Turns Off Pain
From Wrichacir
"In retrospect, love is not at all like warfare. You get a lot of these overly dramatic poets who've never picked a fight in their life saying things like that, but to the void with them. I've done a lot of fighting, and I've spent just about as much time occupied with the opposite sex. Two have nothing to do with each other."
I paused. Jaw's a mess of pain and all kinds of broken, but something in particular throbs worse than the rest. I reach back and try to see what it is. The voice in the back of my head suggests just removing the problem, and I'm not in the mood to argue. I pull, and I'm glad that I can't hear the tearing nose through the fragments of what supposed to be the side of my face. The molar feels strangely warm in my hand, but it's cooling already. Why I'm talking, I don't know. They always said I never knew when to shut up.
"War works differently alright. There's rules there. They believe in giving quarter to fallen opponents. There's a code to follow. Hell, there's academies that teach the art of fighting. They don't do that for love. It's just something to stumble into, and hope you're doing the right thing with. Only when you're fucking up do you know if you're doing it right or not. Then again, most women don't try to murder you and set fire to your house when you fuck up. Zee, grab my hand."
There's an audible pop and my field of vision explodes into a screaming star burst, as I use Zee to pull to my shoulder back into socket. Their apartment's nice, maybe bigger than our own was, and of course there's not all the putty holes from where I've had to fix things after arguments that I'd grown accustomed to. Zee's girl, the redhead, brings him some weird syringe. She says something about how he always thought Em was fucking nuts, and they both laugh. It sounds like it's underwater; I must have hit my head when the floor collapsed. He holds up the shot, and I think he asks if I'm ready.
"Don't make those for love either." I add. I chuckle, even though it feels like I'm rubbing the inside of my mouth with glass. I could use the laugh regardless. Zee doesn't make it much better when he jabs the thing into the vein in my neck, though the throbbing goes numb and then away period, and I can feel my eyes rolling up in my head.
It's quiet and dark now, alone in my head. He wasn't kidding, it turns off pain. But he didn't say it turns off everything else, too. It's a temporary reprieve from a truly fucked situation, but like my jaw it'll pull itself together in time. For now, all I can do is sleep on this and hope for the best.
