One Dove

Working in the community and on the streets, you get to know stories. The stories of people who ended up on the very bottom of the society, the stories of how they got there. And all of those stories were are sad, at least all that I could recall. Sad and the same. About teenagers who gave in to the peer pressure and instead of the college ended up on the street, addicted to whatever drug they wanted to just try out. About girls who ran away from home with their boyfriends and ended up being sold by the people they trusted the most. About people who ran away from abuse, only find something even worse.

As we were driving to my apartment, I watched him and wondered which of the stories was his. Why did he start with the drugs? Did he want to experiment and did it just get out of his hands? Or did he want to fit in? I didn't, and I still don't think that was it. Behind the destroyed façade I could see the sparkle of his beauty. He must have been popular. He must have been one of those kids that you admired and wanted to be friends with, one of those kids that never missed any important party and always had the most fun they could. One of those kids who never said no.

He probably didn't say no to the drugs. Maybe it started with weed, maybe with ecstasy, but then he moved to different stuff. Maybe he got his first fix for free from some dealer at a disco and he couldn't say no because everyone was watching and he was too cool to refuse. And maybe it was all completely different and... and it didn't matter anyway. All I have, all I always had was just speculations, never the truth.

A part of me, a horrible part I didn't want to acknowledge was saying that I was lucky he ended up as this wreck, otherwise I would never get to know him. Otherwise I would never get to touch him, never get to... never get to do a vain attempt of saving him.

But when we were riding in the taxi, I didn't know that yet. I didn't know how it would all end up.

When the taxi stopped and I paid the driver, I could sense being watched. Glancing over, I caught him staring at the money like an animal watching its prey, his eyes narrowed a little. There was a strange alertness in him, alertness he never showed at anything else. Only when money was involved, money he could buy the drugs with.

He stumbled when he got out of the taxi; obviously his legs still weren't cooperating all too well. Landing awkwardly on the pavement sooner than I managed to walk around the car to catch him, he let out a painful groan. He remained sitting, clutching on his knee, his face twisted in a grimace of pain. Remembering how I found him, I knew he must have been hurting in other places as well.

“Come, get up,” I whispered when I squatted next to him, practically pulling him up.

Do you know the feeling when you hold a small baby who can't even keep his head up yet? When you can feel all the bones beneath the soft skin and weak muscles, and all you can think of is that it's you who is protecting the baby? It's you who is holding the baby, fragile and helpless, and protecting him from everything bad that could happen to that little human.

That's exactly how I felt when I half-dragged, half-carried him to the door to my apartment. I could feel all his bones beneath the skin, and all I could think of was that I had to protect him from the world. Whether he wanted the protection or not.

Panting lightly, he leaned against the wall when we reached my apartment, and I fished the keys out of my pocket and opened the door. The place itself wasn't all that special. A small living room-slash-hallway, a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom, all of them were painfully ordinary. A little messy and very ordinary.

I led him to the couch, seating him between the computer magazines and the paper bag from McDonald's, the remain of my yesterday's dinner. I sat down next to him, suddenly unsure what to do.

I haven't really been thinking when I dragged him here; all I knew was I wanted him off the street, with me. But now he was with me and the silence between us felt thick and uncomfortable. I glanced up at him, but he was just staring down at his knees, scratching his forearm absently. It caught my attention for a moment, the pale lines that followed his nails turning pink. He scratched off a scab from some old wound, making a little blood appear, only to get smeared by the next movement. He didn't even notice it.

I coughed lightly to get his attention and he glanced at me without any interest. I smiled awkwardly.

“Do you want something to eat?” I asked, as if we were having a perfectly normal, ordinary date. Except this wasn't anywhere near normal, and the feeling grew more intense as he looked away without any reply or reaction to my offer. I felt stupid, my insides tangled in a knot. I could just as well talk to a wall.

I'm not sure how much time passed; it could have been minutes, but it felt like hours. He still didn't move or acknowledge my presence at all, and I... I was desperately trying to come up with something to say or do, like a lovesick teenager on the first date. It was so ridiculous, how intensely I was staring at my knees without an idea what to say or do, when all I needed to do was to look at him. Because when he whimpered out loud, he was already pale as death, sweating and trembling, as if he was having a seizure.

I panicked, once again when I was put face to face with his pain I panicked. Some part of my brain was aware that he was having another withdrawal fit, the fit that I didn't see coming because I was making sure I wouldn't say anything embarrassing or stupid.

I still did. “What... how...” I stuttered, moving my arms around him for comfort that wasn't helping at all. When I held him in my arms, so thin and small, I could feel him shaking, his muscles tensing and his breath being held when the worst pain came, and then quick and shallow breathing punctured with a soft whimpering cries when the cramps weren't as intense.

The time was twisting and my mind couldn't grasp for how long we sat there like that. Thinking back about it, the laws of physics seemed to disappear when I was with him. Time flowed in strange ways, the ground never felt stable enough, and his body seemed to be made of water, trickling between my fingers.

Water. It must have been a miracle, that I remembered how the warm water helps cramps. Maybe it was a vain attempt, but it was better than doing nothing at all.

I let go of him – he didn't seem to notice or care, fighting his pain alone – and practically ran to the bathroom. Opening the facet, I let the bathtub fill with warm water. It took an eternity.

When I returned to the living room, he was curled on his side, crying soundlessly. I swallowed thickly, leaning down to pick him up. He felt surprisingly heavy for such a thin person, his dead-like weight making it difficult to get in the bathroom. I stripped him off the clothes while he held himself up against the toilette. He didn't say a word.

Maybe he thought I was going to fuck him and he still didn't care the slightest bit. It scared me a little, it still does. How can someone be so careless about what's happening to their body? How low do they have to fall?

He sunk in the water like a bag of sand, leaning to the left and resting against the side of the bath tub. There were small riffles on the water as he continued shaking, but after what felt like another eternity, it all seemed to help. The water calmed down, he calmed down – and so did I. I squatted next to the tub, and without thinking reached forward and ran my palm along the curve of his spine. And again, and again, and it felt like the most natural thing in the whole world. It all felt like I brought him to my apartment for this single moment.

Suddenly he pulled his knees to his chest as if he just realised he was naked. He looked up at me and I noticed something was so very different.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked me. It came as a complete shock. I hadn't really heard him talking, not to me, except for the offer of sex the very second time we had met. His voice was quiet and composed and for the first time I felt like he knew what he was doing. It was as if I did something exceptionally good and as a reward, I got a glimpse of his real self. Before he destroyed it with the drugs.

I blinked and let my hand slid down his back in the water, making quiet splashing noises. I had no idea what to say, no reply.

"You don't have to," he continued, moving his eyes from me to the dreadful brown tiles on the wall opposite him. He shuddered but I couldn't tell whether it was because he was cold or because of the emotions. I pulled my hand out of the water, wiping it against my jeans. "I'm a living dead anyway," he finished, his voice lacking any emotion or feeling or anything that could hint something to me.

"I want to," I replied, my voice almost breaking under all the emotions. What a paradox it was, that he could turn me into such a mess, while he, who was a mess himself, would be so calm. He looked back at me and his lips moved a tiny bit, almost as if he was going to smile at me. I swallowed and out of nothing, felt an urge to kiss him.

It was the only time he actually talked to me for real.