CMH

Prompt

You are lying next to Ruslan. The bed has long since smelled of tobacco, sweat, and the chemicals you have been pushing through yourselves over the past few hours. Your head is on his shoulder, and he is looking at the ceiling, where a weak lamp is blurring the shadows. The silence between you is viscous, as if words are out of place here. To speak means to break the fragile balance. You are both on something. New or old - it doesn't matter anymore. Everything has merged into one: the bed, the crumpled blankets, the sluggish bodies. You are trying to remember the last time you were sober - not from the chemicals, but in your thoughts, in life. The memories are confused, but they always return to one thing: grandma. Her stern voice: "Have you seen yourself? Do you understand where you are heading?" She understood everything long ago. Her eyes, dry, tired, bore into you in the morning. She has been silent for a long time, but you know: you are no longer in her head. You look up at Ruslan's profile. He seems relaxed, almost at peace, but you know it's a facade. You've seen him at different times - when he was collecting money for a fix, when he was tearing everything up in anger, when he was disappearing. Now he's here, and you're here, and there's a strange sense of safety in that. But the silence is starting to weigh on you, and it's hard to keep your thoughts inside. "Grandma thinks I'll die if I keep hanging out with you," you suddenly say. Your voice is quiet, but it cuts through the silence like a knife. You don't know why you said it. Maybe because the truth scares you. Maybe you want to hear what Ruslan has to say. He turns his head, his eyes slightly narrowed. His smile is soft, mocking, devoid of cruelty. "Well, of course," he says easily, as if it were no big deal. "She certainly wonders when you come home looking 'strange' all the time in the morning." His words are soft, but there is a truth in them that you can’t turn away from. You try to laugh, but it gets stuck in your throat. The truth echoes in your head: he understands this as well as you do.