2Fame often came with a price and that was your life. Although fame often had a lot of advantages, it often comes with crushing disadvantages as well. Even with wealth and opulence, there was the matter of dealing with the paparazzi, facing scrutiny, increased security, having your life always out in the open for everyone to know, and the more common chance of your life going downhill as a result.
This was the case for former reality star Duncan. In his prime, he was swamped with tv show offerings and guest panels on reality talk shows, but a series of unfortunate events had all but put an end to his career. After a public scandal about cheating on his wife and a nasty divorce that resulted in him losing everything, his career got into a downward spiral and he all but disappeared from the public eye. Many speculated that he was dead, had moved to another city or even left the county but none of these rumors were the case. In fact, Duncan was right under everyone's noses and no one realized it.
After the public scandal, he took what money he had left and bought a secluded house in Topanga and moved there. He never left the house during the day and only went out at night if he needed groceries or to pay his bills. Only Duncan's best friend Geoff ever came over and he often arrived and left without much of a notice by anyone.
Being right near the bay seemed to be the perfect place for isolation since you could enjoy the ocean waves without the bed of the press following you around and there were a few stores nearby, mostly liquor stores, that expressed the soft decay Topanga faced as more and more people moved to the Hollywood Hills. The decay impressed Duncan since it represented the state of mind and life that he was in, that of decay, and he didn't know what to do or when, if ever, he would ever get out of the decay that grew as the days dragged on, never to end.
The bay also offered him a chance to sleep at night since the waves made a relaxing nose whenever they crashed onto the shore, but although it made him sleep, his past was ever present in his dream and that life made his dreams more like nightmares and did more harm than good to his state of mind. But that wasn't even the biggest issue Duncan faced.
Duncan was a heroin addict.
He found the drug after the scandal started and it helped him get through some of the hardest times he had to face but had grown to depend on it daily since he suffered horrible withdrawals that made him violently ill for days if he went without a constant supply. Usually once a month, he'd have Geoff go and pick up the supply he needed and bring it to his house and would pay him in return. Geoff was a well-known drug supplier in the streets and had a good relationship with Duncan.
When the doorbell rang, Duncan hopped from his bed and ran down the stairs. He knew that the only time he ever heard it was when Geoff came by and dropped off a new load of a heroin supply for Duncan.
"I'm coming!" Duncan said as he put on a shirt and went to the door. To his surprise, instead of Geoff being there, it was their mutual friend DJ. "You better have a good reason why Geoff's not here." He gravely added.
"How about the fact that he's been arrested," DJ replied.
"He's been what?! Oh shit."
"They hauled him off as he was about to deliver a huge amount of drugs and cash."
"Oh no, this is not good. Not good at all damn it."
"Relax man-"
"Relax? You expect me to relax when my dealer is in jail now! Are you fucking kidding me?!"
"If you would let me finish, you can relax since thankfully, your supply wasn't caught on Geoff," DJ commented as he pulled out a cloth bag. "He gave it to me before he was caught."
"So he made sure I was looked out for?" Duncan asked.
"Of course he did," DJ replied. "But he wanted me to warn you to not only lay low but to make this batch last as long as you can. He has no idea when he'll be out."
Duncan sighed. "I'll try, but I can't guarantee anything."
"Fine by me. I just want the money. What you do with the heroin is your own business." DJ indifferently stated, having long given up on seeing Duncan getting out of the heroin's claws.
While being quite annoyed by DJ's presence, he gave him the money and got the heroin in return. After he left, though, Duncan locked the doors and pulled down all of the blinds, so that no one would suspect that anyone was home or lived in the house, before heading up to his bedroom and locking the door.
He turned on some heavy metal music to play in the background to keep himself in the zone while he got ready. Duncan took off all of his clothes and sat on the bed with nothing but his nude body and the heroin. He prepared the heroin the same way he did before, by heating it up to melt it down into liquid form, and placing it within syringes.
Duncan loved the feeling of getting shot up. It made him feel relaxed and at ease amongst the uncertainty and chaos that surrounded his own life and the world around him. Although DJ told him to save up his supply, he really didn't care. He wanted to get high and wanted the drugs in him now.
When the heroin was melted down and put into the syringes, Duncan got his left arm ready and wrapped a leather strap around his arm and placed it in between his teeth. He took the first syringe and injected it into his blood veins and started to shoot up. With the music in the background, he felt at a bliss so he shot up more heroin into his body until there's nothing left but a pile of bloodstained syringes and a whole supply of heroin in his system.
Duncan laid back on the bed as the heroin entered his system. He felt at bliss and saw different images floating around him as he felt his eyes get heavy. It was hard to fight the feeling, but he embraced it and the last thing he remembered before his eyes closed was the music playing in the background and the sensational pleasure that was traveling throughout his body.
It must've felt like hours before Duncan decide to wake up. When Duncan did wake up, he noticed that something was off. He remembered that he passed out naked, but he looked down he saw that his clothes were on. It was only when we realized that his clothes were on that he was also flying, by himself. "Holy shit, what's going on?" He asked.
He couldn't figure anything out except that this was either a dream or that the heroin in his system was messing with a mind way too much. It turned out to be the former.
He kept flying through the atmosphere until he landed on the moon, and that was when he started to question his sanity. "I don't know what kinda dream this is, but this is pretty fucked up, even for me."
"That's what you get for being on heroin."
Duncan knew that voice. Could it be her? No, he thought, it couldn't. I remember putting her on an airplane heading overseas so that she could save her life and not have to deal with the fallout and the divorce that was occurring at the time. But he did miss her. Even after she left, he was heartbroken since she was the only true woman that he ever loved and he had to give up for drugs.
He slowly turned and there she stood, looking back at him. "I know. I kinda deserved it." Duncan quickly answered.
"Kinda? Kinda deserved it?! No, you deserved it." She replied.
"Okay, okay. Maybe a wording was a bit off, but you're right. I allowed it to control me."
"I just wish I could've been there for you."
"No. I didn't want you there since I couldn't bear the fact that you were in such much pain over me."
"I know that, but sometimes I feel like it's my fault."
"Why would it be your fault?" Duncan asked.
"I didn't try hard enough to help you." She added.
"No, it's not your fault. You tried the hardest of all to help me, but I just allowed the drug to overtake me."
"Is there a chance that I could come back someday?"
"Would you be willing to come back?"
"I would in a heartbeat. I would come back to tell you that everything is okay."
"Of course I want you back baby. I'd do anything to get you to come back again."
"Anything? Even give up heroin after your dealer was arrested and your supply link severed?"
"How did you know that? I told nobody."
"Duncan, you have to remember, I know everything."
"Should've known."
"What was that? I didn't quite hear that."
"Nothing."
"That's what I thought."
The next thing that Duncan could recall was him waking up and trying to breathe. He shot up and ran to the window and opened it with all of his strength. He breathed heavily as the fresh air came in. He never remembered heroin causing this difficulty before, but he also never remembered flying to the moon and meeting his one true love there either.
After sitting at the window for a few minutes, he went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There were dark circles and bags under his eyes. He looked at his arms and saw the tiny dots where he injected heroin into his body and it absorbed his skin, beginning to age it beyond his actual years. His hair was in tangles and added to the mess that he was. "Man, I gotta get my shit together." He told himself.
But while saying a commitment was easy, the real challenge was to stay committed.
So with a new goal in mind, Duncan got dressed and decided to go for a walk. He needed to clear his head and figure out what to do following last night's dream.
He wasn't prepared for the heat wave that greeted him though. As soon as stepped outside, the humidity was so high that it nearly knocked him down, but he just headed to the shore and found a rock to sit on. As the waves came crashing in and provided relief, he pondered over his available options.
"I could stay and try to get clean, but that would take a while and I could be tempted to get back into heroin so that's out." Duncan thought to himself. "I could leave California and move elsewhere, but here would I go? I hardly know anyone outside of here. Or I could move to another country, but that'd be more of a last minute I'm desperate to save my hide kind of move. If we're being honest, nothing's clear. I'm stuck in some deep shit that I can't get out of."
Although he couldn't figure out what to do, the sun was out and it was a nice day. "Might as well soak up some Vitamin C and relax for awhile." He said as he laid back and relaxed under the sun.
"I don't know what to do. I'm stuck in this dilemma without a way out."
"Well, that's your fault."
"I thought you would be supportive of me, not condemn me."
"I am supportive of you though."
"So does that mean that you'll help me?" He asked.
"Why should I help you?" She replied.
"You're the only one that can."
"No, I'm not. You can help yourself."
"So you expect me to figure this out by myself? Why?"
"Duncan, sometimes, you just have to figure things out on your own. If you don't, you get nowhere in life."
Instead of trying to argue more, Duncan walked to a moon crater and sat down. He tried to figure out what to say, but nothing came to his mind. He would zone out and felt frustrated at the fact that he couldn't even get himself out of a mess that he made. He was stuck in a middle area and didn't know what to do.
The next thing that Duncan could remember was that it was the middle of the day and he was red as a lobster. When he woke up from his sun nap, he discovered that not only was he roasted to a crisp, but that there were people on the beach acting like it was the middle of summer when it was only February.
Deciding not to get burnt anymore, he headed back to the house and was on high alert the whole time, afraid that a noise or something would indicate that the end was near. This, however, made him eager for more heroin.
As soon as he got back to the house, he rampaged all of the rooms to see if there was a hidden supply anywhere. He found two baggies in a kitchen drawer and the third one under his bathroom sink. Without bothering to tidy up after sacking the whole house, Duncan ran back to his bedroom and was prepared to inject it in, but he couldn't find the willpower to do so. Instead, he threw the syringes off to the side and took a few pills out of a bottle and swallowed those instead. He climbed back into bed and tried to take his thoughts away.
"Look, I love you with all my heart, but you have to be a man and live up to your actions." She told Duncan.
"I know that sweetheart," He replied, "but it's been harder than I imagined."
"And that's okay. Even though I'll be with you every step of the way, only you can fix this by yourself. I can only encourage you, not help you."
"You're right. You're always right."
"Well, I wouldn't say that-"
"But it's true and you know it." He added. A blush crept up on her cheeks and that was when she knew. "Alright. So you have me. Are you happy now?"
"Not quite. There's one thing that I need to know."
"And that would be?"
"Where are you at now? I want to find you and be able to reunite with the one person that I love more than anything."
"I'm nowhere Duncan. I'm dead."
"Very funny. And I suppose that I'm well off too."
"No, I'm serious I'm dead."
"What?"
"It happened after I went overseas. I was killed in a car accident not too long after I left the airport."
"Are you fucking kidding me? The only person I had the hope of recovering for is gone? Who does that kind of shit?"
"Karma, Duncan. Karma."
"Well fuck Karma."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"And why not?" Duncan asked.
Her answer was verified when a piano came out of nowhere and crashed on Duncan. After he wiggled his way out of the mess of ivory keys, his lover gave him a look that said I told you so. "Maybe you're right."
"Maybe?" She asked.
"Okay, you were right. I now know not to mess with karma."
They just stood there for a while, looking at each other and not saying a word. Duncan felt happy being able to talk to her again and it was as if two souls who were lost and weary had found each other to become one again. They leaned in and-
Duncan woke up in a cold sweat all over his body. Even though it was just a dream, it all felt real. Now, he knew what the only option was. He grabbed the heroin syringes he discarded earlier and injected them all into his body and also swallowed the rest of the pills that were in his room.
As he lay there, waiting for death to come, he felt his eyes grow weary and his body slowing down. This made him happy. "I'm coming for you. I'm coming for you princess."
So, here we go!
This was actually an original story that I wrote in July of 2017 but revised to make it into a Duncney oneshot. I knew that Duncan was the one for this when I heard the song "Heroin" on Lana Del Rey's Lust for Life and it spoke so much about the dude since I could imagine him doing drugs at one point or another in his life and costing him everything. It was hard to decide who it was that Duncan would speak to in the flying to the moon sequence, but I decided that Courtney needed some love from me since I've never had much of a chance to write them together and so this was perfect. Geoff made sense as the dealer since if he's a party dude, he's more than likely in the same boat as Duncan in doing drugs at some point in time. While some of you may question why I had DJ be the middleman between Duncan and Geoff, I felt like that this was a universe when the Brickhouse wasn't as close with either of them as he is in canon so that worked out the best. Or maybe he did this on the side to pay for cooking school? The perception is up to you guys.
I do hope that you enjoy this and the Gwent that went up prior to this. This is a little something to keep you guys happy while the next chapter of AG is being worked on. It's been hard with the amount of classwork I have as of now, but I am aiming for a late or end of the month update. c: And I also decided to break away from my usual format that you guys have seen on some of my previous oneshots since change is a good thing. c;
Well, until next time! Please read, review, favor, alert, and spread the word.
