"I look like shɨt," Kris griped when he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Chanyeol laughed and ruffled his messy hair.

"You smell like it too," he teased, leaning over the bathtub to turn on the faucet.

Kris raised an arm and sniffed his armpit, making a face. He really did smell like bad, though it shouldn't have been much of a surprise. He'd been unconscious for half a week.

“Alright, I think that’s good enough. Get in," Chanyeol said a few moments later, motioning to the bath with his chin. Kris gave Chanyeol a look and meekly crossed his arms over his chest.

"Oh please, it’s not like there's anything I haven’t seen before," Chanyeol said with a smirk, tugging at the hem of Kris's t-shirt.

“Stop being a .”

"Okay fine, tell me where the towels are and I'll go find one while you get in the bath," Chanyeol reasoned.

Kris agreed and pointed him towards the linen closet down the hall. When Chanyeol left the bathroom, Kris quickly shed his clothes and stepped into the bubbly water.

Kris sighed contently as warmth enveloped his tired body, and he closed his eyes. He heard Chanyeol come back in but didn't bother to open his eyes.

“You put too much soap in the water,” he mumbled.

“Please forgive me, O Great Master, I was only trying to please you,” Chanyeol replied sarcastically. Kris cracked open an eye to see Chanyeol kneeling right beside him, arms propped up on the edge of the bathtub.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m trying to enjoy the view, but these stupid bubbles are in the way,” Chanyeol complained with a pout.

“Chanyeol, just get out,” Kris laughed and pushed his face away.

“No way. If I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do it right. Now sit up straight so I can give you a good scrub," Chanyeol instructed, squeezing an enormous amount of body wash into the palm of his hand.

Kris reluctantly uprighted himself. “I don’t even know why I’m letting you do this, it’s so weird,” he grumbled.

“You’ll get used to it,” Chanyeol teased with a chuckle, but then stopped suddenly. "Oh shɨt.”

“Oh shɨt what?” Kris turned to look at him. "What?"

Chanyeol gave him a look before gently running the palm of his hand down Kris's back. Kris winced at the sudden stinging pain and shrank away from Chanyeol's touch. "What the hell?" He wondered, reaching an arm over his shoulder to feel the sore, raised lines on his back.

“When the hell did I get scratch marks?” He muttered.

"Uhh, sorry," Chanyeol mumbled. Kris was shocked to see how red he was turning.

"Sorry? What are you sorry for?" Kris babbled, blinking in confusion.

Chanyeol stared at him awkwardly, and Kris stared back for five long seconds before it finally dawned on him.

"You mean these are--"

Chanyeol coughed and glanced around the bathroom, looking thoroughly embarrassed.

“Oh my god,” Kris groaned, putting his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry.”

Chanyeol shrugged it off. “Don’t be sorry, it’s fine--I mean, no, it’s not fine. I guess I should be the one saying sorry. Actually, neither of us should be apologizing because it was great. I thought it was great, anyway...obviously. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever c--”

“Ooooh god, okay, I get it Chanyeol, please shut up now,” Kris interrupted loudly, hiding his face behind his hands.

“Is my lack of filter making you uncomfortable?” Chanyeol asked, waggling his eyebrows.

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll stop.”

Chanyeol easily changed the subject, washing Kris’s hair and then his upper body. He’d used so much soap that Kris couldn't even see his skin underneath all the bubbles. When Chanyeol reached for Kris’s right arm, Kris shied away, holding it beneath the water. Chanyeol shook his head and held out a soapy hand.

"You can't hide them anymore. Come on, let me see," Chanyeol coaxed, and Kris reluctantly held out his arm. Chanyeol stared at the neat row of scars that travelled up the inside of Kris's wrist and arm. He counted twenty-four of them. Then he started washing, gently, carefully.

"Why twenty-four?" Chanyeol asked, looking up at Kris with genuine curiosity.

Kris opened and closed his mouth, looking hesitant.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Chanyeol said quickly.

“No, it’s...I want to tell you. I need to tell you. I have to start somewhere,” Kris replied with a forced smile. Chanyeol nodded and sat back on his heels, listening patiently. Kris took a deep breath and looked down at his scars as he’d done so many times before.

"I wanted to keep the tradition," he finally said.

"Tradition?"

"It started with my mother. She wasn’t a good person. She abused me for as long as I could remember. The reason for this is when she was sixteen or seventeen, she was , and she got pregnant with me. Her whole family basically disowned her. She tried three times to have an abortion, but all  of them failed, obviously. And when I was born, she tried to leave me at the hospital. Anyway, she didn't want to have the responsibility of raising me, so when I was two, she put me up for adoption. After a year with no offers, she...she cut my arm. This one," Kris said, now pointing to the small scar in the space where his lower arm and elbow joined.

Chanyeol looked at Kris with a shocked expression.

"Why did she do that?" He questioned.

"She told me she did it because hated me, and she wanted to keep track of how many years she'd been miserable. She said that if she had to suffer, I had to suffer too," Kris said.

"How long did this go on?" Chanyeol asked.

"Until I was thirteen. She came home drunk one day, saying she’d bought me a gift for my birthday. It was a brand new pair of scissors. That was probably the worst day of my life. After she--you know, after she was done--I don’t remember much. I just remember bleeding, a lot. When the police found me, I was half-dead and she was long gone," Kris muttered, running his finger over the thirteenth scar.

"Jesus," Chanyeol murmured. “Did you ever hear from her again?”

“No. She did leave me a “goodbye” note, though. She said that I had to use the scissors every year on my birthday, and that if I didn’t, ‘I’d pay for it’. Being a kid, I really believed that she would come find me and do the deed herself. I was terrified for my life. But of course, I never saw her again. That note was the last I ever heard from her,” Kris replied, popping a bubble that had landed on Chanyeol’s hand.

"So, when you said you wanted to keep tradition, you actually mean..."

"Every year since she left, I added one new cut. This year I added two extra for the ones I didn't get when I was one and two. That's why--"

"Twenty-four."

"Yep."

"I'm so sorry, Kris." Chanyeol looked back down at the scars, running his soapy hands over them. Kris liked the way Chanyeol's fingers felt against his skin. They made him feel as if his scars didn't exist at all.

“So, what happened after that? Who took care of you? Where did you go?” Chanyeol inquired.

“The policemen that found me ended up taking care of me for a while, until they were able to find a family to put me with. They were a nice family, too nice for me to be a part of. They abandoned me after two months. We went on a trip to the beach and the next thing I knew, they were gone. I probably went through about seven families before I was old enough to work and take care of myself. So yeah, here I am now, I guess,” Kris said.

“I can’t believe you had to go through so much. I just don’t know how anyone could do that to a kid. I’m sorry, I just don’t know what to say," Chanyeol murmured, hanging his head low.

"That's ok. You don't have to say anything. I’m just glad you’re here to listen," Kris said with a small smile. It was kind of weird how easy it had been to share all that with Chanyeol. Instead of terror, he just felt a huge sense of relief.

“So, what about now?” Chanyeol asked quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to keep doing it?”

Kris thought for a moment before shaking his head.

“No. I’m not.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“You.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You were just so...I don’t know. Not like everyone else. When I was mean and rude and cold, it didn’t faze you. You just accepted everything; you accepted me. You gave me hundreds of second chances, even though I didn’t deserve any of them. And you cared when no one ever bothered to give me the time of day. You gave me more happiness in the past four months than I have ever had in my whole 24 years of living. And honestly, I don’t ever want to stop feeling happy. I want to be happy for the rest of my life. I want you for the rest of my life.”

Chanyeol gazed at him for a moment, his eyes searching Kris’s face intently. “I love you, too,” he finally said, leaning over to plant a firm kiss on the other’s mouth and chuckling when his face turned beet red.

“So, does this mean we’re official?” Chanyeol asked, casually swirling his fingers around in the water.

“What do you mean, official?” Kris questioned, casually smacking the hand away from his bare chest.

“You know, are we like, Facebook official?”

It took about two minutes worth of shoving and protesting and yelling until Kris was able to get Chanyeol out of the bathroom without flashing too much skin.

“Kris, I was joking! It was a joke!” Chanyeol whined from behind the locked door.

“You’re a joke,” Kris retorted, trying to rinse the ridiculous amount of bubbles off his skin.

“Fʋck you, you know you love me,” he heard Chanyeol muttering, and Kris couldn’t help but laugh.

Within ten minutes he was done, sighing contently as he slipped on a clean white t-shirt and flannel pajama pants.

Chanyeol was standing right outside the door when Kris opened it, and he grabbed Kris's hand and led him into the bedroom.

"Sit down, I want to dry your hair," Chanyeol said, pushing Kris onto the bed.

"That's kind of gay," Kris said as Chanyeol tossed a towel over his face.

"Shut up," Chanyeol replied lightly.

Kris smiled as Chanyeol dried his hair, a warm sense of security filling his chest. He rested a hand on Chanyeol's knee, rubbing circles against it with his thumb. He leaned forward every few minutes to press a kiss on Chanyeol's forehead, his nose, his chin, his jaw, his neck, his collarbone.

"Thank you, Chanyeol, for saving me."

The words were whispered against sharp lines and warm skin.

And suddenly the towel was flung to the ground and Kris was being pushed down onto the bed and slender thighs were bracketing his hips and long fingers were running through his semi-damp hair and plush lips were pressing insistently on his own.

The whole thing was quite familiar, but this time, he wasn't resisting. Kris pulled Chanyeol down so that their bodies were flush against each other. Chanyeol moaned at the sudden pressure and Kris felt it everywhere. Chanyeol’s tongue pressed against his lips, and when Kris parted them, the intoxicating heat from Chanyeol’s mouth made him dizzy. Their tongues met and pressed flat against each other. Chanyeol moaned again, and Kris decided that this was a sound he’d never get tired of hearing.

Kris moved his hands down Chanyeol’s sides and under his shirt, raking his nails against the skin of Chanyeol’s torso. He felt Chanyeol’s stomach tighten beneath his touch and there it was, that gorgeous moan, muted against his mouth.

Chanyeol pulled away, panting hard. He pushed himself up and put his hands on either side of Kris's head.

"Kris, I want-"

Chanyeol's lips were inches from his, but every time he spoke, they brushed against Kris’s, and the sensation sent a shudder through his whole body.

Kris stared at Chanyeol with hooded eyes, his breath ragged and uneven. Through the foggy haze of his own lust, he could see Chanyeol's hesitation. He took the chance to kiss him, deeply but slowly. Chanyeol seemed to relax as he returned the kiss, and any rigidness in his body simply melted away.

“What is it, Chanyeol? Tell me what you want,” Kris murmured against his mouth.

"I want you," Chanyeol whispered.

And that night, as Kris closed his eyes, his nails leaving harsh lines on warm, smooth skin, lips chanting Chanyeol's name like a prayer, he didn't see scissors. He didn't see scars or blood.

He saw white.

END

*

i hope you enjoyed crimson! thank you all so much for reading ;u;