it entered his vein.
And then…
A warm, syrupy bliss bubbled up from his core. The knot in his chest eased, replaced by something light and comfortable. He no longer needed Laramie. For the time being, he had no twin. The only person in his head was himself—old enough to know better, but young enough to not give a fuck. At least he felt complete.
Time changed, seeming to run backward against him as he made his way through the club. He drank too much, laughed too loud, flirted with several interchangeable women before finding himself pelvis to pelvis on the dance floor with a bright-eyed young man. He was shorter than Denver, thin, blatantly sexual, and wonderfully responsive to Denver’s touch. Denver kissed him and found he tasted just like cherry cola.
Denver had always considered himself about seventy percent straight and thirty percent open to suggestion. Maybe it was the Rave working, but right at that moment, whatever his usual proclivities, he was one hundred percent ready to find a bit of privacy with his young, willing dance partner and spend whatever remained of the evening being delightfully distracted. Just the thought made him breathless.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said into his partner’s ear, and he heard a soft exhale as the boy smiled.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
But then time shifted again, as it had a nasty habit of doing when he was on Rave. He lost track of his bright-eyed companion, although he had the feeling he’d been looking for him. His next moment of awareness, he was being dragged by the hand out the back door of the club, into a neon-lit alley. There might have been another dose of Rave. There might have been a blow job from an orange-haired woman as he leaned against a cold metal wall.
Some indeterminable amount of time later, he found himself huddled on the ground at the base of a darkened building, his teeth chattering as the drug wore off. His head ached. His jacket was gone. His wallet too. He looked around the alley, its glowing guidestrips cracked and unrepaired like most of the safety features in this part of the station. He tried to locate a familiar landmark, or barring that, a person he could talk to who wouldn’t put him in a worse spot that he was already in.
There was no one to be seen, and Denver’s headache intensified. He either needed another hit of Rave—not a good idea—or he needed something to ease his crash. He had that in his room. The problem was, he was completely lost. He had no idea how to get back to Jiminy’s dock.
He could stumble around looking for it, or he could give up and sleep here for a bit. With any luck, he’d wake up with a clearer head before any patrolmen showed up and hauled him off for a night in jail.
He lay down against the wall, his arms wrapped around his chest as he shook, half from cold, half from withdrawal. God, he missed his brother again, and he hated himself for it. But he hated himself more for the things he’d said.
“You’re not a burden,” he mumbled to nobody. “And you’re not pathetic.”
The withdrawal kicked in harder, and he lost a block of time to the darkness. And then, like a beacon, he heard the voice he always longed for.
“Jesus, Denver. You’re nothing if not predictable.”
Denver nearly laughed, not bothering to hide the wave of relief that flooded through him at the sound of Laramie’s voice. “How’d you find me?”
“I just followed the self-pity in my head.”
Laramie struggled to pull Denver to his feet. Denver’s knees felt like rubber, but he finally managed to stand, his arm strung over Laramie’s shoulders. His brother began half leading, half carrying him toward the street. There was still enough drug in Denver’s system to keep him from hearing or feeling Laramie in his head, but not enough to keep him from missing it.
And he knew how much Laramie hated that.
“Look,” Laramie said at last. “Just because I said I felt like a burden didn’t mean you had to go out and prove me wrong by, you know, proving that you can be a burden too, every once in a while.”
“That’s not what I was doing.”
“Isn’t it?”
Denver didn’t answer. He didn’t have the energy, or the brain power. He just let Laramie steer him back to the Jiminy. He expected his brother to dump him unceremoniously into his room, but instead,