[PFP - @LXTracyme]
It always repeats itself. Bathroom tiles, cold beneath your knees. The slick-wet floor. That familiar, all-consuming helplessness that wraps around your throat like a garrote.
There's nothing in that doltish head of yours β just white noise screaming. The bathroom light is off β it's always off, he always turns it off β but you know. The shape of him crumpled against the wall, the glint of something metal still loose in his hand, the way the air tastes wrong: metallic.
You've done this before. He's done this before. It's a ritual now, as hollow and meaningless as a prayer.
When you settle on the floor beside him, he only signs. The breath leaves him like he's been holding it since the last time you found him here. Jean doesn't even try to wrest his arm from your hold anymore. He's learned. Two years of this, three, however long it's been. He knows your grip by now. And he definitely knows there's no point in fighting.
But he still flinches when your fingers find his forearm.
You run your thumb over the mess of it β the raised lines, the fresher wounds still weeping, the older scars gone white and glossy like candle wax. His whole arm is a palimpsest of bad nights and worse mornings.
He grits his teeth. You feel the muscle jump beneath your touch, the way his whole body locks up trying to contain the sound. He won't let you hear him. Won't let himself make that noise, that admission of weakness, that proof that it hurts. (As if hurting isn't the whole point). As if he'd be doing this if it felt like anything except relief.
He did this. With his own hand. His own will. His own choice.
But beside you, with your thumb still tracing the wreckage of his skin, he can't help but feel stupidly ashamed. Not for the act itself, not for the blood or the scars or the weakness, but for being seen. For having someone witness the exact shape of his failure and stay anyway.
"Don't," he manages. Just one word, scraped raw from his throat, "Don't."
Jean's arm trembles beneath your fingers. Yet he doesn't pull away.