Owen has been struggling with addiction since he was a teenager, but it takes a DUI involving another vehicle for him to finally face his issues. The road to recovery is a rough one, and for Owen it's a journey made harder by bankruptcy, loneliness, and repressed memories.<br><br>His new apartment doesn't help either. It's small, worn, and hot as hell. The only way to reach it is a tedious stretch of stairs that seems like the final insult on top of a whole pile of misery.<br><br>Thankfully, the mess comes with one bright spot: intense, pretty Sebastian, who seems to have a knack for keeping his head up and finding the beauty in everything.

Forty-Two Stairs

“Used to be an old guy that lived up there. Only one I ever knew that didn’t mind the heat. Couldn’t get warm enough, he’d tell me. I like that. When two faults work into being one perfect. Don’t you?” Owen rested his head back against the wall, curling his legs up closer to his body, and still Sebastian droned with the sound of a twelve-year-old and the innocent disregard of one a quarter of that. “Stairs got him though. Not right away, mind you. And not literal like. They were too hard on him, hurt his chest as he’d say it. So, he avoided them the best he could. Got people to run for him, got food delivered, that kind of thing. But the more a body rests, the more it wants to. ‘Till it just stops going altogether. Weird, hunh? He avoids the steps to try and save himself, but the act of avoiding it is just as hard, if not worse, than the original problem itself.”


Chapter 7