The Who - Short Fiction

Behind Blue Eyes - 2/3

Closing the door to your flat as quietly as possible, you slunk into the sitting room, where you deposited your work bag and car keys on the coffee table. Most of the lights were off; John must have gone to bed already. Midnight was a bit early for a Friday night, you thought, but shrugged it off. You had just finished a nearly 16-hour shift, as you'd had to cover for a co-worker who had called in sick. Bringing a viral or bacterial infection into the hospital and powering through your illness could literally mean life or death for an immune-deficient patient, and your co-worker made the right choice by asking you to cover for her – but you were still exhausted.

As you trudged down the hall to your bedroom, you noticed that the sole sliver of light you'd seen from the sitting room was emanating from beneath the bedroom door. Maybe John had decided to read for a few minutes before he called it a night? You gently pushed the door open, slowly so as to avoid making the hinges squeak as they often did. To your surprise, John was stretched out on top of the blankets, fast asleep, but sitting up beside him, hands around his knees, was your boyfriend's bandmate, Keith Moon.

"Keith?" you whispered softly, drawing his attention, which was focused on picking at the ends of his nails and ripping them off. "What's going on?" Keith's eyes flickered up to meet yours; his pupils were blown wide, almost flooding out the lovely brown of his irises. He was high on their drug of choice, cocaine, and in all likelihood, John was, too. But why was one wide awake, and the other out cold? In a panic, you hurried to John's side and pressed two fingers to the artery in his neck; to your relief, his pulse was normal. Your next concern was his breathing, but once you'd watched his chest rise and fall for a while, you felt comfortable that he hadn't overdosed.

"S'wrong, Y/N?" Keith asked, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. When he pulled his hand away, he noticed a spot of blood on his skin, which he promptly wiped off on your duvet cover. Annoyed and a little grossed out, you wrinkled your nose and passed him a tissue from the box on John's bedside table. His hand trembled as he reached out to grab it from you; it took a moment of careful observation for you to realize that his entire body was shaking.

"Why is John asleep?" you wondered, trying to keep your tone even. "Did he take something different than you?" Keith shook his head, pausing to shove the tissue into his left nostril. He winced as it went in, scraping the raw walls of his nose, which were always somewhat damaged because of his regular cocaine use. Having watched Keith make more and more bad decisions in terms of drugs over the last 2 years, you were grateful that, for now at least, John's coke habit only reared its head when he was stressed. It appeared that tonight was one of those occasions.

"I had some more 'bout 10 minutes ago," Keith explained, his tongue running a mile a minute. This, along with a small straw and a bit of white powder on the bedside table beside Keith (your bedside table), were good indicators that they had indeed been using cocaine. "We was bored today, Y/N," he complained, "and John said you'd be working." Really, John had known you'd be home late, and had decided to get fucked up while you were out rather than when you would be home to notice it. If Keith hadn't been curled up on your side of the bed, you might have gone to sleep without checking on your boyfriend.

"You need to slow down, love," you cautioned. "You're going to hurt yourself if you keep at this rate." Keith ignored your comment, choosing instead to continue picking at his nails. With a sigh, you kissed John's forehead and left the room, deciding to sleep in the guest bedroom for the night. If both men were breathing and responsive, they would still be that way in the morning, you decided.

To your dismay, however, someone was already using the guest bed. You flicked on the light switch to find a woman – dressed in a pair of lacy knickers and a man's blue collared shirt – passed out on the bed. Your vision went red as you noticed a dark purple bruise on her neck; it had been a trademark of John's in the early days of your relationship to leave love bites on your skin when he was feeling particularly randy. She could very well be a friend of Keith's, you reasoned; John had never done something like this before.