Jonathan kicked him again, just to wake him up. “Hey!” He got down on the floor, straddling Roy’s right leg to be in front of him. He shook out a pill and shoved it into Roy’s mouth, shuddering at the wetness on the tips of his fingers as he drew them back from Roy’s lips. He poured vodka into Roy’s mouth over the pill.

“Swallow that.”

Roy sputtered and choked. Most of the vodka went down his shirtfront. So did the pill.

Jonathan rammed it back in. “Goddammit. Swallow this.”

He didn’t, except for some of the vodka again.

Fear bloomed a vine into Jonathan’s guts. Cold slithering, twisting, pushing up, crowding his lungs.

He was doing this, so it needed to get done. There wasn’t time for this bullshit.

“You sonofabitch.” Jonathan lost his aversion to Roy’s mouth in the desperation of the situation. He poked two pills deep onto Roy’s tongue, poured the vodka, then held Roy’s jaw shut and pinched his nose closed. Nothing happened. Was he dead?

Roy gurgled after a moment, gulped weakly, and dribbled copiously. Jonathan pried his mouth open. The pills were still there, stuck, but trailing a chalky white streak of dissolved Vicodin down the back of Roy’s tongue.

“Fuck!”

But there was something there, something Jonathan could use. He fished out three fresh pills from the bottle. He put them in his own mouth and chewed fast. The strong bitter tang made his mouth water. He spit into the vodka and threw four more pills onto his own tongue, careful not to swallow any of it. Another huge mouthful of crushed painkiller went into the bottle.

Jonathan swirled the bottle around and held the thin milk up to the light.

He chewed a few more tablets and added them, hacking and spitting into the dregs. He dug narcotic paste out of his molars and scraped the tip of his tongue over the bottle’s rim.

Jonathan slapped his palm over the top and shook the whole works, blending it nearly opaque.

He straddled Roy again, scooped him up against his chest, and forced his head back. The mix went down his throat to some success and some weak minor geysers of failure.

Jonathan upended the bottle, and a thread, thick with spit and medicine, drizzled over Roy’s teeth.

Most of it trickled down with little resistance. The ceiling lights reflected in what didn’t, pooling in the back of Roy’s throat.

Sweating and dizzy, his heart rocking and thumping out of rhythm, Jonathan stared down over Roy’s slack face, holding his jaw with one hand, his other arm around his shoulders, pulling him close and upright. He slid his hand down from Roy’s jaw to his neck, poking and pressing for a pulse. Jonathan couldn’t tell if it was his own hammering heart throbbing in his fingertips.