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The Dark Passenger	By : Lahmia Category: Beyblade > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 898 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Beyblade, nor do I make any money off of this. This is solely for entertainment of myself and my fellow fans. The lyrics used belong to Linkin Park, not me!

Chapter List
- 1
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Disclaimer: Beyblade is not mine, nor are the characters. The lyrics quoted in this chapter belongs solely to their artists, not me.

Warning: This fic is centered around alcoholism, promiscuity, druguse and other such self-destructive behaviours. It contains a lot of angst, and if you find any of the above difficult to deal with, then you might want to reconsider reading this. Any additional warnings will be placed at the beginning of every chapter. Author's notes at the end.

Xxx xXx xxX

Alcoholism is a really two-sided thing. A very complicated, yet ridiculously simple thing. Ever since we were teens, everyone around me always drank to party. I joined the parties, but I never drank to have a good time. Every bit of alcohol I passed into my bloodstream was to numb everything out. I found out early, somewhere around the age of fifteen – when I first started drinking – that I happen to have a very high tolerance. It was a good thing in the sense of me still being standing when the others were at their limits. So I could always get them home safely and then carry on on my own. It takes a whole lot of booze to get me drunk enough to forget everything. It was also a bad thing, in the sense that I had to be at it for a while before the blessed oblivion would take me away for a few hours. And of course because I had to make sure to always have big supplies hidden away at home. Me being a big bad evil Russian helped me out nicely. I was almost expected to be able to take huge amounts of booze and shrug it off. So no one was ever really surprised that there was a lot of alcohol around when I partied. Such a ridiculously easy cover, ne?

Strange really, how I – who is famous for my coldness and self control – became slave to the bottle so easily. Within a year of escaping from that cursed place called Balkov Abbey, I drank on a daily basis. The first thing I did every morning, besides taking a whole chart of painkillers and cursing my tolerance towards those things as well, was to take a cup of coffee with something alcoholic in it. I was always the first one up, anyway, so no one noticed. I got up, drank my booze with coffee, showered the smell off, brushed my teeth shiny white and went to wake the others up. Everyday. And I drank every chance I got – especially if we were going to be out in public or battling. Stupid, I know. Through the whole tournament before BEGA, during the whole shit with BEGA, I was drunk. That's why my performance by the beydish was so beneath contempt. I know that if I had been sober then, I would not have lost a single battle. That vile little punk Garland would never have beaten me. But I wasn't sober. Of course, my team mates who happens also to be my best friends, noticed that something was wrong. Back then I still shrugged them off and told myself I had control. It was just a little help on the way. It just dulled the edges on the pain.

But everything was going downhill. Thankfully, we had moved in with our favourite little bastard by then, in a mansion from God knows when, and the damages from the Abbey came in millions. The pay from the blading was also good by then, so we got by without having to get hold of jobs. I mean, none of us could hold down a job even if we tried. We were just too fucked up. And living in the mansion in Moscow kept us away from all the nosy reporters digging up trash for all to see. And I was glad for that. Because my control was slipping so fast I hardly even had time to realize it – much less prevent it. The others had, apparently, caught on long ago, but still not been sure enough to confront me about it. Guess they had been busy dealing with all their own shit. By the time they really saw that I was slipping, I was already so deep in the shit I couldn't even see the surface.

I don't know how many times I've wondered the streets of Moscow, bottle in hand, reeking of alcohol or vomit – or both. Blood splatter from fights covering my clothes, rain and snow wetting through the fabric without me noticing it. I lost count long ago of how many times I passed out in some gutter, or on some park bench like some fucking hobo, haunted even in drunken sleep by all my memories.

They found me, of course. They always found me, and I still don't know how. When Bryan, Spencer or Ian found me, they'd scream their heads off at me and then drag me home and throw me in the shower. And then they would continue to yell at me for being a stupid drunk fuckhead. But it was always the worst when Kai found me. He never yelled at me. He never said a single word. All he ever did was put a jacket around my shoulders, take me home and put me to bed. He was always quiet, and that was the hardest part. I would really have preferred it if he had just punched me around and call me every single insult he knew – and he knows quite a decent amount of insults. But no. There was some sort of resigned sadness in his eyes, but the harsh words never came. Sometimes when I woke up in the morning, he would be asleep on the floor next to my bed, to keep watch on me, I guess. Sometimes he was gone.

Kai had his own way of dealing with everything. He ran. He travelled around the world like the very demons of hell were on his tail. He slept around, he got in fights, tried various things to numb all the shit out. He never stayed in one place longer than two weeks before moving on. There were long periods of time when we didn't hear a single word from him, and that was when we started watching the news anxiously, listening to the radio non stop, calling the BBA every other day – hoping to God nothing had happened to him. Kai did, for a long time carry around really strong suicidal thoughts, and even made a few attempts. We always got to him in time, and I think he was thankful for that. It has never been that he wanted to die – it was that he didn't want to live. Sounds strange, I know, but there is a difference. He could be gone for months on end, and then show up at the doorstep, exhausted both mentally and physically. Sometimes half starved, other times coming off whatever new shit he had tried. All we could do was nurture him back to health again. He could lie in bed for days and days, sleeping like he had never slept in his whole life before. Then he would stick around for a few weeks, and be almost like himself again. But then the darkness always came back – and we would just wake up one morning and he was gone again.

And it broke my heart every time. I had always been closest to Kai, and I knew him even better than our other three friends did. And they know him inside out. When he was at home, I felt somehow calmer. I didn't drink as much as usual, and I actually felt ok every now and then. We would do what we had always done; go for long walks in the middle of the night, sit on the roof of the terrace and eat ice cream, and talk. We could talk for hours on ends about everything and nothing. It was sometimes like what we said wasn't important – it was that we said it to each other. I know that people don't think either of us has emotions – but it's quite the contrary. Especially Kai has a very wide range of emotions, with so many nuances it can be hard to follow. He is a very warm and loving person underneath that mask of his. My emotions were forced into hiding throughout most of my life – yes – but that doesn't mean I don't have them. I feel as much as anyone else. I love, I laugh, I hurt, I cry, I hate, just like everyone else. It was soothing, I think, to both of us to be that close again. If I was sober, he would climb into my bed at night and sleep with his face hidden against my neck and a steady grip on my hair – just like old times. Just like the little boy he once was. Like the small boys we both were.

But I was still slave to the bottle. Still buckling under the weight of all the nightmares, the flashbacks, the memories. I couldn't function without alcohol. It was as simple as that. I needed to feel numb, and since no drugs will ever work on me, that was the only thing I had to resort to. Being an alcoholic, is like having two sides. You're two faced, like a coin. There is you, and there is the passenger in your head. The one who sits there, commenting on you life, you choices, your thoughts. Who edges you on to take that last glass. And then another, and then another. You're as much that passenger's puppet as you are the bottle's slave. And you drink to forget, and to shut that voice up. You drink until you can't see, you can't feel, you can't remember where you are, how you got there, where you live – you drink until your passenger is satisfied. I remember hearing a song playing in Kai's stereo once, that really said what I felt. I had no idea who the band was, but somehow, their music connected with me. I remember that song so clearly.

“Why does it feel like night today?

Something in here's not right today

Why am I so uptight today?

Paranoia's all I got left

I don't know what stressed me first

Or how the pressure was fed

But I know just what it feels like

To have a voice in the back of my head
It's like a face that I hold inside

A face that awakes when I close my eyes

A face watches every time I lie

A face that laughs every time I fall

{And watches everything}

So I know that when it's time to sink or swim

That the face inside is here in me, right underneath my skin

It's like I'm paranoid looking over my back

It's like a whirlwind inside of my head

It's like I can't stop what I'm hearing within

It's like the face inside is right beneath my skin”

That was how it felt. Like there was someone inside me, watching, laughing, controlling. And I kept falling. I kept slipping. And then, about a year ago – everything fell apart.

“Hi, my name is Tala, and I'm an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Tala.”
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The Dark Passenger