December 12th, 1894 — Samuel's old laboratory, Whitechapel

Samuel was surrounded by fog. He was not sure where he was. He watched his hands. Time seemed sluggish. His fingers attempted to undo the last button of his stained shirt. The round button, mother-of-pearl, caught on the fabric. His hands stopped moving. Then, exasperatingly slowly, they moved again and started over. It was the last button. If only he could get it to slip through the buttonhole. It would be the accomplishment to set him free. Or he would be stuck in this loop for eternity.

A noise to his left startled him. Samuel turned his head, and through the clouds he saw him approach. He had seen him looking brighter, but one could not have such expectations for a dead man. "I thought I wasn't dead.", he said, and it contained some doubt and the question if he was. He was glad to see him. He did not smile, but the warmth shone in his eyes. It set his hands free, and with a uncoordinated movement of his elbow, he swept away a bottle that appeared to have been standing right next to him. It shattered on the floor. The smell of some essential oil spread trough the air. One of the shards cut the side of Samuel's foot, alerting him to the fact that he was not wearing shoes. The pain and the pearls of bright red color suddenly shifted his environment.

Sam looked around and saw that he sat on the edge of a heavy claw-footed bath. The water ran from the tap, and steam rose thick through the air and fogged up the large mirror on the wall across. It looked like a cloudy landscape seen from above a summit.

Don Juan stood in the doorway. "Careful. There is glass on the floor," Samuel told him. The realization who it really was dampened the eerie happiness he briefly felt. But the cold contempt he once held for Don Juan was likewise gone; he had misplaced it somewhere along the way during this harrowing night.

Now he vaguely recalled getting up from the floor some time after taking the last dose. That was some time after Don Juan died and he dragged him back. He had been lying on the floor, waiting for it to hit. It did, eventually. But instead of the usual rushing, Samuel had a heartbeat in his ear, and he did not think it was his. The pulse accelerated, then dropped off to nothing. After a while, the sequence repeated. And so on. Eventually, the room appeared as if he were looking at it through a mirror, observing himself and the outline of the man beside him. That's when he got up. He might have told Don Juan that he was going to change and clean himself up. Or he might have said nothing. He did not recall and now he shivered, only lightly aware that he was still close behind the last dose.

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Don Juan Dempsey

CONTEN WARNING -- drug use, dark themes, etc.

Edit: minor phrasing edit

  

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Threadlog

Don Juan had been downstairs and entirely diverted by the way the beam of light from the fireplace smeared, blurred, and then snapped back precisely when he focused and unfocused his eyes. The fire was on its last legs, sputtering and cracking and putting out neither much light nor much heat by now, but that was fine. In the gentle embrace of the drug Don Juan didn't feel cold, and he didn't need light. He could feel his way to anywhere he needed to go... and given the ecstasy of any friction on his palms he would have likely done that even if the light had been good. Griffith had gone, and Don Juan had forgotten he was supposed to be there in the first place until he heard distantly the noise of running water.

It took several seconds to connect the sensory input to an explanation. Drawing a bath. Griffith had mentioned one before. Don Juan recalled distantly that he had been concerned Griffith would drown himself. The evidence that had lead him to that conclusion was even more distant than the idea itself, and also seemed unimportant. Perhaps he ought to go up towards the bath, he thought. He peeled himself up off the floor and drifted that direction. There was something about the steps he only half-remembered, so he had to go slow on them, testing each one with the tips of his toes.

He made it to the doorway and Griffith, sitting at the edge of the bath, looked at him with such warmth. It was only a moment and only in his eyes, but it wasn't the first time Don Juan had noticed it. Always just a little snatch and then it went away again, always inexplicable, always while they were high. There was something there, but once again it was difficult to interrogate it in his current state of mind. Relieved; the word drifted up through his thoughts, framed like a question. Griffith was relieved to see him, then masked it... possibly it had nothing to do with Don Juan at all, just at seeing another person. Perhaps he was desperately lonely, starving for any kind of company, and that feeling like all others was closer to the surface when he was high, but didn't want to admit it — particularly not to someone he disdained.

There were stars glittering over the floor. Don Juan looked at them in wonder before Griffith revealed that they were actually broken glass. Yes, of course — he'd seen the bottle shatter on the tile. He'd heard the crash. Griffith's foot was bleeding. "Dead men don't bleed," he said, though on reflection he didn't know if that was factually accurate.

He took a step out into the field of stars. He moved his foot the same way he had on the stairs, testing it before sliding his weight down. He had once seen a street performer in Turkey walk on hot coals, and afterwards someone had told him the trick was to move like this, to edge in slowly and flip the coals so that the cooler sides were up before stepping down. He didn't know if that was true but the fact had accomplished its purpose; he'd thought the other man was knowledgeable and suave and he had happily followed him back to bed four drinks later. He tried it now with the glass-and-stars, sometimes picking through them to clear tile and sometimes not, and on the other side he'd see whether it worked or whether he was left bleeding and burnt for his trouble. He didn't mind either way; nothing hurt when he was high like this. Just a different kind of feeling.

He reached the tub and looked down at the water, and for a brief moment was lost in the turbulent surface of it, transported to a sailboat caught in the waves. He'd never been seasick before. Probably he had his father's interest in sailing as a hobby to thank for that; early exposure to being separated from solid ground. Or perhaps he had just always been comfortable with the idea of being adrift.

"You'll turn the water pink," he pointed out, almost chiding.

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"Sometimes they do," he answered in a conversational tone and turned his gaze towards the floor to inspect the shards. Kaz bled a good long time after being parted from his heart. If one acquired a hole big enough, gravity did the rest.

While Don Juan slowly came closer, Sam got off the ledge of the tub and crouched on the floor to pick up the glass. The air seemed to offer him resistance and his hands moved slowly. Just as they struggled with the last button of his shirt, that was still done up and held the front together in the middle, they struggled with picking up the glass with the pace he had in mind.
Two shards lay glistening in his hands. Then Don Juan entered his field of view and he looked up to him. "You'll hurt yourself," he said to him.
He watched him step on the glass. Samuel could not look away. The first shard had rounded edges and left his skin intact. Don Juan too was not wearing shoes. The next shard had a serrated edge and cut right into his sole and got stuck. Don Juan did not seem to mind that, or he did not feel it, or not in a way that deterred him. He stepped on a clear tile and the next sharp piece of glass Samuel picked out of his path and kept in his hand. He gingerly took away the riskiest pieces, while Don Juan, like a sleepwalker, found his way to the bath and sat down on the edge. Samuel looked up to him.

"That's fine," he said. "There's worse things than some blood in water."
He put down the shards in his palm on a side table. With one hand he reached for Don Juan's ankle, now that he sat down and took his weight off it. "You cut up your foot. There's glass stuck in it," he said. It seemed natural that someone ought to get it out from there.
The lights and the fog made him feel like he was somewhere unreal. In the mirror across him, his own image moved and he watched it from the corner of his eyes, like it belonged to someone else.

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Threadlog

Don Juan flexed his foot idly as Griffith took it in his hand. There was indeed glass stuck in his foot, bedded in deeply. He'd cut himself and then driven it in further by continuing to walk. It was impossible to be alarmed by this. He had died tonight; what should worry him about a cut? He felt Griffith's fingers on his skin, tingling as they moved. He turned his gaze to the water again. It was still running. If they let it go much longer it would overflow the sides of the tub and spill out across the floor. The rest of the glass would be swept away into corners; the rug in the hallway would be ruined with mold.

"Are you going to patch me up? How delightfully domestic," he said. The second sentence was like an inside joke meant only for his own benefit, but even he was having trouble grasping what he'd meant by saying it. He ran the backs of his fingers over the surface of the water and wondered if it was hot enough to burn his skin. It seemed right that he should come out the other side of tonight with some scars. Wounds on his feet and blisters on his fingers. He shouldn't have let Griffith give him more after they'd sobered up, he knew. He shouldn't have asked for it. A day of withdrawal should have been his penance for his sins tonight, but he'd skirted it — or at least delayed it — so something else ought to stand in for it.

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Samuel still crouched on the floor on one knee, the shards scattered around him and reflecting the light in a pattern that seemed unlikely, and was oddly beautiful. "Yes," he said to Don Juan and propped up his heel on his leg. "A picturesque scene."

And he pointed towards the mirror, where both of them stared back at them. He on the floor, dark and harsh. There was nothing domestic to the blood on his shirt and hands, nor did his face suggest any such inclinations. Pale and harrowed Don Juan, once dead already, was no better. He was not the only one of them, Sam noticed, whose bones seemed to press closer to the skin than usual.

He directed his attention back to the shard. "It would bother me to leave it in there."

The shard stuck deep in Don Juan's arch. The vague concept of how painful such an injury would be in a sober state came up to him but did not really stick. "With every step I see you take, I would think about it."

He pulled the skin lightly and the edges of the cut parted. The glass shone in the light. It would be easier to use some sort of tool, but he had honed the skills of his hands his entire life. As useless as they were with the button, as much did being needed for this task restore their dexterity.

"This might hurt... But you don't look like it does" he said and pulled the glass out of the skin. He watched with an absent expression how a red trickle stained his trousers.

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Picturesque. Better word than domestic. Don Juan thought he was capable of being picturesque, at least for brief flashes here and there. Long enough to strike a pose and capture a moment. He understood aesthetic. He'd never really understood how to coexist with somebody.

He felt the glass slide out, and felt the cool air and the warm blood rush in to the gap it left behind. He was briefly dizzy with sensation, but Griffith was right; he was past the point of hurt. This was what he'd wanted, when he'd asked Griffith before to give him more. He'd been chasing after this feeling, not the disassociation that came after, and definitely not the numbness beyond that. He shivered and flexed his toes against Griffith's hand. "When I come down some, I need to go home," he commented. No more of this for him tonight. He shouldn't have had this dose; he should have been in withdrawal. He should have gone home already. It would have been the worst withdrawal of his life, probably, coming back from so much and coming down so quickly, but it probably wouldn't have killed him. He should have ridden out the night in a hospital, given his mother the scare of her life, and then sobered up when he finally came out the other side of the sickness in a few days. But he hadn't done that, he'd asked for another dose, enough to hold back the ocean. The next time he hit withdrawal it should be easier, if he came down slowly and gently and he didn't have any more in the meantime. If he could just stomach his way through one, maybe he could get clean after that. If anything was going to scare him sober, it would have to be tonight, wouldn't it?

He wasn't scared of anything, at the moment. He wasn't sure what choice he would make when he came down. It seemed like such an entirely distant prospect.

"You're wearing too many clothes for a bath," he pointed out, tapping a toe on Griffith's blood-stained trousers.

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"I know," said Samuel. He stayed silent after that. In his mind he asked himself if Don Juan would request one more dose at the end, to tide him over. Would he give it to him? Yes, he would. Without question. He did not think that he would take more himself. There was no place for him to go like this. His home, inhabited by his family, might as well be a foreign and hostile country. The school was impossible, he could not turn up there anything less than sober and decent. So this old house was the trap of his own making, until he got himself through the dark valley into a new day. There was no word to describe the morning that would await; to give form to its hatefulness and violence. He felt despair. What was left to do? Not much.

The water poured and poured from the tap into the bath and now it flowed over. It swept over the edge and ran down on the tiles. Around their feet, it did turn pink. Samuel let go of Don Juan's ankle, stood up and wanted to reach to close the tap, but got sidetracked by his comment. "I was working on that, before you came," he replied. With the hope to have overcome his conundrum, he tried opening the last button of his shirt. Of course it slipped through his fingers. He sighed and looked down his chest towards his hands, blurring before his eyes. Impossible.

Instead of trying again, he sat down next to Don Juan on the edge of the overflowing tub and slipped his suspenders off his shoulders. He would simply pull the damn thing over his head. Someone, he thought, should probably turn off the water.

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Threadlog

Don Juan watched Griffith fumble with the shirt button. His fingers were useless. Don Juan found this exceptionally funny. It was the contrast, probably. Griffith had just been playing the medic with his foot. He had brewed this wonderful thing that had set Don Juan on a cloud for the evening. He'd measured out the antidote when Don Juan was dying and administered it. It was hilarious to see him foiled by a button. Don Juan tried to hold back his mirth while Griffith stood up, in case the other man would be offended by laughter, but then the tub started to run over and he found that monstrously funny, too, so he really stood no chance. He tipped forward slightly as he laughed, and his hand slipped off the wet edge of the tub. He pitched forward into the water, submerging his arm up to his shoulder and soaking half his shirt. He reeled back from the bath, splashing water everywhere in his wake and still laughing.

"Let me get it," he volunteered, as though he were any more capable than Griffith at the moment. He swayed forward, well into Griffith's personal space, and put both hands on the button. The world was swaying, too. He paused and bit his lower lip, trying to concentrate enough to bring his fingers into focus in his vision, and still fighting back giggles.

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Samuel instinctively grabbed on to Don Juan's other arm when he fell over into the bath. "Don't drown yourself—dying twice a night is once too much," he chided him, but he did not turn off the water. Don Juan started laughing, and it was the sound of his barely suppressed laughter, after all that happened this night, that broke something in him he thought could not break.

It was the most painful release, like something split him down his sternum. With burning eyes, he looked away. Flickers of carefree memories seemed to drift by underneath the steam fogging up the mirror. How many times had he stood in the bathroom with him and listened to his laughter? Kazimir, starved working-class boy that he was, suddenly developed hilarious opulence when he wanted to take a bath. He lay down in the water with a chair nearby that he draped in towels and the bathrobe Sam gifted him. He smoked cigarettes and drank whisky and read books and poetry and wanted his hair washed and his shoulders massaged until they were soft and supple. He wanted to be brought food, and he threw the soaked lavender flowers he put in his bathwater at Samuel while he stood at the mirror and tried to shave, and he laughed about his exasperation. Of course, Sam always got him everything he wanted.

Gone, Samuel thought and looked at the bloodied water flowing around their feet. Washed away, nearly fifteen years ago. Suddenly everything ceased to matter. There was no use in holding on to it. He smiled with relief and looked at Don Juan and invested him for the first time with warmth that belonged to him.

"Go ahead," he said to him. "Free me. Or I'm not going to get there tonight." He turned towards him and took his hands away to give him access. His gaze wandered over his face, then drifted towards the flowing tap. He did not care anymore that the carpet in the hallway would grow mold. The wooden floors would bend, and the water would swell to a river down the stairs. If all of this was swept away by the morning, Samuel would be glad.

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It took another moment to calm himself down enough for his vision to focus, but once it had releasing the button was easy. Don Juan dropped his hands and looked back at Griffith's face, thinking to tease him for it, but then the odd look was back and it killed the words in his throat. Griffith looked towards the tap. Don Juan could hear the water splashing as it fell down to the bath and as it sloshed over the rim and hit the floor. It had already soaked into his pants where he sat on the edge of the tub and the moisture was wicking up through the rest of his trousers too. Someone ought to turn the tap off. Neither of them were much capable of it; Griffith couldn't handle buttons, and Don Juan had just been admonished not to fall into the tub again.

"Why do you look at me like that?" he asked with real curiosity, though he wasn't sure he expected Griffith to know. He'd said that before: you overestimate how well I understand myself.

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Just like that, the impossible button came undone. "Thank you," Samuel said to Don Juan. He got up from the edge of the bath, halfheartedly stalling on the question. It seemed he could not block or divert it; the curiosity in Don Juan's voice was too earnest. His defenses were swimming away with everything else.
"Because—," he said. He had stood up too quickly. The floor was slippery and he swayed. "Because you—," he cursed and lost his train of thought. While struggling for his balance, he stepped into a piece of glass. Holding on to the edge, he picked it out of the sole of his foot and threw it across the room. It bounced off the tiled wall with a quiet 'plink'.

His train of thought was gone. What were they talking about? The steam in the room was denser than the winter fog. He felt pleasantly dizzy and adrift in time. Without further ado, he stripped down. First out of his shirt. It fell unceremoniously on the floor and into the water. Then he got out of his trousers, pulled them down with his underwear and almost dropped them down on the floor too, but remembered the vials were in his pocket. He hastily caught them and hung them over a hook on the wall. He looked towards the man sitting on the bath and was confused why he stared at him like that.

"It just happened again," he said to him and he got in the bath, brushing past him. The water was very hot. He stood in it for a second, while he got used to it. Don Juan, of course, stared at him because of the brutal and angry red scar etchings covering his body. Irritated by the poison in his sweat, they looked more ominous and alive than ever. Samuel had given no thought to it because a part of him could not come to terms with the fact that the pair of eyes that stared at him now did not belong to him -- the person who painstakingly carved these circles into his body. "A part of me thinks that you are someone else. I know you are not, but—" the rest of the sentence vanished to somewhere. "I don't think that is good." For you; For me. He lowered himself into the water.

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Threadlog

Don Juan followed the man's movements with his gaze. He didn't bother to look away when Griffith started slipping out of his clothing, mostly because it didn't occur to him. Privacy and decency were such distant concerns in this state of mind; he hadn't hesitated to strip off his clothing in front of Griffith last week either, even after having just asserted he had no intention of sleeping with him. Then he saw the scars, and of course he couldn't look away after that.

He'd seen the ones on Griffith's hands before but he had never really looked at them, to be honest. When he was sober and in Griffith's presence there was no concern in the world that could distract from the desperation to get his next fix. When he was high he often forgot that Griffith was there at all, except when Griffith was directly interacting with him. For all the times he'd been here Griffith had only indulged twice, and when he was high and Griffith was sober the interactions between them weren't pleasant, so there was no sense in lingering on them. Now that he was looking he saw how they were mirrored palm to palm, and how their form was repeated elsewhere on the man's body. They all looked so raw and angry, as though they're just been done, but Griffith didn't move like a man with fresh wounds. He was used to these. Don Juan had a perverse urge to touch one of them. His fingers twitched but his hand didn't move. Griffith lowered himself into the bath.

A part of me thinks you are someone else. That made sense, Don Juan thought. Sometimes it was impossible to reconcile Griffith's actions with each other, but if his own motivations were conflicted then it was easier to separate them.

"That's why you carried me out of the Orchid," Don Juan said, not a question but recognition. He watched the steam curl around the top of the scar on Griffith's chest. The desire to touch one hadn't dissipated. He slid off the edge of the tub and down to the floor, leaning his cheekbone against the rim instead so that he was propped up in a good position to keep staring at Griffith. "That's why you pulled me back tonight?"

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"I think—" he sank back into the bath. The water was scalding, but he did not feel pain in a meaningful way. Just as a transient sensation, as interesting as any. Filling his palms with water, he cleaned dried sweat and blood off his face. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze fixed on Don Juan. The man leaned on the rim of the bath now. His eyes were very dark and wide. Sam moved towards the rim and put his arms on it and propped his chin up on them, looking at him.

"I think—" he started again, talking slowly as if the words he spoke just surfaced in him, for the first time, "—that is why I can never leave you. Not to the dirty old men in Montparnasse; not in the Orchid. Couldn't stay out of your business at the dinner. Can't let you die, can't cut you off, can't let you be. I know I should."

He contemplated him in depth. That's why I punish you. I can't say no to you in a meaningful way, and I resent you for it. Suddenly he felt the urge to say sorry. What he subjected Don Juan to was really not his fault. The words did not form and he did not know if they ever would.

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Never leave him. The sentiment filtered through his brain like a falling leaf and settled at the back of his skull, taking on more weight the longer it sat there. Wouldn't it be a terrible twist of fate if that were true? After all the things he had been through and all the people who had wrecked themselves loving him, and then it turned out Coleridge was right about soulmates only for Don Juan's to be a man who didn't even especially like him... what terrible irony that would be.

"I'm sure you'll manage it," Don Juan mumbled, letting his eyes drift across the surface of the bath water for a moment. It was still running, and still throwing up clouds of steam. "Everyone leaves me eventually."

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Samuel looked at Don Juan's morose face. He shook his head and saw water droplets land on him, dislodged from his own hair. The bath was flowing and flowing; it turned into a river and rushed past Don Juan, who was soaked—from his shirt to his trousers to his cut-up feet. He put his hands in his hair, affectionately. "Hold on to that hope," he said. "I've not been very good to you."

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Threadlog

Don Juan looked back towards him when Griffith put his hands in Don Juan's hair. This gesture didn't belong to them, yet the effect was near instantaneous. His eyelids drooped pleasantly, drowsily, and he blinked slowly at Griffith. Someone playing with his hair always gave him the urge to curl up against them, put his head in their lap or cuddle against their chest, and stop thinking about things. Obviously this could not be acted upon while Griffith was chest-deep in scalding water, and anyway Don Juan didn't feel that way about him. Griffith didn't either. His hands shouldn't have been in Don Juan's hair. This was a gesture displaced — something meant for the other person, the one Griffith said he was reminded of when he looked at Don Juan.

He didn't know whether the words were intended for him or the other person, either. Earlier tonight Griffith had defended himself by saying he'd only done what Don Juan had asked — only what he'd begged for, really. And it sounded as though it hadn't all been bad along the way... Griffith had referenced Montparnasse before, but Don Juan had never remembered it, and Griffith had led him to believe through context clues that it hadn't been a very pleasant interaction for him. His phrasing of it now, not being able to leave Don Juan to the dirty old men of Montparnasse, made it sound like Griffith had been more of a protector than a predator. Don Juan didn't know which was closer to the truth, and unless he found some way to recover all of the memories he'd lost to his habits over the years he would never know. Maybe Griffith didn't know, either; maybe he switched the story based on what suited him at the moment, reframing the memory each time he looked at it.

He leaned his head in to Griffith's fingers the way a cat arches into its owner's hand and thought one of us is going to drown in the bath. Something had to be done. Finally he mustered up the will to do it, turning and reaching to tug the tap closed without moving from where he leaned on the rim of the bath. Without shaking Griffith's hand off. He let the arm he'd used to reach for the handle fall languidly into the water. "What was their name?" he asked as he turned his eyes back towards Griffith, still looking sleepy. He knew instinctively to use the past tense; if they were still around, Griffith wouldn't have kept bringing up death. "The person you sometimes think I am."

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