Bad Habits
I was going to be a pharmacologist.
I was going to get my degree and come up with a cure for Alzheimer's or Tay-Sachs or Parkinsons or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or one of those. Instead, I do this. This is how I spend my biochemistry scholarship to the tune of ten thousand dollars a semester. This is my life now. The room is dark, just how I like it with pupils as big as they get. I'm not high though, haven't been for hours. That'll change. I walk another room of my tiny 4-room house. I call this room my lab, although it's really nothing more than a couple 2-liter soda jugs, a bottle of ammonia, a tin of lighter fluid, and a glass dish. I check the glass dish, but there's no powder left in there; I cleaned it all out last time. It's okay, though, I can make more. I'm getting ready to do that when a hunger pang hits. I try and remember the last time I ate. About 2 days ago. I used to be in really good shape - now, I'm scrawny and my fur is matted and greasy. I figure I last took a shower about the same time I last ate. I consider grabbing a quick one before I dine. I'm headed to the bathroom to bathe when another pang hits, tearing at my stomach with intangible claws. So no shower, I think. Food first. I walk to the kitchen, open the fridge, and start staring at empty shelves. The cupboards are empty too. There's a can of soup in one, but it's dented and past the expiration date. I figure a 3-minute drive to the restaurant is better than botulism. When you get poisoned by botulin toxin, acetylcholine isn't released from your nerve endings to stimulate your muscles to contract, and you suffocate to death because none of your muscles will move. So I decide to go to the diner.
I grab my keys from the bowl by the door and am halfway out the door before I remember Noah has the car. Noah's my roommate, a wolf. Noah's a crystal freak. It gets kind of boring when he's rappity-rapping on at you at two in the morning when you're trying to sleep, but he keeps the house clean (which is hard for me) and he doesn't eat all the food. Noah's an okay fur. I toss the keys back in the bowl and see if I have the energy for a ten-minute walk. I decide to go for it and spray some deodorant on to cover my smell. I start walking.
About halfway between my house and this nameless diner I go to, there's a gas station. I check my wallet to see if I have enough money for food and something from the convenience store. There's thirty dollars in there, more than enough.
Inside the gas station the heat is on way too high and it's really unpleasant. I go down the aisle closest to the door, which is where the gas station furs keep what I want. Then, between the motor oil and the condoms, there it is. I grab two bottles and walk up to the register. The bored-looking otter behind the register looks at the two bottles of cough syrup and says with an odd sort of sarcasm, "Is that all?"
I tell him I'd also like a pack of Camels.
Walking outside with the cough syrup and my wallet 15 dollars lighter, I light a cigarette. I put the bottles of viscous goo and my pack in a satchel I carry. I start walking again, but smoking now, which makes it better and easier. When I get to the restaurant, it's drizzling lightly (not strange for this city). I notice there's some ivy growing along the side of the building. I'm almost sure it wasn't here 4 days ago, the last time I visited, but I'm not positive. I took botany for one semester then dropped out, but I'm pretty sure I have the textbook at the house still. I decide to come back later with my book and figure out what it is.
Inside the diner, I eat. As I try to read the menu, my headfur falls around my face in lank, greasy strands. I'm just thinking about getting out of there so I can get home and shower and such when I'm interrupted by the waitress, a rather pretty panther. She asks what I want and I realize I don't know what time it is. I decide to just go for it. "I'd like a patty melt," I say.
The waitress shoots me a look and I can see her sizing me up in her mind. I look like a total drug addict, and I probably am. I should have taken a shower before I left, I think. She says, "At 9:30 in the morning?" And I say, deadpan, "I'm not a big fan of eggs." She leaves and I raise a paw to my face and start biting an already well-worn claw. To kill time while my food's getting here, I read a little placard that lists the different types of pie I could order. I consider getting a slice of lemon meringue when the panther comes back just to weird her out more, but then my train of thought is interrupted by another waitress offering me coffee out of two big urns; one brown and one orange. I get some decaf.
When the panther comes back with my sandwich (complete with fries) and leans down to put the plate on the table, her nose wrinkles at my smell. I barely notice this, though, because the smell of the patty melt stimulates my roaring belly into a state of total frenzy. I say to the waitress, "Could I also get some lemon meringue pie?" She says, "Sure," and turns away really quickly, breathing through her mouth.
I guess I haven't told much about myself. My name is Tobias Flynn, although everyone I know excepting my mom calls me Toby. I'm a fox, about 6"1', with grey fur except for a tawny patch on my chest and belly. My mother was a secretary before she got married, and my father is Senator Flynn of Oregon. I moved to Seattle a year ago after recieving a scholarship to U of Washington to study biochemistry and pharmacology. I haven't been to class in 3 months.
When I get outside, my full stomach sighing in content, I light another cigarette. The rain has cleared up and the late-morning sun is shining down on me. As I'm thinking about nothing in particular, a car horn honks behind me. I practically jump out of my fur. I see it's my beat-up 2002 model black sedan. Noah's behind the wheel and another fur I don't know is in the passenger seat. Noah pulls into the diner's parking lot and gets out. "Hey, man, you want a ride home?" he asks. I say sure and get in the back. The cat sitting in the passenger seat turns and introduces himself as Ryan. He dosen't look like the kind of fur Noah would hang out with. That is, he's not missing teeth and there are no sores on his face where he's spent hours picking at bugs under his skin. As a matter of fact, Ryan looks pretty together. I say, "Hi, I'm Toby," and extend a paw. Pawshaking isn't really the norm among my circle of friends, but Ryan takes it anyway, firmly, and shakes up and down twice.
We get back to the house and I take my satchel from the seat beside me and walk inside. As soon as we get through the door, I excuse myself to my bedroom, which I call a lab. I unwrap the cough syrup once I get there and start performing an acid-base extraction. I put on some music first, not what you'd expect. No Nine Inch Nails, no Marilyn Manson. I put on The Flaming Lips and start.
In over-the-counter cough syrups, the active ingredient acts as a hallucinogen at high doses. This is where you've heard those stories about furs drinking cough syrup to get fucked up. You can extract it from all the thickeners and glucose and crap in the syrup with simple chemical reactions. First, I pour all the cough syrup into one of the two-liter soda jugs. Then, I mix it with ammonia. Then, a little bit of lighter fluid. Then, I seperate the ammonia (which is all just glucose and propylene glycol now) and the lighter fluid, which has what I want in it. The end product: dextromethorphan or DXM. I pour the lighter fluid into a wide glass baking dish and evaporate it. The residue that's left, I scrape together with a razor blade. There's about 650 milligrams of it. I take the powder and put it all on a milligram scale. 657 mg. I divide it until the readout on the scale reads 300mg.
Beneath the crappy card table I use to do this stuff on, there's a shoebox. Inside the shoebox is a baggie and a tupperware container. Inside the baggie is a piece of dialysis tubing, an insulin syringe, and a smaller baggie. Inside the tupperware is a shot glass and a bottle of lactated Ringer's saline solution that I lifted from the doctor's office last time I was there. I also lifted a prescription pad, but that's really just for extra income. You have no idea what speed freaks and junkies will do for just two of those sheets. I take out the bottle of saline and the shot glass and fill the latter halfway full with the former. I like to say 'the shot glass filled with the saline that the junkie uses to shoot up with is half full.' Call me an optimist.
I mix up the 300mg of DXM and the saline, then take a pinch of powder out of the smaller baggie. It's light brown and packs a punch. It is heroin mixed with Benadryl. I stir that into the saline as well.
I can smell the acrid smell of pot smoke coming from the living room and I figure Ryan must be toking up, since I've never known Noah to touch the stuff. He says it's bad for your lungs, but he snorts meth and coke and takes uppers and downers and poppers and screamers and laughers and just about anything else. Noah does practically everything besides weed. I pause in my work for a moment to reminisce about the first time I smoked. I had my first brush with psychoactives when I was 12 and a friend offered me a cigarette. I smoked it, went home, and learned everything I could about nicotine. When I was 14 I was at a party and someone gave me a joint. I smoked it and afterwards, I researched delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol until I thought my brain would burst. From there I was hooked not on any particular substance, but the world of underground drugs in general. I learned everything I could about neurochemistry. I liked weed but it didn't mess me up enough. I tried coke but figured why get high when you can get low? My dad was prescribed painkillers for a chronic back problem. I tried those at 15. By 16, I was mixing my father's Vicodin and my mom's Valium, trying to get ever-lower. When I was 17, I took my first ride on the H train. And the rest, as they say, is history.
I suck the witches brew into the syringe, filling it almost all the way. I find a vein on my left arm. On the second try, I get it. I'm pushing down the plunger, shoving sweet relief into my abused veins. The last of the fluid is forced out of the tube just as the door slams open. Ryan's standing there asking, "Hey, do you know where I can-" He breaks off. "Oh, sorry," he says, and makes to leave the room.
"No," I say, "it's okay." I can feel my skin turning red under my fur. I'm not proud of my habits like some furs I know. "I'm done here." I pluck the needle from the crook of my elbow and snap the knot on the piece of tubing wrapped around my bicep. I toss the two items back into the container, almost toppling over as I do. Ryan comes in the room. He sits down against the wall next to me. Now that he's closer, I notice his eyes are both a startling shade of green, and bloodshot and lidded. I guess I was right about Ryan. He says, "Alright, I was just trying to get away from Noah for a minute anyways." "Is he tweaking?" I ask, struggling to get the words out through the haze of smack pounding through my bloodstream, numbing my brain like a cough drop on a sore throat.
"Yeah," he replies. He scoots over to where I am. "Sometimes he just..." He trails off, but I know what he means. Noah's a great fur when he's not hardcore methed up. He's okay when he is, but he gets boring after a while. I'd say Noah's been tweaking since 5 this morning.
"Yeah, I know," I say.
There's a silence for a minute. I'm nodding, my head dipping down, then snapping back up when my chin hits my chest. I feel great, though. My gut tingles with a familiar opiate-induced feeling. Ryan's staring into space, looking like he's trying to figure out something important. Suddenly, he starts singing along with the album.
"Do you know these guys?" I ask, turning my head towards him with an etheral slowness. "Yeah," he says. We both hum along for a while, but the CD starts skipping and Ryan goes to turn it off. He comes back, and now all you can hear is Noah in the other room talking to himself.
Ryan leans his head onto my shoulder.
I'm surprised and fall over to the floor. (I don't fall over because I'm surprised, I fall over because I pull back reflexively and lose my balance.)
"Sorry," he says, retracting, not really knowing what to do. "I'm just...you seemed like...I don't know." He's about to leave when I say, "It's okay."
"Err...." There' an awkard silence. "Let's go see what Noah is doing," I suggest, glad for the excuse.
"Yeah, sure," Ryan says.
Ryan walks to the living room and I trudge, ready to sit down already. Out in the living room, Noah's watching TV and drumming one paw against his knee so fast I'm surprised that it hasn't caugh fire from air friction yet. He turns toward us. "Hey guys," he says.
"Hey," Ryan and I say simultaneously. "What are you watching?" I ask, blushing. "This," he says, nodding towards the TV. The TV isn't on. Which is not to say there's nothing on it - I can see our reflections. We both plop down on the couch alongside my roomie to watch some nothing. I wonder how long Noah's been up for - the last time I saw him sleep was quite a while ago. I'm thinking maybe he has amphetamine psychosis and is hallucinating a TV show. I'm wrong about the psychosis but right about the hallucinating.
"DMT," Ryan says. I turn my head to the cat. There is indeed a little baggie with masking tape label reading DMT. "Nice of them to label it," he says, and chuckles. It makes sense, though, really. Sometimes, drug dealers and illicit chemists working with multiple substances will label them, because quite a few psychoactives are white powders, crystals, or flakes, and it's easy to get confused. I knew a fur once who thought he was getting some heavily cut coke, but his dealer got mixed up and my friend wound up snorting 5 lines of almost-pure China White fentanyl. He died within five minutes, probably in forty-five seconds or so. Not a bad way to go, considering.
We sit there for a minute without turning on the TV, but if you've ever just tried to sit with someone who's tripping, you know it can get boring. Ryan and I, without exchanging words, decide to get out of there temporarily.
"See ya," I say to Noah, walking out as Ryan grabs the car keys.
We drive for about four minutes in silence, then I ask where Ryan's house is.
"It's right around here."
I fall silent again. I sit and contemplate the dashboard until Ryan says, "We're here."
I look up to find we have, in fact, arrived at a slightly more dilapidated version of my own domicile. We get out of the car and walk inside. As soon as we're in, Ryan says, "Could you take off your shoes?" I look down and see that the carpet is very nicely taken care of. Clean and free of clutter. I slip off my tennis shoes and pad over into the living room, feeling a little out of sorts since I usually only take off my shoes to sleep. We walk into the living room, which is a bit more spacious than mine. There's a TV and a VCR and some speakers sitting opposite an old couch that probably came from a dumpster somewhere. I sit down on it, diagonally, taking up two cushions.
"What do you want to do?" Ryan asks, pretty clearly at a loss himself. I say, "Let's just watch some TV," and grab the remote from the arm of the couch. I press the power button and the screen becomes a lighter shade of grey, but there's no image. I play around with the buttons and bump one accidentally. A sideways white triangle appears on the top, and after about three seconds of hearing the VCR whir, a picture pops up. It shows two cheetahs, sucking each other off. Ryan sits, stunned apparently, then springs up off the couch like something poked him. He rushes over to the VCR, blushing furiously, and stops the tape, ejecting it and dropping it. He shoves it under the shelf holding the VCR and TV, apparently trying to conceal evidence. I can actually see the red coming up through his grey fur and manage a wan smile.
"It's okay," I say, "it's okay."
He returns to the couch and sits down next to me, mumbling something about he was sure he put it away. I say it's okay again, and this time he seems to belive me. Desperate to fill the awkward silence now blossoming, he asks, "Are you...you know....?" "Gay?" I say. He nods. I shrug and raise one paw, making a comme ci, comme ca gesture. I look at him, and I'm a little surprised to find I'm blushing too. There's a mischevious grin on his muzzle. He asks, "So you wouldn't mind too much if I did this?" and leans forward and kisses me. It's not much of a kiss, really just a brushning of our muzzles, but I don't recoil, so the next one is deeper. I can feel his tounge prodding around in my muzzle, like it's getting used to the territory. I kiss back, somehow laying full out on the couch now, with Ryan on top of me.
He pulls my head into his, so I'm in sort of a sitting position. His paws, which were previously on my sides, move lower, undoing the snap on my jeans. He moves his paw into my pants, sneaks below my boxers, and gives my sheath a good squeeze. I'm kind of surprised to find that I can feel my cock stirring in there, considering my nasty habit of booting heroin and psychedelics. I'm just getting psychologically prepared for the first time I'll be having sex in about a year when I hear the unmistakeable sound of another fur coming up the front steps. Ryan's obviously heard it too, as he recoils off of me, buckling his own pants back up and and trying to hide a rather sizeable erection. He gestures at me furiously, and I get the idea and buckle up my jeans also. We've just resumed more innocuous positions on the couch when a badger who looks like he's in an ill temper storms into the room. Ryan and him exchange a few words that I don't catch, and then Ryan's tugging on my paw, dragging me off the moldy old sofa.
Ryan walks and I trudge out the front door back into the driveway, which is now wet with the rain that's pouring down from the heavens. We get back in the car and Ryan explains, "That was Jake. He's a nice fur, really, but kind of a homophobe and he's pissed off for some reason."
I nod and we set off, back to my house I presume.
We drive for a minute, taking random turns. Just trying to avoid the moment, as someone once said. I lean back in my seat and close my eyes, enjoying the patterns in my head. Ryan says, "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."
"No problem," I say without opening my eyes. "I'm gay, or bi, or something." Ryan just nods. To some mild surprise from me, he reaches over and rubs my headfur, scratching me behind my ears. I murr weakly and push my head up into his paw. I'd like to do more, but heroin isn't great for that kind of stuff. Meth, definitely. Amyl nitrate, maybe. Junk, no.
"Shit!" Ryan yells, jerking his paw back from me and clamping it to the steering wheel. My eyes shoot open and I see him drifting into the oncoming lane. There's no one on the street, I think. We're okay. I revise my thoughts a moment later when a black-and-white starts up his sirens and we have to pull over.
"Shit!", Ryan yells again. "Fucking goddamn fuzzmobile saw me fucking up."
Backed into a corner, he does what anyfur would do; he shows his underbelly and hopes for the best. He pulls into a parking lot, and the cop follows him.
I close my eyes and wait.
A big dog crammed into an ill-fitting uniform walks up to the driver window. "You know you were swerving back there," he says with an accent that's definitely not Pacific Northwest. I would peg it as Oklahoma or Texas, but I never was good at geography. "Uh, yeah," Ryan says.
"May I ask why?" the cop replies.
Ryan blanks, freaking out and racking his pot-clouded brain for an answer. Apparently, he hesitates too long, because the dog asks him to get out of the car. He shoots a look at me before he complies. With that look comes the realization that we're not getting out of this. I think randomly that Ryan must have been smoking some very good weed. Then I think I should never have let him drive. Too late now though.
Outside, the cop is saying, "Your eyes look a little red. Tell me, you on anything?"
"Uhh...yeah," Ryan says, giving up and shooting the cop a little half-smile.
"Alright," the cop says, and I'm glad to hear from the tone of his voice that he's not the kind of cop who will lecture and such. He leads Ryan to the back of his car and then turns his attention to me. He taps the window and I press the button, rolling it down.
"Can you step out of the car, sir?" he says, and I nod. As I'm stepping out, though, my footpaws catch on each other and I stumble and fall to the ground. The cop helps me up and puts me in back with Ryan. At first, I start to mumble a protest to the tune of 'I didn't know he was high,' but then give up. He locks my car and comes back, sitting in the driver seat and saying something into his radio. The radio comes back with an incomprehenisble hiss of static that may have some voices underneath it, and the cop nods and starts up the car.
At the station, it's kind of grimy and washed-out looking from cheap fluoroscent lighting. We sit in the drunk tank, waiting for someone to come and get us. Ryan asks if we should call Noah.
"No," I say. "What difference would it make anyway? They're just going to let us out of here in like 24 hours or something and Noah would just show up tweaking and they'd arrest him too."
"Yeah, I know, but we should probably let him know where we are."
I shrug. In retrospect, it's a pretty good idea. One time I left for a while on a road trip up to Astoria, really just a day trip, without telling him. When I got back, Noah had barricaded the door, pretty much convinced that I had been nabbed by black helicopters and they were coming for him next. "Maybe," I say.
I figure the cops will let us sober up, fill out some forms, set a court date, and let us go. This peaceful notion is broken when a cop, a vixen, comes in and asks me if I'm Tobias Flynn. I say, "Yeah, so?" She says, "The Senator's son?" I could lie, but I figure they ran my ID already and just want me to confirm it. So I say yeah. I'm seperated from Ryan and brought to a room to wait, nodding off occasionally, for my father to come and completely destroy me. They ask if I'm on anything and I say I'm on heroin. I leave out the DXM because it's really not worth explaining what it is. In my experience, nine out of ten cops have no clue what I'm talking about, and I have to say it's cough syrup basically, and that's really embarassing.
They return me to the cell and I go slump down by Ryan. He's still in shock that I'm a Senator's son. I guess he figured me for the son of a blue-collar working class type. "God, I'm sorry, I really fucked up," he keeps saying. "It's okay," I say back.
Eventually Ryan is taken away and I figure they're asking him the same questions. What are you on, how long have you been using, what other drugs do you currently use, et cetera. He comes back and confirms my suspiscions.
He sits down next to me and wraps my paw in his and squeezes. I squeeze back and we sit there for a while until a drunk who looks like he has a bone to pick comes up and asks if we're queers. I say yeah, we are, and he starts trying to preach God's word through a .22% BAC. I tune out for a while. When I get back in, I'm a little less impaired and the severity of the situation is beginning to sink in. No more scholarship money, that's for sure. I don't even know if you can take back a scholarship, but Dad will probably find a way. He always does, God help him.
An indeterminate period of time later, my father is there and springs me (and Ryan, reluctantly). Ryan uses his common sense and keeps quiet while me and Dad are shouting at each other. Dad asks where I'm living and I direct him to the house. He lets Ryan off and he says to get my things.
"What do you mean?" I ask, really just to start another argument.
"Toby, use some fucking sense! If they search that place and find your drugs, you could be looking at ten years in prison if not more. I'll try to pull some strings and keep the cops from searching that house, but only if you get your things, get back in the car, and come live with your mother and I. The only reason you're not looking at jail time already is because you're my son."
I consider it. Of couse going back to Salem is a lot better than ten years in jail, but I still consider it. Finally, I get out of the car and go inside to pack.
Ryan's already in there, explaining the situation to Noah. I come in. The heroin wore off hours ago and the DXM about 30 minutes ago, and I'm dazed at the concept of leaving my home and trying to get sober. I'm mentally preparing for the excruciating withdrawal from heroin when an idea occurs. It's so blindingly simple, I'm surprised I haven't thought it yet. If the cops haven't searched by now, I can eliminate evidence. I walk into the lab and gather everything. I gather things until it looks like a regular, if not very clean, bedroom. I walk through the living room into the tiny bathroom and flush all my drugs. I walk back out into the living room and get Ryan and Noah to give me theirs. Both are reluctant until I explain that they can either give up their stashes or spend the next five to ten years getting cornholed in a prison cell by a wolf named Scar. I flush theirs too. Then I start putting more innocent stuff away. The ammonia goes under the sink. The lighter fluid and baking dish go in separate cupboards. The Tupperware goes into the drawer from whence it came. Then I go back outside to the waiting SUV containing Dad.
I open the door and say, "Fuck you."
I say, "I'm an adult and I can make my own decisions. You can get the cops to search the place if you want, but they won't find anything." Then I slam the door and walk back to the front step. I can see Dad figured out what I did, because the SUV rocks back and forth a couple of times while he thrashes and punches the horn. The old mouse living across the street pokes her head out, and I wave and smile. She waves back, stares at the rocking truck for a minute, then retreats into her house.
I come back in and say, "The cops will probably be along anytime soon."
And I'm right. Obviously, you don't get pulled into a police station with your high friend while you're nodding on H, but the repercussions weren't that bad. I tell the cops that it was my first time on junk. I spout a lot of shit about how I'm sorry and I can't belive I did something so stupid. They say I'll probably have to attend a rehab class and I'll have to complete it or face jail time, for what I don't know. A court date is set.
I go into my bedroom, now free of all the cooking equiptment. Ryan is snoozing on the bed, even though it's been six hours since we were dropped off here by my dad. I nudge him with my footpaw and tell him to wake up. He rolls over, mumbles, and rolls right off the bed, dragging my blanket with him. I can't help but notice he's naked. He looks up at me and notices me noticing. He smiles and asks if I want to do something, but I just don't feel up to it. Even though it hasn't been that long since my last hit, I'm starting to sweat and I'm getting nauseous. I give it six hours, tops, until I'm thrashing around and hallucinating. I explain the situation.
"I'm starting to withdraw," is how I sum it up.
Ryan appreciates the severity of this. "Shit," he says. He goes out to call his roomate and tell him he won't be home. I lie down on the bed and wait.
Three hours later.
The bed and my fur are soaked in stinking sweat. Ryan's hovering above me with a warm rag that he occasionally presses to my neck or forehead or muzzle. There's a bucket beside the bed and I shove Ryan out of the way and vomit into it. More accurately, I dry heave into it, since anything that was in my stomach came up long ago. I fall back onto the bed and Noah comes through the door, having just made a run to get some comedown essentials, with a bag full of tiny glass ampoules. I try to ask what they are, but my mouth is so dry I can't get words though. Noah gets my gist, however, and says, "They're promethazine. They'll keep the vomiting down." There's also some pills, which he says are methadone for if things get really bad. He fills a syringe with liquid from one of the ampoules and shoots me up with it. I instantly get tired, and after about three minutes the cramping in my stomach goes away. I drift into an twitching, uneasy sleep. The sweat on my back is like a pane of ice. When I wake up, Ryan isn't there and Noah has taken his place. I taste the inside of my mouth and croak, "Water." Noah leaves the room for a while. When he comes back, he has a glass of water. Ryan is with him, blinking sleep from his eyes. I take a sip of the water, and it's the best water I've ever drank.
"Thanks for being here," I say, my mouth considerably more lubricated now. They just nod, almost in unison, and I try to sit up. I manage it and notice that Noah looks pretty sick himself. I realize he's coming off meth and it can't be too long before he'll be in a similar position as me. I ask for another shot of promethazine, but Noah's paw is shaking too badly and Ryan does it. He's no great shakes at finding a vein, but eventually he manages and I go back to sleep.
When I wake up again, I'm feeling a lot better, having gotten past the worst part in an antihistamine daze. Ryan says I've been sleeping for about twelve hours. Noah is out on the couch, coming off lots of meth and moaning. Ryan's been ferrying between us, playing nurse to two sick addicts. I walk out into the living room, where Noah is lying on the couch and shaking. Ryan is giving him some aspirin, looking very haggard. I sneak up behind Ryan and hug him. He's happy at first, but then he smells me and recoils a little. I take the hint and move farther away. He says, "I'm glad to see you're up. Here." He sounds very matronly and holds out four pills. Two are aspirin and two are methadone. I swallow them without water. He says, "You should probably take a shower, then I'm going to try to get some sleep. Can you take care of Noah?" "Sure," I say. I'm pretty confident that with enough methadone in my system, I can do anything. As soon as Ryan's gone off to find a nice clear spot on the floor to sleep on, I take two more methadone. Methadone is an drug that's like heroin, but more addictive and powerful. For some reason, they give it to junkies to keep them off smack.
Withdrawing from amphetamines is less serious than withdrawing off opiates, so Noah is still conscious and coherent. "I feel like I'm going to die," he groans. I offer him a couple tabs of methadone and he accepts. For about an hour or so, I just sit with Noah and talk. After I've given the methadone some time to kick in, I ask if he'll be okay while I go take a shower. He nods. I wash.
Inside the shower is warm and steamy and thoroughly welcome given the events of the past twenty-four hours. My fur is grimy and matted, which I suppose is what happens when you spend a night in the drunk tank. They don't bother much with cleaning it, apparently. I think I hear the bathroom door open and cock my head, listening for anything further. I hear nothing and return to the matter at hand, namely, cleaning myself. Ryan steps into the shower, naked, with a brusque, businesslike expression. I'm so surprised I almost slip on the slick porcelain and practically shout, "W-what the hell?!" He looks at me for a second, and I amend, "Are you doing?"
"Finishing what we started earlier," he says.
I'm still stunned for a minute and he grabs a bottle of shampoo, pouring a large bit into his paw. He rubs it into my greasy coat, forming a cascade of suds. Despite my shock, I murr and start breathing more heavily. I reciprocate, pouring some shampoo onto his fur and rubbing it around. I look down to find that his cock is slipping out of it's sheath, growing steadily. I reach down almost despite myself and start rubbing it. Ryan purrs and thrusts into my hand. A drop of pre slides down his head, and my paw catches it. My own cock is at full attention now, which is very surprising considering recent events. My right paw wanders down and starts playing with it. Ryan murmurs, "Stop."
I comply, slowing my paws down until they stop, both still clutching a dick. He grabs my paw and removes it, then drops to his knees. The water from the showerhead pounds down on the back of my neck as I look down at him engulfing my member in his muzzle. I can't help but to gasp as his rough tounge starts running over my head. My knees threaten to give out and I grab the soap dish to keep from falling down. Ryan starts to move his head back and forth, slowly, exploring my meat with his tounge. My knees resolidify and I reach down, my paws now free to grab his head. Ryan starts moving faster. I let out a moan despite my best efforts at being quiet, but choke it back and instead settle for twitching my hips into Ryan's welcoming muzzle.
I don't notice what Ryan's doing until he does it, sliding a finger into my tail hole. I hadn't even noticed that my tail was raised until the cat brought it to my attention. I gasp and my outraged knees give a warning, slipping a little. I can feel Ryan smiling around my cock, starting to pump his finger in and out. This is too much for me and I quiver, pleasure flooding my as my cum floods Ryan's mouth. He swallows twice, then gives up and lets most of my seed run out of his muzzle over the base of my cock, my pubic fur and his chin.
I breathe hard, basking in the afterglow of the best (and only) orgasm I've had in a year. Ryan, still smiling, stands up and grabs my shoulders. I think it's a gesture of camraderie, but then he applies gentle pressure and I understand I'm supposed to turn around. I do, bending over and pressing my paws against the cold synthetic porcelain of the shower. I can feel the tip of his cock pressing against my slightly loosened tailhole. He dosen't mess around with preliminaries, instantly thrusting all six and a half inches of himself into me. My voice box tries to scream in pain but my brain keeps it in check. The result is a stifled sound that's something like the sound you make when you're trying to pick up something very heavy. After thirty seconds, though, I'm starting to remember why I like getting fucked so much. Ryan's purring harder than ever, moving his whole body instead of just his hips to thrust into me. I clench my tailhole around his meat and his paws squeeze my waist. He mrowls and starts to shoot cum into me. There's a lot less than I had, from the feel of it, but I'm betting Ryan hasn't gone a year without sex.
We sit there like that for a moment, until his softening cock slips out of my tail hole. I rinse the remaining suds out of my fur, then shut off the tap. Ryan and I just stare at each other for a moment, then I softly say, "Thanks."
When we get back to the living room, Noah smirks knowingly.
The next time one of my scholarship checks is to come (I am told this later by Noah, as I was quite sick at the time), a letter arrives instead informing me that I will no longer be recieving payment and that they have notified the school, and that my enrollment will be terminated in 30 days if I don't go in there and fix it. I don't really have the desire to do so. I figure this is a college town. There's going to be a job for a dropout.
And I'm right. The gas station down the street, the one I bought my last hit of DXM from, hires me to replace the bored otter I met that day, who got into a car crash. He lived, but ended up paralyzed. I settle into a nice little routine, a niche if you will. I work the night shift, catering to stoners and drunks mostly, in for a late-night snack or another twelve-pack. Working the night shift, you run into some weird furs, though. The work isn't too hard and I get free cigarettes. Overall, it's a nice existence. Noah is still going to school and is free from meth, although he sometimes does do coke. Me and Ryan are being tested to fulfill a court order. Basically, the deal is twelve months of probation in return for not going to jail. Of course, there are ways to get around drug tests.
DXM dosen't show up on drug tests. I've been doing a lot more of that lately, as a sort of heroin surrogate. Every other week I bring home my meager earnings and Ryan, Noah, and I party, waking up the next morning in a hazy Robitussin hangover, picking up empty bottles. It's a good life I have now, free from the complication of having to constantly score smack. My employee discount at the gas station means I can pick up a lot more cough syrup for the dollar.
When we can afford it, Ryan and I go out to a movie or dinner, just the two of us. Ryan got a job at a record store, and our combined salary is adequate, if not comfortable.
I was going to be a scientist. I was going to cure diseases and be the hero of furkind. That didn't work out, so now I'm working in a gas station. Still, it's a comfortable life I live now. My future is looking up.