It's Not An Addiction (Sean)

Considering that Sam had only told a very few people, it really was amazing just how fast news managed to travel. Sometimes rumors held a grain of truth, and this was one of those times.

Maybe he should have sworn his friends to secrecy.

He still wasn’t willing to admit that he had a problem. Sure, learning about things like addiction were more or less part of the curriculum. But he didn’t have a problem.

He was going to argue that until he was blue in the face.

He closed his eyes as Sean spoke to him, not wanting to be there in the first place. His voice was grating on his headache. “I know,” he grumbled back. “But he was being an asshole.” Yes. Because ‘please hand in your homework’ was an asshole-ish thing to say.

“Can you just punish me and let me go?” He didn’t want to stay, even if it was better than sitting in class thinking about other things. Like just how much he wanted a hit. Just a little hit.

Right. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that. He tried to concentrate on his hands, daring to open his eyes again, before throwing one arm over his face in frustration. “Your lights are fucking bright.” He was already irritated, and waiting for his punishment wasn’t helping. Or he was just looking for things to complain about. Either was possible.

Sam pulled a face at the admonishment. “Yeah, yeah.” It was harder to keep a civil tongue these days, but he’d try if it kept Dr. Neville off his back a little bit more. Try being the operative word, of course. The whole time Sean spoke about his history teacher, Sam just made a face. In his mind, Morgan had asked for the assignment in an asshole-ish way, and he was going to stand by that. Normally the gentle teacher was one of his favorites, but not today. “He didn’t smile,” he argued, more to be difficult than anything else.

Being difficult would surely get him out of the office faster.

Or not, if what Sean said next was anything to go by. Sam made an indignant noise and pulled a face under the cover of his arm. “That’s what always happens. You tell me I did something wrong, I get punished, we all leave happy.” Well, not happy, but he was trying to make a point. “Why do we need to talk?”

He didn’t have any idea what that meant. They’d had ‘talks’ in the past, including several on his use of pot once in a while. He didn’t know what he’d done recently that would make a talk necessary.

At least Sean offered to dim the lights. That was a somewhat unexpected gesture, and if nothing else, would make the visit just a tad more tolerable. “Okay, dim ‘em. ... Please?” If being a brat didn’t get him out faster, maybe a touch of manners would.

Minor relief flooded Sam when the lights dimmed. He even managed to remove his arm from his face, blinking in the dimmer light. That was so much better, and the pounding in his head seemed to lessen just a bit. “Thanks,” he said quietly, actually meaning it. Now maybe he could find this whole thing tolerable.

Well, for about five seconds.

“What about attitude?” He cast a suspicious look Sean’s way.

The explanation only made things worse. Sam sat up, looking almost offended. He’d used that... that word. The one that Sam didn’t want to think about, because he wasn’t. “Whoa.” He held up his hands, trying to tune the rest of it out. “I wasn’t being abusive! Who said I was? I didn’t even yell at Levi when he broke my fucking car!” That had provided a momentary distraction before he made himself return to the topic that had originally riled him.

“An’ I’m not addicted to anything!” Not alcohol, not pot. Nothing. Sure, he’d had more access to alcohol recently, especially through Vincent. And maybe he’d been spending more money on marijuana and it hadn’t been lasting that long...

But that had nothing to do with anything. “I’m not,” he repeated, crossing his arms. If this was what he was here to talk about, it wasn’t going to happen. “I’m just trying to stop, an’ it’s hard. That’s all.”

Sam pulled his knees up against his chest, his arms wrapping around them and his chin resting on top. This was so, so not the road he wanted to go down right now. Not with Dr. Neville, not with Spencer, not even with Levi or Vincent.

He didn’t comment on Sean’s experience with cars breaking. He still had to scrape together the money in order to fix it, without telling his parents what had happened. He was willing to bet that ‘being responsible’ didn’t include letting your friends drive with little experience. “Vin complained I hit him?” He scowled again, unimpressed that Vincent would tattle. The thought that someone might have seen and alerted Dr Neville not even crossing his mind. “He let me hit him!” After he’d explained why he’d needed to, Vin seemed to think it was funny, and hadn’t complained (much) about becoming Sam’s personal punching bag. At least, he hadn’t to him.

There was that word again. Sam resisted the urge to clamp his hands over his ears. Instead he just shook his head. “It’s not an addiction,” he repeated, more of a hiss this time. How many times did he have to say it? “It’s just stupidly hard to quit.” This conversation was making him itch all the harder for a fix. “I’m not... I’m not addicted.” The more he said it, the more it felt like one of Vincent’s punches to the gut. And the more he started to doubt it himself.

Considering that Vincent was the same person that had blackmailed Sam into buying his silence for a certain incident in bed, it had hardly surprised Sam when he’d offered to be his personal punching bag. It really did make him feel better about everything. Especially when Vin ended up swearing and rolling on the ground. “But it works,” he protested, though the fight wasn’t as present in his voice anymore. “And he likes it, ‘cause it’s helping.” ‘Like’ was probably too strong a word for Vincent’s feelings on the coping mechanism, but in Sam’s mind, it worked.

The pyrokinetic shot Sean a dirty look, starting to toy with the singed hem of his hoodie sleeve. He was starting to get antsy, and he didn’t want to talk about this anymore. He didn’t know the legal definition of an addict, nor did he want to, because he didn’t want to be one. Sadly, even he could count, and the math he came up with for his recent usage versus what he had been doing after starting Hammel... didn’t quite match up. “I don’t want to,” he finally admitted with a steady whine. He’d figured stopping was just like trying to stop eating junk food, or something along those lines. Or stopping doing homework. You could just stop, and that was it. But this was so much harder, and he didn’t like what was happening to him. His mind was reeling at effects, and his body wasn’t often fairing much better.

Still toying with his sleeve so as to avoid having to make eye contact, Sam shrugged at the idea of pamphlets. “I just want all of it to stop. I... get headaches. Really bad ones. And really fucked up dreams.” Not to mention his mood swings, and the fact that food wasn’t all that appealing to him anymore. Even Doritos. The other day he’d even seen his hands shake a little, which had scared the hell out of him. Enough to make him once again break his ‘no smoking anymore EVER’ rule. “How’re you supposed to deal with it without punching anyone?” Between the intense cravings he had and his mood swings, it had seemed like a perfectly reasonable and suitable solution.