I’m Watching You Breathing In

📅 April 2, 2018; 5, almost 6 days after Chey’s reappearance

►ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ ғᴏʀ ᴛᴀʟᴋ ᴏғ ᴏᴘɪᴀᴛᴇ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴏᴠᴇʀᴅᴏsᴇ◄

Chey was leaning against Anarchy’s door frame when he heard Kohao’s door open across the hall behind him, and he felt Kohao’s pause; the burn of his scrutinizing gaze on the back of his neck.
“You’re being a fuckin’ freak, you know that, right?” The night dictated that Kohao’s voice remain quiet, just barely above a whisper, but his tone managed to be sharp and hostile nonetheless.
Chey finally turned towards him from Anarchy’s doorway and offered Kohao a smile that didn’t reach his exhausted eyes.
“Hey, K-O. No sleep for you either?”
“I’m just taking a piss.”
“Have fun. Don’t drown.”

Kohao shot Chey a perplexed, distrustful look as he passed, but Chey just turned tiredly back around and resumed counting the rises and falls of Anarchy’s chest. When Kohao came back out of the bathroom, he padded quietly over to Chey again, raising his eyebrows after assessing his sight-line.
“It a hobby of yours to watch people sleep?” he hissed.
Chey shook his head and straightened up, though his eyes stuck stubbornly to the floor and he failed the fight to raise his heavy gaze.
“C’mon,” he murmured, motioning for Kohao to follow him down the hall to the kitchen so they wouldn’t risk waking up Anarchy. Kohao took up his usual sullen lean against the breakfast bar, there, and Chey hopped up to sit on the counter. Kohao glared expectantly at him. 
“Well?”
Chey let out a soft sigh. They both wore deep, cool shadows and bags beneath their eyes: The blue cast of the dark apartment seemed a melancholy equalizer, indifferent to whatever daylight conflict Kohao was carrying in his tone—so Chey dismissed it, too, and gave himself over to the honesty of midnight.

“‘Key used more heavily than I did, back on the streets,” he said, finally, speaking to his hands in his lap. His voice remained night-quiet, his tone sad; “I repressed a lot of my past. Anarchy didn’t. He used heroin to cope with that. Normally, when it starts getting hard to inject into your arms—the veins start collapsing—addicts go for hands, feet. Legs. You know, the neck is kind of the last place you want to go for.” Chey paused and gave a half-shake of his head.
“...But we were fifteen. We were operating like we were indestructible—or maybe we were operating like we were destructible...” 
Kohao’s weight shifted but he didn’t interrupt; his attention rapt on Chey’s words, the intensity of his silent gaze still burning.
“...The thing about injecting into your jugular—or your carotid—is that it’s instant,” Chey went on; “It hits you like a freight train. I only did it a couple times; it felt terrifying to me. It’s all but a fluke to just remain conscious if you’re not careful with your dose, and if you’re just a little too careless or if you have a batch with fent in it—you’re dead. Unless the person with you is carrying Narcan, you’re dead.” Chey’s voice came out a far cry from the one he used in daylight: That light, eccentric tone had been replaced by something serious, something accompanied by a slight tremor in his hands. “‘Key would shoot into his neck and half the time he’d pass out straight off. I’d catch his head before it hit the ground. Keep the needle from breaking off in his skin. I’d lay with my head against his chest and count his heartbeats because I was terrified he’d die.”

Chey finally managed to lift his head and met Kohao’s eyes, finding that the distrust which usually kept them guarded had lessened, and his brow was furrowed more in thought than in anger. Chey blinked rapidly and failed to bite back a strained, shallow sigh.
“I worked through a lot of trauma in therapy. I learned to deal with flashbacks. Nightmares. But this…” Chey raised his eyes and looked past Kohao, down the hall. “...I don’t know what this qualifies as. I haven’t dealt with it for over seven years. I didn’t expect to start waking up, terrified, needing to make sure my best friend was still breathing after all this time.” Chey lowered his gaze to the floor again and his voice grew quieter. “I’ve been back in his life for five days. I don’t even know if I have the right to call him that.”
“You do.” Kohao’s tone was blunt as always, with the ghost of hostility at its edge; his expression was unreadable. “He never told us about you by name while conscious, it was always ‘my friend’—we all assumed he’d had someone who’d overdosed and died—but I heard his tone when I asked him about the name tattooed on his hip. Even without having read it off his skin I would have recognized your name when he introduced you a few days ago because I’ve been hearing him murmuring it in his sleep for six years.” Kohao broke eye contact and stared moodily across the room towards the balcony door. “You can just sleep in his room instead of standing in the doorway like a creeper.”

Chey had stared in disbelief at Kohao’s first assertion but bit back a laugh at the last comment and couldn’t keep the amusement from his tone when he responded; “Are you saying it would be less creepy for him to wake up and just have me chilling in his bed?”
Kohao gave Chey a scathing, pitying look. “Well clearly wake him up and ask him first, you fucking idiot.”
“Yeah? You think ‘hey man, I know we just met back up after over half a decade, it cool if I spoon you shirtless for a few hours?’ would go over well?”
“Tch. Look,” Kohao snorted, “Anarchy puts up a front, but he’s a fuckin’ pillow pet.” His voice abruptly quieted; his expression drew distant, even wistful. “...He won’t say no to you.” 
There was a beat, then Kohao shoved away from the counter and whatever gentleness he’d given into vanished, his usual hostility seizing its place. 
“I’m going to bed,” he spat out, turning on his heel and starting back toward his bedroom.
“Kohao?” Chey softly called after him, following to the mouth of the hallway. Kohao froze, his silhouette going rigid.
“What?” he half-snapped over his shoulder.
Chey couldn’t make sense of the aggressive about-face, but offered him a cautious smile nonetheless.
“Just thanks. That’s all,” he said. 
Kohao rolled an insolent shoulder and kept walking. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Chey watched as Kohao shut his bedroom door behind him, hoping that, one day, he’d be able to earn his trust...or at least learn to understand him. Kohao’s closed door offered no answers, though, and Chey's gaze drifted to the doorway across the hall; his thoughts returning to Anarchy.
He padded quietly down to Anarchy’s room again and leaned against the doorjamb, the dim light snaking in from the hall just barely enough for him to make out the rises and falls of Anarchy’s chest with how his ever-present dog-tags caught the light. Chey counted fifteen breaths; an arbitrary number that both made him feel he’d lingered too long and felt like too low a number; too little reassurance; nothing compared to what he wanted to do; to rest his head against Anarchy’s broad chest and feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat again.
Chey reluctantly turned away and walked slowly back to his own room, mulling Kohao’s words over in his head: ‘Just sleep in his room instead. He won’t say no to you.’
Chey bit his lip. Instinct told him Kohao had been honest; there was no cruel trickery at play. And yet...Anxiety welled up in his rib cage, hollowing his chest.

Not tonight, he thought to himself as he crawled into bed, curling up on his mattress as if hugging his knees to his chest would make the space beside him feel less empty.
Some day.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
When I’m not a coward anymore.