Mikaeel hated answering the phone while he was driving but whoever it was, was persistent as hell and the constant ringing was beginning to get on his nerves.

"Hello?"

"Hey man."

"Ya Is'haaq?" He skipped the pleasantries.

"Uhm," Is'haaq was hoping to drag out the conversation for as long as possible, "The thing is..."

"Uh huh." Mikaeel stopped at the robot, closing his windows as soon as he could before anyone came to beg by him.

"Ihsaan is in deep fuck... basically." He answered uncertainly.

"Why?"

"He was out last night with Zameer and his friends."

"How would you know?"

"I saw them. Farah wanted to see the Parlotones at Blues so we went and they were there."

"Oh." His grip tightened around his steering wheel at the idea of Ihsaan hanging out with his cousin.

"He was fucked up, boss." He knew what he saw and what he saw scared the shit out of him.

"Fine."

Mikaeel cut the call and turned on his indicators.

 His class could wait.

...

He was assaulted with the smell of stale piss as soon as he walked into Ihsaan's flat. It was stuffy and it smelt as if his flat hadn't tasted fresh air in months. He walked slowly through the house looking through every room for him before opening the door to his bedroom as slowly as possible, holding his breath as he walked in. The pungent odour of piss, vomit and beer hit him all at once was enough to make his eyes tear up. He walked up to the bundle beneath the duvet, lowering it enough to expose Ihsaan's face to the chilly air of the room. "Get up."

"What?"

The fuck. Who the fuck was that?

"Who the fuck are you?" She asked, lifting the covers off her body before raising herself to rest against her pillows. She looked like a fucking scrawny, washed out dog with her ratty hair and all that bullshit smudged over her face. She didn't even care that she was stark naked before Mikaeel as she reached for her box of cigarettes on the pedestal beside her, lighting up as she waited for Mikaeel to reply.

"Who the fuck are you? Get out." Mikaeel stared at her, vexed at her attitude.

"I'm his girlfriend, asshole."

Keep dreaming, bitch.

"Ya... fuck off." She had a fucking hope of snowballs if she thought he would believe her. "I'm waiting. Go." He watched as she rose from the bed, searching for her panties in the haphazard pile of clothes beside the bed. She muttered obscenities beneath her breath, balancing her cigarette between her lips until finally she found what she was looking for.

Where the fuck did he find this tarties bitch?

She was still talking to herself as she dragged her panties lazily up her legs before bending down again to look for her bra. She had turned her back on him, sending Ihsaan's clothes flying in all directions before she stood up with her bra in her hands. She was pale and her skin was stretched so tightly over her bones, Mikaeel was sure it would tear right off. She rubbed her hands distractedly over the dark blue bruises along her hips as she surveyed the floor for her jeans but her eyes were still glued shut with sleep and the task seemed harder than it should have been.

"Did he do that to you?" Mikaeel pointed at her hips as she yanked the denim material over her thighs. She looked down at the marks, shrugging as she ran a finger over it.

"Ya. I like it rough."

"Fuck..." He muttered, picking up her shirt off the ground. "Here. Take your shit and fuck off."

"Thanks." She pulled her shirt on over her head, yawning as she did so. He had to take a step back at the sour smell coming from her mouth. He didn't even want to imagine what Ihsaan smelt like. He could barely believe the shit was still fast asleep as his little tramp friend pandered away, buttoning her shirt as she did so.

"Get up." Mikaeel smacked his ear.

"Huh?" Ihsaan lifted his head, wiping yellow drool away from his chin before he stared blearily up at Mikaeel. "How'd you get here?"

"I have your spare, remember." Mikaeel stood back, watching as Ihsaan tried lifting himself off his pillow countless times yet failing countless times again. "What the fuck's wrong with you?"

"Fuck you. My wife died. I can mourn her any way I want to." Ihsaan shooed Mikaeel away with his hand as if he were a pest before turning over and burying himself beneath his covers again.

"By fucking some ugly whore? That's how you're mourning Dahlia?" Mikaeel ripped his duvet off of him, reeling back at the sight of claw marks running up and down his back. "What the fuck were the two of you doing last night?"

"We were..."

"Don't answer me, jackass." Mikaeel shook his head. He didn't know what he was feeling. He was angry and annoyed and disappointed and somewhere beneath it all he pitied the poor bastard in front of him. He looked like shit. Ihsaan was small and skinny but now he just looked malnourished. He looked like bones with skin glued on. "Man, I left you for a few months and this is the shit you get up to."

"You were too busy running after your bitch of a wife to worry about us. Why are you upset?" He grumbled, scratching at an invisible itch along his stomach.

"You're old enough to look after yourself. Stop whining about me not being there. I'm your friend not your fucking babysitter."

"I didn't need you to be my babysitter." He glared up at Mikaeel. "I needed you to ask me what was wrong." He admitted, clenching his jaw at the idea of it all. "I gave up my fucking home to save you from being kicked out and you couldn't even figure out that something was wrong."

"Fine, humour me." Mikaeel leaned back against the wall, waiting for him to reply. "What was wrong?"

Ihsaan looked at him, considering whether or not to even talk to the smug bastard. It would be good- it would wipe the expression of his face once he knew what his little ray of sunshine was getting up to. He'd be sorry then for accusing him of feeding all that shit to her once he knew.

"Dahlia was sleeping with men for drugs."

Mikaeel's hand slipped behind his back. "What?"

"Surprised aren't you?" Ihsaan's chapped lips curved up into a grimace. "Dahlia was actually a whore. She was a fucking prostitute." He smiled, mirthlessly "And then she'd come back home after hours on her fucking back having these big shits use hernany way they wanted to and she'd fuck me dry till she could barely even walk." The thought of it made him vomit. The idea of it all made him want to fucking die. The thought of her moaning in ecstasy as they pumped her with drug after drug as they took her body in all different kinds of ways... the thought of her opening her mouth for them and spreading her legs for them had him sick to his fucking stomach. "And I didn't even fucking know until she asked me to go for an HIV test.."

"Did you?"

"Ya I'm clean. She was scared because one of those assholes was HIV positive and she didn't know if she used a condom or not." Fucking bitch.

"So what did you do?"

"What could I have done? I told her I'd pay for it and so I did but the more I paid for it, the more I used and the more I used the less money I had and the less money I had the more she'd fuck man after man to get more of it." It was a nightmare but he never wanted it to end. He wanted to live in it. He wanted it and he craved it and he needed it more than air to survive. He needed to feel what he felt as soon as he injected his little tiny bit of magic into his arms. "I hated her man."

"You didn't hate her." Mikaeel shook his head. He didn't want to believe it. That could have been him. He could have been the one in that bed lying in a pool of who knows what and it could have been Ihsaan leaning against the wall looking at him as if he was a piece of shit. He didn't want to believe that Dahlia- chubby Dahlia with her braces and her frizzy hair- was sucking off men for money. It just...

"Ya I hated her. I hated that fucking bitch so much. How dare she?" He was getting angrier and angrier the more he thought about it and the more he thought about it the louder he got. "How dare that bitch spread her legs for all those fucking dicks when I was the one who got kicked out for her? I fucking lost my parents for her." He was screaming now, bits of spittle flying out of his mouth as he raised himself on his knees. He needed space. He needed to stand but he couldn't stand and the more he thought about it, the more he hated her. "I told everyone I got her pregnant when that fucker raped her and I told everyone I forced her to get an abortion when she got an infection." He shouted tasting his own tears as it dribbled into his mouth. "Who the fuck told her to get a back-door abortion? They all hated me for it but I did it for her and that was how she fucking repaid me? By acting like a fucking slut!"

His chest was heaving and his eyes were wild as he screamed his angers and his frustration out. He couldn't hold it in anymore. It was poison and it fucking killing him the longer it stayed in his body. "I hate her man." He curled into himself, sobbing for all the time he had lost and all the love he had spent on her only to have it flung back into his face. "She's a fucking whore and I'm happy she fucking died."

"You don't hate her." Mikaeel said softly, watching his friend break down into loud, body wracking sobs that echoed throughout the entire room. "You loved her too much and she broke your heart."

She broke everyone's heart but she just never knew it...

...

"Where were you Mikaeel?" It was his 19th birthday and he had gone out celebrating with Ihsaan and Dahlia. He didn't know where they took them but he remembered the taste of beer as they poured it down his throat and he remembered the scent of the woman that had plastered herself to his body as they swayed and moved and pressed against each other. He remembered the taste of her lips on his tongue and the taste of her skin as he grazed his teeth against her neck and the feel of her chest against his palms as he touched her, exploring more and more of her body that she graciously offered up to him.

"We went out." Ihsaan stifled a giggle at the answer as he watched the hour hand slowly move to 5 as the sunlight began peeking through the curtains.

"Where did you go?" His father asked. They were surrounded by both sets of parents that had blocked their way as soon as they had staggered into Mikaeel's house at the brink of dawn.

"I don't know." He shrugged, feeling sweat roll down his back at being interrogated by both his and Ihsaan's parents.

"Were you drinking?" Aunty Najwa asked ignoring the way Ihsaan shook his head as she watched Mikaeel tug at the collar of his shirt.

"No."

"Are you lying?"

"No."

"Are you high?" Nazeer crossed his arms, watching his son sweat.

"No." The bank packet lined with crushed powder in his back pocket seemed to have gotten heavier and heavier till he felt as if it were lead weighing him down.

"Can we check your pockets?" His mother asked, stepping forward to search through her son's jeans.

He didn't know what to say. They told him they would send him to Worcester to live with his grandparents if they caught him with anything and he's be fucked if he had to live with them.

Fuck

Fuck

Fuck

He felt Ihsaan step just a little closer to him before he felt his hands dig into his back pocket to pull out the bag that had been weighing him down. "Yes or no, Mikaeel. Can we check your pockets?"

"Yes." He didn't allow his eyes to stray to Ihsaan, knowing he had pocketed the coke himself. He could feel his fingertips dig into the palm of his hand as his mother emptied out each of his pockets, forcing him to lift up his top before his father pulled him into the next room. He forced him to remove his shirt, take of his jeans and get out of his shoes and socks before rifling through the material carefully. His father ignored the hickeys on Mikaeel's neck and the lipstck smudges on the collar of his shirt as his heart beat faster and faster at the thought of searching through his boy's clothes for drugs.

"Found anything?" He didn't even know why he asked that but he didn't know what else to do in the maddening silence.

"Shut up Mikaeel." Nazeer said using those words on him for the first time since his son was born. "I'm just..." He handed the pair of jeans back to Mikaeel before he reached for his shirt.

"Just what?"

"I'm disappointed in you." He breathed out hating that he had to ever say that to him.

"You're not here enough to know what that means Dad." Mikaeel grabbed his shirt from his father's hands, pulling it over his head as he walked away.

"I guess not boy..." Nazeer said sadly to himself before he followed his son slowly out the room.

...

It was barely 11 in the morning by the time Mikaeel stepped into his bedroom. He needed to change his clothes considering what he had been wearing had been drenched from hauling Ihsaan's piss-pants and all- into the shower. He didn't even want to know what the hell he had been touching as he changed the sheets and the covers and threw whatever other shit was lying around the room into the dustbin. He didn't know what the hell happened to Ihsaan's domestic but she sure as fuck was doing a pathetic job of keeping his place clean.

He heard the shower switch off in the next room as he buttoned up his jeans before searching through his draw for a belt. He was sure she didn't even know he was home but he knew he needed to see her. 

He just...

He was fucked. He was sure he was fucked as soon as he switched his indicator to left at the robot knowing he didn't give a rat's ass about his shirt when he thought about going home.

He could hear the thuds of her walking stick against the hallway floors as they got louder and louder the closer she got to the room. He had buckled his belt as she entered the room, rubbing her towel through her hair with one hand as she balanced her weight on her walking stick in the other. She didn't even realise he was there as she dropped her hair towel on the top of the bureau before she opened the drawer slowly, rifling through her underwear for what she needed.

His footsteps softened on the rug as he walked up to her, slowly closing his hands around hers as she held onto the wooden draw. He felt her jerk in surprise as he closed his arms around her, his skin dampening as her towel pressed against it. "Hi." She turned her head to look at him, trying to calm her heartbeat when she realised it was only him.

"Hi." His closed the draw softly, never leaving her hands as he did so before he rested his chin on her shoulder.

"What are you doing home?"

He didn't reply.

He didn't want to reply. He wanted to stand exactly where he was, surrounded by the scent of her ridiculously expensive shampoo and equally expensive body wash as he felt the soft grains of her towel brush against his chest.

"Did you mean what you said last night?" His words tickled her ears as he grasped her fingers tightly between his own. He didn't know why he wanted her to say it. Why he wanted her to affirm it but he just needed to know.

She nodded her head just once, bumping against his shoulder as she did so.

"Good." He breathed out, lifting his head as she turned to face him.

"Are you okay?" She looked up at him, concerned at the almost pensive look on his face.

"I'm fine." He ran his fingers gently up her arm. "Are you okay?"

"I'm perfect." She stepped just a little closer to him as soon as his fingers grazed the edge of her towel, inching closer and closer to the knot at her side. She wrapped her hand around his as soon as his fingers pulled at the snag holding her towel together. Hoori raised herself on the tips of her toes, brushing her lips against his forehead in a soft, chaste kiss before kissing each of his closed eyelids then the tip of his nose before stopping a scant millimetre from his mouth. "You're not okay Mikaeel." She pressed her lips against his for only a split second before she leaned back again.

"Do you want to feel okay again?"

He could only nod his head before she cupped his jaw in the palm of her hand, coaxing him into coming just a little closer before she kissed him as he wanted to be kissed. She kissed him fully, never teasing him or moving away but keeping her lips on his as she curled her hand, brushing her fingertips over the stubble that had gathered on his jawline. He didn't feel her unwrap her towel from around her body but as she pressed herself against him, he couldn't mistake the feeling of her damp skin against his own nor could he stop himself from running his hand down her naked back as she wrapped her towel around the two of them. His body shivered slightly as his back cooled from the water left over on the towel but it all seemed inconsequential as he walked her over towards their bed, lowering her gently against her pillows as he braced himself on his elbows above her.

"Make me feel okay again." He asked softly, forgetting his reservations for a moment as he looked down at her, feeling the swell of her chest against his own before he reached around for her hand still grasping her towel. "Please."

He loosened her hold on her towel, causing the edges to fall beside them.

He leaned down, capturing her lips with his as she nodded her consent...

Losing himself in her and her damp skin and the smell of her shampoo and her ridiculously expensive body wash...

...

He was reversing out of the garage when his phone began ringing again...

He didn't want to answer it- he really didn't but as Is'haaq's name glowered up at him from his screen he assumed it was best to just get it over with.

"Yes?" He sighed, praying he wouldn't go into some long winded story again.

"The fucker was sleeping with my wife."

"Excuse me."

"Ihsaan. I came home early and caught the fucker in bed fucking my wife!"

Fuck me...