Judal and Aladdin sat together on the couch for a long time. They were silent. Aladdin took Judal's hair out of its braid and ran her hands through its silky length. His hair was so nice.

"Ready to hear the rest of the story?"

"There's more?"

"Yeah. You started this so now you have to end this."

"I'm not going anywhere. Tell me."

"Well, that first day after Sinbad left I was a total wreck. I drank all the alcohol in the hotel room, then I paid someone to go get me more. And every day I drank more. And I kept doing it, I kept drinking to dull the pain, but after a while that wasn't enough anymore. I slept around with a lot of people. I dated everyone and anyone who would look good for the cameras and improve my image. I kept drinking. And eventually I started taking drugs. My manager got me started on them. And once I started I couldn't stop."

"What were you on?"

"Oxycodone. It's a downer. It creates a state of euphoria. It seemed to make everything better."

"But it didn't, it just masked the pain, right?"

"Yeah. I actually took off from Al Thamen for a lot of reasons, mainly to get off the drugs and stop the alcohol. It really sucked the first week. I stopped everything all at once. The first week is called a crash week. It's the hardest week because all of the withdrawal symptoms are the worst. I kept getting panic attacks and muscle pain. My muscles were super weak too, I couldn't sleep, I had a fever off and on. Every week after the first week got a little bit better, every day got better ever so slightly. Exercise helped too, but it was excruciatingly hard because the drug caused muscle weakness. Took a shit-ton of work to build that strength back up."

"I bet. What made you want to get clean?"

"I was inspired by an artist who was getting a little to close to my popularity level for comfort."

"Who?"

"You should figure that out yourself."

"I got really self conscious after some of the producers and even Sinbad started commenting about my weight. I spent more time working and listening to those things and less time around my family and friends. I got really lonely. There was this pain in my chest, it was cold and it felt like a gaping hole. I felt like I was completely separated from everyone else. It was terrifying. I started working out a ton and eating way less to try to loose the weight that everyone was saying I needed to loose. They kept saying that I wasn't skinny enough for a celebrity. It worked, I lost a lot of weight really fast, but it didn't seem to alleviate any of the pain. Spending more time with my friends and my dad helped a little, but it was barely noticeable. Then I met you that day in the music store and we spent the day together and I felt so much better. The pain lessened the more time I spent with you. Now it's barely there at all. It started hurting again earlier and so I went back to old habits and I ran."

"That wasn't a healthy kind of running Aladdin. You need to stop that."

"I've been better for the last few weeks, but it got really bad when Sinbad kissed me. It's been better ever since but when you shut me out it got bad again."

"Sounds like we both have some pretty dark pasts. We seem to compliment each other."

"I guess so. It's nice that way."

"Finding comfort in each other's loneliness and isolation. Yeah, really nice. Why are you such an optimist?"

She stuck her tongue out at him and nuzzled against his neck. She spent time just breathing, relaxing against him, relishing the fact that he wasn't upset about being her comfort. She had been worried about that. Things were good, even if they both had lots of pain, they could comfort each other.

Hello there.

What's up? Aladdin and Judal having bonding moment. I spent forever when I first started this story doing research and trying to figure out what drug I wanted Judal to be addicted to. I don't really know why it took me so long to decide in retrospect.

Kouha and Leraje coming up soon.

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Until Next Time!
-Kizuna