Title: Lovesick

Rating: T for suicide, language, and sexual material; rating may go up depending upon how smutty the receive-ee may wish this fic to (eventually) be

a/n: includes possible melodrama and inaccuracy. definite AU. written as a Chirstmas fic for a friend - much love to her. :) song lyrics are not mine, but are not specifically credited because that takes the fun out of it - look them up + 'lyrics' on your search engine to find the song, if you're curious.

eyes stare up

but something's in the way

in the bible only angels have wings

and the rest must wait to be saved

Meroko lives on the top floor of a shabby apartment downtown. She has no mother. She has no father. She disowned them. Not legally, mind you. Not even most of the time. She still leaves the occasional message on their phone, a wheedling thirty seconds full of Mommy and Daddy and just fifty dollars of please, please, please, I love you still. She is twenty, still young, and still caught up in the flights of fancy that mark youth.

Why does she dislike her mother and father?

How does she pay the bills?

Is this a love story?

Most importantly: will there be sex?

You might as well ask.

Meroko, too, had many questions in life: a lot of them like Where am I going and What am I doing, and a lot of the time, the sentences were followed with big long rows of question marks. Frantic question marks: ???????. Demanding. Needy. Overwhelming. These were some of the ways that the people who knew her best described her.

Meroko needed answers. She wanted and needed so badly that it killed her.

At least, it tried.

Twice.

Once, when she was sixteen, she tried razor blades, but could bring herself no more than two horizontal cuts across her skin, in quick succession. She bled and was so frightened she dropped the razor in the tub and ran for the sink, making little noises and trying to mop it up with a hand towel under the faucet. Blood diluted under the swishy stream of tap water, clouding and stinging.

A month ago – that was the second time. She took too many aspirin. Not too too many, as it turned out. It was like she didn't really want to kill herself. Either that or she was a little too weak and scared.

It was her first week on her own, in this shoddy apartment, and she was scared of all the emptiness and the boxes that lay unpacked. She felt like if she unpacked them her departure from her family would be final. Like she would be alone. Here, in this grimy apartment.

She excuses her own cowardice with I was interrupted!

She took one, two, three, four, five, six ,seven, eight, nine, ten. Her throat began to feel sore. Eleven… twelve…

(Just like a child's rhyme; you can do this, Meroko.)

….twenty-four…

She swallowed. It was too much. Already her stomach was sinking, although maybe this was all in her head.

She stared at her wall, her mind already fading.

She stared at her poster of Route L.

She'd always liked the youngest one. Takuto. She wondered if he would have ever fancied her. Maybe in another life.

Another place.

Another time.

She lay back on her bed. Her eyes closed. She hummed a couple of bars of Route L's latest love ballad before dozing off. She thought she was ready. Maybe.

There was shame, too, but sleep (or death) had already claimed her.

She dreamed of wings. Maybe she would be an angel. But that was silly – angels were good. She was not good. Good people did not commit suicide. The very word – commit - what she was doing was a crime in its very description. You didn't do suicide or just suicide yourself.

There was a knock on her door. Another, more insistent. She opened her eyes. The knocking came again and again, always with a short pause. But whoever stood on the other end was impatient. The knocker only waited so long before knocking again.

Annoyed by their insensitivity (couldn't they tell she was trying to commit suicide?) Meroko staggered to her feet and toward the door. The drugs were already taking effect; she could tell by the way her stomach squished and growled. And by her own dizziness. She tried to sneak a glance of the digital clock she'd placed on one of her boxes. She couldn't make out the red numbers. She blinked, but turned to the door.

She paused and realized that she was living in the city now. She'd gotten a deal on her apartment for two reasons: because it was crappy and because it was in an even crappier neighborhood. Meroko fumbled for a can of pepper spray that she'd set near the door. She looked out the eyehole and made a face. It was a boy. Young. Maybe like… like her. Her age.

Her neighbor – what is there to say? That he's insufferable? That Meroko hates him with every fiber of her being? She didn't know any of this at the time. All she did was see, and this is what she saw: a young man, blonde and sallow and almost a bit sour looking, but with a roundness to his face that gave the impression of youth, a quirk to his lips that gave the impression of amusement.

He didn't look like a rapist, but one could never tell. It didn't occur to her that someone waiting for their suicide attempt to take effect shouldn't have much to worry about. Perhaps because she was Meroko, and she was by nature deliciously fickle.

"What do you want?" she called out through the door, holding her can of pepper spray at the ready.

"Sugar," he said.

Meroko stared out through the hole. "The hell?" she called out again.

"I wanted sugar. That's what you're for, isn't it? Neighbor?"

He smiled.

She opened her door.

"Why do you want sugar?"

He walked into her room. Meroko was suddenly acutely aware of the dust on the windowsill, the bars over her window, the crack; the stains on the linoleum and the dead cockroach on its back in the corner. Most of all, the boxes, still unpacked.

"I didn't invite you in!" she said, frantically.

He turned around and looked at her. "My," he said, "It looks like you've just moved in. Well, if I need to borrow pepper spray, I know where to come." He smiled again, and this time there was something sadistic in the sweetness of it. She realized she still clutched the pepper spray in her right hand. Her face was red.

"Get out!"

He didn't even bother to shake his head 'no'. He just continued to smile and turned back to the rest of the room.

"Get out!" she said again. The squelching in her belly was horrid.

She puked. Right on the floor. It was almost startling to her. She came down on her knees, clutching at her stomach.

He just stood there.

"Get out," she said again. She expected him to run away or, if he was a gentleman, to kneel down and put an arm over her back, and assure her things would be all right, just before asking what was wrong.

She wanted that.

"What did you take?" His voice was impassive. Indifferent. Phlegmatic bastard.

How did he know?

"Asprin."

"That was stupid." She expected some lecture on suicide. She got otherwise. "Cocktails are quicker."

She was a little surprised for a moment, but, staring into her own pool of vomit to avoid looking in his face. She felt like she was going to be sick all over again. It was a good thing she had drunk so much water.

"Get up," he sighed. With one arm and surprising strength, he pulled her to her feet. The long, pink strands near her face were coated with puke. She noticed this with some measure of disgust. He let her fall to the floor and picked up her phone.

"It's not connected," she mumbled. He stared, unblinking, in reply. His face was devoid of expression, but if she had to pick one it would be annoyance.

He hauled her up again by the arm and dragged her to his apartment. It was a messy affair, what with the thumping sound she made. She wouldn't blame any passerby at that moment if he had mistaken this stranger for a rapist and her for a drugged victim. The drugged part would have been spot-on.

Not three steps into his apartment was his phone. Normally, Meroko would have gotten a close look at another person's house, the second window of the soul, so to speak, but under the circumstances it was understandable that she barely noticed a thing. It was very neat, she thought vaguely, much better than her own, dusty and smelly as it was.

Calmly, he punched three numbers into the phone. Meroko strained to pick up what she could, but the urge to vomit was suddenly so overwhelming that it took all she had to keep it in check.

"Yes, hello. My name is Izumi Rio… and my address… yes… and I just walked in on my neighbor who's overdosed on aspirin. Yes, aspirin. I know, stupid, right? Very unusual." Pause.

His name was Izumi, she thought. She wasn't sure if she liked that name or not. She liked the way he was calling for help. It was very efficient of him, though it was annoying how he was taking his time about it. Ah, well, she liked his take-charge attitude. Wait. She didn't want help. She wanted to die.

She was suddenly very confused.

"No, I am, unfortunately, very serious. Yes. Please come and get her. She just puked on her floor. Uh-huh. It was gross."

More waiting, while a squeaky-faint voice talked on the other end.

"She's at my apartment now. Across the way." Meroko listened very closely. "Yes, please hurry. I don't want her puking on my floor." And he hung up.

"And that's all?" she asked.

"Yes. I shouldn't have come over. This isn't worth sugar."

"I don't even have any stupid sugar."

"I should have figured."

She was still on her knees. She leaned over and puked on his floor. And his shoes. And the bottoms of his pants.

"Definitely not worth it," he said, wrinkling his nose, just a bit, and cocking his head to the side. "Time to get you downstairs, druggie."

"I'm not a druggie," she said, clearly as she could, while she leaned on him to get back to her feet. "I'm an attempted suicide. A stastistic."

"Aren't we all."

It was not a question. It was one of those sarcastic, wry statements meant to satisfy a comment that calls for reaction.

She didn't go on. He prodded. "An attempted suicide?"

"Yeah."

"Well."

"Cause everything is icky."

"After you puked on it, I would have to agree." He stared down again at his shoes . They were beginning to smell. It was really quite nice of him, she thought, to put up with all this.

"You owe me sugar."

"I told you, I don't have any."

"Well, buy some. And maybe you should make me some food. Maybe some cake. Or some chocolate. What's your name?"

The lie she had practiced so many times: Hi, I'll be (insert suggestive purr here) serving you tonight. My name is…

"Meroko. I can't cook."

They made their way down the stairs, one bumpy step at a time. He looked even more annoyed. There are five flights to go.

"Then how are you going to pay me back?"

She wanted to go on and say, With my body, but she thought that he might take her on her word. Because word is greater than intended sarcasm. Like signing a contract with the devil, all the tricky phrasing in the clauses.

They continued to trudge down the stairs, in silence but for her occasional moans of pain and his grunts of physical exhaustion. His step, much like his expression, did not waver.

At the bottom, he abruptly let go of her, and she stumbled back to the ground. He motioned with his head to the door, grubby as any other part of the apartment. There was a dirty mat, under his shoes on which she stabilized herself with her hands. She faced the ground and took deep breathes. It smelled like wet and hot together. The mat was damp with melted snow that had stuck to shoes. Maybe it will soon smell of her puke.

"Go," he said. "They should be waiting for you out there." She rose herself to her feet for less than five seconds before having to prop herself against the door. Sure enough, outside in the remnants of the melting snow, she could see an ambulance. A man jumped out. She opened the door. The cool air blasted her in the face and she took a sharp breath in and out; the icy vapor of breath appeared.

Suddenly, her sight went dim and sound, suddenly, went far away. She turned to look once more at Izumi, indifferent, before she took another sharp breath...

... and suddenly her eyes rolled back in her head and she went thunk and everything else went dark.