Overdose is the most common cause of death after heart failure.
The newlywed Holts are keeping out of the public eye, so here's everything you need to know about them!
Sario yawned and stretched, his stiff back popping. He groaned as he sat up. At this rate, it might have been better for him to have slept on the floor. Marlowe's couch had done murder to his body. Speaking of Marlowe… Sario looked around the apartment and saw no sign of the hacker. The bathroom door was open, and the light was off. The computer was off, and the desk chair was empty. Sario got up, got dressed, and used the bathroom before realizing that Marlowe's bedroom door was still firmly shut. Nervously, he tapped the backs of his knuckles against the door. He was pretty sure Marlowe was still pissed with him from last night, but there was no sign that he was even alive. "Hey, I know you probably hate me, but can I at least see your face for a sec?"
Nothing.
Sario's head whipped around when someone pounded on the apartment door. He was about to find a good place to hide when he heard his brother's voice through the door.
"Sario! I know you're in there!" Shit. Darius sounded really mad.
Sario unbolted the door and opened it. "Hi."
Darius pushed into the apartment and slammed the door behind himself. "What the hell are you doing here?" His face was red, almost the color of his hair. Yeah, he was mad all right.
"Sam and Levi screwed me over. I didn't have anywhere else to go!"
"You could've called me!"
"It was like two in the morning!" Sario protested. "You'd kill me if I called you that late! And my phone was dead by the time I showed up here! And," he added sheepishly, "Marlowe agreed that it's be a bad idea to call you last night. I was going to call you this morning. Or just get an Uber."
Darius rolled his eyes. "In what world would you assume that it was okay to invade the apartment of someone you barely know?"
Sario shrugged. "I didn't have anywhere else to go. He understood that. He wasn't too terribly pleased to see me at first, if that makes you feel any better."
Darius groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. "I genuinely do not understand how you manage to weasel your way into everyone's good graces, even at two o'clock in the morning." He glanced around the apartment. "Where is your disgruntled host anyways?"
Sario looked toward the bedroom door. "In there, I think. I haven't heard a sound out of him. Honestly, I'm a little scared he might be dead."
Darius' face furrowed. He walked straight up to Marlowe's bedroom door and pounded on it. "Marlowe?" After a silent moment, he added, "I'll break this fucking door down if you don't come answer it!"
"Isn't that a bit much?" Sario asked nervously.
Darius' answer was shoving his shoulder against the door and tearing it off its hinges. "Fuck," he swore as soon as the door was down. He took two huge steps over to the bed, where Marlowe was sprawled, fully dressed, on top of the covers. He slapped Marlowe's face. "Marlowe!" When there was no response, he did it again. "You fucking dumbass," he muttered.
Then Marlowe's eyes opened in slits, and it took Sario a moment to realize that his pupils were blown to cover nearly his entire iris. "Stop hitting me, please," he whispered, almost like he was scared to say the words at all.
Darius grabbed his jaw tightly. "How much did you take?"
Marlowe tried to pull his chin away from Darius and scowled when he failed. "Four," he replied, holding up four fingers in Darius' face. "Are you happy now?"
Darius did not let go. "Stop being a bitch."
Sario's eyes flew wide, sure that Darius would get kicked in the nuts for saying that to Marlowe.
But Marlowe just laughed, and that scared Sario more. "Yeah, I'm a real bitch, aren't I? Maybe that's why everything happens to me. I just deserve it, don't I?"
Darius slapped Marlowe's cheek again. "What the hell are you talking about? Did you take those pills with alcohol or something?"
Marlowe shook his head, pouting like a kid caught lying. He pointed lazily to the half-empty glass on his nightstand. "Water. I can't drink. It messes with the suppressants." He dropped his hand down onto the wrinkled covers. "Why do you think I take this stuff?"
"Because you're fucking addicted," Darius snapped.
Marlowe rolled his eyes so exaggeratedly it was practically in slow-mo. "Alcoholism would be easier. But that would screw me. And get me screwed. And I'd rather not."
Sario cringed. It was not like he had been thinking about doing that to Marlowe, but the idea had crossed his mind and he could not deny that he had found it slightly attractive. Slightly attractive? Where the fuck was his brain going? He could not think like that, not about someone who had more barbed-wired walls up than Rowan had at first.
Marlowe reached up and patted Darius' chest. "I'm fine. I didn't OD. If you don't want to deal with me being bitchy, you can leave."
"When did you take it?"
Marlowe rolled his eyes again. "You're so annoying," he muttered.
Darius grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled his upper body off the bed with very little exertion. "Answer the fucking question, Marlowe. When did you take it?"
Marlowe groaned like the conversation was giving him a headache, which it probably was. "Last night. Early this morning. Whatever category three am falls into."
Darius sighed and let Marlowe back down onto the bed. He must have been worried about that. "Okay. Have you taken four before?"
"No." Marlowe admitted it like a kid admitting to stealing candy.
Darius grabbed his arm. "Yup, you're going to the hospital."
Marlowe had been pretty relaxed and chill this whole conversation, but as soon as Darius said hospital he freaked out. He tried to twist himself out of Darius' grip. "I don't need to go to the hospital. I'm fine! Let me go! Leave me alone!"
Darius glanced over his shoulder at Sario. "Come help me."
Sario hesitated. "He looks fine to me. Why should we force him to go to the hospital if he doesn't want to?"
Darius gave him a look that immediately encouraged him to help his older brother out of fear for his health. Only when Marlowe's bloodwork came back with non-lethal drug levels did Darius' shoulders relax.
Darius' best friend Noah turned the tablet off and held it down by his side. "I had no idea that Marlowe took this kind of stuff." When only silence met his comment, he added, "And why the hell did he lie about being a beta?"
Sario blinked, surprised that Noah knew. "He told you that?"
Noah shook his head, holding up the tablet for a moment before letting it drop back to his side. "It came up in his bloodwork. I assume both of you already knew?"
Darius nodded slowly. "He wanted it to be a secret. He's had some really messed up shit done to him because he's an omega. You understand."
Noah returned the slow nod. His boyfriend Camille had gone through hell and had finally started to go to therapy for everything that had happened. "So he'll kill me if I even hint that I know."
"Yeah, probably. But he's okay?"
Noah glanced toward the mostly closed door to the room Marlowe was in. "He'll be fine. But that was pretty close to a lethal dose. Make sure he knows that. If he does that again, he could OD." He headed down the hall, a female nurse hurrying up to his side to say something to him as they turned the corner.
Darius pushed open the door, Sario following on his heels.
Marlowe gave both of them a withering glare. "How does it feel to know I was right?"
"You could have died!" Darius snapped back. "How does that not affect you at all?"
Marlowe gave him one last glare before ignoring both of them and staring out the window.
"You don't look good," Sario ventured cautiously.
Marlowe snorted. "Oh, I'm good. I'm great." There was no warmth in his voice. "Just leave me the hell alone."
"Can't," Darius replied, his tone sharp. "You're a fucking idiot, and you'll OD if you try that again."
"If you would stop bothering me, I won't need to try it again." Marlowe sounded angry, but hovering in his voice was an exhaustion that seemed to run in his blood. "Please just fuck off."
"Sario's going to stay here with you."
Sario stared wide-eyed at his brother in a look that should communicate his absolute disagreement with the decision being made for him.
Darius seemed oblivious. "And if you hurt him, you know what I'll do." Without another word, he turned on his heel and left the room. He did not even give Sario an encouraging look. Bastard.
Sario carefully sat down on the edge of the chair in the room. "Sorry," he whispered.
Marlowe's head turned sharply, his eyes sparking enough to be made of fire. "I hate you," he spat, his tone especially venomous. "If you show me one damn ounce of pity, I swear I'll find a way to deep fry a human."
Sario felt all of his insides freeze. He knew Marlowe meant it. He knew, as well as anyone else, that underworld people never joked around when it came to murdering people. "Don't trouble yourself just for me," he said, trying to treat it like a joke. "I don't think I'll taste that good."
Marlowe seemed to short-circuit, like he could not believe that Sario had just turned his death threat into a joke. "You're fucking with me."
Sario shrugged, getting back into his element. "That's what I do. I fuck with people. You've known Darius for what? Two or three years now? Surely you know all about me."
Marlowe still looked like he was a robot who had gotten dumped into a pool. "What the–"
"Sorry, did I talk too fast?"
Now Marlowe was seething. "You're going to regret that with every atom in your body."
"Ooooh, so scary," Sario mocked, even though his heart was going a million miles an hour.
"Don't tempt me to fuck up your credit score for the rest of your miserable twink life."
Sario chuckled, actually finding it amusing that Marlowe still thought of him as a twink. "Come on, man. I go to the gym like every day. You'll have to find someone else to call a twink, cause it's not me."
Marlowe clenched his jaw so tightly Sario could see it from across the room. He looked like he wanted to say something particularly scathing, but he folded his lips together and turned his face back toward the window. So he was going to give Sario the silent treatment. Excellent. As long as he did not actually try to kill Sario, they were sure to become good friends in no time.