I opened my eyes, and that was my first mistake.

Whatever room I was in, it had the curtains drawn, sunlight pouring in and making my head pound even harder than it already was. The second mistake, I found out moments after, was waking up at all. Waking up came with the sensation of my body being coated in sweat, the rancid smell of vomit, and the worst case of dry mouth I'd ever had in my entire life.

I rolled off my side, moving to my back to feel the plush seat of a couch. Turned out I was also shirtless and covered by a thin blanket, but I didn't have much time to find a new one before I heard voices. I don't know why exactly I decided to quickly shut my eyes and pretend to be asleep, but I'd already moved back into position by the time I could fully make them out, just in case they walked in.

"-Yeah, but I didn't see him going ahead and doing something like this," I could hear Blyke saying as three pairs of footsteps made their way further into what I could only assume was Gwen's shared apartment.

"I mean, I could see him getting a beer or two," Gwen added. "But wasted? That bitch slipped something in his drink. I would bet on it."

"I'm... not too sure actually."

I winced at the genuine concern I could pick up in Dustin's voice. There was a small beep from the other room, and from there the smell of coffee, but even with how much my brain was muddled, I could guess that he wasn't making it for himself. A deep breath filled my sore lungs. Why does he feel the need to care for me so much? Especially after what I did.

"What makes you say that?" Gwen asked as the silence continued to drag.

"It's just ever since he's moved in, he's been... panicked, I guess." There was another long pause before he continued. "And he's been angry, quiet, obsessed with keeping potions like they're going to save him-"

"Save him from what?" Blyke cut in.

"I don't know! And he won't talk to me about it either. When he didn't want to hang out last year, I just figured he needed time to process after— well, everything. But now it's been a year and he's..."

Then I heard a small choke, the next words broken and scratchy. "What if it gets worse? What if this is just the first step?"

"Then... I don't know, Dustin. I really don't know." A chair was scraped back, feet moving to finally take a seat. "But it's not your job to fix him. He's the only person that can do that."

"Right," Blyke agreed. "I think the best thing we can do for him right now is give him some peace and quiet and let him sleep. He hasn't thrown up since this morning, and we should probably give him a bit."

"Exactly. If you want, there's a small cafe only a block away. You can come with us and we can-"

"I'm staying."

"Dustin." Gwen sighed. "Coffee isn't a cure-all for being hungover. It's just something you wait out."

"I'm staying."

"... okay."

She sounded disappointed as the chair was moved again. After that was another shuffle, then the sound of a door opening, and closing.

My heart fell as I heard the uneven tapping of Dustin making his way over, sinking along with the stuffing of the couch as he sat on the edge. A weird sense of deja vu hit me as I realized that this would make that the second time in less than twenty four hours, unless I'd been out longer. I couldn't really tell. Gods my head hurt.

It was almost enough to make me pass out again as I lay there with my eyes closed, room spinning even when I wasn't going anywhere. Honestly, with how much my muscles ached, I didn't even want to. The only thing I wanted was to pass out when I heard a hiccup, then a sob.

My eyes opened before I could stop them to find Dustin. His arms were out, braced on his knees to hold a mug of coffee. It shook wildly as he sat there, hood up and face pressed into a spot between his wrists.

He was crying.

A tight, anxious feeling cut sharply through the haziness, squeezing at my chest. I'd never known Dustin to cry. Not once. Even at Liesel's funeral, he'd stared off blankly the entire time. I was the one who'd clutched at the coffin and cried, apologizing again and again to her fathers even though we all knew there was no bringing her back. He was the one to pull me aside and say how she wouldn't have wanted me to be a wreck. That even her last words were spent thanking me. For someone so meek at times, he'd always been so strong.

And now he was crying because of me.

"Hey." I tried to sit up, even though it jerked at my stomach and made acid race along my aching throat as a warning.

He jolted, coffee slopping over the ceramic edge and onto the rug. Grey eyes rimmed with red darted to me, then the floor as if he wasn't sure which to wipe first. He decided on his face, dragging the purple sleeve of his hoodie over it. "Sorry! I... tripped."

I tried to give him a bewildered look from where I lay as he quickly pushed himself to standing. "You were sitting down."

"... my hand tripped. I did it with my hand."

I groaned, hating the way my muscles all had to feel sore and stretched when I was just trying to push myself in a more vertical position. Finally I was upright, but that had been exhausting enough, and so I let my head flop back onto the edge of the cushion. "You're such a bad liar."

He didn't answer even after he came back from the kitchen with a roll of paper towels. No matter how much he pressed it into the carpet though, all it did was sop up the extra, leaving a russet stain behind while the pile of soaked brown paper grew higher.

His hand shook again. "Gwen's going to be furious."

I laughed, even if I didn't really feel it. "Pretty sure that if you all dragged me here from the party throwing up, I'm the one she'll be pissed at, not you."

His face darkened at that, and he moved to scrubbing the floor harder. It was a good minute before he spoke again, and when he did, it was quiet. Hurt. "Why Crow?"

"Why what?" I asked, although I guess it was a stupid question. It could only be so many things, and I doubted it was why I was shirtless. Although I was starting to wonder where my clothes were as I raked a hand through my hair so I at least wasn't a total mess.

"You promised me. You said you weren't going to start drinking and you did it anyway the second I left." He stopped scrubbing, head snapping up to wince at me. "Why?"

I sighed, letting my hand drop from my bangs to my face. At least then it blocked out some of the light. Everything hurt to look at right now, my ears still ringing. "I don't know. I was bored, I guess."

"Bored?" He looked at me incredulously. "You don't just do it out of boredom."

My face grew hot, the dizziness spreading further. "Some people do!"

"Well, you're not some people," he argued, the floor mopping on pause as he stared at me. "You're better than that."

I'd felt it before, the rage in my chest when they were talking in the kitchen. As if I was some person to take pity on when I was fine. It was them who I'd gotten hurt, and instead they were wasting their time doting over the hotshot who'd raked in the fame and glory all while they suffered their scars. Now though, that rage was building up into something more tangible as my face grew even hotter than it normally did, the alcohol igniting that flame into something more vibrant and wild than I'd ever felt.

I flung myself off the couch, wobbling a bit as I glared down at Dustin. My hands balled into fists, starting to raise at my sides. "Who are you to decide what I'm better than?"

"Nobody!" he shouted back, voice raising an octave as he stood, mouth half-open in shock. "I just want to make sure you don't end up like-"

"Like who?" I cut him off, stepping closer to his face. I didn't like the way he kept backing up. If he wanted to start raking on me now, then he might as well stick with what he started.

"Like my mother."

"Your mother?" I backed off slightly, raising an eyebrow. My head still throbbed, only adding to the confusion as I sat back down. The anger was dying down now, as quickly as it'd begun, and it felt like it was leaving me even more exhausted in its absence. "I thought it was just your sister and your dad?"

Dustin followed me in taking a seat, the pile of paper towels on the floor forgotten. His hands were back to clutching at his knees, eyes staring through the floor. "Yeah."

I frowned, joining him in the floor staring. For as much as I hung out with the guy, Dustin never really talked about himself much. Hell, the only reason I even knew about his whole spacing out disorder was because Gwen had told me to knock it off with the whole 'dragging him into things before he got hurt'.

That reminder too, irked me. What a lovely job I'd done at that.

I turned my head to look at him, frozen in place but still trembling. Maybe I still was. I bit at my lip. "I'm... guessing your mom drank."

"...Yeah. I was really young, so I don't remember a lot of it. But she did, and when she did, she became enraged. She'd-" His fingers moved the strings of his hoodie into his mouth, leaving him to chew at aglets already bitten to wispy shreds. He continued to not look at me. Only ahead into nothing. "She'd grab at my hair, put her hands around my neck, yell at me. Not Gwen though. Never Gwen. She's perfect."

Something in my chest squirmed uncomfortably, and I awkwardly reached to throw an arm around his shoulder. He didn't push it off. In fact, he didn't do anything but continue to explain. "She always took it out on me, because I can't do anything right, and on the week my dad had a nursing conference out of state..."

He took a deep breath, the tears coming out of his eyes completely silent now. "I failed a test, and she- she grabbed me by the hair and locked me in my room. I tried to get out, get food, help... but I wasn't allowed, because I wasn't good enough. She thought I didn't deserve it."

I watched him, eyes wide in shock as I listened, dumbfounded. What did you even say to something like that? Sorry? My arm gripped his shoulder tighter, until he was pulled flush against my side.

"I was stuck in there for a week while she ignored me and drank. I sat there and starved-" His hand reached forward to brush back his jacket's long sleeves, revealing arms coated in pen markings. His eyes stayed trained on his left, at the plain, no frills handwritten notes jotted there. "-Until I became someone who was good enough."

"Dustin," I finally managed to get out, leaning forward to look directly into his eyes. "I would never."

"I'm not saying you would. I'm saying that that's why I can't stand to see you like this." He finally sat up, and I dropped my arm so he could adjust himself better. He was still chewing at the strings in his mouth, until he dropped them with a sigh. "When I say you're better than that, I'm not trying to control you and tell you who to be. I just... hate to see you angry all the time."

He scooched over, flipping himself to face me. "I know you didn't drink last night because you were bored. You were using it to have a good time."

"Okay. So what if I was?" I asked, giving him a simple shrug. "I'm nineteen. Two more years and it isn't even a legal matter." A short laugh drew out of me. "You've got to stop worrying so much. I'm old enough to do what I want."

"But what you want isn't healthy, Crow!" he cried, gripping the couch tightly. "Again, I know you wanted me to drop this, but as much as you want to pretend to be fine, you're not. Right now this is just one incident, but if you keep going like this it's going to be so much more than that. You need help."

I stiffened, the aggravation from before returning, but in a slower, colder way. "Are you serious right now? You're really going to make this about therapy again?"

He gave me a pleading look. "Yes, I'm incredibly serious. That's why I'm telling you this before you get hurt."

"Me? You're worried about me getting hurt?" A scoff shot out of my lips before I could stop it. "Why don't you worry about yourself for once? For someone who can't even follow a twenty-five pound limit rule for carrying weight up a staircase, you sure have no issue telling me how to live my life."

He stood up, throwing a hand across his chest as if that made him any more believable. "Because I care about you!"

"Well, I don't want you too! I want you to leave me the fuck alone!"

I didn't know it was going to be a shout until it was echoing around the room, leaving a deafening silence after it. Still, even as my stand deflated, the rage didn't, and it wasn't as if I lied. I was sick of it.

Dustin only stood there, tears running faster down a hurt, yet blank face until he wordlessly threw his sleeve over it, turning for the apartment door.

"Hey!" I called after him. "Where do you think you're going?"

He paused, and I couldn't make out his face beneath his hood as he placed a hand on the knob.

"I'm leaving you alone."

That was all he said as he opened the apartment door and closed it gently behind him. Then all that was left was me, an empty apartment, and a coffee-stained rug.

I flopped down on the couch, a groan coming out of me as I sunk all my weight into it. Leaning back, I closed my eyes, feeling how heavy and sore I felt.

"Man, my head hurts so much."

It was all I could think about as I let the tiredness take over each of my limbs. I stayed like that for I didn't even know how long. The next thing I remembered was the feeling of my phone buzzing in my pocket.

Confused, I slid it out, squinting at the screen. That too, was too bright. Still, I could make out a notification through the blurriness of my stinging eyes. It was a text from Dustin, followed by another.

Crow

Problem

"Oh my god just drop it already..." The complaint almost came out as a single aggravated word as it rolled out of my achy throat. "I'm too tired for this."

As if my body finally got the hint, my arm gave out and the phone fell to my side before I passed out for good this time.

☾☆☽

"Hey."

A hand roughly shook me awake, and I peeled open my eyes to find Blyke watching my face intently.

"Hey," I answered, moving to scrub at my face. Then I sat up, noticing that my head was a lot clearer than earlier, and it was pitch black out. "What's up?"

"You, finally." He reached behind him towards the coffee table in the center of the room, and I finally noticed a grey T-shirt hanging off the edge.

Oh, so that's where it was.

I was in the middle of sticking my arms through it, worming the fabric over my torso when Gwen shot me a look from across the room, tapping her foot at me. "Where's Dustin?"

"Huh?" I raised an eyebrow at her. "I thought he left to go to the cafe with you guys." At least, that would have made sense. I didn't really know how much father he could have gotten with his car left on campus and his leg as crooked as it was.

"No." She fixed me a glare. "He didn't want to go. He insisted on staying back here with you, and yet I come home to you still passed out and a stain on our carpet."

"Yeah, he spilt it," I explained, leaning forward to grab at the paper towels he'd left there. I didn't feel all that off anymore, just thirsty, but I could at least get up now, and picking up seemed like the least I could do after... The image of Dustin turned away to walk out the door floated through my mind and my heart sank.

Why did I say that to his face?

"Oh, you talked to him. I figured you slept the whole time." She moved closer to Blyke, taking a seat on the table next to him. "How'd that go?"

Suddenly the paper towels weren't getting picked up quick enough, and I started gathering them up faster, heading towards the kitchen wordlessly. There had to be a trashcan in there somewhere, but I'd never been over Blyke and Gwen's place before, and all I saw were clean, neat shelves, stools propped up next to a bartop, and cabinets. I stood there, holding them in my hands as my eyes continued to dart.

"Crow," Gwen called from the other room, her voice warning. "Where's Dustin?"

"I said I don't know, okay? He didn't tell me. Where is your trashcan?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"It's in the cabinet by the fridge. Why did he leave?"

"Why did you stick the trashcan in a cabinet? That's so inconvenient," I told her, yanking at a handle. Sure enough, there was a little plastic bin in there, and I tossed them in along with my sense of purpose in life. Then with nothing else to do, I closed the cabinet.

"Crow!"

I turned to find Gwen in the doorway, her long, blond hair in ragged waves around her shoulders. "Forget about the stupid trash can. It's one in the morning and he's not here."

My eyes could not have popped further out of my head. "It's what?"

"Yeah it's one am my guy." Blyke came to prop his elbow up on the frame, almost a full foot above where Gwen stood with her arms clutching each side in worry. "We figured he was with you and went and saw a movie so that we wouldn't interrupt whatever he wanted to say." He tapped a finger against his cheek as if in thought. "And... maybe we got a little distracted after the movie and lost track of time and-"

Gwen's pale face shot bright red. "Blyke! Focus."

"Mhm, mhm. Focusing." He nodded. "So yeah. Surely he said something before leaving, right? What'd you two talk about anyway?"
My mouth fell into a line, my hand reaching to scratch at the back of my neck. "Well... He was upset about what I did, I guess. Said he didn't want me to end up like his mom."

"He... mentioned Mom?"Gwen stiffened, looking me over from head to toe. "What did he say?"

"Uhhh..." I chewed at my lip again, thinking it over. "It was personal. I don't know if-"

"She locked me in there for a week, and I sat there and I starved until I became someone better."

"Oh god." The words shot out of my mouth before I could stop myself. Was that why he was like that? Why was that so much more clearer now than when he'd told me earlier? I reached up to yank at my bangs. "Why did I say that to him?"

"Say what?" Gwen demanded. "What happened?"

"I..." I turned to her, but I couldn't meet her eyes. They were that same shade of grey, holding the same amount of care and worry. "We got into a fight, and I... I don't know. I snapped and told him to leave. So he just... left."

"Damn." Blyke dragged a hand through the thick, black mass that was his hair. "You yelled at him after he took care of you the entire time you were out?"

"What? I didn't— It wasn't—" I circled my hand, looking for some kind of reasoning, but there was none. "I don't know. He just kept getting on my nerves recently and I guess I couldn't take it today."

Gwen perused her lips, but the frustration was quickly leaving her face as she seemed to focus. "When was this?"

"Hours ago?" I replied. "It was light out."

Her fingers started rapidly drumming at the door. "Did you tell him sorry?"

"No. I texted me and I just... ignored it."

That was a lot harder to get out than I expected, the uncomfortable feeling in my chest tightening.

"Well, can you maybe try reaching out?" Blyke asked, giving me a strangely serious look for once. "He didn't answer when either of us called."

"I..." I trailed, leaning back until I was propped up against the kitchen counter, phone in hand. "Yeah, I can do that."

They left me there, moving back to the couch I'd made my home for the day, while I just stared at my lockscreen. I couldn't look at it for long though, at the picture of Dustin and Blyke with arms flung over my shoulders while I stood roped into the center. So I tapped my finger on the back, opening it up to face those two text messages again.

My fingers tapped at the screen, spelling out one message, then another, longer one. I glanced over it before immediately deleting it. It sounded like a list of excuses to me. Instead I just sent a single word.

Sorry

I watched the chat for a few seconds, but the little checkmark to show that he'd seen it never lit up. Finally, as much as the idea sent my stomach spiraling into a slew of knots, I swiped out of the chat to bring my phone into the contacts section.

It rang a few times, but eventually the phone dipped into voicemail.

"Hi! This is Dustin. Whether I've been sucked into an alternate reality or just eating some chips, for some reason I can't get to the phone right now. But, if you leave your name and number, I'll be sure to call you back as soon as I can. Okay? Okay. Bye."

Then a beep went off, and I sighed.

"Hey Dustin. It's me. I'm... really sorry about what I said earlier. My head just—" I cut myself off. "I shouldn't have done that, and everyone's real worried about you. Please call me back? Thanks."

After that, the only thing left to do was walk into the living room and face Blyke and Gwen again. I was more scared about the latter though as she shot me a sharp look as I walked in. "Well?"

"He didn't pick up," I told her, choosing to sit in the middle of the carpeted floor. "Which sucks because I'm his ride home, and I'm pretty sure he has class tomorrow. I know I certainly do." Not that I really felt like going, but it felt like the right thing to do.

"I'm not worried about him missing class," Gwen spat out, as if me even suggesting that was just another annoyance. "I'm worried about where he is. What if he can't walk here, or I don't know! Got lost or something."

"Gwen." Blyke put a hand on her shoulder, bending forward to give her a soft smile. "I'm sure he'll be fine, all right? You don't need to baby him. He's our age."

He cast a look outside where warm, night air was blowing in through the cracked open window. "Let's just wait it out. I'm sure he'll be back soon, and this will all be for nothing."

"And if not?" Gwen pushed.

"Then... We'll call the police in the morning. For now, let me go see if we got any extra pillows, and Crow can take the couch again."

It wasn't long after that that I was laying back down on the couch, stretched out arms holding the phone above my face. I stared at the screen, far too awake to pass out right away. Who would have thought that would be difficult after spending an entire day asleep?

So instead, I just stared emptily at the same text, still left unread. My stomach continued to sink, leaving me nauseous. Truth be told, I wanted to agree with Blyke. Dustin was a year older than me, and despite what Gwen thought, he wasn't stupid enough to get lost. At least, not for long.

Three o' clock. That was when he sent me those two words. 'Crow. Problem'

I brought the phone down, clutching it to my chest as the thoughts continued to spiral. I hoped nothing had happened to him. I didn't want him to get hurt because of me.

Except that once again, as I lay there on a couch with only the glow of a tv power button to light the room, I was getting the feeling that I was already too late for that.