Angels

White lips, pale face, breathing in snowflakes…

He doesn’t know how long it’s been.

He used to measure it all – every second of every day, rough pen slashes across tearstained paper, ink smearing under shaking fingers until there was nothing left but ugly smears on crumpled calendars that he sometimes thought looked just a little bit beautiful.

Now he counts with lines of white instead of black.

Max strokes trembling fingers down the length of the frameless mirror cradled in his lap, chipping black nail varnish a stark contrast against pale walls and skin and powder as bloodshot green eyes look back at him from between thick white lines of icy numbness. With unsteady hands, he reaches for the crumpled, tattered dollar bill on the bedside table, one of the only ones he has left, and twists it into a messy tube, placing one end to his nose as he leans even closer to the mirror, thick, dark eyelashes fluttering down over skewed vision as he forces himself not to think about the fact that it’s barely been an hour since the last time he was in this position.

The worst things in life come free to us.

He breathes in.

And he can feel Ronnie again.

His Ronnie…the Ronnie of before, before everything fell apart – before his smile faded, taking the light in his eyes along with it, before the cancer withered him away to bare bones in a hospital gown – he can feel the warmth of that Ronnie surrounding him again, strong arms pulling him back against a toned chest, the pure love in his touch overwhelming every insecurity clawing at the insides of Max’s mind, making him feel completely protected, untouchable. Invincible.

But Ronnie couldn’t protect him.

Not from himself.

It’s too cold outside for angels to fly.

He doesn’t know how long it takes for him to find the strength to stand, stumbling down the barren hallway towards the bathroom on shaky legs, clinging to walls and doorways, fingernails scraping over bland ivory paint. He staggers into the tiny room, scattered with broken needles and alcohol-stained clothing, and he doesn’t know why, but he lifts his head to look in another mirror for the first time in weeks.

He’s a mess.

His hair is greasy and snarled, tumbling over his shoulders and blending in with the blackness of the weeks-old t-shirt clinging to his body, his roots showing a dirty brown nearly down to his ears. His eyes are dull and glassy, rimmed in red and unfocused, and his skin is pale and seems stretched just a tiny bit too tight over his cheekbones, white powder dusted over cracked lips and blending in with sickly skin.

But he hardly notices any of that. No, what scares him the most is that he is alone. There is no Ronnie there, smiling into his hair like he always did when holding Max; no decorated arms slung around his thin waist, those same arms he felt at night when he'd had a little bit too much to drink and lay awake, staring unseeingly at the dusty stars outside the window until he wasn't sure what reality was anymore. There is no body against his. There is no warmth. There is nothing but Max and his drugs and silence.

There is no Ronnie.

And there never will be.

The feeling in his stomach is less now of a comforting hug than it is a constricting, crushing grip, cold nails digging their way violently into his flesh, forcing the breath out of his lungs and leaving him open and vulnerable and absolutely empty.

Ronnie isn’t there.

”I’ll always be watching you, Max. Even when I’m gone, I’ll always be here for you.”

The words echo through Max’s subconscious, sound waves just as empty as the chill in his chest.

Ronnie lied.

Ronnie isn’t there.

And suddenly Max can’t look at himself another minute. He can't stand the pure desperation in his own eyes as he searches the world around him for something that's never, ever coming back. He’s running, unsteady on his feet and barely aware of his shoulder hitting the door frame hard enough to bruise on the way out. And then he’s outside, stumbling through the snow he hadn’t realized had begun to fall, bare feet slapping the icy pavement as he runs away from the house he’d lived in with Ronnie for five long years, and himself for the last one. He doesn’t know where he’s running to – he just knows that he has to run, to escape the phantoms of his shattered past and withered hopes, run and never, ever look back.

He runs until he can’t run any longer.

Max falls back against cold brick, sliding into the snowdrifts below him, feeling them chill his skin on the outside as his heart did from the inside, and realizes he can’t see anything anymore. The snow is swirling around his sickly form in twisting, writhing patterns over a backdrop of impenetrable white, white like the intoxicating powder dusted across his fingertips, white like the walls of the hospital room Ronnie lay in as his heart finally ceased its beating and Max screamed, screamed for him to wake up as strong hands pulled him away, tears blurring his vision as he leaned into the doorway desperately for one last glance at the small, sad smile Ronnie had given him as the heart monitor propped beside the bed had begun to slow.

He’d run then. Away from the hospital, away from his family and friends and the cloyingly sympathetic doctors calling his name far behind. He’d run like he always had. Like he'd run away from Ronnie. From music. From kindness and love and sobriety.

Max doesn’t want to run anymore.

He just wants it all to end.

He wants to rest.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there before he begins to feel everything slipping away. One second it’s there, numbing pain and blurring vision and the next it’s fading, fading away from him, and Max realizes that he’s dying.

It's not too bad, really, freezing to death. It's almost...peaceful, in a way. Calming.

He hears footsteps, then. Footsteps on the impenetrable ivory canvas stretched out in front of him, quiet as a whisper borne along the wind – not exactly heard, but more felt, footfalls in his chest and behind his eyes, bathing his mind and ears in the soothing comfort of silent winter.

And then there are hands, grasping his arms and pulling him into endless, desolate whiteness once more – except this time, he isn’t being dragged away from something, but towards it.

The snow is thickening, deepening…and then, through the swirling snowflakes biting at his cheeks and settling in his tangled hair like flecks of fragile ice on ebony, he thinks he sees a hint of his Ronnie’s smile.

And then everything is white.

It’s not so cold anymore.

It’s too cold outside for angels to fly,
For angels to die.