blood. Unclean blood, but he could only get rid of a small part of it at a time. He wasn't trying to kill himself, after all - just stave off one addiction with another.
The blade slipped, and he winced as it nicked the tip of his finger. He let out a bitter laugh. For all the times he'd calmly carved lines into his chest, he still flinched at a small cut. He rinsed the blade under the hot tap and sat it down next to his toothbrush.
He used to cut his thighs with his father's pocket knife after a really bad comedown, but he'd pawned that three years ago for a fix.
Dean stripped and stepped into the shower, steeling himself against the cold spray, and imagined the last of his craving wash away with the blood.
He woke up huddled in the shower cubicle four hours later, shivering, and it was all he could do to dry himself off and crawl into bed as the rising sun peered through the curtains.