Jared and Gnat - Three - Introspection

Some nights, Jared would wake up screaming. He would thrash about and cut himself, punch walls out and smash things up. After all that was done, he would usually slink back down to his mattress and cry himself back to sleep. His crying was not that of sorrow; not that weeping you might emit out of sadness, but one of despair. Where did it all go wrong? After tonight’s episode, Jared was in tears, cupping his face in hands sitting on the mattress. He was silent now, sniffling occasionally. Misty breath materialised in front of his mouth and dissipated…

It was freezing at night; especially in mid-winter. Gnat and himself couldn’t afford heating. There were much more important things to acquire… At least in their minds anyway. He hacked violently and spat onto the grim, carpetless floor. The black mucus slapped against the surface and lay there, allowing it to settle for a few seconds before he scuffed it with his foot. Funny how things are so easily swept from existence isn’t it? No, not really. This was Jared’s sense of humour. Well, he’d either laugh or he’d die, and he isn’t quite ready for the latter yet. Jared was fucked in every sense of the word.

Jared collapsed back onto the mattress and reminisced.

There certainly had been a lot of fucking in his life, but Jared didn’t mind that. Backstage orgies were regularly held after the concert. Rough, spitting, sweating, bitter submission was the only thing hard and real in his life when the music stopped and the drugs ran dry. He enjoyed it less for the sensation and more for because it was actually there, and he was in the moment.

All was still for the moment. Jared’s breathing blew away the dust in front of his muzzle, making it dance in the moonlight. The tatted curtains hid their miserable existence from sight, thankfully. Gnat began to stir. He had been lying awake whilst the weasel threw his fit which occurred almost nightly now. Sure, it disturbed him, but what could he do? Jared was always fine in the morning anyway. Now that he calmed down, Gnat looked pitifully at him out of the corner of his eye?

“Jared…?”
“What?”

Gnat sat up and placed his paws in his lap, looking down at the furless Jared. Those tear-stained eyes used to be so bright.

“Would you like some coffee?”
“No.”
“Well I’m having some, so you are too.”
“Whatever.”

Gnat hacked for a while and stood up. His ribs hurt and he was cold. “It’s just us and the music tomorrow, anyway. None of that shit that usually happens backstage, either,” he stated. For a second there was a faint glimmer in Jared’s cold, red eyes. When he was up there on stage, it was just him and the music. The whole world simply ceases to exist apart from him. You lose yourself in the rhythm and put your heart and soul into it.

The filthy rabbit beat the cobwebs away from a dirty mug and filled it with boiling hot water and coffee. Gnat hadn’t washed in months. Suddenly he wasn’t thirsty anymore and decided just to make Jared’s. He looked so cold anyway.

As he returned to the living room clutching the hot mug he stopped in his tracks. Jared was sitting straight up on the mattress with a smile on his face, clutching his paw in his other.

“Gnat; I’m getting clean… For you.”

He tossed the needles he had acquired across the room.

“Burn the shit.”