Past

I sat on my bed, or the one in Esmond's guest room, anyway. The one I had been sleeping, or trying to sleep, on for the last two weeks. Almost two weeks of fucking hell. I had been in withdrawal for nine and a half days, and I had already blocked most of it.

What I remembered was a blur of shaking, pain, nausea and the inability to sleep. I knew I stayed awake for seventy-six hours straight at some point, my mind racing too quickly and my body hurting too much to even lay down between throwing up and crying. It had been disastrous, but I was on the other side now. My back was constantly in pain, but I was breathing through it. A few more days and then I would take some low-level painkillers, get a massage to release the sore muscles from tensing throughout the pain and the sickness.

But today I had Esmond's phone in my hand. We decided it would be safest to contact Jake through his phone, so that there would be no evidence of it on my end. To keep any hint of the contact away from Queen.

Even though I had put his number into the phone, I was now frozen, just staring at the screen and wondering if Jake would even care. Two weeks wasn't much time in the grand scheme of things. And maybe Jake didn't give a shit about me anymore. If that were the case, I wouldn't blame him, but that fear was stopping me from pressing the dial button.

I took a slow, deep breath and thought about Jake for a second. I couldn't keep him out of my life anymore unless he chose to leave it. This would be on me if I didn't call him, if I didn't try to be a better friend.

I had the capability to keep contact with him, to think and plan and sneak around, keep secrets.

I pressed the dial button and put the phone to my ear, hoping to god that he would pick up.

It took ten seconds, but he picked up and I almost cried at the sound of his voice.

"Hello, this is Jake." He said, his voice bored as he answered. My breath got caught in my chest and I forgot how to speak. "Hello?" He asked after a few seconds of silence, and I realised I had to speak or he would hang up.

"Jake..." I trailed off, not knowing what else to say. How to start the conversation.

"Hi?" He said, which was when I realised it had been so long he didn't recognise my voice, especially since I had whispered his name.

"Jake, it's me. It's Max." I said, and there was a pause on his end.

"Max?"

"Yes, it's me."

"What... why are you calling me from a random number? Why are you calling me at all? Safety-"

"It's okay. It's why I'm calling you from a different phone. I needed to talk to you, I..."

"Are you okay?"

"Better than okay, Jake. I..." I almost didn't want to say it, to hear him be disappointed in me.

"Max, what is it? How can you be better than okay?"

"I got clean." There was a resounding silence from his end of the phone. "I haven't had fentanyl in two weeks, was in withdrawal for a bit over nine days." There was still just silence from his end. I pulled away the phone from my ear just to check he hadn't hung up on me. He hadn't, so I put the phone back to my ear. "I know it's not long, but-"

"Are you kidding me? Max, that's... fuck, that's amazing."

"I don't know about amazing. The experience hasn't been great thus far." I said. I heard him laugh.

"Well, it's going to be shit to start with. You were doing it for years, and now you've gone through the whole withdrawal process, even with your back. God damn, you went for it. I thought you might ease up slowly, but of course you went cold turkey, didn't you? Everything to the max, as per normal." His words made me smile. He was right. It was very much how I lived my life, go full throttle or don't bother.

"Um, I had to cut off completely. I uh, I tried to..." Judging from his laughter cutting off from the other side of the phone, he knew what I was trying to say.

"Shit, Max, you can't let yourself get that bad again. I'm here, I... did you get to the hospital? How are you not..." He trailed off, not wanting to say the word I had been avoiding since the 'incident,' as Esmond and I called it.

"Um, it's a long story. One that you will kick me for not telling you anything about earlier than this."

"If you have a boyfriend, I deserve to know, so I can stalk him and make my presence known."

"I don't have a boyfriend." I told him, which was true, but it wasn't the whole truth, I guess. After the withdrawals had stopped, keeping away from Esmond had been hard. So hard in the forced proximity that I gave up, and when he offered to rub my back to ease the pain, I ended up jumping him. "I have a situationship."

"Oh boy. What kind?"

"I can't tell you over the phone. It's classified." I said, feeling a smile come to my face at those words.

"That is interesting, Max. I will grant you privacy and won't push you for answers, just because of this top secret business. But I have a question. I need to know if he's good in bed because you deserve that, at least." It might be odd for exes to talk like this, but it felt normal to me. Jake was my best friend, and I had talked to him about everything.

"You don't want to hear it, but he is better than you were by a longshot."

"I would fucking hope so. I was a virgin until you, in case you forgot." Jake said. I laughed. "But at least the dick is good. I assume he's also good looking."

"Very."

"Don't talk him up too much. I might try to steal him."

"We can find you someone else, Jake. Don't touch my man," I warned him. He let out a breath.

"You know, when I realised I liked everyone, I thought it would make dating easier. Bigger pool, you know, better odds and all, but it is so much harder." He said. I laughed again.

"Well, you can meet my man..." I trailed off.

"Oh?"

"I need to leave to get back to Queen today. It's been over two weeks. She's getting suspicious. But I will be back in London in two months, for classified reasons, but if you meet me here, then you can find out everything. I might even include you in the top-secret plans." I said. He let out a slow breath from his side of the phone, which made me smile. Still the same dramatic and caring Jake. Good.

"Two months? I'm in."