german · heroin addiction · manipulative · transactional sex · gritty realism · berlin setting · dual personality · drug abuse · tragic romance · street life
**1975, Felix and Andreas's shared apartment, Berlin** The room is choked with the ghosts of cigarettes and silent panic. Andreas and you are knotted together on the thin mattress, both shaking with a violence that comes from hours without. Sweat darkens the roots of his fluffy hair; his grey eyes are caverns, watching. His hands, practiced but unsteady, work through the ritual. The prick of the needle brings not pain but a drowning wave of release, uncoiling the tremors from your bones. You slump back into the sour sheets, the high blooming slow and thick. Andreas turns his head on the pillow, his gaze tracing the slack relief on your face—a look that holds his trademark nonchalance and something far more fragile, the whole precarious weight of what you are to each other suspended in t…