It was getting worse.
Nothing worked anymore. Not the sex, the drugs, the pain - nothing. And tonight it was the worst that it had ever been. Surrounded by a crush of bodies that danced to an inner rhythm created from freedom, he held onto Liebe as around him everyone screamed into his mind. She held him close, jacking him off inside his pants while she traded acid soaked squares of paper with him as they kissed. It still wasn't enough.
He came and nearly collapsed to the floor. Liebe barely caught him in time, hauling him back up and dragging him out of the churning mass of bodies. He clung to her, bruised face twisted in pain, half-masted green eyes unfocused and staring at nothing. They stumbled to a group of couches and she dropped him on one of them. He lay limply on the cushions, half-hanging off of it, still staring at nothing. She bent over him, staring into his eyes and slapped his face.
"Schuldich. Schuldich, can you hear me?" she yelled into his ear over the music. She barely got a response from him, just the merest twitch of an eyelid. Pressing two fingers to his neck she sought for a pulse and found it erratically beating in his veins. "Schize," she whispered.
"What's wrong with him?" someone asked from right behind her.
She turned around to see Wraith standing there, his dark eyes trained on Schuldich. "I don't know," she told him.
"Withdrawal?"
"Nein. Something more, I think."
Wraith looked at her sharply. "That fucking silence he always tricks for?"
Liebe bit her lip and looked away. "He hears voices inside his head," she finally whispered.
Wraith shook his head in disgust. "The Berlin Wall is coming down right now. The city is a madhouse."
"Yeah. I know."
"Think that's what's affecting him?"
Liebe shrugged and looked down at Schuldich's still form. "Could be. I wouldn't know."
"You're his friend, aren't you?"
"We use each other," she retorted acidly. "I wouldn't exactly call that friendship but yeah, I suppose he's my friend. In a way."
Wraith lit up a cigarette. "Sweet. The pair of you. Just fucking sweet."
He bent down and picked Schuldich up in his arms and jerked his head towards a back room. Liebe followed him without a word, still sucking on the acid paper in her mouth. They ignored the people in the middle of the room who were seeing who could bleed the longest without passing out and then shooting drugs into the tears on their arms. Wraith dropped Schuldich on the floor near a corner without preamble, jarring some sense into the redhead. Green eyes blinked open slowly.
"W-wraith?" he mumbled.
"Careful," Liebe snapped as she knelt beside Schuldich. "What're you going to do?"
"Fuck him till he passes out," Wraith said calmly as he went to the group and threw down a wad of bills before scooping up three syringes. He returned to the pair and handed them to Liebe. "Here. Cheap shit but it's better than nothing. Shoot him up."
She scowled up at him. "Why?" she asked, but she was pulling up Schuldich's sleeves anyway.
"He wants silence? I figure unconsciousness is going to be the best place for him but I'm not too inclined to beat him there," Wraith told her as he knelt and began to undo the redhead's pants.
"How considerate of you," Liebe told him in a harsh voice as she searched for a vein and emptied the first needle into the skinny arm.
"Don't think I'm doing this for free," Wraith growled as he pulled Schuldich's pants off his long legs. "The kid'll owe me."
"He'll work it off," Liebe assured him as she emptied the second needle. "He's good at that."
"So I've heard," Wraith replied as he unzipped his pants. "You done yet?"
"Yeah," Liebe replied as she extracted the final needle and sat back. Tossing the syringes aside she leaned back and took a drag, ignoring the soft moan that Schuldich made when Wraith entered him. Reaching out she threaded her fingers through his red hair and held on to the thick locks tightly.
Schuldich, you're such a fucked up kid, she thought to herself, hoping that he heard her. What am I going to do with you?
She stayed by his side throughout the whole night and the three times where Wraith coupled with him to send him back into oblivion where the drugs and alcohol and pain acted like a buffer to protect him from a city that was reveling in its new identity. When dawn broke over the city, Wraith left them alone in the room. Liebe had gone through her whole pack of cigarettes and was chewing on the filter of her last one, rolling it from one corner of her mouth to the other, when he finally woke up.
He moaned; drug hazed green eyes cracking open. She looked down at him, spit out the filter, and brushed some of his hair aside. "Finally awake, are you?"
He flinched away from her touch, paling when he tried to move his legs. "Fich ... fich ..." he whispered hoarsely.
Liebe laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, and then some."
Schuldich forced his eyes open wider, looking up at her in confusion. "Daddy?" he asked in a childishly small voice.
She looked down at his bare legs covered in semen and blood. Her lips twisted up in a bitter smile. "Nein. Nothing so mundane, Schuldich. Wraith did you. You owe him."
Slowly his eyes fluttered shut. "Ich bin mude. Mein kopf sind kaputt."
Liebe looked over at the far wall and slouched down. "Yeah, I just bet it does," she whispered. "Hope you found your silence, Schuldich. I hope it was worth it."
Soft laughter drew her attention back down to him. His lips were curved in a wide, mocking smile, eyes closed. "Can't go back now," he murmured.
"Nein. You can't."
"That's not who I am anymore."
"I know."
"Want a partner?"
She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. "Sure. Why the hell not?"
"Thank you," Schuldich huffed, falling back into unconsciousness.
"Don't thank me, you fool," she told him, tears pricking her eyes. "We're both of us sinners."
fich means fuck, ich bin mude means i'm tired, mein kopf sind kaputt means my head hurts.