12 December, 1894 — Samuel's Old Laboratory, Whitechapel

Outside of this empty residence, Don Juan was beginning to think that he hated Samuel Griffith. Hate was a strong emotion, and not a conclusion to be arrived at lightly. Don Juan wasn't sure he'd hated anyone before. Elfrieda Yaxley's husband had repulsed and irritated him. Valencia had infuriated him when she'd begun messing around with his family and refused to tell him what her game was. There were people in society that he disdained, and far more that held him at arm's length which he hardly considered. But when he thought about Griffith, the smug superiority with which he carried himself when he offered Don Juan a drop of what he'd been craving, he thought maybe this feeling rose to hate, or something like it. It had been over a week since the first occasion, and they'd been meeting up again irregularly — after Don Juan had come frantically crawling back on the edge of his first round of withdrawal and begged for something to keep it at bay. Griffith still administered it by his hand, with Don Juan sitting or kneeling and holding his mouth open for it. He still claimed this was for safety and precision, but Don Juan had begun to consider perhaps it was more about power. The ability to regularly humiliate him, to force him to his knees while he begged with his eyes — he suspected Griffith liked that. And he certainly had been holding back on the dosage, which seemed like another way to exert his control over the situation. Nothing had ever felt the way that first night did, and Don Juan didn't think it was because he was getting used to it; Griffith was purposefully keeping him on the edge of withdrawal all the time. He kept the dose low enough that Don Juan would be back soon enough, and every time Don Juan returned here the scene played out like a power struggle that he was destined to lose. And Griffith, smug, in control, ever victorious — how could Don Juan not hate him?

But when he was here there was no room for hate. No emotion survived at all; they were all subsumed by need. He'd wait until Griffith was ready and then get on his knees without hesitation, in order to get the hit he craved. Griffith could have asked anything of him and he probably would have done it. He'd stopped just short of saying it, the first time he'd come back asking for more. I can pay you, he had offered, and though he hadn't verbalized anything else he was sure it was clear in his air of desperation that the offer didn't stop at money. Griffith had refused payment, so far — another thing that made him suspicious when he was edging towards sobriety, but which he didn't bother to think about at moments like this.

"Give me more this time," he pleaded. He was pacing while Griffith worked, entirely insensible to what the man was doing. He could have been concocting a poison to feed Don Juan for all he knew (in a way he supposed he was). "Like the first night."

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Samuel Griffith

M- drug use, terrible power dynamics, & suicidal ideation, possibly other dark themes to develop!

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   Samuel Griffith

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Samuel sat at his desk in the shuttered laboratory. Every time Don Juan completed another pace behind his back, the coil of annoyance and disdain in his chest twisted around itself. Before him stood three vials he had just diluted. In his hand he held a letter, and sorted on his desk lay more. It was the infuriating paper trail of his father's failures. All his debts, his secretive letters to mistresses he gave money to, the nonsensical investments he made upon promises of so-called businessmen he met in his gentleman's club. Samuel just finished reading a letter to a woman, to find out how much of the missing funds had gone that way. The lecture turned his blood acidic. The fingertips of his left hand tapped in a very slow and tense rhythm on the tabletop.

He found the letters earlier today, when he was visiting his father on his supposed sickbed. Edmund Griffith kept them shamelessly in the nightstand of the bed he shared with his wife. Had shared, until Samuel secretly placed his father under the imperio curse and told his mother to take any other room in the house and make it her own, since her husband was apparently in rapid mental decay. That had been in August.

Samuel had sat at the side of his willless progenitor's bed today and looked upon his once handsome face, bloated and congealed by the excesses of his life. With his decision to exert total control over his father, spurred by Edmund Griffith's betrayal to change his will in Gilbert's favor, Samuel had trapped himself in chains to him. He felt him always in his mind. Edmund needed to cease — he needed to stop. It was enough. Nonetheless, the prospect of shouldering this last responsibility made Sam want to die.

Today he had sat in his father's room and his gaze drifted to the bookshelf, to see a copy of Byron's 'Don Juan' perched on the very front. Of course. Edmund loved Byron's writing, as did his beloved eldest Gilbert. Gilbert had been friends with Don Juan, of the Dempseys. Samuel turned his head to watch the younger man with the dark curls pace another round across the room, completely oblivious to anything besides his own repetitive dilemma. Suffice to say, Samuel's mood on arrival to the laboratory had been terrible. It was made more terrifying by residing sealed away under Samuel's smooth and hard surface, with no way to dissipate or be expressed.

With cruel feeling in his heart, he gave Don Juan even less of the substance than usual. Now he was unwilling to leave, restless, fiending. He made another round and stopped in front of Samuel's desk. He had expressive eyes. Today they were pleading with fervent desperation. "Give me more." "Fine," Samuel answered. His voice sounded empty. "Tonight you get as much as you can stomach. Don't get used to it. Come here."

He did not so much as move an inch from his seat at the desk. Samuel simply waited until Don Juan kneeled and then he measured double the sensible amount. Don Juan's entire body had a light tremor, because he had not gotten enough to shake off withdrawals. Sam gently steadied his face with his left hand and dropped the substance on his tongue. "There you go, Don Juan," he said. That would send him spinning towards an ascent and fall he was hardly prepared for. "The great object of life is sensation.", he told him. It was the only Byron quote he liked, and only half of it.

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Griffith said don't get used to it with the tone one might use for a dog, and like a dog Don Juan rushed eagerly to heel. He knelt at the side of Griffith's chair and leaned his head into Griffith's steadying hand. He met Griffith's eyes, cool with disdain. He wouldn't shy away from the man now, wouldn't react in any way whatsoever, but he would remember his eyes later when he was considering whether he hated him.

He could tell that it was a dramatic increase before the high kicked in. The way it felt on his tongue was different enough to notice; usually it was only a few drops, dissolved the instance they landed, but this time it pooled briefly and Don Juan was obliged to snap his mouth shut for fear of losing any. The anticipation built immediately. This was more than he'd had before — tonight was going to be wild. Hopefully in a good way.

"Byron," he breathed with a grin, recognizing the quote. Not from his namesake poem, but he'd read all of Byron's works, obviously. "To feel that we exist, even though in pain. But I prefer this," he admitted. Who wouldn't?

He stood and moved back to where he'd been pacing before and picked up the movement again, though more languidly. He was still trembling from the withdrawal setting, but he was no longer worried about it now that he could anticipate something very good hitting him soon. "Why won't you let me pay you?" he asked, because he was buzzing with anticipation and something almost like gratitude but could not bring himself to actually thank the man.

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MJ made this <3

"I simply don't want your money," Samuel answered, observing Don Juan, then turning his gaze away to his own hands, resting on his knees. When Don Juan had looked up with a smile at the quote, he felt for a fleeting moment a spark of human connection. He had known it before; It had moved him in the Orchid, when he realized just how vulnerable and alone Don Juan was in his addiction. Before he became aware who Samuel was and reinstated all his guarding walls. Now guilt vibrated in Samuel's chest, right behind his sternum. He contemplated why he did not want the money. "This was never meant for sale. I made it as a last resort, to pull myself out of the dark," he added and turned towards the vial on the table. Still deeper lay another reason, one that his own mind sought to obfuscate from his awareness. Don Juan was accruing debts with Samuel and his power over Don Juan increased with every meeting. His power over all the painful things Don Juan represented to him. He did not want to think deeper on this.

Still sitting at the table, he took the vial back into his hands. He was worn down from the days and weeks since November 22nd. How would he ever solve the mess he was in? He missed Themis unbearably. Samuel kept away from her and he knew she was sad and determined to trust him. With precise, automatic movements he measured out one and a half doses. "To feel that we exist," he repeated the second inferior line back to Don Juan with half a smile. He took the dose and leaned back. His dark eyes still followed the pacing man through the room.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Don Juan had come from a situation in life where he had rarely needed money, and even when he was temporarily out of it he was never more than a floo home from being restored to good fortune. Still, he didn't buy Griffith's excuse. It didn't matter whether you needed money; exchanging money was how these things were done, except among friends. They were not friends. At least Griffith hadn't tried to claim that as his excuse.

To pull himself out of the dark. Was that what they were doing here? It seemed to Don Juan that its purpose had shifted; the days he came here kept getting darker. But maybe that was because Griffith had been holding back on him, until now; maybe now he'd had enough that the high would outlast the opium withdrawals and he'd arrive on the other side clean and sober and without a tremble to his hands. (It didn't seem like the sort of thing Griffith would do, but with the anticipation of the high buzzing in his ears anything seemed possible). And then Griffith took some himself. Don Juan caught the motion as he paced and paused to watch, feeling warm inside. This might have been his next question: why Griffith hadn't been joining him, since the first night. It shouldn't have made any difference, but it had made him uneasy (to the extent that he could feel any negative emotion at all while in the grips of the substance) to think of Griffith watching him from the cold heights of sobriety, like Don Juan was an experiment to be observed or a pet to be cared for rather than a person. Not tonight, though. He felt immediately more at ease. He'd already removed his jacket when he'd first come in, but now he started to cuff his shirt sleeves up to his elbows. He made a circuit of his pacing route twice more while he worked on his sleeves, then dropped down to the floor and started removing his shoes. The high hadn't quite hit him yet, but he was expectant; he wanted to feel the carpet beneath his bare toes and didn't want to mess with laces when his mind started to drift.

"Keeping me company tonight," he observed. And giving him easily twice as much as usual. "You must be in a good mood."

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MJ made this <3

In a good mood? "Seems like it," said Samuel, who had rarely felt so miserable. At least until now. That was about to change. He had barely eaten all day and he felt the first surge of the substance in him quickly. An electric feeling pressed through the irritated pathways of his nerves.

He got off his chair and took off his jacket. His waistcoat restricted him and he took it off too. With quick movements, he gathered all the letters on the table into one pile and put them away into a drawer. Enough of that.
Samuel walked one circle around the desk and Don Juan, who sat on the floor and took off his shoes. He noticed that he was pacing and that their positions in the room were now reversed. So he stopped across from Don Juan and crouched down until they were on eye level.

"Do you feel it? I gave you a lot," he said. There was a sliver of worry in him. The first dose, had that been a half dose? Two thirds, that was closer to it. Two doses and two thirds of one for Don Juan. One and a half for him. He needed to keep that straight and ordered in his head. Samuel watched the face across of him contemplatively. "Every person is different. I don't know yet how much you can take."

He felt something like curiosity. The gravity of his responsibility towards Don Juan seemed to grow more distant with the rushing sound in his ears, that promised him what was coming for him. "We can find out. Tonight you can have as much as you like."

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Don Juan worked his shoes off and stuffed his socks into them while Griffith orbited him around the room. He didn't need to look up to watch him; he could feel the other man's movement. The profound sense of awareness was probably a sign that it was starting, though he knew it would hit him hard and all at once when it really kicked off. He cuffed his pant legs up to his mid-thighs... or started to. He'd only accomplished one before he shivered, stopped in his tracks by the wave of pleasure that rolled through him. His eyelids fluttered, and when he fully reopened them Griffith was kneeling in front of him. He hadn't realized he'd moved — not as aware of everything as he had thought, perhaps, or at least not while the climb started.

Griffith wanted to know if he felt it yet. Don Juan found this tremendously funny, because he was sure his pupils were already blown out. Griffith's were, too; he didn't realize because he was already high as well. That had hit him quick, hadn't it? And distantly it did occur to him that if they were planning to push his limits on a drug he'd only started earlier that month, someone ought to be at least passably sober — sober enough to get a healer, if it came to that. But it was difficult to think seriously of the possibility of anything bad happening when he was feeling this way.

He laughed and leaned his hands against his cheeks, savoring the feeling of his own skin.

"As much as I like," he repeated. To his ears his voice sounded dreamlike, soft and warm and distant. He didn't know what it sounded like to Griffith. "I don't think you really mean that."

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MJ made this <3

"I mean it," replied Samuel. The rebuttal tugged at his anger, that lay snugly under his skin. His expression darkened and he moved closer to Don Juan, until they were only inches apart. "You resent me for controlling your access to this, don't you? You think I get off on it—"

He wanted to say more, but a wave of sensation swallowed him up. It split him down the middle deep into his stomach and for a few disorienting moments Don Juan's face doubled in front of his eyes, before the two images converged again. Sam let himself fall back to sitting on the floor, hands on the carpet to steady himself.

For a while he was silent. He felt himself emerge from the dizzying rush like a beast from a dark cavern; horrifically sharp and unpredictable. It had been an excellent idea to take the higher dose. "It is simple," he said evenly, as if they never interrupted their conversation. "I give you more whenever you want. Until you say you've had enough."

Wasn't that fair? It was of course evident that Don Juan did not know when enough was enough. In the end, it would be up to Samuel to do the right thing. It was always like that. Everyone around him relied on him to be controlling enough to ward off the consequences of their incompetence, and then they wanted to be mad about it.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Griffith rushed forward and the space between them contracted, cracking with tension and possibility. He thought the man might hit him, shove him — caress his face, lick his cheek — bite his lip until it bled. He didn't know what, only that the air was thick with the expectation of it, the moment of just-before. And then what happened was — nothing. That energy didn't leave, didn't evaporate or dissipate. Griffith swallowed it. Don Juan saw him take it into himself, watched it knock him back to his heels. Don Juan shivered again. This was an inarguably intimate thing to watch.

He hadn't meant what Griffith thought he'd meant. It wasn't that he thought the other man would cut him off, though of course he might. What he'd meant was: he didn't think Griffith was prepared to let him kill himself tonight. And he thought — without serious consideration, without alarm, without much emotion at all — that if Griffith actually gave him unfettered access to this, he might.

He curled his toes through the carpet. He leaned back against the heels of his hands but was too enchanted by the feeling of friction and kept sliding them back until he was laying flat on his back. He closed his eyes against the light, even though the room wasn't brightly lit, and sighed in pleasure.

"I could take more," he remarked lazily.

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   Samuel Griffith

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"Then you shall get more," Samuel answered grimly. He observed being lifted to his feet by his body without giving the command. He stood and turned towards the desk, where he left the vial. Taking it in his hand, he crossed back through the room until the tip of his shoe touched on the trouser leg of Don Juan. He looked down on him. Sam did not understand why the man had taken off his shoes and socks and rolled up his sleeves and half of his trousers to his mid-thigh. It made him look like a straying boy, laying down to rest after wandering through a meadow. He was splayed out on the carpet, his face towards the ceiling. His hazel eyes were made pitch black by his pupils.

Samuel thought about telling him to sit up so he could administer the dose. A powerful shudder seemed to grip Don Juan's body and he let go of that plan. Three and two thirds, he reminded himself. About an hour had passed since the very first drop.

He stepped over him and planted one foot on either side of Don Juan's body. The vial shimmered in his hand and he measured out another dose. Holding it up to the light, he waited until the blurriness of his gaze abated and the dropper shifted into focus once more. Right.
He looked downwards. Don Juan's ice-white face seemed miles away and he himself atop a sky-high ledge. It was dizzying. Samuel shivered. Very slowly he descended until his weight half settled on Don Juan's ribcage, half remained held up by the tensing of his leg muscles. "There you go," he repeated and dropped the liquid on his tongue. Three and two thirds for Don Juan.

Staying in place, he measured out one more dose and took it. It burned in his mouth and all the way down his throat. Two and a half for himself, half an hour since the first onset. He took his watch out of his pocket and checked the time. The tiny lines and numbers on the face of the watch flickered before his eyes.

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Don Juan's world narrowed to single points of focus, isolated experiences disconnected from any other. A shadow falling across his face when Griffith moved to the desk caused him to open his eyes. He felt cold and wasn't sure if he actually was or whether it was just the idea of shadows that had tricked him into believing that he was. He considered raising his hand to his cheek to check, but didn't follow through. The fibers of the carpet had still captivated his fingertips. His body was ruled by sensation now, no centralized command; he could not force his hand to do his bidding if it was otherwise distracted.

Something firm touched his leg. The shadow had left his face. Rather than shutting his eyes against the gaslight like he had before he took it in. He had never, he thought hazily, been able to look at just light before; he was always looking at things in light or things out of them. But now he felt that he could separate his field of vision out into layers and isolated that featureless flickering aurora from all the rest. It was monstrously beautiful. He shivered.

He ought to have waited until he was sure the dose had fully hit him before he asked for more, he thought distantly. That would have been the smarter thing to do. He was briefly aware that he could pull it back with a single word. He could just tell Griffith later, and pretend that's what he'd meant all along. He certainly didn't need more right now. But his tongue didn't cooperate, and then he became aware of Griffith stepping over him and was so wholly and immediately distracted that the idea slipped away.

Griffith's face was too far above him to be in focus, and his hands were blurs of movement rather than anything Don Juan could see distinctly, but it was such a fitting pantomime that Don Juan had no trouble picturing it in his mind's eye. Griffith looming over him like a mountain, firm, unmovable, unyielding. Griffith placing himself in the position of a god over mortal men: his experiences incomprehensible; his grace when he deigned to provide it all-encompassing; his motivations unknowable; his vengeance terrible. And Don Juan by contrast as simple as a beast of the forest, laying down in the meadow amidst the flowers and the dead things they concealed, wallowing in the dirt.

Griffith lowered himself and Don Juan felt an illogical rush. Brought him down to my level, he thought smugly. A snatch of poetry occurred to him, something about Prometheus bringing down the secrets of the gods, or Milton's Satan wresting the garden from paradise, but it drifted through his brain before he could grab ahold of it. Just as well; there was nothing truly Romantic about this moment, anyway. If he did die tonight, he hoped his family cared enough to make up a better story about how it had happened.

The concoction flooded his tongue. He stretched one hand out over his head, fingers flexing as though they were only just getting used to inhabiting his body. His other hand reached up to press against the top of Griffith's thigh, an idle attempt to hold him down now that he'd descended.

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   Samuel Griffith

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Through the fabric of his trousers, the edge of his shoes dug into his legs's backside; Samuel propped up his weight on his heels to not let it settle on Don Juan entirely; he would be crushing the breath out of him. The man's ribcage expanded and contracted between Samuel's thighs. He measured out a dose of the antidote he carried in his breast pocket. Better do it now, and better get it right. Samuel's stomach cramped and he hunched forward in pain while he worked, commanding all his focus towards his hands. I should have eaten prior to coming here, he thought, but it caused him no real feeling of concern anymore.

His gaze settled back on the feverish face beneath him, while he waited to be pulled up into cruel, terrific heights. Don Juan's glazed eyes were alight with a victory Samuel did not understand. "What are you so glad about? Think you will fullfill your deathwish?" he asked him, and he stared at him, suddenly feeling vicious resentment. Too bad. Don Juan's hand dug into his leg and he grasped it by the wrist. He felt Don Juan's pulse under his fingertips like a moving tendril under his skin below the root of his thumb, and he pressed his arm against his own chest while he bent down closer to him, watching for hints that it hit him again.

Dread settled over him and the edges of his vision started swimming. There was no way for him to foresee if they would be crossing Don Juan's limit soon or if it lay still further out in this treacherous ocean. Perhaps his tolerance to opium would serve him for once and protect him from going over too quickly. The vial with the antidote was tucked into Samuels pocket. He forcefully steadied his breath and took out the watch again with his free hand to discover that time had become senseless to him. Fine — they would do without.

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Did he have a deathwish? He didn't think so. He wasn't seeking an end — but he was too apathetic these days to try and avoid it. He ought to have died a while ago, honestly. He'd outlasted Byron, the idol of his youth. He'd had his chance to go out as a romantic hero, if he'd gone to the duel and let Yaxley kill him. He might have bled out while the sun rose with words of devotion upon his dying lips. He'd been too much of a coward to face it then. Now when death brushed up against him it did so in a less noble fashion. An anonymous, empty house with a man he didn't like sitting on his ribcage. But why not? Wasn't that a fitting end to such a rambling sordid story as his? At least he felt good. There were worse things. And if he lingered on, kept stringing life along, it was likely only going to keep getting worse. Griffith's company, for instance — if Don Juan was going to lose his life to an overdose he might have done it a year ago, when Hudson might've held him. Selfish of him to even contemplate putting Hudson through something like that, but if he were going to die Don Juan thought no one would fault him his selfishness. At least not before it ceased to matter to him.

He probably wasn't going to die, anyway. He never had before.

Griffith had pulled his hand up. Don Juan tangled his fingers in the other man's shirt, a thoughtless compulsion to cling to something. The world was becoming less distinct. Sensations had dulled when he wasn't consciously thinking about them, and grew sharper when he was, like they were too overblown and intense for his brain to hold on to more than one of them at a time. His field of vision had narrowed. Griffith had told him what the symptoms of overdose were once. Did he remember any of them? He hadn't cared at the time; he would have taken anything that kept him from withdrawal and didn't hurt. And he certainly didn't hurt. There was warmth in his chest and the beginnings and ends of all his thoughts were pleasantly rounded. All the rough edges sanded off.

"You look frightened," he observed. This wasn't an answer to Griffith's question; it felt like many minutes had passed since he asked it, though that might not have been true. In any case, he meant it as distinct, and Griffith could take it however he wanted. Don Juan let his eyes drift, up towards the ceiling past Griffith's head. "I'm not."

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MJ made this <3

Seconds and minutes ticked away. Don Juan's hand hung from the front of his shirt and Samuel held his wrist. The pulse under the skin told him that this body beneath him was alive, while the room darkened around him. He still held Don Juan's arm against his chest, he did not know why; his own heartbeat must be clearly felt by the other man, slowing and accelerating while his body fought the substance. His simple, human heart. Would he ever see it laid to rest on cold stone, if even for a second, or suspended in mid-air?

He wiped his free hand across his eyes. He was no god. Sam was just a man who lived for the pursuit of power. Even his addiction to substances, and it had never been just the opium, was about the power to force himself up and down and awake and asleep and away from and towards reality, according to his desires. Of course, his search for control over the world of his sensations had led him to the most significant loss of both. As a man, he yearned for peace.

Samuel was drifting. He shook his head back to reality, trying to get Don Juan's face to shift back into focus. He was still alive and his lips were pale, but not blue. They moved. He was saying something.
"Of course you are not scared, Don Juan," Samuel answered. "You are just here to make a mess and leave." He idly wiped away the dampness that gathered on Don Juan's forehead. He felt cold and clammy, while Samuel's own body was running hot. "Saddling me with holding your corpse would suit you just right. Other people have picked up the pieces behind you; and you are happy to let them do that until the end" He was speaking to Don Juan, but he might as well be saying it to Kazimir, or to Edmund Griffith.

He adjusted the vial in his pocket. Too bad I won't allow you to die in my presence, you miserable bastard, he thought. At the same time, something pressed up his spine into his head with a force. The second wind of the first dose and the entire second dose arrived at once. Samuel heard the faint ringing of a bell, like a white-hot train was arriving. He groaned and held his bursting head. The intensity was unbearable. He would not even call it pleasure anymore; he felt like he was being ripped open and submerged in light. It was a white-out—snow was in his eyes and melted away—and for a moment he wondered if he had misjudged his dosage and if that was it.

Then he emerged on the other side and now shudders of pleasure were rolling through his body like waves. He doubled over and his head hit Don Juan's forehead, hard, but the pain did not register. He felt cold stone graze his cheekbone, then he managed to catch himself and got back into sitting upright, swaying. With wide eyes, entirely black, he looked down towards the other man.

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Make a mess and leave, Griffith said. Coupled with the hand on Don Juan's forehead the phrase seemed almost fond, or at least his addled brain could twist it that way. Griffith's skin was warm as fire. He didn't hear the rest of what he said, though he was still aware of Griffith's voice like the sound of an instrument; conveying feeling more than meaning. The loudest sound at the moment seemed to be his own increasing heart rate — or was that Griffith's, pounding in his chest? Either way there was an acceleration — the second dose was hitting him. Don Juan closed his eyes, maybe, or maybe he didn't; his vision went black either way. His senses were all gone, at least with any sort of specificity. He didn't see, or hear, or smell, but he felt, a jumble of all sensation resolving into conclusions which were only occasionally coherent.

Griffith's face was on his. They were sharing a heartbeat, sharing each breath. There was something like ecstasy, but it was distant, muffled, inaccessible. Don Juan had thought before of what an overdose might feel like. Not in his sober moments — when he was sober the idea was as easily pushed aside as Hudson's concerns about someone taking advantage of him while he was high. Things like that didn't happen to people like him. But when he was high like this, the alarm wore off of such ideas and he could look them in the face, consider them without feeling the need to push them aside with empty reassurances. He'd thought about what an overdose might feel like. He'd expected a build, a crash, something monumental. A crescendo, cymbals clanging until they were suddenly silenced all at once. He hadn't expected it to be this quiet... this dark... this numb.

Griffith sat up. He took their shared breath with him. Don Juan felt the pulse fade out, separating from him the way everything else had. Oh, he thought, and then he thought nothing more.

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   Samuel Griffith

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The pulse under his thumb quickened, then dropped off. Don Juan's eyes unfocused and shifted away. All remaining color drained from his face. Sam watched, stunned and frozen. Time bent and circled backwards; two moments converged. The room became unfastened. It could belong to London or Prague or anywhere. This is it. He is here. This is it, he thought.

The wide and pleasing brow of the face below seemed to give way to reveal the skull underneath. The sensual mouth turned inward. Samuel felt for this face, for a split-second, all he had once invested in someone else, then he turned cold. His hands had already opened the vial. They must have shaken, because a portion of the antidote ran over his fingertips, while the other dropped down into Don Juan's slack mouth. He pressed his fingers under his tongue. He saw himself in a tunnel, rushing underwater, unable to decipher the lights, gone blind. With his right he kept pressing down, the other spread over Don Juan's neck under the jaw, as if he wanted to strangle him. Samuel silently counted down from 10. On seven, he felt the weakest pulse. He picked up the vial again to administer the next drop. Wherever Don Juan had gone, he was fighting him tooth and nail for trying to drag him back. We are not going to make it, he thought, and it shook him and filled his throat with anguish.

One more drop. He heard a gasp for air and saw blood return and push back the pallor of Don Juan's skin. If driving opium out of a body was unpleasant, this would be torment. He needed to go slow and he treated both of them with total lack of compassion while he gave him more in slow increments. Only when Samuel felt the lungs under the ribs between his legs draw air frantically did he come to the certainty that Don Juan would live.

He got off his chest and held him in his arms with great tenderness. Don Juan was completely drenched and where his sweat touched Samuel's skin, it burned from the poison. He would need to give him two more drops of the antidote to be safe, he thought. “Two more”, he told him. Like watching them both from above, he observed himself gently steady his face with his hand. What his own body was feeling, he could not have said. He would only come to know when this was done.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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