The Fight had started the night he thought she was dead.
It had become an increasing fear; that he would enter her window to find her lifeless body – and increasingly, it seemed an inevitable reality. And that night she was splayed on the stained mattress, her face still and her chest unmoving, so pale and thin she seemed utterly insubstantial and his throat had constricted with abject terror and he'd been on his knees beside her in a heartbeat, shaking her frail body vigorously, his heart thundering against his sternum so hard he thought it could rupture. "Lex, Lexy baby, come on," he'd been shouting without realising it, heedless of who might hear him – reckless, foolish, even in that part of town where no one was likely to pay attention – and it had seemed a lifetime before she stirred. Groggy, so stoned she could barely crack her eyes open, she'd moaned a little and lifted a hand to rub her face as though he'd done no more than stir her gently awake with a few soft words.
"Hey, ssup'?" she'd murmured in a voice strained paper thin, raspy and unbothered, not even a little perturbed. Just complacent.
And he'd abruptly let her go and sat back on his haunches, a terrible mix of rage and fear and sorrow deluging his system as she'd pulled herself up with an effort and immediately began fixing herself a shot from the My Little Pony lunchbox she kept all her gear in and he wondered when the fuck this had started, when she would just shoot up in front of him so blasé and indifferent, when she knew he hated it, when it took every ounce of control he had not to just rip the syringe from her hand and smash it to pieces against the wall.
The shot was cocaine; he knew that's how she got herself ready for work now, that her smack doses were too heavy and she needed the upper to tear her into alertness. He sat and watched, his jaw gritted and body rigid, his bloodstream roaring with impotence and frustration, his heart a clenched knot of misery as she searched the ruin of her arms for a vein. She had to shoot up between her toes and he found he wasn't sure if she didn't glance at him even once because she knew how violently he resented her right then, or because she just didn't care.
Then she'd capped the syringe carefully, like always, and put it in one of the little black sharps disposals she always had to hand, rolled up her gear and locked it all away, placed the brightly coloured tin box to the side and turned to him, smiling, her eyes lit with an artificial brightness, like a fluorescent bulb where the sun should be.
At some point in the two years they'd been together, the guardedness had left her eyes when she looked at him. The wry cynicism that had always glazed them had lifted and she would gaze at him with such open affection and desire that it always left him undone and defenceless. It was so different to the tough, mean little bitch she otherwise was, and it was his alone. As she reached for him then, he found his fury dissipate at the sight, somehow so unbearably touching, and his resentment fled in an instant. He wasn't really in the mood for sex but as her hand slid up over the inner muscles of his thigh, he knew she could change his mind quick. Lately it had been getting really, really good, now that they were both a lot more confident, and if they started he would once again put it off, put off all he'd been planning to say for weeks now and things just couldn't continue as they were and he had to stop being so fuckin' chicken shit, had to stop thinking with his dick, and just fuckin' say it.
Just as her fingertips stroked his tail, brushed the slit of his cloaca, he made a dive and caught her hand up in his own, even as his traitorous body shuddered and he felt the tip of his organ nudge against the opening. Amber blinked and looked at him in surprise, her dilated pupils dark in her pale face. He looked at her, at her chapped lips and the freckles that crowded across her skin, the long, gorgeous red hair that fell heavy and straight, that she always kept meticulously clean no matter what, with the one lock of hair in front that was shorter than the rest, an ever-present reminder of the horrible events that had finally pulled them together. At the eyes that were always either all pupil or none at all, enormous in her thin head, vulnerable and defenceless with feeling as she looked at him. And regardless of everything else, he was struck with a wave of such tenderness for her he nearly drowned in it.
"Lexy, we gotta talk," he rasped. And just like that, her eyes went hard and guarded once more.