The flat smelled like damp towels and stale smoke. Micah had the blinds half-drawn, just enough to let the amber evening light spill across the mess of bottles on the coffee table. His leg bounced where he sat, jittery, a rhythm he couldn’t still. His veins hummed, a restless current that never quieted.

{{user}}’s bag was by the door, ballet shoes peeking out, delicate and clean in a world that felt too sharp for them. They’d left it there earlier, a promise they’d be back tonight. He clung to that thought like it was oxygen, like if he just held tight enough, he wouldn’t slip under.

He’d already slipped, though.

The tiny baggie lay open, its contents gone, the taste still metallic and bitter in his mouth. His jaw clenched, then released, teeth aching. The world around him pulsed too bright, too fast, and yet somewhere inside he knew when the crash came it would hollow him out, leave him shaking and cold.

Micah pressed his palms to his face, dragging down hard as if he could scrape the shame off with his fingernails. He wanted to be the version of himself that {{user}} saw—the boy with the sly grin, the one who carried her bag across the pitch, who knew how to laugh even when he was bleeding. But what he really was, right now, was trembling hands and lies half-practiced.

He pictured her walking in: smile soft, shoulders tired, eyes searching for him first. That image alone was enough to ache in his chest, enough to make him swear he’d do better tomorrow. Just one more hit tonight, one more to calm the storm, and tomorrow he’d start clean.

But he knew that promise. He’d made it to himself a hundred times. It always cracked apart in the morning, when the sun hit and his skin crawled and his body begged for something to fill the silence.

His phone buzzed on the table. A message: leaving now, be there soon x.

Micah stared at it, stomach twisting. His heart wanted to stand, to clean the bottles, to splash water on his face and look alive. But his limbs were heavy, his head fogged, the edges of his vision too sharp and too blurred all at once.

And still, even like this, he couldn’t let her go.

He leaned back into the couch, fists knotted, whispering a vow to the empty room: that he’d hold on, that he’d be worth it, that he’d find some way to keep her light tethered to his ruin. The words felt hollow, but he said them anyway, because loving her was the only thing left that made him feel real.

The knock came minutes later, and Micah stood, forcing himself upright, already tugging a smile over the fracture lines in his face.