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As you sat at the table waiting for Hongjoong to get home, your dinner untouched, there was only one thought on loop in your head. ‘I need to cut.’ You knew it was irrational. You knew it wasn’t healthy. But it was so, so tempting, and you knew Hongjoong would be so engrossed in his own work that you’d have plenty of time to clean up before he gets back.
It’d been months since you last caved to the urges. The scars that littered your body were no secret to Hongjoong, but as far as he knew, you hadn’t touched a blade in all the time you had been living together. In reality, your methods had only changed. While a cut is nearly impossible to hide, and the healing being a long and messy process - you knew that the bruises were always excusable.
‘I walked into a table.’
‘I fell over at work.’
‘I have no idea where I got that one.’
Every time he questioned the marks, you’d lie. Lie, lie, lie. It felt disgusting. You couldn’t keep up the façade forever, but you didn’t have an end goal in mind either. You were only delaying the inevitable, adding more guilt to your conscience with every bold-faced lie that slipped through your teeth. You knew Hongjoong was suspicious, his expressions looking less and less convinced with each new muddied speckling of black and blue across your limbs. As your excuses got worse and the lies piled up, he stopped asking about them.
He'd told you countless times that you could talk to him about anything, but you rarely did, and you could tell how much it was weighing on him. As much as you would love to talk to him about these thoughts, you already knew how he would respond. The same way he always does – as if it was all a problem to be solved, and not just a fact of life. It was helpful, of course… sometimes. It was so easy for you to get swept up in a cycle of learned helplessness. But God, it was so damn tiring to hear solution after solution when all you wanted was to get the emotions out, to release all that pain and frustration and not immediately be countered with ways for you to solve it.
You couldn’t find the middle ground, not through the clouds of self-loathing, at least. It wasn’t his fault you felt like this; Hongjoong was just trying to help, but you couldn’t help the self-pity and resentment from building up. Why couldn’t you just tell him that you wanted comfort, not solutions? You could tell that you’d built up a crude, ugly wall between the two of you, and now you had no idea how to tear it back down. All you could do was stare up at the bricks and wallow in your own self-inflicted misery.
Was it your fault for lying to Hongjoong about the bruising? Would he have understood if you'd just told him? Could you have just called him and told him you were struggling, would he have dropped whatever he was doing just to help you?
You knew he would. And yet you sit at the table, and contemplated the razors hidden in your room, stashed between the pages of a book you knew he would never open.
Was it the alcohol or the blood loss? The cold or the hunger? The relapse was dizzying and the only thing you wanted to focus on was the head-rush from the new cuts. The release was both revolting and euphoric, and while you tried to steady yourself on the mattress, your ears started ringing. You couldn’t tell up from down and right from wrong, and all of your senses were dulled and heightened, every movement scorching your nerves and every noise sounding like it came from miles away. Regret would set in and the exhaustion would take over if you didn’t get up to clean soon, but those thoughts were pushed aside. You were busy…
Busy? Busy doing what? You couldn’t remember. You looked down at the gaping flesh on your thighs. The red swirled around in your vision as your brain slowly ticked back to reality.
Oh yeah, I was cutting…
The novelty of the wounds was short lived as you heard the knock on the bedroom door. Someone spoke on the other side, but the knocking and the words and the blood pumping through your ears all blended together to make a cacophony of indistinguishable noise.
Shit, you thought, scrambling to stuff the razor back in its paper and into the book, I didn’t even hear him come home.
You stared at the foggy scene of blood rags and open wounds in front of you, and your heart started racing as you heard a gentle, “Hey, are you in there? Why’s the door locked?” from outside.
Another quick set of knocks against the door jolted your head up as the voice got louder and you struggled to stand.
You frantically looked at the scene unfolding around you. Hongjoong, knocking at the locked door to your shared room. Glancing at the shorts you were wearing, every cut was on full show. The drops of blood you had left on the mattress in your daze, the overall stench of vodka and iron – You came to one conclusion.
The conclusion that you were undeniably, irrefutably fucked.
Focusing on your breathing, you tried to slow your heart rate. You realise that it had once again become silent outside.
Breathe in, hold, breathe out. Breathe in, hold, breathe out.
Taking slow, unsteady steps to the door, you tentatively unlocked it and gently lowered yourself down to the floor, holding your knees to your chest and closing your eyes. You could already feel your eyelids getting heavier and the cool floorboards were doing nothing to keep you awake.
For a while, the creak of the door was the only indication that Hongjoong had entered the room. Then – the slow pat-pat-pat of his steps as he closed the door and circled you, before taking his own seat on the floor right next to you.
His breathing was shallow and quiet as he reached for your hand, pulling one away from your knees. Your eyes stayed shut, squeezed tight as if you could convince yourself this was all a dream, as long as you never had to look at him. You knew the look he would have on his face. As if you were fragile, broken, a project for him to fix. The same fucking reason you refused to talk to him about this in the first place.
A sharp inhale came from beside you as Hongjoong surveyed the injuries on your right thigh. A small, cold hand hovered above one of the wounds before gently brushing near it, sending a jolt of electricity through you.
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck?” Your eyes shot open as you sucked in air between your teeth. “Why the hell would you try to touch it?”
He turned away, eyebrows furrowed and voice wavering, “I… I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’ve never seen, uh..." He pauses, eyes darting between you and the floor, looking for the right words. "I've never seen this kind of thing before. Not fresh.”
You scoffed and shook your hand out of his grasp, and shuffled lacross the floor to reach the vodka bottle you’d discarded by the bedside table earlier, finding a shot’s worth left in the bottle. “Idiot…” You mumbled, before spitefully knocking the last of it back. You shiver from the taste and turn to lock eyes with Hongjoong again – only, he doesn’t look the way you expected.
You’d always thought about the day he’d finally see you at your worst. The day he sees you drunk and cut up, a mess of snot and tears, alcohol and blood and bandages. You always expected him to look angry. Dark eyes clouded with unbridled rage, angry at you for not trying harder to get better, angry at himself for not helping you enough, angry at the world for letting you get to this point – but there wasn’t a trace of anger to be found on his face at all.
Rather, there was only a look of muted sadness. His bottom lip was quivering, and despite looking away from you to stare at the ceiling, you could see the tears in his eyes welling up and threatening to fall. His once neon blue hair looked like a foggy grey-brown in the dull lighting, his pitiful form sapping every bit of colour from the room around him.
You almost laughed at the irony, a wry smile creeping onto your face at the absurdity of the whole situation. All this time you’d been expecting it to be the other way around. Now look at the two of you – he was quietly crying at the foot of the bed, while you’re pissed off to the high heavens. It was a pathetic scene.
You tossed the vodka bottle on the ground and Hongjoong’s head jerked up at the loud ‘thunk’ of glass against wood.
“Y’know what? I’m gonna go have a shower.” You tried to stand up on shaky legs as Hongjoong rushed over to you.
“Huh? Wait, no, we need to go to the hospital,” Hongjoong started babbling as you pushed off his hands, “You can barely stand, we have to-”
“What?” You snapped at him, “You’re gonna fix my fucking issues for me? You’re gonna help me scrub up and be the perfect, sane partner you’ve always wanted me to be? I’m not another one of your damn projects, Hongjoong. You can’t just slap some pretty patches on the parts of me you don’t like and make me good as new.”
“That’s not…” He trailed off as you scoff.
“I’ll be fine. Go eat your dinner, there’s leftovers in the fridge.”
It felt weird to shower with Hongjoong in the room. Non-sexual intimacy wasn’t rare for the two of you, but something about watching the blood circle the drain felt too private to have him around for. In the past, it was just you and your own thoughts. Your own private moment where you could feel the regret sinking into your chest as you looked at the carnage you’d brought onto your own body.
You didn’t blame him for following you, though. Not only were you drunk, but the blood loss was enough to make you unstable on your feet, and he didn’t know how else to help. It was… sweet. Through the shower curtain you could see Hongjoong’s shadow flit back and forth across the bathroom tiles, running his hands through his hair as he waited anxiously for you.
Turning off the shower, you sighed as you watched the blood start dripping down your legs again. No matter how many times you’ve done it, the fact that cuts refused to stop bleeding in the shower never ceased to annoy you. Frustrated, you tugged the shower curtain aside, only to be met by the sight of Hongjoong already there, holding out a bundle of towels and a tissue box.
“I, uh, I found the dark towels. I figured the blood wouldn’t stain them as bad.” He sheepishly smiled as he pushed a towel into your hands before quickly kneeling down, dropping the rest on the floor.
“What are the tissues for?”
He glanced up at you as he pulled out a tissue from the box. “To soak up the blood?”
Your sudden laughter made him jump, raising an eyebrow at you. The cracks in the walls you had built up were starting to show, as you considered how to phrase your next sentence. It was surreal to talk about this so casually, after having so much resentment build up for so long – so you stifled your giggles and pulled your leg away from his tissue-wielding hand, desperately clinging to the very same walls you hated.
“Thank you, Joong,” You softly replied, slowly wrapping the towel around yourself as you watched him, “but tissues are bad for anything past the first layer of skin. They break apart too easily, they’ll get stuck in the wound.”
He nods, turning the new information around in his head, before picking up another towel from the discarded pile. Hongjoong held it up between you, wordlessly asking for approval of the material. You nodded, and as you were about to step out of the shower, you instead found yourself frozen in place as he leaned forward to get to work.
You were absolutely enamoured by the tenderness in his hands, as he gently soaked up the diluted blood trickling past your knees and down your calves. The precision of every movement, the way he brought the towel ever so close to the cuts, but never so close as to hurt you. With the other hand, he lightly held the back of your calf to steady you both. The care he was taking to make sure you were cleaned and safe was… Unusual to you. It was like an odd caricature of a proposal. Hongjoong, down on one knee, dyed hair tousled and messy, tending to your wounds - while you stand there half naked and bleeding, and just watch.
He frowned as he realised the blood wouldn’t stop, and he looked up at you. “Can we please go to the hospital?"
Pinching the bridge of your nose, you sighed. This was the third time he’d mentioned the hospital since he had gotten home. As much as you knew he was suggesting it for your own health, Hongjoong had seen your cuts, and that was already one person too many.
“No, ugh-" You stopped, "Just hand me the towel, I’ll stop the bleeding.” You gestured over to the towel in his hand as you hobbled out of the tub, before plonking yourself down on the tiles with him. “This is gonna hurt like a bitch tomorrow,” You winced as you pressed the fabric into the worst offenders of the bunch, Hongjoong mirroring your expression as he shifted uncomfortably at the sight.
You sat in silence, staring off at nothing while Hongjoong gently hummed beside you. It was a tune you didn’t recognise – maybe it was a new one he was working on. You idled on this thought as you waited for the bleeding to stop.
He had a beautiful voice, and you pondered how long it had been since he had sung for you. It must’ve been weeks, if not months. You knew work had been exhausting for him lately. He was always home late, well past dinner, and your free times rarely overlapped. It always baffled you that somehow despite the long hours, he wasn’t completely sick of music already.
You zoned out to the humming, the serene echoes bouncing off the bathroom tiles nearly lulling you to sleep.
“Don’t you need stitches?” He eventually spoke up, interrupting your train of thought.
It had been some time – you weren’t sure if it was 5 minutes or 30, but you ran the risk of reopening the vessels and lifted the towel. Closing your eyes in relief, you let out a long breath as you noticed the bleeding had stopped.
“Yeah, probably.” You finally answered. “But I’m sure I have steri-strips back here somewhere…” You rifled through the cabinet under the sink for a second before triumphantly thrusting the first aid kit into the air. “Hah, found it!”
As you slumped back again, spine pressed to the bath, you could tell your exhaustion was starting to catch up to you. Slowly opening the steri-strip box and pulling out a sheet of them, you start to close the cuts one by one. The room was silent, the only sound being the shallow intakes of your breath when you tugged on a cut a little harder than intended, until a small, manicured hand came up to reach yours and stopped you in your tracks.
“Teach me, please. I want to help.” His dark eyes were full of a gentle, tentative curiosity, and the two of you simply stared at each other while you mulled it over.
“Okay.”
He was a fast learner, and even though the two of you had been in the bathroom for over an hour at that point, he didn’t complain once as you taught him where and how to add the iodine, or the different types of bandages. You could see his long eyelashes fluttering as he fought back a yawn, and you knew you didn’t look too dissimilar, but it was admirable how willing he was to learn. Closing and adding dressings to all the wounds was a time consuming and tiring process though, and you couldn’t deny that you were embarrassed by it. Though you knew that Hongjoong had asked to help, you felt greedy taking up so much of his time and labour.
Darting in and out of the room on clean-up duty, Hongjoong quickly bundled up the discarded packaging and stuffed it all into the trash before turning to where you still sat on the floor. You had almost forgotten where you were, languidly watching every move your partner made.
With a soft ‘c’mere’, he leant down and took hold of both of your hands. Glossy, half lidded eyes met yours as he gave your hands a soft squeeze, and with a quick nod, carefully helped you stand.
You took small steps on your way back to the bedroom, leaning your weight into Hongjoong, careful not to reopen any of the wounds. Huh, the sheets have been changed. The passage of time was a mystery to you, you thought to yourself guiltily – You had no idea how long he'd been busy cleaning while you zoned out.
Looking to the bedside table, the book with the hidden razor was still there – but so was a water bottle and pain meds, and you felt your eyes well up with tears at the gesture. No, he didn’t always understand you, but look at how long he had spent patching you up today, listening to every instruction and soaking it all in with the focus of a surgeon. His incessant need to fix everything, whether it’s his problem or not, can feel overbearing at times – but it’s the same thing that gives him the initiative to get you water and meds without you having to ask.
You sat down on your side of the bed, adjusted the sheets, and glanced up at Hongjoong. Your glossy eyes followed his lithe frame as he circled the bed to get under the covers next to you, before looping his arms around you to pull you close. Resting your head on his chest, you listened to his breathing slow down, as your eyelids finally fluttered shut. The walls between you weren’t fully torn down, it’d take a while before you really took the sledgehammer to those bricks - but the cracks were showing, enough for the rays of sunlight to peek through. And that was enough for now.