Work Text:
She should’ve been asleep by now. The tiny digital icon on the upper left of his screen flashes 2:14, glowing faint even on the lowest brightness setting. She ignores it, duh, and digs the bottom half of her face deeper into the blanket as an act of defiance. Ness scrolls through her twitter timeline (or x, she never cared to change her personal vocabulary through the weird rebrand), finding herself subconsciously swiping through the oh-so-special self harm content. A bedtime routine ritual, if you will.
A quick search on #shtwt brings her to vents, seshes, and aftercare tutorial threads. She scrolls past, focusing in on each and pressing “unhide” to view each photo. Then, she bookmarks.
An oddly familiar back fills her screen; the obvious bodycheck is uncensored, receiving eight-thousand likes nonetheless. The user spells out Kaiuser10, referencing the famous kai razor, but Ness stumbles over himself when he accidentally misreads it as something (someone) else. The shoulder blades create harsh shadows against the pale skin. Even in the dark, Ness can still make out the blue rose tattoo adorning the skin. Thorns trail down the person’s arm, the familiar crown on the palm was concealed with the angle of the photo. It’s fuzzy and royal blue, textured and delicate, like the soft fibers of old photos. Ness aches to touch, both the tattoo and the bumpy scars.
“New year, new markings,” the caption reads. Puffy keloids scatter across each thorn and the sides of the lower back, making Ness wonder how anyone could reach back there. Barely-scabbing styros litter the shoulders and angel wing carvings were finely scraped out from thick muscle.
decaying angel / 0 days without binging
scarspo + thinspo ugh
my melody of shedtwt 🩸🥗
need the workout routine badly
mimi
oh my god im totally fasting till i die
Jesus of shedtwt
moots?
Ness zooms into the photo, focusing in on the hair that drapes the person’s broad shoulders. Wisps of blond, layered, like someone he knew a bit too well. She sighs, opening up her messages.
Kaiser
(open attachment)
Is this you or is someone impersonating?
Unsurprisingly, the blonde was online, and the typing icon quickly flashes back at her.
“Are you sure this is okay?”
“You’re backing out?” Kaiser looks up at the other through her lashes, blade in her right hand and grabbing Ness’s thigh with the other. “You wanted to do this.”
The badly drawn out sharpie star sits on the crease of where her hip ends and her leg starts, staying a cruel reminder of what they were about to attempt. Ness bites her lip.
“No!” Ness defends. “I’m just scared my parents will see. Don’t do it too low.” Sink, and swipe.
That’s how Ness typically used her blades, and she tells Kaiser that much. Sink and swipe — it was reliable as long as she stayed above her mid-thigh where their shorts could cover. While she had tried her forearm and wrist before, back when she was in school, the awkward infection talk with her parents was so not worth it. The blonde throws her a judgemental stare, eyeing the size difference between their preexisting scars. Compared to Ness, Kaiser’s a total zombie. Her keloids look like chunks of flesh ripped out, present throughout her entire body. Swollen scars layer atop each other in cross hatches and various designs like floral buds threatening to bloom.
Ness winces at the first cut, picking his phone up quickly to take a photo of the white layer before it turns red. Cutspo… maybe, she thinks.
“Why do you care what your parents think? You don’t even see them these days. You post this online for pedophiles, Ness.” Sink, and swipe.
“I don’t… I private my twitter every other day, it’s fine.”
This time, Ness watches the blade closely, watching it dig itself deep through the outermost layer of the skin, the epidermis. The razor blade stains itself with crimson and burgundy, losing its nuance to the lack of light in Ness’s room. Her similarly colored bangs get pulled away and tucked behind her ears to get a better look at the beads flourishing on her thighs; Kaiser catches this movement and puts the blade away too, adjusting Ness’s leg to let it drip towards his pulled-up shorts. She cups her hand around Ness’s inner thigh, a bit too high for Ness’s comfort, curling her fingers involuntarily and controlling the blood flow. Ness’s skin tingles at Kaiser’s warmth and the burn of the cuts.
“Either way, they’re gonna… wait, slow down! My parents are gonna think I got into, like, a blood pact or white supremist cult or something,” Ness hisses.
“Is that not what this is?”
“Stop deflecting with questions and just cut me!” She cries, praying it would scar properly.
“What I mean is,” Kaiser sticks out her tongue trying to get the right angle, “a blood cult-pact-whatever is way cooler than what this actually is.” Sink, and swipe. “So you might as well tell your parents that.”
“Not sure if — fuck — a death cult would use mini hip stars to label their members,” Ness winces, gazing back at the matching un-cut star on Kaiser’s hip, only partially hidden by her underwear.
Kaiser raises an eyebrow. “You were the one who said this was like a blood pact.”
Ten cuts total… seven more to go. Ness huffs, feeling Kaiser’s grip on her leg intensifying the pain.
And honestly, if she was really honest with herself, the two sensations together felt good. The vulnerability of their positions, the entire situation, the way that Kaiser could easily grab the blade and start cutting Ness out of the lines just for the sake of ruining her… the list goes on. Ness turns red (at the pain, not the thought… or, or maybe... no, no. She doesn’t think too hard, she’s way too far gone).
Sink, and swipe. On the rare occasion when Kaiser does reach the fat layer (despite the fact that he swore not to go deeper than styro), it takes a second longer for the blood to fill in. A window between the styro layer opens, revealing the dull yellow beads of fat.
Baby beans. Ness exhales shakily and stares at it longer, too, yet the blood pools in all the same, just overfilling the wound more than usual. It drips down Kaiser’s index finger, leaking down her palm as it dries. Ness can feel the stickiness of her hand without even touching it herself, yet zero complaints were heard from the blond.
She places down the pink razor flat on his own leg, wiping her fingers hastily on whatever used tissues she can get her hands on. Ness’s stomach flips violently, taking nearly a minute to recover before another wave of nausea encompasses her as Kaiser wipes down the new blood again.
“What are you doing? We promised!” Ness panics.
“I can do way deeper than this if I wanted to. We’ll just do aftercare.” Sink, and swipe, he cuts, giving minimal time for Ness to get over the previous one. “You really are all talk if you only do styros,” he mumbles.
“I don’t think depth matters… but right, yeah, okay,” Ness braces herself. Ness stares down Kaiser’s shirt, a basic white athletic leisure shirt from Aeropostale she probably stole.
“Shut up.”
Ness’s mouth gapes. “What the fuck? Wait — don’t go that hard, wait!”
Soon, the tissues are more red than white, and more brown than red. The blood dries down bone dry and to put it simply, it’s disgusting. The scent is repulsing, filling Ness’s room like poison gas and the locker rooms after practice. Kaiser’s mellow body spray and hers from Victoria’s Secret veils the scent faintly, but Ness gags all the same. The blood stiffens the soft tissue, reminding Ness of the cheap cardstock Noa uses to get them to ‘write down how you feel’. The tissues bleed, too — onto the sheets, mattress, their skin, Ness’s denim shorts, everywhere. The residue of simply having it directly on her bed grosses her out more than necessary.
“Y’know, the power I have right now is… really hot,” says Kaiser, without further elaboration. Ness hums, feeling blood rush up her face in addition to her leg. Each cut makes Ness twitch and Kaiser frown at her lack of tolerance, but each time, the blonde would softly smile and press her forehead against her shin. She’d rub Ness’s calf assuringly in small circles, but immediately do the next when the girl least expects it. Sink and swipe, repeating ‘till Ness looks back at her with teary empty eyes, whining and groaning all at the same time.
“Em, ah, Kaiser… Kaiser,” the redhead begs. “Slow… slow down.”
“Your legs, they’re nice. I’m jealous.”
“Huh? Wait!” Ness flinches. Sink, swipe, and pull away.
“Like, they’re shaved, despite the scars. And you’re thin, here,” Kaiser hums. “Scars really get in the way of shaving.”
“Are you like — ow, ow ow — an edtwt bitch now?”
“You said you saw my post! Liar,” Kaiser giggles, grinding the blade deeper and running it against past swollen cat scratches.
The black sharpie fades into the blood with each wipe. Somewhere in the middle, where the edges blur and she can still feel the other’s judgmental stare, Ness groans and throws her head back. Her thighs, hips, wherever-this-is, and everywhere else pulses. Ness gags as aggressively as Raichi does with her badly hidden bulimia tendencies and her breath catches in her throat with a sickly tinge. Kaiser observes attentively.
She feels her heart beat erratically, and she’s sure Kaiser can hear it too as she inches herself towards Ness’s quivering thighs — as if suppressing the urge to lap up the blood with her tongue. Kaiser stares at the blood like a drugorexic vampire, sucking a breath in through the gaps of her teeth. Ness’s shorts chafe her skin, red lines blooming beneath from the strain of denim fibers. Kaiser traces her leg with her breath, pressing a soft kiss on the tip of the other girl’s knee. She shudders while giving a careful nod of approval.
Ness cries but the blond keeps going, stippling kiss after kiss to her trembling body all while sinking the blade in, reveling in the ruined gasps. Soft sniffling comes from underneath and Ness furrows her brows, flinching with each touch. Reaching down, Ness cards her fingers through Kaiser’s (ultimately dead) hair, running circles with her thumb on the other’s scalp. Her heart swells. Kaiser tips her head upwards.
“Look at me, you’re fine. Deep breaths.”
Two sniffles and a nod, but her vision swarms.
Sink, and swipe. Ness bites down on her left hand, in between her thumb and her index, leaving teeth markings and prints of saliva on the back of her hand. The fan flickers in the background, blinking back at the two in short intervals through a loud buzz; the room seems to eerily tilt around them as the pain flares once more. Another silent sob breaks loose while her ears ring and Kaiser’s hysterical yells melt into static.
Ness never did cut Kaiser’s star carving in return, but she wakes up to the throbbing and Kaiser having already done it herself. Ness’s was finished too, covered with badly done dressing, making her wonder how Kaiser did the rest while she was out. Something new blooms on Kaiser’s thighs as well — at least ten new cat scratches and a couple of parallel styros. She has a way cleaner, uncovered star too, following a clear stain line on the skin where she took too long before wiping off extra blood. The mini puddle of blood underneath them two is bigger than what she remembers and her throat suddenly feels like she was throat fucked with a pair of scissors. Kaiser smiles lopsidedly, her align tank top’s right strap falling off of her shoulder.
The blond catches her staring. “Told you I’m not backing out. It’s nice enough that you just allow me to do this to you, anyway.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Ness coughs.
“I mean, there is no universe where I’d ever let you, but whatever.” Kaiser pauses. “Was kind of banking on you fainting mid way.”
Ness bites down on her hand again. Iron floods her taste buds.
“I’ll tag you in the thread,” Kaiser swipes open her phone with facial recognition.
Ness groans. “This better be a hit tweet.”