Her brown hair was floating all around her and bubbles of air clung to her eyelashes. She touched his face gently, but he couldn't feel it. He ached to feel it. The sun was coming and they were only a few hundred feet from shore. There was no escape, but there they floated. Her face, sharp and beautiful, looked blue now surrounded by so much water. Darkness was ebbing and the sun would touch the water. Would they burn if they were in the water? He tried to ask her, but the bubbles that came out of his mouth without the sound. Drowning now. The sun rose higher. He could feel it prickle on his skin, ache in his abdomen. Fear and the need to vomit rose in his throat. Warm, no, hot now as the sun touched the water. Drowning. Boiling. He watched her with panic. She dissolved before his very eyes.
Nikolai Armani awoke with a start, gasping for air that his body didn't need. Disoriented, he looked around for her with clouded eyes - but she was nowhere to be found. There was no water here, no sun. Nikolai laid back into the couch, trying to fight the panic of confusion that surfaced in him as his eyes picked up clues to his whereabouts.
His living room. On the couch. When the fuck did he get there? He tried to rub at his eyes to clear them of their heaviness only to find pain and swelling that hadn't been there before he fell asleep. He shifted and groaned, feeling the pain in his ribs, his shoulders, his back. It felt like someone had kicked the shit out of him. But his face was concerning. What the fuck happened to his face? Lips tender, nose crushed, and dried blood all over him. He picked off in flakes - old blood.
His head ached like it had been put in a vise and crushed. Bile - or something like it - was lingering in the bottom of his esophagus. His stomach was cramped like someone was trying to make tye dye with his organs. Little whispers made themselves known in his ear and he shook his head to clear them without much luck. A growing sense of panic was filling his chest needlessly. None of these things had made sense to him.
Nikolai tried to remember what happened last night. He could remember feeding from someone after snorting coke off a table in a dimly lit kitchen. Mike? Yeah, he remembered Mike. Mike was the last thing that made sense. Everything else was that familiar, aggravating sense of gray. He had blacked out, lost control again. Nikolai swore under his breath and leaned back into the couch, trying his hardest to remember why he was so fucked up. There were images stuck in random places in his head, but nothing else - getting head in a bathroom, a punch to his face that broke his nose, blood in his throat. There was a human there somewhere but he couldn't remember.
Judas slept without a worry, deep asleep now that he was safe and - for the most part - sober. Judas never felt the withdrawal, the irritation, the tremors, the nausea, the running nose. That was all Nikolai now. He held his head as the headache pulsed painfully, curling in on himself to ward off the cramping. It was only then that he realized that there was a body on his couch.
Some young kid was passed out, strung out was on his couch. Anger and panic gripped him. He must have been dreaming. There was not some fucking kid on his couch! Nikolai never took people home - there were too many things that could go wrong with that considering the amount of drugs he had stashed away in the house, the amount of cash. He was smarter than that. Roughly, Nikolai put his hand on the kid's leg that was closest to him - still warm. Thank fuck. The kid smelled of Nikolai's cum and his dope and was definitely missing a lot of blood. As long as this little brat wasn't dead, things might actually be fine.
The headache pulsed again, turning very rapidly into a splintering migraine in the back of his head. He knew that this happened when he fucked with smack. Why the hell did he keep going back to it? Every morning was the same, full of pain and withdrawal, shaking, and aggravation. The skin itching would come in a few hours. It always did. His face felt like taffy and he couldn't remember a single thing about why it had gotten that way. He needed more blood - maybe then he would remember.
The vampire stood and found his cigarettes across the table, beyond three lines of snow - the kid must have been snorting it then. With a shaking hand Nikolai pulled out and lit a cigarette, getting angry with himself for his physical weaknesses and want of more drugs. He was turning into a fucking junkie again. He had been clean off skag for at least forty years. For some reason, the last two years had him craving something extra and he had fallen into old habits, especially now that those habits would never kill him. But with face and ribs in the shape they were, he had his doubts. Nikolai took a long drag off his cigarette, hating how his hand was shaking.
How long had he slept? What part of his night was spent awake and active? He clearly had smack in his system so he had clearly fed from that little idiot asleep on the couch. It frustrated him that he had no answers, that he just had to trust that everything was alright. Clearly, it was not. A point of contention as always.
Nikolai went about his routine - showering, cleaning the blood from his face, putting his nose back in place. When he had finished, the boy had changed positions on the couch slightly - a very good sign. His breathing was shallow and Nikolai glowered at him, lighting another cigarette. The vampire took up his phone - noting that it was almost sunset - and ordered a pizza from the closest place. It would arrive within a half hour. By then the kid on his couch would be awake, even if Nikolai had to shake him awake himself.