Hansol woke up dizzy, nauseous but happy. It was weird, usually he woke up feeling dread, or a wave of depression hit him, usually from a nightmare was what he woke up from. He was dizzy, but he actually slept without fear grasping him at 2 in the morning. 

When he did move though it pulled on some of the cuts in his thighs. He bit into the skin of his lip. Whine a little bit, it hurt. He sighed and he tried to go back to sleep, knowing it was useless because he knew he wasn’t able to. 

He turned his body over again to face the wall, trace patterns into the wall with his eyes closed. He would pretend to be okay. But when he turned to the empty wall it wasn’t really empty. His Channie was there. 

Lee Chan? He didn’t remember much at all? When did Chan come up? He assumed it was soon after he drank the coffee. He was immediately tired, and he kinda remembers passing out in somebody’s arms and they felt like home. 

“Good morning hyung,” Chan said to him. He still had that maknae style smile plastered across is face like Chan praised his hyung. Hansol really wanted to cry, because the look in his face was that of love and trust and he felt like he had just kicked Chan’s puppy. 

“G-good morning.” He settles for. He hoped that Chan couldn’t hear the hurt in his voice. Or that he couldn’t look at Hansol and see that something wasn’t right. Hansol could only find reassure in his voice and that only made Hansol want to cry even more. 

“Hyung,” Chan started. “I don’t want you to do this again, the cutting. It hurt me to see you do this. It hurt us to see you do this, and it hurt the whole groups to see this. And I can’t imagine how it hurts Joshua. So please.” 

He wanted to say that he could. That it would be so easy, maybe easier to stop cutting than it would be when he did drugs. But it wouldn’t, be wasn’t addicted to the high this time. He was addicted to the pain. And that was worse. 

The deep red spilling out of cuts, some that would rise once they scar over because they were almost too deep. Ones that he passed out from with blood loss. Some were just to toy with himself, to just break the skin, some just deep enough to have bead of blood spill out of the split skin. 

Some that were faint paler lined after they scarred over. Some a tanner one that were shallow but deep enough to spill over a good amount of blood. Some that hurt him so much that he laughed at himself. 

 No, he couldn’t stop. It would hurt him really, much more than the actual pain. He’d been through withdrawal once, but this he craved. He needed it he wanted it. It drained him and fed off of him. He felt hindered off of it...hooked on it more than a drug. Because it was...

It was just like a poison. 

Ok, maybe he was in some deeper than the thought he was.

———————

Chan didn’t know what to think when Hansol froze up and left. He knew that mentioning the cutting was something that might have been pushed to far. It was kinda mean. He wished he could find some way to get through with him. 

Chan was the youngest, he was the maknae but he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t glorify or some kind of pure bean. He grew up he was a teenager and he went through some things. He still had some scars from child hood. 

And he was going to make his hyung trust him because the band was their dream. Not one but all their dreams. He sure was the youngest but he had been through more than that know. And he would be ready to help and support him. 

Chan lightly rapped in the door to Hansol bedroom. He knocked once more waiting for the elder to open it. He let out a small sigh, then knocked loud enough to get his point across. He pushed open the door and nobody was there. 

He took a gasp of air. He was officially freaked out. There was only a few places that he could imagine the elder would do if he was pressured. He hear a strangled cry, quiet almost mistaken for a creak in the wood. But Chan know better. 

He followed the source of the sound to the bathroom. He opened the door slightly to see what was wrong. He know it as soon as he saw it. That he was correct. He saw the elder of the two was sitting in a small pool full of blood. 

The blood was pooling from his thighs but mostly his wrist. It was to much blood the room smelled of dizzying iron. Chan felt dizzy. It was really really strong. He put a hand on the counter of the sink so his didn’t pass out at the smell. 

“H-Hyung, stop. Your going to kill yourself. Please stopping before you get even more hurt,” Chan know his voice shook slightly. He felt like he was scolding a kicked puppy. He wanted so badly to hug the elder and just let him bleed. Cry. Cut. But he had to be strong. 

“C-Channie you have n-no idea. It hurts me to not. It burns. It’s like a drug it’s in my veins, it runs through my body. And maybe it’s all fake but it seems so real and... oh G-god Channie. It hurts so bad I have to cut it out,” Hansol voice shook to. Cracking at some of the words he was trying to usher out because it was true. It really did burn. And it hurt, indescribable pain that laced through if he didn’t do it. Sometimes it were words that he would carve into his skin ‘fat’ or ‘ugly’ sometimes ‘worthless.’

“I do get it. More than you know, more than you would ever know,” Chan frowned. Was he really going to do this? He took a hesitant hand to the hem of his sweater. Sometimes you couldn’t see it. But it still burned like Vernon said. His breath hitched as he pulled it up. 

It was so deep, a thick raised welt above the skin, a scar, though raised he could and probably did cover it with some concealer. But it wasn’t a scar from cutting your hand on accident, it was deeper. A self harm scar. He looked at it once more to be sure. 

“I didn’t want to tell you guy because I thought it was going to this reaction. I was scared and I just wanted to tell you that I know what you are going through, and can help you,” Chan spoken with sincerity in his voice and Hansol started crying. 

“No, it’s okay hyung we can— I can help you through this,” Chan was crying. He was really crying. Vernon was crying and they were all crying now. But the wound that Hansol had carved into himself was deep, it was going to form a scar. Chan was more worried about the one that’s been wrapped in gauze, he was pretty sure that Hansol never bothers to change the gauze once. 

He was right, as he peeled the gauze back the cut had turned a deep purple kind of color. It wasn’t oozing anything weird or something but it wasn’t good, considering that once the bandages were peel back Hansol was wincing. His other hand flexing to deal with the pain. 

Chan wincing to, but not because he felt any pain, but he did. Just not physically. He grabbed some rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab. He then gently pressed the swab into the cut, it probably burned like what Hansol was used to but it probably still hurt. He held onto the other hand, letting Hansol wince and squeeze it. Not making a sound but flinching when his knuckles pressed against each other when they were squeeze. 

Chan wrapped it with new gauze once he was done. It probably still throbbed with a dull stinging prominent pain. And he sympathize, he led the elder downstairs and he made a small bowl of ramen. Knowing that the elder would vomit it if he ate it himself so he just gave the elder a few crackers just to keep it down. 

Hansol kept on eyeing the knives, he imagines pressing it deeply like he would’ve had Joshua not coming home early that day. When he rocked the knife back and forth on his wrist, the way it teetered on his bone and left a feint line of where he had it pressed firmly.He thought about that feeling. God it really was like a poison. 

He imagined twirling it in his hands before pressing it into the skin. The feeling like a drug. Just the thought made his skin crawl, and he felt it. The ‘snake’ through his veins, the burning wasn’t their yet, just the yearning for the pain—

“Don’t do it,” he felt Chan’s hand on his wrist, laying directly over the cut. “First step, don’t do it. Try not to think about it.” He was staring directly into Hansol eyes, voice was stern but his face was look caring. He sighed nodding, putting his hands under the table. 

‘Small victories,’ Chan thought. And it was better. ‘Small victories, Chan. It’s hard to kill the devil if you don’t think that God exists. Especially if you can’t see him.’ Chan held onto Hansols hand. 

 Chan has a good feeling if anyone could fight it than Hansol could.