Addicted to Company
Summary: Today, he promises himself, he'll start anew. ...Just as soon as he finishes this one last line. Craig, post rehab. AU
Rated M for horribly inappropriate language and drug use.
Don't want this story to be one that is filled with regret.
Lot left to tell you
...but it might be no business of mine.
This is the Morning After:
Regret and uncertainty wash over him in waves and sounds. He thinks he wants nothing more than to take back last night. Although, if it's possible, he would only erase the actions and eliminate the mistakes, but not the feeling. If he could, he'd bottle up what it feels like to get high using another person's body. He wouldn't mind feeling that way again.
"Fuck."
His head is pounding and there are bright, bursts of white stars behind his eyelids and his mouth feels full of cotton. He moves to roll over but his limbs are heavy and he curses his misfortune to an empty room. His poor, screwed up mind tries to piece together the puzzle but all he can come up with are flashes of moments - bathroom sink, refrigerator, bedroom doorway - and all the other ways they screwed each other over.
"Fuck!"
Bright, late morning sun streams in through the sheets serving as a curtain covering his window and he is nearly blinded when he opens his eyes. Craig doesn't know whether to feel dejected or relieved that he wakes up alone.
He expected to wake up alone, anticipated the after-effects of last night the moment he pulled Alex into his apartment and onto his bed. But somehow this hurts more than he wants to allow himself to admit. He isn't sure why that is.
The pillow underneath his arm still has a dent where her head was. Without her presence, he can't really ignore the fact that he's alone. The thought saddens him-actually that's an understatement; it fucking depresses him.
She was kind enough to leave a note, though, and in between its wrinkles and creases he can make out her handwriting:
I do stupid things when I'm upset.
That's it.
He wonders just what the hell that means, exactly. Is he, technically, the "stupid thing"?
He fights to keep his mind from lingering on meanings and consequences as he shuffles into the bathroom to blow his nose and take his meds.
(He doesn't feel any less hopeless than when he first woke up.)
When he comes to, he is lying flat on his back, facing a delicately tiled ceiling with fluorescent lamps that seem to only exist for the sole purpose of blinding him.
Craig blinks and the blurry image above his face comes into focus, the jumbled sound in his ears becomes clearer. A pair of legs in jeans so tight they look like they were painted on, a voice that doesn't match— filled with far too much authority and experience.
He's awake enough to realize that the voice and the body don't belong together, that the hand that's helping him up, warm in his, has nothing to do with the lecture he's getting.
"Mr. Manning… do you think you can wait until after you're shown to your room before you decide to rest?"
The condescension doesn't sit well with him, and he promptly gives whoever the hell is talking to him the finger once he's standing on his own.
For a moment, Craig wonders how she knows his name but the tiniest of dots fills in the holes of his memory: Joey signing him in because his own hands wouldn't stop shaking. Joey, who hasn't been able to look Craig in the eye since Snake called him and let him know what his stepson was up to in the midst of becoming a rock star.
(Although, truthfully, Joey hasn't looked at him the same in a long, long while.)
"Where's Joey?"
"I'm right here, Craig."
"Mr. Jeremiah, he needs to carry his own bag. Personal responsibility starts the moment he signs himself in."
It's a completely bullshit motto, in his opinion. Nothing but an excuse for the residents to use so they can feel better about their own crappy lives. He tells them this, tells them where they can shove that motto; they don't bat an eye.
None of it is what he wants to hear at the moment. All he wants is one line. One fucking line to make the pain stop, make him go numb—he's not in it for the high, can't they see that?—and he can do this. Is that really so much to ask for? He's currently on his hands and knees, limbs quivering, a sheen of sweat above his brow, and Craig wants nothing more than for this feeling to just...go away.
He pulls himself to his feet, because they won't even let Joey help him do that much. Their faces are stoic and cold as he stumbles, his fingers grasping for something, anything to hold onto. (Bastards don't even help him up.) He groans, struggling to overcome the strong and seemingly constant urge to vomit.
He doesn't feel grateful for being here, doesn't feel as though he's just walked into the place that is going to save his life. To Craig, Calgary does not equal salvation. He feels coerced by sad, hazel eyes that can't be disappointed by him again; cornered by the pressure to be better than who he is, when really he doesn't even have the strength to think he can.
Needless to say, his first day in rehab is hell.
He's never felt more threatened and intimidated by an inanimate object before.
Craig stares up at the building where Group is held, shuffling through his pockets for another cigarette.
He places it to his lips, hands shaking, mind overrun with memories of smooth brown skin and fine white powder. He can't get the feeling out of his mind, frightens himself with the lengths he's willing to go to get it back.
The forty-five minutes that he should be spending ripping open his soul in Group, he alternates between chain-smoking and pacing, as he takes up a post in front of the building.
With fifteen minutes left in the session, his hand hovers over the door handle but never bridges the gap to turn it. He can feel its metallic coolness, and realizes then that his palms are sweating. Ten minutes later, his fingers are dialing a number that he swore to Joey he would delete, one that connects him to a world he's wanted to forget but can't seem to escape.
His roommate, Vincent, doesn't speak more than three words at a time and the first day they meet, Craig is more focused on counting the track marks lining his arm than learning his name and memorizing his story. He counts seventeen, but that's only on the left arm.
He finds out later that Vincent is the son of some big shot plastic surgeon, who can't afford to let anyone know what's become of his former golden child. There are eerie similarities in their histories, but Craig decides as he dutifully takes his medication that he'd rather not dwell on what they are, exactly.
Vincent watches him as he swallows his pills, seemingly fascinated.
Later, he asks Craig how he deals with the numbness. Instead of answering, Craig feigns disinterest, and then sleep. (He doesn't know if it works. Probably not.)
He stumbles home after meeting with the dealer who has thoroughly missed his services and lets him know it by charging more than Craig is able to remember. He's anxious and nervous and excited about the prize sitting comfortably in his jacket pocket and he almost doesn't see her. He would've walked right over her, if it wasn't for the dim light illuminating the hallway near his apartment door.
She's leaning against the door, her head against the 2B that will likely fall off the next time someone knocks on it. Her hair is down, tumbling down her shoulders and almost covering the form-fitting V-neck t shirt. His mind grapples with coinciding this woman Alex with the tomboy from high school, who would probably kill anyone that made any references to her actually being a girl.
"Hey."
"Got stood up again?" he asks bluntly. He's not in the mood for pleasantries. He stares at some point on her chin, almost afraid to look anywhere else. He realizes that before last night he's never actually been afraid of her, but he can't completely trust himself not to get dragged into doing more regretful things.
"No. I just...figured I owed you an explanation."
"You don't owe me anything," he insists. He doesn't want to talk about the other night- even though it was, admittedly, the best high and fuck he'd ever had. Craig steps forward, key in hand, eager to go inside and forget about this conversation before it even starts.
"Why are you trying so hard to get away from me? Hiding something?"
"Why can't you admit that you're only here because your girlfriend found better options?"
"She's not my girlfriend," she snaps, and he thinks she's trying too hard to revert back the girl who can scare him, and not be the one who he's figured out how to make squirm underneath him with the right touch of a fingertip.
"Why are you here, Alex?" he resigns. He looks at her then, because she's covered her hand over his key in the lock, the other one discreetly sliding into his pocket.
"I thought you could use the pick me up. Looks like I was right." If anything, he's starting to think she might just be as lonely as he is, if not more, and she needs the excuse to feel connected to something, to anything. It's sad, really, how similar they truly are.
Alex holds the bag between her teeth and Craig allows himself a moment to become fascinated with her lips as she tugs on his belt buckle and slides her hand beneath the waistband of his boxers. In one surprisingly deft motion, she turns the doorknob and pulls him inside.
He calls her, because he can't help himself.
He calls her because, if he's honest, he misses her - misses being around her, talking to her, seeing her. He calls her, just because he can't stop thinking about what it'd be like if he never got the chance to speak to her again.
"I meant what I said, before."
"Craig." She stops there, but she doesn't need to finish. He can practically see Ellie, shaking her head.
"I meant what I said," he repeats, with conviction this time. An aide lurking around a corner glances over at him, monitoring his phone call and pitying him from afar.
She sighs, and when he realizes that this is as far as the conversation will go, he hangs up.
Three days later, he's flying through another set, but no matter how fast and loud he strums he is unable to repeat the high he's experienced with her. It's new and exhilarating and everything he craves (and everything he shouldn't).
Alex is sitting at a table near the front, ignoring advances from the other bar patrons and focusing her attention solely on him. It's different, coming from her, but not completely unfamiliar.
When he's finished, she is waiting for him outside and drags his mouth towards hers in an unexpectedly rough kiss with an aftertaste of rum and coke. She is desperate and pulling on his collar, but he doesn't ask what's happened that's made her like this. That's not what their arrangement is about.
Craig isn't sure how long they continue on like this; days tumble over and into each other, fading and melding into weeks until he finds it hard to remember a time when they weren't using each other to reach their highs and try to overcome their lows.
He feels somewhat hypocritical, going to Group meetings and pretending to care about the plight of his fellow addicts only to go home to screw Alex and snort as many lines as he can handle. But he is lost, trapped in the middle, uncertain and unwilling to pick a side completely.
On one of the rare nights that Alex actually stays over, Craig wakes up in the middle of the night with a craving for something sugary or loaded with caffeine. He slides from underneath her, her bare chest sliding across his and for a moment he almost stays. But his wants will always exceed anything and everything else and he leaves.
He throws on a pair of jeans and an old t shirt, then heads to the mini-mart a few blocks from his apartment.
In aisle four, he is trying to decide between blow pops and jolly ranchers when he's startled by a shock of red that he sees out of the corner of his eye and can't ignore.
"Ellie?"
"...Craig."
He smiles when he sees her, puts on a front of stability, but he thinks - almost hopes, actually - that she can see right through it. "Hey," he says.
"Hey." She smiles back.