December 2nd, 1894 — the Orchid, Limehouse district

In the depths of winter, Samuel Griffith found himself in London on a weekend night, straying around the Limehouse District. Frost covered the cobblestones and the icy wind stung and tormented the few people who were out in the streets. The Alchemist wore dark, nondescript clothing and his face was very still and white. The shortness of days had faded his usual tan, and that circumstance made him look a little sickly. Samuel would have thought that by now his mood would have returned to equilibrium, but that was not the case. He had felt enduringly unhappy, and now his inner turmoil had flattened out into a nothingness that was, to him, worse. Another weekend spent grading papers in his office, his back to the window, would get him nowhere at all. So he had taken leave of Hogwarts for London, and he was, as they called it, slumming it. He was seeking the return of some sort of sensation, and as he had so far been unsuccessful, it was time to increase the stakes.

His surroundings turned more desolate. A gaggle of prostitutes came out of a building to his left and walked in front of him for a few paces. They appeared to him dreadfully thin and harsh. He turned into an alley and ducked into a narrow entryway that looked to be abandoned and barred up. He sighed and turned clockwise twice and counterclockwise once, and then the boards seemed to fall towards him, and he found himself transported to a dim room, cut up by worn drapes and paper screens. A cloying and sickly smell filled the air. Opium. It brought back a flood of unpleasant associations and a slight feeling of nausea, but he shook it off. There were a number of people and creatures in this room, both visible and hidden away. The owner, rumour had it, was a vampire, but Samuel had his doubts about that. He motioned for a drink to the barkeep and then he retreated into one of the séparées, before someone could get the idea to talk to him.

It was dark and to his dismay there was no proper seating, just some assortment of shapes that might be large pillows or upholstered low benches. He sat down and that prompted the sunken shape next to him to slump over and fall against him. To his surprise, what he had assumed to be a large pile of pillows was a man. He caught his head before it could crash against the edge of the table. Sam snapped his fingers and a small red flame appeared in the air. In its shine, he looked upon the face of the man and felt a profound sense of déjà vu. "Mr. Dempsey. Wake up," he said, and tapped lightly against the man's cheek, holding him upright by the shoulders with his other arm. Sam's hand against the skin of his face was still cold from the winter air; it might aid in startling Don Juan awake. If Samuel was to gain a Knut for every time he had found the younger brother of magical Britain's Prime Minister passed out in a questionable establishment, he would now have two Knuts, which was not a lot, but… "I wonder if you will forget me this time, too," he said flatly to Don Juan as he saw his eyelids flutter open.

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Don Juan Dempsey

  

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Threadlog

Sometimes Don Juan enjoyed all of the various indulgences that could be found around the edges of polite society without much ado; dipped in, stayed high for a while, glided out again, did some of his writing in his windows of sobriety. Sometimes the comedown hit him harder. If he hadn't eaten much before he'd started, or there was something off about whatever he'd taken, or he had been coming down with a cold, or any number of other practically invisible and unavoidable factors. He could tell when he was going to have a nasty withdrawal, and sometimes he could stomach it. Sometimes, though, the physical symptoms started and were then followed by an exquisite self-devised mental torture: remembering the first times he'd felt this way, the first time he'd tried to cut back, and the person who had been there helping him through — a person he'd chased away through his own poor choices. When that happened, he didn't stick out the withdrawal and circle back to sobriety. When that happened, he took more, and more, and more, until the memory was lost in the haze and he was once again physically relaxed and mentally unburdened.

This had been the series of events that had led to his being mistaken for a chair at Limehouse opium den. Don Juan was high enough that his eyes didn't focus right away, even after he slowly batted them open. He didn't know who was talking to him, or what they were talking about, or why, but he managed to catch the last sentence and parse out the words. Forget me this time too.

"If you like," Don Juan muttered, amicably enough. He was no stranger to nearly-anonymous sexual encounters in the darkened rooms of drug-riddled, poorly furnished venues, and this had the shape of one. He moved his hand to his face, covering the stranger's hand and holding it flat to his cheek as a sign that he was amenable to being touched. "You're cold."

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   Dean Hudson

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"Because it is cold outside." The light of the red flame reflected blurredly in Don Juan Dempsey's eyes. They had opened sluggishly and Samuel felt their gaze pass over his face and then fall away without really seeing him. When Don Juan's damp hand settled on Samuel's and moved it back to his cheek, he knew. There had been a time in his life where the sort of thing he was being offered had been familiar to him. "You are too out of it to even know who I am. I could be anyone. Do anything to you," he said quietly to him, but he let him keep his hand, that slowly warmed. He was not scolding him. His tone of voice remained flat—if there was anything to it, it was a hint of regret, for finding himself in this predicament.

He relaxed the grip on the other man's shoulder because his arm started to tire, and felt the weight of his body slump against his side like a wet sack of sand, devoid of any tension. Samuel tensed at the impact. He had come here to tend to his own vices in peace. The choice of venue was to keep that sort of thing away from the places where he conducted his regular life, so that his habits might remain unaffected. There was a balancing act to self-destructiveness, one that required close attention. Being confronted with Don Juan in this state was distracting him from his plans and it was, frankly, jarring. He knew well that years ago someone might have found Samuel Griffith in a similar state somewhere in Paris, or that he himself might have happened upon someone like Don Juan and taken advantage of the offered opportunity. He did not wish to ponder the nights he had spent in some godforsaken corner in Montparnasse as a younger man, sleeping and waking to swat away wandering hands from his legs.

Yet, just like in Paris many years ago, something in his heart forbade him to extricate himself from this séparée and leave Dempsey to his fate of, in the best case scenario, getting his pockets emptied and his watch taken. Merlin knew that Samuel Griffith was not the saviour of just any lost moth and nightingale he crossed paths with. Why was Dempsey of all people any different? At the dinner party they had not parted ways on friendly terms. Samuel felt certain that the other man despised him.

"I suppose I can stay around until you have sobered up enough to remember that you dislike me," he said dryly. He had something on him to speed up that process, but getting the dosage right was difficult. Too much and it would send a man who was too corrupted running straight for the next indulgence to escape the sickness.

Sam glanced towards Don Juan and it struck him for the first time that his willful features reminded him of someone—even more so now, that he was a bit older than in Montparnasse, and had sunken cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. He averted his eyes and extinguished the red flame and it was dark again.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Don Juan heard the words, but didn't register them as a threat, or even as the beginning of a lecture, though people had lectured him with phrases like this before. In his current state of mind he presumed them foreplay: I could do anything to you. If he had been slightly closer to sober he might have answered, either with words or with an indistinct purr of agreement, but his eyes were glassy and the room seemed distant. He made an effort to nod and wasn't sure if he'd managed it. The stranger would have to do what he wanted without input, if he was going to proceed; Don Juan was distantly aware he would make a very poor bedfellow at the moment.

He was in contact with someone, all up his left side. He was incoherent enough to assume this shift was an intentional move by the stranger, rather than recognizing that he'd merely slumped here. He closed his eyes and leaned in to the man's shoulder. There was something odd about his smell, a metallic undercurrent to it.

This second remark was a strange thing to say. Don Juan wondered if it was meant to be funny. He didn't get the joke, but given how high he was that wasn't exactly surprising. "Are you an unlikable person?" he asked. He did not dare to hope that this was a clever thing to say, but perhaps if luck was on his side it would make the stranger chuckle anyway.

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   Samuel Griffith

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Don Juan's question made him laugh, just enough that he might feel it by the movement of Samuel's shoulders and chest. "At times I am," he answered, his smile somewhere in the dark.
The man seemed to be intent to melt into his side, and Sam found his utter, vulnerable passivity unnerving. Perhaps there was little someone could do to him that would hurt him; as numb as he was. Samuel resented that he did not feel repelled by the slow, unsteady breath he felt on the skin of his neck when Don Juan had blearily lifted his head a little to address him. What did it say about him if he found even a shred of comfort in the warmth that emanated from the body that leaned helplessly against him? It was pathetic, Samuel thought grimly.

Suddenly, he became aware that steps approached the paper walls that enclosed them. A drink—he had ordered a drink. Unceremoniously, Samuel pushed the incapacitated man from the bench and under the table, where he felt him fall against his legs.
"Be good and be quiet," he instructed him. The barkeep appeared at the table and set down his drink. "Wanted to warn you, Mr., 'twas a certain fellow in here," the man said and looked around suspiciously.
Samuel's hand found what felt like a face at his knee, and he touched it, reassuringly and warningly. He needed to avoid being seen too close for propriety with the Dempsey brother of ill repute in The Orchid, a place shrouded from polite society's view, but nonetheless public. It was wise, he was now ever more acutely aware, to have no public association with him at all. Being close to Don Juan spelled trouble, and then some
"There was no one here", he lied.

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At times; well, that was fine. Don Juan was unlikable half the time, too. Not on the surface — he worked hard to be charming, suave, witty. Even when people found him odious on a moral or philosophical level he still tried to keep a certain swagger about him. Confident enough to be captivated even by those who despised him. But he had the sense that under the surface, to anyone who had the misfortune to really get to know him, he was in fact deeply unlikable. That was why he was alone, passing out in places like this. Left by everyone who had ever tried to love him.

He heard the footsteps approaching, but didn't connect the sound to any meaning right away. He was processing everything two beats too late to react to anything. The stranger had him on the floor, bumping up against his legs — far from an unexpected turn of events, given the premise. Don Juan tried to get himself balanced on his knees and blinked his eyes open in the dark, on the lookout for an appendage being shoved his direction. It didn't come, but a hand did, and it was at that point he belatedly connected the dots. Footsteps approaching, be good and be quiet, the table over his head — he wasn't down here to suck someone off, he was hiding from someone. He didn't know who, or why, but wasn't in much of a position to question it, not while the stranger and another man were having a conversation two feet above his head.

The hand touched his face. Hazily, Don Juan recalled a scene in the moonlight study of an estate in a country house some weeks prior: voices passing in the hallway, him playfully admonishing the woman he was with to stay quiet to avoid discovery. The situation with him on his knees below a table at an opium den probably wasn't an either/or kind of situation, he decided — he was hiding, or rather being hidden, because the stranger still wanted him, and wanted to avoid the staff throwing him out before he'd had a chance to be of any use. He wasn't protecting Don Juan from anything; just protecting his own interests by ensuring Don Juan had a chance to sober up a bit. But selfish or not, Don Juan could be appreciative of it — it was cold outside and he didn't relish sobering up in the snow, and there was no chance of his making his way home on his own in his present state. So he was more than willing to play along with whatever the stranger wanted from him in the meantime. To demonstrate this, he reached up to hold the stranger's hand against his face again, then turned his head in to kiss his palm — then took one of the man's fingers in his mouth.

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'No one? Might have staggered off. Troublesome guy, that. A snooty type, but rotten, if ya catch my drift, Mr.,' the barkeep drawled. Sam felt Don Juan move under the table and then he felt lips on his palm. The scar etching there was sensitive. Don Juan was likely too intoxicated to notice the circular markings, but Samuel felt them and he felt the stubble on the man's cheek rub past them. It caused a tingling, sharp sensation that made his hair stand on end. 'Wouldn't want a sort like that to cause you trouble,' the barkeeper meandered on and Samuel longed for him to get to the point.

"There is no—" he heard himself answer, just as his index finger was suddenly slipped inside of something wet and very warm. "—trouble," he finished, with considerable strain to keep his voice even. Mercifully, the barkeep spat disdainfully on the floor and turned and left the nook.

Samuel tried to move his hand and he felt something silky smooth and then the hard edge of teeth. He looked down to what he could see of Don Juan under the table between his legs and the whole situation felt so surreal that he wanted to laugh. He wanted to be appalled and disgusted at the vulgarity of the gesture. But he watched himself, like observing a stranger, press his thumb under the man's chin and then insert a second finger and push both of them deeper, to see if he would meet any resistance at all. Samuel was fascinated, and frightened. There was something about the message and intention behind this display that got to him. Use me, Don Juan seemed to say to him, I'll go along with anything. Just don't leave me to myself like this. Because no one is coming for me.
Not in his bleakest of days, Samuel would have been able to give himself to a stranger like that. He was too hostile towards the world; he could only show it his teeth and bite. Perhaps, he thought, Don Juan was even lonelier than him. Although he did not doubt that he found company all the time. It was tragic. And yet, Samuel had no tenderness to give to him anymore. All of it belonged to someone else and had gone away with her into the distance. They would need to make do without.

Samuel pulled his fingers free and he cradled the man's face in both of his hands and pulled him up a little and lowered his own head down to him. On one cheek, his fingers left behind wet streaks. "Do you have a place we can go to?," he asked him, their faces very close. "We can not stay here. You need to tell me the address. I will get us there. Sort you out."

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Don Juan took the introduction of a second finger as a gesture of approval. He leaned in and ran his tongue across them both, his eagerness to please offset by the languidness the opium infused in his every action. The other man held his face, which fit the pattern of the interaction Don Juan presumed they were having. He lowered his own to meet Don Juan's eyes, which didn't. He rarely came face to face with these sorts of people, in these sorts of places. This wasn't an intimate situation. They had nothing to say to each other, and no need to exchange tender kisses. Seduction was unnecessary. Don Juan, eyes still glazed, blinked at the other man in confusion.

"No," he admitted. He had nowhere to go, not in a moment like this. He lived at his parents' house, but he wouldn't go there while he was this inebriated. He had a fairly regular room at the club, Atlantis, and he had stumbled there in a stupor some nights to sleep things off, but he couldn't bring company to a room at a gentleman's club. More often he followed other people to their homes, their rooms, their beds, whether or not he was actually sleeping with them.

"You can get a room on credit," he suggested sluggishly. Which inn, brothel, or boarding house he didn't especially mind. He had not fully grasped the reasons why they couldn't just stay here — Don Juan was already on his knees — but trusted that the man had a reason. "I'll pay it when I'm sober."

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Don Juan's bloodshot eyes wandered aimlessly from left to right, confused and unable to focus on anything for long. Samuel let go of his face and leaned back. It was not surprising that he did not want to tell him where he lived, it was likely at the Dempsey Estate. He had hoped that he kept a private apartment in the city, but apparently that was not the case.
Sam slowly took a cigarette out of the étui he kept in the inner pocket of his jacket and lit it. While he put the case back into the pocket, he felt the small vials he kept in there—his original reason for seeking out the Orchid.
Don Juan was a problem. He could not be trusted, Samuel did not want to be seen with him, and he did not want to leave him here, for whatever reason. The reason, chided him a small voice, is because he reminds you of him.
"You are difficult," he informed Don Juan, whom he had left sitting under the table while he smoked and pondered his predicament. Not difficult because of his suggestion, that was a possibility. He put a hand in his curls. "What am I going to do with you?"

If he had a place to take him where he did not have to worry about being discovered, he could sort him out in peace. It was a bit tricky, but he was not an Alchemist for nothing. Take him down from the opium and ply him with what he had in the vials. That would stave off the sickness for a while. Get him a little more lucid. Keep him comfortable. And then. Then what? He would recognize him and be an ass about it. Don Juan did not want to be helped. All of this was none of Sam's business. This was another ruse to torment himself and to meddle with other people's lives.

Just stay here and take advantage of the situation, said a voice in his head. You like him better like this, don't you? He is begging you. At least you'll get something out of wasting your time.
Samuel closed his eyes. Starting to argue with himself was a sign that his integrity was fraying. A decision needed to be made about where this would be going. He could ask Mr. Disaster himself. Samuel took one of the vials out of his pocket and dangled it in front of Don Juan's face by a silver thread. "Do you want this?" he asked. "It will tide you over until tomorrow, stave off the sickness. Make you less of a mess than you are right now. But if you do, we go somewhere else. " He would need to figure out the place himself.

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Don Juan curled his head towards the hand that was tangled in his hair. The sequence of events continued to confuse him, but in his current frame of mind it was difficult to hang on to anything like concern. What was the man going to do with him? Whatever he liked; Don Juan thought he had made that fairly obvious. So long as it was rough enough for him to feel it through the haze.

His eyes focused, with difficult, on something dangled in front of his face. He had no idea what it was, even when the man started talking about it. Do you want this he asked and Don Juan knew he was going to say yes, whatever it was. His inhibitions were low enough that he would have taken anything someone gave him, if they promised it would make him feel better or make him more fun to be around or anything at all. But this man said it would stave off the sickness, and that got his attention in a sharper way than the vial itself had. He wasn't sick now, but he had a vague recollection that that was what had gotten him here — that he was as far gone as he was because he'd been running from it, because today was one of the bad days. What staved off the withdrawal? More opium, obviously, but the man said this would make him less of a mess. It sounded far too good to be true, and if he were closer to his right state of mind he would have been skeptical of it, but as it was this stranger had his fingers in Don Juan's hair and his complete and total trust. If he ought to have been worried about agreeing to leave with the man, going to some unspecified secondary location, he was yet again too high to realize the danger.

"Yes," he said. He made a clumsy motion to reach for it as it spun in the air but he missed and it bounced off his fingertips. "Please."

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   Samuel Griffith

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The vial swayed through the air when Don Juan's fingers streaked across it and Samuel pulled it out of his reach and put it back into his pocket. He would need to keep a close eye on these. When he had taken them, there was no reason to assume anyone but himself would have access, so he had not bothered to dilute them. They were potent enough that Don Juan would manage to kill himself messing around with them. Their content had nothing to do anymore with something as forgiving as a field of poppies.

By the time he had finished his drink, he had settled on a place. His shuttered laboratory in Whitechapel had not sold yet and he had kept the keys. It was not ideal. He would have preferred to keep Don Juan out of any places that were connected to his life and work. He pushed back the table and stood and looked down on the kneeling, dazed figure below him. In the time it took him to render both of them invisible and lift him into his arms, he wondered how he kept ending up in impossible situations like this. He suspected that at this point it was entirely his own fault.

The place he apparated them to after slipping out of the Orchid unseen was a lightless narrow building. "26th Doubt Street" read the number at the door. The Gargoyle guarding the entrance glowered at them and showed its teeth. Down the impossible stairway they went. Samuel knew the way and its trappings by muscle memory. He had slaved away here for the better part of a decade. In a room that seemed to stretch endlessly in the dark, he put Don Juan down in an armchair and lit the fireplace. Empty shelves and stone tables became visible behind them.

He bent over the slumped man in the chair and held up his head firmly at the jaw. "Open your mouth. Keep the drops of liquid I give you under your tongue," he said to him. "I am getting you off the opium. It will be unpleasant. But I need to get you down entirely before I give you what I promised you, or we put you at risk. You shall suffer no longer than a few seconds."

He looked at Don Juan. This was a delicate process. A number of things could go wrong, but Samuel was ever confident in his abilities.

"You need to tell me when you start feeling sober," he told him. Then he administered the first drop, counting exactly 30 seconds until the next. He did not wait for permission, he did not even know if Don Juan really grasped what was going on. He was prepared to deal with some reaction when the man would suddenly regain his faculties. A problem he would solve when he got to it.

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The vial disappeared again. Don Juan was briefly disappointed, but like any of his thoughts and feelings at the present moment the sensation was slippery; it faded away momentarily, followed by the memory that there had been a vial at all, and eventually — as the silence and inactivity of the booth continued to stretch on — that there was any ongoing interaction at all. He was a point disconnected from space and time. He drifted, aware of very little until he was scooped up in someone's arms. Don Juan curled in towards the man's chest on instinct, and was struck by the alienness of it. The wrong set of arms, but he was in no position to protest. He used the man of his center of gravity, keeping the world from spinning as they moved by virtue of blocking out the entire world. The apparition caught him off-guard and made him retch, but there was nothing in his stomach to lose, so the stranger's coat was saved the indignity.

The other man held his jaw in a way that would have hurt if he was sober. Don Juan looked at his face and tried to recall if he knew what was going on. More drugs? He could hold something under his tongue, sure — he moved it sluggishly towards the roof of his mouth, tucked it behind his first row of teeth, and obediently opened up. The rest of the man's words didn't catch up with him right away. By the time he'd started to fully parse them, there was already a drop of something splashing onto the space beneath his tongue. Suffer, had he said, and sober? Don Juan wasn't sure he was onboard for this... and then the concoction hit him. There was lightning in his veins. His muscles seized and his heart pounded. He coughed, gagged, but the man was holding his jaw too firmly for his head to move with either gesture. He wanted to spit, or throw up, but couldn't manage either — and the bead of the potion had already soaked in to the tender area below his tongue, anyway. There would be no dislodging it.

The feeling started to subside and the world, still rendered thrice and still spinning, started to slowly come back into focus. Then the man gave him a second drop, and it started over again.

"Stop," he sputtered, forming the word with some difficult while he was trembling and the man was still holding his face. "Stop, I can't —"

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   Samuel Griffith

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Don Juan protested and retched and writhed, but Samuel held his head and kept going. Letting him off halfway down would not do him any better. He would be withdrawing shortly and Samuel could not give him what he had, because he could not be sure there wasn't still enough opium in him to interact with the substance and mess with something important, like his ability to breathe. "Too late," he told him. "There's no going back with what we're doing, I fear."

Was there ever? He looked into his eyes and found the pupils still constricted to a pinpoint. He would need at least two more drops. On their lone island of light in the abandoned room, he forced two more on him, in quick succession, five seconds apart. Samuel did pity him. He remembered withdrawing, remembered being sick as a dog with no one around who knew or cared. "Look at me," he said and put his weight on the thrashing man, so he did not throw himself out of the chair. Finally, he caught a glance at his pupils and saw them dilate. "And there we are," he said and stroked the man's sweat-gleaming forehead. "Sober. But fear not—only for a moment." He took another cursory glance at his rapidly more lucid-looking eyes. Withdrawals were imminent. He started preparing the next vial. The viscous liquid swirled languidly in the measuring dropper. If he had just thrown Don Juan into a deep chasm of misery, this would take him soaring to the peak. Sam looked at the shimmering drop with longing. Then he turned, to ascertain if Don Juan would be cooperative enough to proceed now.

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The intensity of it was indescribable. Don Juan had already been spasming due to the effects of the potion, but he tried to thrash more purposefully as well, to fight the fellow off. He didn't have Don Juan's best interests at heart; he was trying to kill him. Unfortunately he didn't make any progress in hurting the other man — everything was reeling and he was uncoordinated, incapable of violence. The most resistance he could manage was to not look at the man when he ordered it, and to let out a continuous impotent string of profanity. "Fucking shit hell goddamn," he swore, trying to wrench his head out of the man's grip.

Sober, the man proclaimed, and dropped Don Juan back into the chair. Don Juan sprawled, off balance from the sudden shift. He scanned the room he was in — where the fuck was this? How had he gotten here? — looking for escape routes. There was a fireplace, but no way of knowing whether it was connected to the floo or not, and he didn't fancy self-immolation as an exit strategy. He put a hand on his leg and felt the reassuring shape of his wand in a pocket, but he couldn't very well apparate while he was —

That was when it struck him that the man was right: he was, in fact, sober. He blanched. Don Juan had grown up in a world full of magic, but he would have said this was impossible, if it weren't happening to him right now. The man — a familiar man, where did he know this man from? — turned back towards him. Don Juan returned his appraising look with a wary one of his own. "What the hell was that?" he asked, voice still shaking slightly from the intensity of what he'd just experienced. "What did you do to me?"

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Samuel's gaze flickered from Don Juan's hand that had unmistakably reached towards his wand to his face. Samuel's posture increased slightly in tension. His hair was askew from the physical struggle he had just emerged from. He was not scared of Don Juan, wand or not. In his hand he still held the dropper.

"I gave you something that counteracted the opium and drove it out. It is dripping off your skin right now," he said and looked at the sweat that had accumulated on Don Juan's face and neck and had soaked his shirt. "Unfortunately that won't stop you from withdrawing. It is the absence, not the substance, that seems to cause the sickness. You might start to feel it very soon."

The unsteady light of the flames drew strange shadows on their faces. Samuel wondered if Don Juan had recognized him by now. "This will spare you of that, but keep you in talking and walking condition, if dosed correctly," he said and held the dropper a bit higher. "It is up to you. You cannot apparate here but the fireplace is connected to the floo."

He had half turned towards the fireplace and with the movement, the drop dislodged itself and before it could fall onto the floor, he caught it with his other hand. It pooled on the side of his index finger. Samuel looked at it for a second, then he put the finger to his lips. The substance tasted unpleasant and acidic. He had always dealt with this kind of thing in a solitary manner, but he did not feel inhibited in front of Don Juan in the slightest. He had degraded himself in front of Samuel so willingly in his opium haze that he could scarcely afford any judgment anymore.

Like from far away, he heard a faint rushing in his ears. "Suit yourself," he said to Don Juan, the dropper still in hand, and sat down on a second armchair, closer to the warmth of the flames. He took a watch from his pocket and looked at the time.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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At the explanation Don Juan turned his eyes in wonder towards his forearm. He hadn't noticed the sweat before but as soon as his attention was drawn towards it, he wondered how it was he'd avoided thinking about it even a moment. His clothes were damp with it and beads of it stood out against his skin. He ran the fingers of his right hand over his left wrist, then looked at the wet marks on his fingertips. Opium, dripping off his skin. Wonders unceasing. He had the impulse to put a finger to his mouth and see what it tasted like, but refrained.

But withdrawal was still coming, apparently. Don Juan's eyes slid to the dropper in the man's hands. Liquid that looked like it belonged more to a chemistry set than a cocktail bar was a dangerous business, from his limited experience with these things. Potent and unpredictable. Don Juan was not a chemist, so always relied on other's descriptions of what it was or what it would do, and those were usually inadequate. And this man had just put him through something awful, and his motivations were obscure.

But if it would save him from withdrawal...

He watched with morbid fascination as the man licked a drop of it off of his fingertip. That decided him; it couldn't feel like the last one if the man was taking it so casually. He leaned forward in his chair, feeling suddenly vile as his sweat-soaked shirt stuck to his back, entirely too aware of his body. "What happens if it's not dosed correctly?" he asked, but he licked his lips as he looked at the dropper; he was asking because he knew he should, not because the answer would dissuade him.

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