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The adrenaline is faint, but it’s always there. every time.
He’s long given up on resetting the counter on his sobriety app. it doesn’t really matter anymore when it’s become so frequently infrequent as it has, used as some kind of stress relief rather than something as serious as it is.
But it’s… not, really.
He doesn’t cut deep. It’s shallow, and thin lines. they only bleed enough to roll down his tanned skin in one sluggish, trailing drop for each wound. But it’s enough. Blood letting to a minor degree, it feels like. A punishment for being the way he is. Penance is maybe a better word.
He’s fine, is the thing. He goes to school, goes to work at the campus library. He calls Tristan and they talk while he’s doing homework, a quizlet study set on citizen rights on one side of the split screen and the pixelated view of them sketching, their giant book of tear-off sheets of paper laid out in front of them on the other.
He calls his parents when he misses the idea of a mother, of his father. They remind him he should be doing more. He doesn’t miss them anymore. He nods in silence as if they can see his empty agreement from the other side of the line.
The cycle repeats. Benji lives through it like a flower blooming through a winter that wont seem to leave, battered, weak petals peaking out through the frozen snow.
The cold will kill him one day. He just refuses to let that day be soon.
So, he bleeds. It helps him stay that way—helps him keep pretending like he’s fine, like the life he leads isn’t so fucking draining that he lies awake in the mornings, the few minutes he can spare before dragging himself out of bed spent wallowing in how bad he hates himself. How pathetic all of this is.
It’s a way to keep the balance he’s set for himself. He ruins himself to keep him conscious of the fact that he’s not enough—To stay self aware about it, about the way everything he does is annoying or too much or not enough. Maybe both.
He doesn’t know why he phrases it as maybe. He knows both is the right answer.
Whatever. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.
None of it matters. He bleeds, he releases all the hurt he’s clinging to that month. The cuts heal. They leave slim, flat pink lines in their wake. He opens them up again. Never deep, but never stopping. Always hurting on the surface so he doesn’t ache on the inside more than he can handle.
He knows maybe, if he was talking to a professional about this, they would disagree. They would tell him hurting himself won’t give him what he’s looking for in the long run, and collecting barely-visible, pale scars on the skin of his hips and thighs isn’t something to be proud of, isn’t something to feel like he’s bettering himself with.
Tristan would disagree. Not that they know; he wants to keep it that way. It’s not their problem, and they have enough things to worry about. Their internship is going well, but it’s a heavy workload. They’ve been fighting with the CSFA about their status as a cut-off kid.
They don’t need him flooding their already overfilled capacity for worry, for fear. They don’t need him at all, but they insist on keeping him around.
He hopes they continue to. He thinks he might be in love with them. With the way they laugh, the way their rings clink against the screen when they pick up their phone to shove their face closer to the camera for emphasis as they rant about a shitty professor. He loves everything about them. Who wouldn’t?
But he wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t let him hang around much longer. He wouldn’t blame anyone. He’d keep loving them from the other side of the screen when they post pictures of their new projects and he’d read every article that mentioned their name and their work with such pride for them that it made him sick.
They don’t need to know, is the point. He’s fine. There’s nothing to know.
Anyway, They’re coming into town today. He’s picking them up at the bus stop. He keeps smiling to himself, tugging at his sleeves with nervous excitement. He’s missed them so bad. They always give good hugs that drag out a little longer than he thinks normal ones do. They always tell him he smells good.
That’s not why he misses them, of course, but the praise and open, easy touch, the affection behind it, is something he doesn’t get much of. He lets himself soak it up like a sponge whenever they’re here, desperate and aching to be someone who’s worth it.
So today, despite the fresh cuts pulsing in their ache underneath his jeans and the giant square bandaid slapped over them, He feels nothing but happiness. He’s let his hurt for the month go. He’s ready to start filling the empty sink of it with their sunshine, and then let it make the rest of the murky hurt feel a little more bearable as it’s poured in after. Start with the good, top it off with the bad. It makes the taste of it easier. It’s an added plus that it makes him feel fresh for them—cleaner, more purified from all his bad, all his worst parts.
He rubs his knuckle against the flat of his lip, jittery with happiness, and he rocks back and forth on the worn soles of his fuzzy boots as his head swishes back and forth in search of the bus.
His heart nearly jumps out of his chest when he sees it turn the corner, the head beams bright in the rising, hazy sunlight of the early morning. He hops up and down a little maybe. Sue him! He’s excited.
He tries to wait patiently for the bus to stop. Tries, being the keyword, because he kind of hovers off to the side of the door as a few other people trickle out.
Tristan emerges last, and he forces himself to stay still as they adjust their backpack and the bus door close behind them.
When they look up at him from their shuffling, smiling and beautiful and murmuring “Hey, Benji,” his resolve snaps. He’s gravitating into their space, and they’re laughing and wrapping their arms around him like they’ve missed him too. His weak heart purrs like a kitten at the hope he finds in that.
They turn their nose into the side of his head, and he sighs into their shoulder quietly as they murmur into his hair about it having been too long. He nods, and squeezes them tighter.
They pull away after a few moments. He mourns it, mourns being held, but he goes willingly. Their hand drags against the side of his hips as it pulls away, and he rests assured knowing they can’t feel the bandage there through the thick denim. To them, He’s fine. He’s okay, Because he always is. He gets sad sometimes, he goes quieter than usual, but he’s always alright the next day. He bounces back because it’s not that bad.
No one knows how he keeps it that way. Tristan, specifically, will never know. He won’t chase them away with his hurt, his self-reminders.
It’s like sticky notes on the bathroom mirror—for his eyes only, and a note-to-self about the important things.
They all read “You’re a disappointment with everything you do in life, and you’ll die that way. You’ll die unhappy and mediocre and a burden to your parents,” and when they flutter off the metaphorical mirror in Tristan’s presence, he decides he’ll pick them up off the floor later. They can stay fallen from his concious for now.
They smile at him, and it makes the hurt worth it. He’ll ache alone, and he’ll bask in them when they take mercy on him by visiting. They’ll never feel the band-aids through his clothes.
He’s okay.