#squicklit

"Mn," agreed Trip, looking down at his shirt cuff. It had become soiled with dirt and grease stains somehow and one of the buttons was missing.

However, something else caught his eye as Virus moved away; fresh crimson stains were polluting the white fabric just behind Virus's left arm and under his shirt collar.

"Ohh.. Virus, you're bleeding."

"I know that already." One of their enemies had been carrying a flick knife he hadn't had any idea how to use. "Should we get back home?”

"We can." Trip caught up to walk beside Virus. "..Does it hurt~?"

"Don't ask me things like that."

"Okay, okay."

Home, for the moment, turned out to be just a hotel. It was a long way to go back to their apartments in Platinum Jail. Virus stripped off his ruined shirt and hopped up onto the bathroom counter, using the mirror and rather dim lighting to get a better look at the damage to his back, while Trip went to go fetch some first aid from the front desk.

"It's only a few knicks here and there, but I can't reach them properly. You'll have to do it."

"Hmm. You sure?" Trip asked. He was aware that he might be better at making people bleed than he was at making them stop. Virus apparently knew this too.

"I wouldn't be asking if I wasn't," said Virus, a little impatiently. Nevertheless, he poured some of the disinfectant down his own neck and back, hissing with pain. Trip's cold eyes glittered.

"They're all pretty shallow so just wrap the bandage tight and apply pressure."

"Like.. this?"

"No, you have to tie it in closer. That's too loose." Virus winced, his mouth hanging open in slight pain as Trip jerked the bandage more firmly over his wounds. "Ouch. Now it's much tighter than it needs to be."

"How's that?"

"That's fine. It'll have to do anyways." Virus slipped off the counter, pulling a shirt back on. "These bandages are kind of outdated, aren't they."

"Sorry, it was all they had."

"It's okay. Can you see them at all?" Virus twisted to try and catch a glimpse of his reflection and the bandages underneath his shirt.

"Can't," said Trip forthrightly. "You're fine. How about me?"

"You're not even hurt." Virus's eyebrows disappeared under the frames of his glasses as he narrowed his eyes accusingly. "It was just your shirt."

"Ahh, right."

Their current yakuza supervisor (an older, balding man covered in a great many vivid tattoos) smirked, uncrossed his arms from over his chest, and left the room. Trip hoped it was to get them some chairs.

"This kind of stuff can only lead to a life-ruining addiction," Virus continued, ignoring Trip and barely glancing up as their shadow departed them, leaving them alone with the goods. "I'm sure it must be a mind-blowing experience at first, but the human body adapts so quickly it can never be exactly the same again, never as good as that first initial hit. Of course, it doesn't stop people from trying to chase that high and achieve the same sensations."

Virus handed Trip another bag stuffed with illegal powder to pack into the moving box.

"It's the same with any addiction, really. People get wasted on the pleasure they're trying to give themselves. They use it to cope with unpleasant situations, but then they're so busy coping over and over that they have nothing else left to help get themselves out of the situation that made them unhappy in the first place. I think that's a bit miserable.. isn't it?" Virus shrugged his shoulders without concern. "Well, you remember."

Trip looked sideways at nothing in particular. He did remember - they had spent plenty of time on the streets in the company of drug-addled hoodlums during the days before Morphine's disappearance - but this was a high and mighty speech coming from Virus when they had only been working on the other side of the drug industry for half an hour.

"Addiction can happen so quickly too," Virus went on. "You never know when it will strike so it's better not to dabble in it at all. That kind of temptation makes handling the product so much more complicated; I've heard of dealers on the mainland killing themselves out of desperation to make more, to sell more, just so they can afford to take more. It's a pathetic life. But otherwise, it can be very lucrative."

Was he still going with this? Trip squeezed the air out of a bag that Virus hadn't filled very well, peering inside at its contents.

"If we stay clean while we're doing this sort of thing, we stay productive, and if we stay productive, we're better off. We stay wealthy and on top of the rest. Drug users are good-for-nothing bottom feeders, or they end up that way. We enable their rotten habits but we make sure not to become like them. Right, Trip?"

At that moment when Virus looked over his shoulder, he was greeted with the sight of Trip sucking a small amount of powder off one of his fingers, having dipped it curiously into one of the plastic bags. Caught in the act, Trip met Virus's gaze with a crooked grin. There was already a slight excess of saliva glistening at the corner of his wet, pink mouth. Virus's expression flattened and his shoulders sagged into a long, drawn-out sigh as he turned back to the work table.

"Sorry," Trip said, still grinning. "I got curious." A few minutes later, he added with a laugh, "My mouth feels numb."

Virus closed his eyes. "I'm not sure what you were expecting." Now he would have to go out of his way to make sure Trip had a bad time so that he wouldn't associate too many good feelings with the drugs they were working with. Hopefully that would do the trick. "Do you want something to drink?"

"Haha. Sure. Give me those." Previously only having been putting one bag into the boxes at a time, Trip now seized two at once from Virus's work space and stacked them on top of each other.

"I'll go see if they have any alcohol.."

When Virus came back, Trip had already finished packing everything into the moving boxes and had taken his place at the measuring table with the empty plastic bags.

"Do you want to switch places?" Virus asked out of necessity, proffering one of two beers, then noted, "You're working hard."

"Thaaanks," Trip crowed without looking up from the plastic bag he was filling. When he had finished, he accepted the beer and took a swig, wiping his mouth on his wrist.

Virus looked at him cynically. "You didn't have any more, did you?"

"Nope," Trip grinned. "But that stuff's not so bad. Here, try some yourself."

Just as Virus was lifting his own beer to his lips, Trip dipped his hand into another bag, coated the pad of his index finger with the powder, and before Virus could protest, had pushed it inside his mouth. Once Virus felt the tiny crystal powder brush off Trip's finger and begin to dissolve against his tongue, he didn't see the point in struggling or attempting to rinse it out. Instead, he simply removed Trip's hand from his face and warned him not to do that again.

Trip stopped grinning.

"But it's good, right?"

Virus hesitated. "Yeah, it's not bad."

The rest of the packaging session went considerably faster after that.