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SNOW HAD FALLEN RELENTLESSLY AND CONTINUOUSLY OVERNIGHT, blanketing the ground so thick it looked like someone had draped a white duvet over the city. Outside her window, the world was blinding as evening descended and the sunset bled the peach-bruise sky of its daytime colours. Sawyer sat on her sill watching the snow fall in powder-white flakes as trucks struggled to clear paths of black in the stark-white street and her neighbours tried to shovel the stubborn snow off the steps before their front doors. In one hand, she flipped a black sharpie over her knuckles. A cassette tape sat in the other, waiting to be labelled—she'd burned all the songs into the tape two nights ago. All her favourites and then some. In her bathroom, still bound to the pipe underneath her sink Rio lay curled up on his side, shivering under a blanket he'd kicked off and demanded to be pulled on again multiple times throughout the night, the pale wasteland of his sallow skin haunted by withdrawal and craving.
Thrice in the span of an hour, he'd spoken about his death like he were familiar with it. Held the information like a dagger, a threat, a tightening noose.
"I'll die," Rio had snarled, the first time, something diabolic in the red of his eyes. "I'll fucking die and it'll be your fault."
She'd ignored him.
"Please, Sawyer," Rio had begged, desperation clawing at his tone. "Please. If I don't get another hit, it'll kill me. My body can't take the withdrawal symptoms. You know this. I need it. I need—"
"You don't," was all Sawyer had said.
Despair broke over his expression, morphing into a feral rage as he pulled with a reinvigorated might against his restraints, almost ripping out the sink whole as the pipes groaned and protested against his resistance. "You don't understand!" Rio had roared, a cruelty in the bite of his tone, in the humourless laugh he let out bordering on hysterical. "You think I like this? You think I wouldn't ask for it if it weren't essential? I'll die and my blood will be on your hands. How will you explain this to Marcus? How will you be able to face Jeremy? How will you face yourself knowing you can't keep your fucking promises to your friends?"
"I'll grieve forever," Sawyer had deadpanned, and that was the end of the conversation as Rio fell to his knees and bared his teeth at Sawyer, who placed another water bottle on the closed lid of the toilet bowl, well within his reach, and closed the bathroom door behind her.
Lunch had come and gone and nobody questioned why Sawyer piled a second serving of food onto her used plate and, without another word, brought it back to her room where she had been locked up in her room all day, presumably finishing up her food in private. She'd untied Rio to allow his hand mobility while he ate. Still, Rio hadn't been able to keep down the rice and steamed fish. Sawyer had dug her fingers against the back of his neck and pushed his head towards the toilet bowl right before he threw up violently.
