Morishige stood in the bathroom, hunched over the sink, with an arm propped on the counter. His other hand clawed at an array of scars that lined his skin. His fingers scratched at the scabs that had formed over the past week. His nails dug under as he destroyed the clots over his wounds and gave access to the smooth cut underneath.
He needed to see the bright, striking red of his blood on his skin. The stage of healing where his cuts were replaced with ugly, muddled scabs was his least favorite. He only looked at them with repulsion; a regret that ached and itched until they fully paled and healed.
It always took too long for his liking. As another scab was scratched off, blood seeped out of the wound immediately, and a sense of relief washed over him. The sting reminded him of the first pricks at his skin from a razor blade. He missed that feeling. It had only been a few days.
He reached for the tissue paper by his side and quickly patted it down his arm. His bleeding thoroughly stained the tissue he held in his hand, and he threw it to the side, along with the rest that were littered throughout. Out of the corner of his eye, he gauged the amount of tissues there were at the counter, how the red stains stood out against the pale marble. He glanced back down to his arm, to the blood that dripped down his wrist into the sink below, and to the bathroom door.
His heart sank into his stomach as he realized what he had been doing. He looked over the mess he made on the bathroom counter, then down to his arm. He almost felt nauseated by the contrast of red against the white of the bathroom.
He quickly turned the knob of the faucet to wash away the blood, then dropped to the floor, and opened the cabinets beneath. He searched frantically for fresh bandages; rummaging through various boxes of medicines that his mother never threw out and medications he never took. But, he stumbled as his arm bumped into the cabinet door, and he let out a frustrated groan.
Morishige stood back up, turned the knob off, and reached for his phone.
-
Kizami laid on the futon in Morishige’s room; he mindlessly fiddled with his phone as he waited for him to come back. The television at the desk was set to the HDMI channel– the blue screen the only source of light in the room aside from his phone.
A ping then rang out along with a text from Morishige.
| Sakutaro
> I NEED YOU
> GET IN HERE
> NOW
Kizami looked at his phone, bewildered, before he put it down and got up.
-
He walked across the hall to the bathroom and stood by the door as he knocked. "Sakutaro?"
"Get in here.” Morishige's voice was muffled by the door, but Kizami could notice how it wavered.
"What's wron–" Kizami cut himself off as he took in the state of the bathroom. His eyes glanced across the blood that stained tissues, the countertop, the sink, until they lastly settled on Morishige. He had been gripping his wrist, hastily wrapped up in tissue paper, his tight grasp an attempt to stop the bleeding.
Kizami shut the door behind him and walked to where Morishige stood. He grabbed his arm with more force than necessary– the makeshift-bandage unraveled slightly to reveal the cuts underneath. "You reopened them…?"
"I…" Morishige started, distraught as he struggled to explain. After some hesitance, he only gestured to his arm, then to the cabinet beneath the sink. "I can't find the bandages like this."
Kizami took the signal and crouched down to see the pile of meds thrown about from Morishige's earlier attempt to look through it all. He tried his hand at finding what Morishige needed, for a first-aid kit, anything to fix up those wounds. "Why do you have so much of this shit?"
"My mother never throws it out," Morishige said. He was certain most of it was expired at this point, but she insisted on keeping all of it around from her fear that one day he may need it.
Kizami finally took out a box from the back that seemed to carry different kinds of gauze. He set it down onto the counter as he moved to the sink to wash his hands thoroughly. “Come here.”
Morishige walked over to him slowly. The blood had soaked the tissue that wrapped his wrist, and it clung to his fingers as he loosened his grip. Kizami held a wad of tissue, wet with water and soap, and took Morishige’s arm. As he unraveled the wrap over Morishige’s wrist, there was a noticeable grimace on Morishige’s face. He hated this sight of Kizami taking care of him. He felt like a child, fragile and helpless.
But his cuts were now out in the open; fresh clots had already started to form. “There should be disinfectant under the sink,” he said in a small voice. Kizami instead moved his wrist under the running water, and Morishige let out a hiss.
“I’m not putting disinfectant on that,” he replied as he dabbed Morishige’s arm with the wad. Morishige grunted, the soap stung at his cuts until Kizami washed it off. “It’ll only damage your skin.”
With a washcloth, Kizami then gently dried Morishige’s arm, and brought out the gauze from the box. He set a piece over Morishige’s wounds wrapped the rest around, and took care of his injury.
“There. Now, don’t mess with it,” he demanded as he finally let go of the other’s arm.
Morishige gave out a huff, visibly embarrassed by the whole ordeal. “You know how to dress a wound well,” he said vacantly.
Kizami shrugged as he began to clean the counter. “My sister. She had to do the same thing to me all the time when I was younger.” He looked over the stains that remained, and a vague smirk came across his face. “How do you manage to take care of yourself when you’re alone?”
“I have all the time in the world when I’m alone,” Morishige replied without any hesitation, but he looked down and refused to make eye contact. “Knowing you were here, though… I panicked.”
Kizami blinked at him, then glanced down to Morishige's arms. “Does it usually get this bad?”
“Sometimes,” Morishige murmured. He was lucky enough to get out of his stupor before he truly went too far. It was a common ritual for him to reopen his scabs and watch himself bleed. If he hadn’t realized Kizami was outside that door, waiting for him, he could have gone on for hours.
There was no excuse he could come up with as to why he did it. He only knew he downright despised the feeling of his scabs, the way they took over his skin, the dry itch that weighed on his mind constantly until he finally picked at them. He craved that release more than anything in the world.
“You can’t help it even when you have a guest home,” he heard Kizami say. There was a slightly mocking tone at the end, but Morishige chose to ignore it.
“I think it’s worse when I’m under stress.” A stupidly obvious answer.
At that, Kizami’s mouth twitched, his brows knit together. He was silent for a second until he asked, “Does it stress you out that I’m here?”
“No,” Morishige said immediately, but his eyes were still fixated on the floor. “It’s not you.”
He stayed silent as he thought of earlier, in his bedroom, when Kizami had reached for his hand. A small, intimate gesture where his thumb had brushed over Morishige’s scars. It reminded him of the hardened skin. It had made him feel ugly, ashamed.
The grip on his arm returned without thinking, a grunt escaping him as it hurt. “I wish you didn’t have to see them,” he admitted.
Kizami then let out a scoff. "I'm not any better, remember?”
Morishige then finally looked up at him, and realized just how unbecoming his insecurity over his scars seemed.
He knew Kizami had his own share after years and years of poor impulse; discolored patches of skin from when he would mess around with his lighter as a child. He had apparently always been a bit of a pyromaniac, though he matured into lighting up his dad’s cigarettes and pressing them up and down his arm.
Of course, Morishige had seen them. They never once bothered him. If anything, they fascinated him.
He wondered if Kizami felt the same for his.
He sighed, "I guess you're not,” and suddenly felt a pang at the side of his head. He squeezed his eyes shut. It must have been from the smell of iron or the fluorescent lights of the bathroom.
He heard water run from under the faucet, then his name.
“Sakutaro.”
Morishige opened his eyes again and looked at Kizami, who had washed his hands one last time. His expression was serious, but nothing about it conveyed pity or worry.
“Let’s just go back to your room."
Morishige nodded, relieved, and followed Kizami out of the bathroom. As they walked out, he noticed a line of blisters on Kizami’s upper arm that peeked out of his sleeve.
-
The screen of his television didn’t help his headache. The moment they entered his room again, Morishige immediately went to put on a movie. He needed the distraction, which Kizami wordlessly understood.
He had been half-expecting Kizami to chastise him, that this was over-the-line, that he should know better or didn’t deserve to do this to himself. But Kizami never said anything, and only watched the movie with a bored expression, head propped up by an arm.
And Morishige was immensely grateful for that.