Warning(s): Selfharm

Heavy pants fill the small bathroom as a thin blond haired boy collapses against the porcelain sink. No one else can see the breakdown and the locking of the bathroom door is almost done automatically.

He's trembling; he can feel the vibrations of his arm repeatedly hitting the cool tile of the floor. He could see it, too, when he first ran into the bathroom. The stark fear that screamed for help from his eyes, the paleness of his face, stricken by some overwhelming emotion, and the haunted, dead expression of his.

He can't stand much longer than a glance at his destroyed reflection and he slides to the floor to an undignified heap. He can't quite place how he feels.

He feels horror, fear, anger, disappointment radiate faintly from inside, but it's all dulled by the overpowering feeling of panic. He hasn't quite mastered feeling nothing, so the bite of shame and heaviness of disappointment sets off a panicked reaction in him.

For a fleeting moment, he wonders what his band members felt and their reactions to his only half collected excuse to claim the bathroom first. It lasts for all of a half second, because he remembers that first night he asked to used to the bathroom first instead of usually being last. Being one of the eldest meant that he tried to catch a few winks of sleep before someone woke him to notify that the shower was empty. But the months of near bolting to the bathroom no longer draws the raised eyebrows as it did before.

No one knows the reason why he bolts so panicked into the bathroom. No one but Minseok. Minseok sort of knows what he's dragging his body into, covering himself in lies and deception, whispering filthy sympathies to himself as he makes everything else fade to the background. Minseok looks at him with his pained expression before he runs to his quiet hell. At first, the elder had pounded against the door, crying to him to open the door and to stop. The begs had abruptly stopped when the rest of Exo slowly filed into the dorm, and the privacy of the two were filtered away.

But now, Minseok just sits outside of the door, still whispering his pleas for him to stop and his pleases. He feels that familiar pang of guilt, but it's just another lie to add to his collection.

It's a quiet whisper that builds up to a full out roar. It slides underneath his skin, too far out of reach to scratch. It's in his ears, his hair, his head. He can't get it out and it tears at him from inside. Luhan wants everything to stop but at the same time, he doesn't want anything to change. He's terrified of tipping the boat and drowning in fake lies.

Minseok's begs, incessant and pleading, fade to quiet as his voice cracks and Luhan can't hear anything but muffled sobs. He doesn't know what the rest of Exo think but he can't seem to get himself to care.

It's ironic, pitiful, and disgusting really, when Minseok's the one who whimpers and cries while Luhan can only seem to make himself cry with biting blades and thin scars.

The sobs from his lover tear at his ears and he almost opens the door and let the small Korean boy into his head and heart to let himself heal but compulsion binds his limbs. It's getting painful now, the crushing pressure inside his head.

It's not real, the doctor whispered.

It's inside your head, Luhan, the psychiatrist whispered.

I love you, Minseok whispered, but all the voices get drowned out by the pain that drapes over him like a wet blanket but hurts him like a boa constrictor around his head, his heart, his self-worth.

His trembling hands fumble as they nearly claw at his jeans. Luhan withdraws small little blades, nothing more than sharp box cutters, glimmering and reflecting the light that shines in the dorm bathroom.

Luhan's not stupid. He's not stupid enough to let his stitches where he's being held together show where anyone with a sharp enough eye and camera can see. HD shows everything and teenage girls with fake lashes and cellulite pinch at their oppas, fawning over their flawlessness generated by pounds of foundation.

He tugs down his pants until the top of his thighs peek above the fabric. When the white skin begins to show, Luhan almost feels anticipation. Then the crisscrossings of a war slowly reveal themselves in thin, broken lines.

Luhan's paralyzed, the only thing moving is the trembling that he can't seem to shake loose. His fingers ghost whisper across the top of his legs, ridges and valleys felt underneath calloused fingers.

"Please," Minseok's outside voice begs Luhan.

"MAKE IT GO AWAY," Luhan wants to scream and throw open the door and throw himself into Minseok's strong arms to throw away the chains the drag him to the bottom on his hell.

But the pressure builds and builds and all Luhan wants, needs, craves is an escape.

And the box cutter winks at him as it draws crimson lines across his broken skin.

Luhan almost sighs.

Before he realizes it, sister lines join the first, droplets of blood well up like rain that slice down cloudy windows.

As more of Luhan's stitches fall apart, the more the pressure lessens and he feels himself sigh.

Minseok doesn't know that he does this. Minseok just thinks that he drowns in his monsters and buckles under the pressure. But he thinks that Minseok really knows that he's doing. He sees the smudges that Luhan can never quite scrub off from under his nails no matter how hot the water is, the amount of soup he rubs in, or careful he is. But Luhan likes to think that Minseok doesn't know.

The blood that he can't seem to wash off.

But Luhan knows that Minseok's tongue is bound by Minseok's own demons and the contract that binds them both and the price that they both sold their bodies away to.

Stardom.

It's funny how it wrecked them both. It's funny how they're both ed up. Luhan and his razors and web of scars. Minseok and his fingers and his deteriorating esophagus.

The pressure is almost all gone as the web slowly spins itself complete and Luhan nearly cries in relief.

At last, the whispering blade is wiped down, drenched in alcohol, and carefully placed back in it's cage and out of sight. More alcohol is poured, before coming out of hissed gasps of pain. He covers his stitching with swaths of white bandages and red flowers blossom, staining the gauze.

It's the price he pays.

Evidence is cleared up, like a crime scene, like how Minseok cleans up.

It's like he's a new man, except nothing more than a broken doll, really, when he unlocks the bathroom door and he collapses on his lover who stands with tear tracked cheeks and red eyes.

"Take me away," Luhan whispers, knowing that Minseok will delay Luhan's next episode for as long as possible.

"No more," Minseok begs and Luhan nods, whispering his empty promise.

A/N: Sorry for the long wait.

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