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filthforfriends · 1 year ago

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Chapter 5: Scared Enough

Authors Note (CW: substance abuse)

Previous chapters linked in my Masterlist

Word count: 4.6k

The chauffeur observes you all too closely, pacing outside Dami’s dressing room. You're both waiting for him to do a final line of coke before leaving for the airport. Then he flushes everything down the toilet and scrubs out the pill case.

“Are you gonna be okay for another four hours?”

“Absolutely not. I’ll be lucky if this high lasts half an hour.”

“So what do you do on airplanes?”

“Drink and suffer.” He laughs at the face you make. “I deserve it, I did this to myself.” Dami keeps that smile plastered on, but it doesn’t reach his eyes anymore. He looks downward to hide it, awkwardly scuffing the end of his boot against the carpet. You sigh heavily, yearning for the right words, but being unable to find them.

“We have to leave now if we want a chance of making our flight.”

“Yeah.” Damiano essentially chain smokes all the way to the airport and refuses to eat, so you end up consuming half the pizza. He insists on carrying your bag while the valet checks his. On the walk to the gate, you trail behind Dami and tuck your hair under a beanie. Unfortunately sunglasses at night draw more attention, not less.

You make it with negative five minutes to spare; they’re already boarding business class. To avoid a disgruntled traveler filming the entitled rich couple cutting in line, you stand at the very back. The stewardess panics over the fact that first class passengers were the last to board. Damiano uses a bit of his magic to calm her and stop attracting curious glances.

“No complaints here, I promise.” He leans forward enough to just barely breach her personal space and lets his husky baritone take over. Dami has this ambiguous closed lip smile that's totally up to the eye of the beholder. Their interpretation reveals the victim’s motivations. This girl wants to fuck Dami, and you don’t blame her. In fact, she’s so taken that she can only manage a nod.

Once out of earshot you murmur, “that poor girl.”

“What?” Damiano says under his breath.

“You know what.” He smirks and steps on to the plane. “Let's hope she doesn't fuck up some poor family’s travel itinerary while dickmatized.” Dami scoffs as he shoves your bag into the overhead compartment.

“It’ll be fine,” he dismisses.

“Says the one without the screaming toddler and 15 hour layover.” This earns a chuckle and he gestures for you to take the window seat.

“Proximity to the bathroom is probably the best plan of action.”

“Stomach still upset?”

“I’m hoping that now it's the kind of upset that can be made better by food that way I can drink.’

“Charming. Maybe wait a bit?”

“Ah, but there's a method to this. You’ve got to start drinking preemptively, that way you’re already drunk when the time for alcohol consumption arrives.” You can tell by Dami’s delivery that he’s used this line at parties and it always landed well. When he sees your face, his confidence drifts away.

“While you're…away I’ll stop drinking, too. That way you have a sobriety buddy.”

“Mm, ‘buddy,’” he winces.

“Yes, ‘buddy.’ Until I’m confident you’re not gonna put your ass in a coma, again. And then some.”

“Fair, that’s fair.” He puts his hands up in surrender. Damiano leans his head back against the seat and exhales heavily. The sound of the pilot's voice on the intercom makes him startle.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Out of habit you rub his leg, then realize that rubbing his arm is much more platonic, albeit awkward. You decide that the middle ground is petting his hair. The buzzcut is surprisingly soft under your fingers.

“Will you grow it out while you’re there?”

“Do you want me to?” He turns his head to look at you, eyebrow raised. Suddenly, making requests about his appearance has much more significance than it did a moment ago.

“Yes,” you answer timidly.

“Then I’ll grow it out.” It's the most tense airplane ride of your life. You’re trying to monitor how hard Damiano’s crashing, while realizing you have no actual experience with cocaine or withdrawals. What do you look for and how do you look for it without him noticing? One fact is abundantly clear, whether you catch his symptoms or not, there isn’t jack shit you can do about them.

Soon after the plane has leveled out, he gets jumpy. A cough or the ding of the seatbelt light spook Dami so severely that he has to catch his breath. He starts craning his neck, looking around at the rest of the plane. Eventually he leans all the way out into the aisle then snaps upright, gluing his back to the seat like he’d been caught doing something illegal.

“What is it?” you whisper.

“I feel like people are filming me.”

“Lets trade seats.” While switching places, you scan the plane for phones. Everyone in first class is laying down except for one woman reading an article on her computer. There's an opaque, closed curtain between first class and business class. The pattern is gaudy, mustard yellow and cobalt blue. Realistically, the only people that could film Dami were those walking up the currently empty aisle or fatigued stewardesses who would be fired for the transgression.

“No one's filming, you’re good. They’re mostly sleeping.” A bored flight attendant infers your concern and hangs a temporary privacy curtain on two small hooks. Damiano orders a mini charcuterie board and two shots of whiskey.

“They’re still filming me,” he hisses, slouching down in his chair. The plane is dark, so you search for the bright light of a camera flash and see nothing.

“Dam, I’m positive no one is filming. If they were, they couldn’t catch anything.” The flight attendant returns with his order and a payment terminal.

“Oh, and two bottles of water please.” You reach down for your purse, but Dami bats your hands away.

“I –”

“No. Do you want anything else?”

“I’m good.” He gives you a dirty look. “I ate your dinner on the drive to the airport.” Dami lets this slide and passes her his debit card. Already knowing that the beep is gonna make him jump, you take your hand in his and whisper, “gonna be a noise. Deep breath.” Dami keeps hold of your hand, even as the stewardess passes his card back, even as he puts it back in his wallet, even as he shoves his wallet into the pocket of his hoodie. Then he leans over and presses his forehead to your temple and all you can think is thank god he’ll be in a secure facility. Because nothing short of that could keep you from throwing your morals to the wind and rechristening your once shared bed.

“It was Aimee, the girl who’s roommate I started – I first did H with.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“But I broke my promise,” his voice wavers, barely audible. “At first it was celebrating the new contract, but then I couldn’t stop. I thought I wouldn’t need any of it, once SME let up. Like I’d forced their hand and the drugs had just been a tool to get my way. I wasn’t an addict.” You push the armrest up, undo your seatbelt, and turn to hug him. “My quality of life is better, but I still needed all this shit to alter my perception so I could exist. In my mind it was strictly a causal relationship. That was fucking delusional.”

“No it wasn’t.” Damiano cries against the shoulder of your sweater and you rub his back.

“I’m so fucking scared,’ he confesses. “I thought I had control so it was like the floor disappearing out from under me. Months of rationalizations built on a lie and I was just falling and it still feels like I’m falling.”

“I’ve got you.”

“That fucking feeling is the reason I don’t go on rollercoasters and now I get to feel it all the time, how painfully ironic is that?”

“Fate has a really twisted sense of irony.”

“The world is punishing me and I deserve it.” You pull back and cup Dami’s colorless face in your hands.

“No you don’t,” you emphasize, brushing tears away with your thumbs. “Thinking you deserve pain, that's the reason it's so hard for you to quit, because you can’t bear to be alone with yourself. I love being alone with you. Dami, you are a beautiful person.” He kisses you, and really you shouldn’t have expected anything else. The responsible thing would be to pull away and gently reestablish a boundary, but you’ve been craving this so hard. Five seconds, that’s the amount of time you allow.

In those five seconds, you kiss back with equal vigor. The hands cupping Damiano’s face end up extended behind his head. With elbows out of the way, you can press your torso against his while Dami pulls you close, then closer still. His tongue has just found yours when times up. Unfortunately, you don’t have the discipline to wrench yourself away and instead pull back slowly. Damiano responds by trying to haul you into his lap, but you make a noise of dissent. There's a chaste goodbye kiss and a sexually-charged disentangling of bodies.

“Sorry.”

“No, no, it's uh…” Not out of my system by any measurement.

“It’s just that, um –”

“Mhm”

“Sorry, what?”

“Oh, no sorry I didn’t –”

“No, you go first.”

“Saying anything.”

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything, sorry.”

“Oh..okay.”

“What were you saying?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like a second ago, you were saying something before I interrupted you.”

“Oh, I was just gonna say that…five months – well, it's almost been five months – is a lot of time.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Yeah…since the breakup.”

“Since we last made lo – the breakup. Since we made the break up.”

“Also since we last made love,” you smirk. You hold eye contact, just like you’ve been all day, but this time there's heat behind it. Damiano’s eyes fall to your lips and he leans in again. You hold up a hand to stop him while grimacing.

“I’m sorry, this is my fault. I’ve been giving you mixed signals, acting like we’re still in a relationship physicality-wise while saying we have to keep our distance for now. I’m just so used to comforting you through touch and I have no idea where the line is to be honest.”

“Sometimes touch is the only thing that is comforting, especially yours.”

“I’m just a physically affectionate person, like I need human contact to feel grounded.”

“I know,” he empathizes emotionally.

“So I’m not good at this,” you admit. “But I wanna be, it’s just…” you sigh while staring at the 80s patterned carpet.

“What?”

“I think if we’re physical my body will forget that we’re broken up. My mind will know, but I think I’ll still feel heartbroken if you aren’t there.”

“Baby, no,” he coos.

“I can’t go through it again and still be the support you need me to be and that I want to be. The affection…for lack of a better word, withdrawals were…rough. But I don’t want to act like strangers either. Like this,” you lace your fingers together, “should be fine, right?”

“Yeah,” Damiano murmurs, but his eyes say so much more.

“So I just have to do my best to keep it at this.” You squeeze down simultaneously, all too easily falling into rhythm with each other. “And ignore the part of my brain that tells me to crawl into your lap, take off all my clothes, and give you a bath with my tongue.” Damiano’s eyes go wide and he blinks a couple times in quick succession.

“Sorry, that was a little graphic.”

“Actually I’m mentally bookmarking that image for tomorrow afternoon.”

“That's when things will get ugly?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve never detoxed from H before, but they have medication to help with that.” He’s visibly nervous and sweating. Damiano opens the shot with one hand and his teeth, then knocks it back. You set a bottle of water on his tray in response. He drinks a quarter of that, which you're feeling good about until he takes the second shot.

“Eat something or you’ll make yourself sick.”

“I know,” he retorts, annoyed. To be fair, Damiano does know a lot more about substances and how they combine than you do. As he’s eating, Dami looks at the row behind us through the crack between the seats. Finally, you recognize it as paranoia.

“I’ll check for phones again, you just keep eating.” The woman on her computer is now working on a spreadsheet and the person directly behind Damiano is watching Casablanca on his phone. Definitely not the Maneskin demographic. Beyond first class, even more passengers are dozing and there's not a single flash from a phone camera.

“Still no one.” The guy behind us is watching a movie in black and white, so I seriously doubt he knows who you are.”

“Fine,” Dami concedes, still on edge. He orders two more shots and you haven’t seen him consume alcohol like this since he was a teenager. Sure, he’d have four drinks at an egregiously long event, but shots of crappy whiskey in quick succession was a different behavior entirely. He unclasps his hand and excuses himself to the bathroom. It’s so casual that you can’t ascertain why. When Damiano returns, he doesn’t take your hand again, so you pretend to be on your phone.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m all good.” If you weren’t broken up, you’d fling your legs over his lap and coax him to look at you. If you weren’t broken up, he’d stroke your hair and tuck it behind your ears. Then he’d massage the shell of your ear. If you weren’t broken up, you’d press your foreheads together and Dami would say everything he meant with his expression. Totally vulnerable, he’d confess his thoughts in a whisper, wrapping an arm around your waist. If you weren’t broken up, you’d know details he’d never disclose to anyone else. The emotional intimacy would throb with the beat of your heart. You’d become so accustomed to having your person, and the total vulnerability which accompanied that.

But you were broken up, so you sat in silence. By the time the place descends, Dami is visibly uncomfortable in his own skin. He has no patience, glowering at the passengers around him. At first the lights coming on is the problem, then the ding of the seatbelt warning, then the way the pilot is descending.

“I need to be off this motherfucking plane,” he hisses. He yanks down the privacy curtain then complains how exposed first class is. You just listen to him and don’t comment. Luckily, the flight attendant allows the both of you off first. This time you carry your own bag until that pisses Dami off too and he lugs it over his shoulder with a scowl.

“I’m gonna take a piss,” he announces, when you arrive at baggage claim. You grab his hand and point to the family bathroom.

“Use that.”

“Why?” he bites. “Why can’t I use a normal fucking bathroom.” You scowl right back.

“Because I’m not a fucking idiot. Because you could ask someone for drugs, or sneak away, or refuse to get in the car. I am far too tired to deal with that shit.” He rolls his eyes, sighs loudly, and heeds your request. Five years of dealing with his mood swings had prepared you for this like none other.

The chauffeur finds you, then finds Dami’s bag, all while he’s still in the bathroom. Had he somehow gotten his hands on something? You’d been with him the whole time. After ten minutes you knock on the door.

“You alive?” He undoes the lock and you slip inside. Dami is bent over the sink with his face in his hands.

“I’m not gonna survive the drive there.” He takes a shaky breath in and sobs. “And I can’t detox from both simultaneously, so don’t fucking asking me to. I want to go home!”

“Damiano, in five months you have been hospitalized four times for your substance abuse. You’ve been in a coma. You’ve started taking two of the hardest drugs known to man. You’ve been one modicum of self-control away from doing crack. You’ve poisoned your body to the point that it can’t retain food or liquids. You are going to die.” He looks up in shock. “You are going to die unless you get sober and if I take you home with me, you are gonna do it in our apartment.” There's a long silence where Damiano opens and closes his mouth a couple times, then swallows hard.

“I’ve never experienced physical withdrawal symptoms like I’m about to. I’m…I’m not – I mean, I can’t.”

“You only have to do it once and this is the easiest it's ever gonna be. I know you’re brave enough.”

“You know fuck all!” he lashes out. “It’s not about bravery or some positive affirmation bullshit.”

“You’re right. I don’t understand and I know you hate me right now.”

“I don’t hate you,” he grumbles, standing upright.

“What you’re feeling is a result of withdrawals. That doesn’t invalidate your emotions, it just means that this particular brand of shitty is very temporary.” Damiano nods and washes his face, beginning to regulate. “That also means that your perception is skewed. The world isn’t nearly as horrible as your brain chemistry is fooling you into believing.

“Okay,” he sniffs. Then he repeats himself with certainty. “Okay. I’m gonna do this. I’ll be okay.” On the walk to the car you trail behind him again, prepared to catch Damiano if he makes a run for it. Once everything is in the Sudan you relax, but Dami has his hands balled into fists as you turn out of the airport.

“Just 40 minutes” you remind him. “Less since there's no traffic right now.”

“Partition, please,” Dami requests, creating privacy behind the tinted windows. Barely perceptible is the sound of a small motor as the driver rolls up the partition between himself and the backseat.

“You wanna lay down with your head on my lap?” He nods and undoes the seatbelt, curling his body to fit in the small space. As soon as your hand makes contact, Dami begins crying. For the first time in a long time, he allows himself to be exposed, to be truly seen. It's the part of him that used to ask for French braids. He’d never actually wear them in public, but loved the sensation. It was the part of him that got genuinely nervous about you enjoying a family recipe. The part that could relax and receive when you fingered him with two digits.The part that lay with Princess on his bare chest because he liked the way her fur felt.

“I don’t want to be alone with myself,” Dami confesses. “I can’t remember the last time I liked that person. Fuck, I’m starting to hate my own stage persona.”

“Front men are supposed to be obnoxious to non-fans. If you were likable to the previous generation of rock listeners, you wouldn’t be rock and roll.”

“Maybe I’m a shitty musician.”

“Someone could justify that statement about most rockstars.”

“Every tour, every album, every new fucking setlist, I watch the power trio get more talented and I just say the same.”

“That’s objectively not true, but I know I can’t convince you of that today.”

“I should take vocal lessons.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” Suddenly he’s abrasive.

“Because it will make you feel more productive and more confident. It could also help the longevity of your voice.”

“Oh.” He settles and allows you to stroke his head. “Why is it so quiet?” he gripes.

“Could you roll down the partition and hand me the aux, please?” Leaning over to dig your phone out of your purse also results in Dami getting a face full of your boobs. He seems to be in better spirits afterwards.

“This band is called Snowy Dunes. It’s bluesy hard rock, I think you’ll really like it.”

‘“That's not what I’ve been listening to lately, but sure.”

“Crotchety old man.” Damiano does, in fact, keep his head on your lap the whole way there. There’s two fences, the first with an attendant and the second with an intercom. The security level seems to pacify Dami.

“Just stay in the car, please. I’ll get it,” he says to the valet. You hop out as he pulls his suitcase from the trunk. It’s the very beginning of dawn, when the world is painted in a deep blue light and the birds start to chirp. The facility is just as beautiful as you expected, well manicured trees barely visible and a grand entrance with double doors. The care idles, red taillights ominously hitting the octagon cement tiles. You take Dami’s hand and walk him inside.

“And I thought the other places I’ve been to were nice,” he murmurs.

“Remember that you put yourself on the waiting list three months ago.” He chuckles, before speaking on another intercom.Theres a clicking sound and the left door opens automatically.

“Hey there, we only keep this entrance locked at night,” is the first thing a staff member says. “Are you Damiano?”

“Uh, yeah.” He looks at you, almost overwhelmed with the urge to run.

“I’m y/n, I spoke with you earlier.” You drag him inside and use your free hand to greet someone in a white uniform.

“A little apprehension is normal. Or a lot.”

“Where’s your bathroom?” he asks curtly.

“Right through here,” responds who you now assume to be an orderly. He leads Dami around a corner and follows him inside.

“Hi there, would you mind if I ask you a couple questions?” A newly appeared nurse seats herself behind a counter on the other side of the hall. The lights were almost as low inside as they were outside.

“Oh, uh yeah! Sorry, I didn’t see you there. And uh, he doesn’t have anything on him. We just traveled through two of the biggest airports in Europe. His stomach has just been upset from y’know…”

“Right, of course,” she responds with genuine sympathy. Now you feel better about leaving him here. “I’ll say goodbye and get out of your hair as soon as he’s back.”

“What's your relationship to Damiano?”

“Well, I was his girlfriend for five and a half years.”

“Woah, five years is a lot in your early twenties.”

“Yeah…but we broke up, because of the…addiction issues. Plus the fame makes things…it makes them complicated.” What you really meant is that global popularity is so intrusive that vital aspects of a relationship go unattended because there's simply no room. She nods like this is something they see daily.

“Do you know what he’s taken in the past 24 hours?”

“Cocaine, uh alcohol, and maybe heroin, I don’t know. He smokes weed and rolled tobacco, plus normal cigarettes.” There's not an ounce of surprise or judgment. She enters the information into the computer like it's the weather report.

“Crack cocaine?”

“No.”

“Okay.” The clicks of the laptop seem loud, but maybe that's because the world around you is so silent.

“He only started using heroin regularly three weeks ago. I don’t know if that matters.” You feel defensive of Dami, then like an dumbass because you were standing in rehab for fuck’s sake. Anxious, you look over your shoulder.

“Do you know when the last time he used heroin was?”

“No.”

“Do you know how he’s ingesting it?”

“No.”

“And do you know what type of heroin he’s using?”

“Um, no. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” she reassures. “We’re just happy to have a little extra information if you’re able to provide it. Do you know when he last ingested cocaine?”

“Four hours ago.”

“Alright. Do you have payment information? It looks like his intake fee has already been paid.”

“Yeah, that was me.” While you were dating, Damiano paid rent and you paid utilities. It was far from equatable, but you made a lot less and he insisted. Post breakup, you found out that a spacious apartment in Rome with private parking was even more exorbitantly priced than he’d led you to believe. So you’d called your landlord to clarify a move out date and were informed that in addition to taking himself off the lease as agreed, he’d paid out the two year contract in its entirety. If you were to move out, the remainder of the money would be yours.

Subsequently, you decided to stay in that absolutely gorgeous apartment, right up until you needed the money for something. After thoroughly guilt tripping your landlord, he gave you half of the remaining lease payment, which you used for application fees and to eventually secure a spot at rehab for Dami. It was, after all, a totally ridiculous amount for him to essentially give you, with no way of rejecting or returning it.

“I’m not sure if his label is gonna pay directly or reimburse him or what.”

“Alright, so I’ll just collect that information later.” She looks up from her computer screen. “The important thing is that you got him here.” You bite the inside of your lip to suppress the urge to cry. No doubt you were gonna end up lying in a pool of your own tears and snot later today, but if you started now saying goodbye would be very ugly.

“How much pain is he gonna be in?” Before she can answer, there's two sets of footsteps behind you.

“No windows?”

“Not ones that I could reach.”

“If you were the proper height for a basketball player…”

“Oh, shut up,” he jokes (mostly). “So which one of you is gonna tear apart all my belongings like a racoon in a dumpster?”

“Damiano!” You’re laughing too hard to reprimand him, as are the two staff members.

“They’re gonna throw out my 70€ shampoo!”

“You don’t have hair!”

“That’s true,” he smiles, rubbing his buzz cut. This was so like him, rallying at the end so you could leave in good spirits. He was trying to spare you some anguish. It also meant he’d decided to commit.

“We actually have storage lockers for this very reason. Once we feel confident, you can have your shampoo back,” reassures the nurse. “Do you have a form of ID you can show me?”

“Uh, yeah.” His voice wavers ever so slightly. Next he signs a release to provide treatment.

“Looks like you’re all checked in,” she announces in a cheery voice. It's your cue to leave. Both staff members find a reason to look away so you have a moment of semi-privacy. It becomes apparent that your tears won’t wait for a more convenient moment. So you hug him to give yourself a tiny bit of grace to wrangle your emotions.

“Are you crying?”

“Yes.” The hug isn’t platonic at all, with your arms thrown around his neck and his dangerously low on your back. Body to body, standing with your feet between Dami’s, any closeness that can be acceptably achieved in public has been.

“I’m so angry with the world that you have to deal with this and I’m –” You take a steadying deep breath. “I’m so fucking proud of you and for facing it an – and grateful.”

“Even though it scares me shitless?”

“Especially because it scares you shitless.”

“I love you.” He whispers it right in your ear and kisses your temple

“I love you, too,” you hiccup.

“Give Princess a kiss for me.” He pulls away, takes a step back, then another, and he’s gone without ever meeting your eyes. Seeing as they have actual patients to care for, you drag yourself back to the SUV. Then you cry so hard that the chauffeur stops at his brother’s gelato shop on the way home.

Notes: Well if it isn't some more nice, light reading from your gal FilthforFriends!

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