Work Text:
Blood drips onto the floor.
The razor falls to the ground with a small clang, a mishap brought on by unsteady hands. He hadn’t even noticed he was shaking until now.
Sae doesn’t bother to pick it back up, exhausted by the mess he’s made of his arm. Warm, sticky blood beads on fresh wounds and travels down, falling into a pool on the hardwood beneath him. He closes his eyes, beginning to feel a bit dizzy. He thinks, just for a moment, that this feeling of peace might last forever. He’d stay here, sitting on the floor, and nothing else would bother him again. No fears. No expectations. Just him and the abyss.
Unfortunately, his thoughts are quickly interrupted by the sound of movement across the room, causing his eyes to fly open.
His gaze travels along the room until it lands on the source of the noise. Shidou stands in the doorway, grocery bags in hand, staring straight at him.
That’s right. Shidou had gone to stock up on food for the both of them. “How am I supposed to make us breakfast without eggs?”, he’d said. Sae briefly wonders how far gone he must have been to have missed his entrance—he wasn’t exactly the quietest person.
It didn’t take long for Shidou’s gaze to become uncomfortable, and Sae ends up diverting his own to the wall. He could still feel his eyes boring into him from several feet away. The silence in the room felt thick and heavy, far too much left unsaid.
After a few moments, he hears the other move, and when he finds the courage to look back up, he’s gone. Perhaps he was angry? Or, better yet, he simply didn’t care. Sae would understand both. Maybe this would push him over the edge, and Sae would be left alone again. At least he’d know how to manage that. He’d learned how to become comfortable in his misery over time.
He looks back down at his arm. The blood was beginning to dry, forming an uncomfortable crust upon his skin. The slashes were deep enough not to sting, but to rather cause a dull, throbbing pain. It felt almost distant, as if he was experiencing someone else’s pain; as if this body wasn’t quite his own. Sometimes he wished it wasn’t.
After a few minutes, Shidou returns, crossing the room to reach Sae this time. He took care to pick up the razor, not wanting either of them to wind up stepping on it, and placed it upon their bedside table. It could be properly disposed of later.
“Come on,” he says, extending a hand to the other. Sae simply stares up at him for a few seconds, not able to process the request immediately. His thoughts felt fuzzy and confusing. Perhaps the blood loss was making him delirious.
“Come on,” Shidou repeats, making a beckoning motion with his hand. This time, the hand is taken, and Sae is pulled to his feet. He stumbles in the process, but is caught; though not without smearing blood on the other’s shirt.
“Sorry,” Sae mumbles. And he was sorry, but not just about staining his shirt; he was sorry about the entire ordeal. This whole situation would have been avoided if he could refrain from the most basic task of not hurting himself, but he’d failed to do so. And he hated himself for it.
Shidou shouldn’t have to put up with him when he’s like this. All he is is a burden. He’s unnecessary baggage, waiting to be tossed out, and he’d have removed himself from their situationship months ago if Shidou weren’t so damn persistent.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been caught, but he hoped it would be the last. He’d been trying to stay clean, but when everything became too much to bear, he desperately reached out for any sense of control he could get his hands on, and all too often that manifested in him holding the blade once again. Sometimes he was barely even aware it was happening until it was over.
When he wasn’t slashing his own skin, he was itching to do so. Every waking moment, it was in the back of his mind. Even when he was out training, or curled up on the couch with Shidou, he couldn’t shake the need to be digging a blade into his wrists. It permeated his thoughts, like a parasite crawling through his brain, infecting it. It made him feel absolutely vile.
“It’s okay,” Comes Shidou’s short response. Whether he had caught on that he was apologizing for more than just his shirt, Sae couldn’t say. For a guy who wore his heart on his sleeve, he could sometimes be strikingly difficult to read.
Wordlessly, Sae is guided to the bathroom by the taller man. He doesn’t protest, simply allowing himself to be pulled along. He didn’t feel as though he were in a position to fight back, and he didn’t want to anyway. He was thoroughly worn out, both mentally and physically, and he trusted Shidou. As much as he could trust anyone, anyway.
Shidou turns on the sink, and Sae inhales sharply as his arm is positioned beneath warm, running water. The sting from his cuts reverberates throughout his arm. For a few seconds, it felt like he was on fire.
“You okay?” Shidou asks quietly, glancing up. Sae provides a small nod in response; the pain had dulled quickly. While the feeling was unpleasant at best, he knew it was best to get it over with as quickly as possible.
He closes his eyes as Shidou uses a gentle soap to clean out his wounds, washing away the blood. The repetitive motions were almost therapeutic. If he weren’t standing, he could probably fall asleep like this.
Sae wasn’t one to let himself be taken care of. He didn’t like to ask for help, and he didn’t like being pitied, either. Relying on others made him feel small and helpless—but Shidou was different.
He still didn’t like accepting help. Shidou had received a slap to the back of the head more than once for saying something stupid that Sae didn’t care for. He was just all too eager to show up, to cling, to be there. It felt like every aspect of Sae’s life had been infiltrated by Ryuusei Shidou. There was no escaping him.
With a bit of time, whether it was from learning they existed or having the initial excitement of sharing an apartment wear off, he started to respect Sae’s boundaries. And with a bit of time, Sae began to feel comfortable with the rhythm they’d fallen into.
There were times like this where their carefully constructed routine was broken, and yet Sae wasn’t upset. Here he was, allowing someone else to clean up after him, and he was fine with it.
More than fine—he felt like he was home.
Not just in a physical, literal sense, but he felt at home with Shidou. As if no matter where he went, he’d be grounded and comfortable as long as he was with him.
In this moment, he felt truly, thoroughly loved.
He didn’t notice he was staring until Shidou—who was patting his arm dry with a towel—meets his eye, raising an eyebrow. Neither of them say anything, but something passes between them, something indescribable. A promise of sorts, maybe?
Suddenly, Sae feels extremely tired, and he steps toward the other so that he can lay his head on his shoulder.
“Don’t fall sleep just yet. I’m almost done, ‘kay?”
“Okay.” Sae murmurs, closing his eyes as his arm is wrapped in a soft gauze. He briefly wonders where Shidou had learned how to do all of this, and if he’d done so just for him.
When his eyes reopen, Shidou is fastening the bandages with a safety pin. Maybe not the best way to secure them, but at least they won’t go anywhere.
“Aaall done! Pretty good work, huh, Sae-chan~?”
Sae takes a few seconds to reply, just staring at his arm. “…Yeah. Good job.”
Shidou beams at the compliment, planting a kiss atop Sae’s head, to which he receives a small shove, without any real force behind it.
“Calm down. All I want to do right now is sleep.”
The taller man makes a face, which might have supposed to have been puppy dog eyes, but his features are too sharp for it to have full effect.
“Yeah, sure, I’ll let you sleep with me. Whatever. And I mean literally sleep. Don’t try shit with me, demon.”
He instantly lights up, moving to hug Sae. “We can get back to that non-literal sleeping together thing later~,” He says through a smile, and Sae rolls his eyes. Maybe they would, but he wasn’t going to dignify that with a response right now.
With a bit of difficulty (hard to leave a room when you have a man clinging to you), they exit the bathroom, and Sae makes his way to their bed. Their bed, since, at some point, Shidou had stopped sleeping on the couch, and Sae would be lying if he said he wouldn’t miss the warmth of having him by his side every night. He’s hyper-aware of how empty it feels without him.
It takes a minute for Shidou to follow suit, but once he does, he immediately wraps his arms around the smaller man. He’s warm, much warmer than Sae, and it brings a familiar sense of comfort. Sae exhales, letting go of a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding, and places his hand on Shidou’s.
His bandages feel tight around his arm, but for once, they aren’t constricting. Today’s events were less than desirable, but Shidou had been there to help him pick up the pieces, and now he can start again.
The thought of picking the blade back up doesn’t occur to him, not even once, as he drifts into a peaceful sleep in Shidou’s arms.
What a wonder it is to be loved.