His mind was fatigued of pain by the time he had managed to remove all of the minuscule splinters of glass that had once been there, taken away with pain and covered in blood, but taken out, nonetheless.
The movement in that hand was able to pick up the tweezers with minimal pain, however, his shaking fingers from his nerves and dread were barely enough to keep them steady in order to make a start on the hand that was still hostage by the brutality. The bleeding had stopped, for the most part, which at least helped him see what he was doing, but the downfall seemed to occupy the importance; the glass had glued itself into his palm as the blood oxidised and dried, and he would have to tear away at the layers of scabbing that had been formed as a result in order to get the glass out.
He ignored the fear of the pain though; he ignored it because he could, because the fear and panic wasn't eating at his head this time. Because he had felt safe for so long that his body had almost forgotten how to fall back into his old patterns of living, back into the state of unsafe.
He fixed the ends of the tweezers around a shard of glass, just like he had done multiple times on his other hand, and tugged, and it took so much more effort and pain and stripping of scar tissue but he still did it, and now that singular shard of glass was sitting, blood-coated, on the bleach-white bathroom counter, while his hand started to spill blood across his palm again which he was grateful for this time as it helped pull the other pieces out.
Once his pile of bloodied shards had built up to its full potential and his hands had slightly more movement, he was actually able to sigh in relief as his heart quickly beat away his nerves. He'd forgotten mostly about his father as well, which was useful in this situation because it allowed him to keep thinking straight and work as quickly as possible without stress and fear and panic nagging at his stomach.
The tips of his fingers carefully pushed up the lever to the tap to open the flow of cold water as he rested his, now glass-free, hands underneath it once again; noticing that it was less painful this time and more soothing than anything else, although he knew that he still needed to apply the antiseptic, which he definitely was not looking forward to, but was certainly anticipating.
He peeled the sachet containing the antiseptic wipe open with his teeth, taking it out between his fingertips and wincing at the sudden sting there where tiny shards of glass had been removed.
He was pretty much numbed out from the pain. His feelings didn't bother him anymore as the stinging crawled through his severed nerves. He cleaned himself up because nobody else was here to do that for him, because he could do that, because he was the one who needed to be there for himself and make himself get better. He was the only thing that could drive that.
He wiped over his hands and cried and winced and put up with it, because he didn't give any fucks anymore, because he was so over this shit that he had to deal with surrounding himself and he had given up on letting it ruin him. Boys could cry. And he would let himself, because he loved Geoff, he loved him, and he knew he shouldn't but he did. He really fucking did.
He was grey, because fuck, everything was grey, not blue, he lied, but his synaesthesia did not want to cooperate with his blindness.
The pain was supposed to be over. He thought it was over once he had wrapped up his hands to stop air and dirt from infecting his still open cuts and nicks in his hand, but the lock on his door was rattling as he heard his father come up the staircase and pound on his door, yelling, drunk, telling him to unlock it no matter how easy it would have been to just kick it in.
He looked at himself in the mirror, his tear-tracked face, his eyelids that were drooping from fatigue and surrender, his mind had stopped fighting, and he didn't care what was going to happen to him anymore. It was too hard to get better but it was too hard to keep living like this. He would leave it up to fate.
He unlatched the door. He didn't open it, but at least now the rattling would stop, even if the pounding didn't. He wasn't worried. He wasn't scared. He wasn't careful or careless, he wasn't anything, really. He was just there, despairing, hopeless and helpless. Abandoned by himself. Maybe he was encouraging it, because he wanted to feel fucking something, fucking anything, and this was at least going to do that.
He didn't care that he was being dragged out into his open bedroom, or being pushed onto the floor, or not being able to fight back from lack of energy or motivation to. He didn't care that his head was being slammed down against his bed-frame, that he could hear his ribs crack and feel his stomach being torn open when he was kicked there. He didn't care that he was going to die.
He didn't care because it meant that he didn't have to care. But he cared that Geoff was going to have to live with that if he did.
YOU ARE READING
Serendipitous (Gawsten)
Fanfiction[COMPLETED] An apathetic boy with colourblindness and too many problems serendipitously meets a boy who may be able to help him feel all of the colours he'd never seen.
