Work Text:
For Jungkook, harming himself had always been something casual; something that truly wasn’t a big deal. He had started when he was twelve, fresh out of the sixth grade, hoping his mom didn’t notice her serrated kitchen knives going missing. He graduated from his mom’s barely-sharp-enough-to-draw-blood knives, to the tiny little blades inside his pencil sharpener, unscrewing them out with his sewing scissors. The blade drew blood, but he wanted more.
By the end of his eighth grade year, he was an expert in taking razor blades apart.
He was fourteen when he told his cousin. She chewed his ear out, before insisting he give her his blades. She examined the blades, exclaiming a “holy shit dude! These are the same razors I use!” There laughter was loud, exclaiming in between giggles how fucked up they were.
She and her boyfriend drove him to Wendy’s after that, buying him a huge thing of chicken nuggets, harassing the drive through worker. She made sure to toss his razors in the dumpster on their way out. They drove to the gas station afterwards, getting Mt. Dew and shouting at the poor woman pumping her gas.
His seat belt was completely useless as they sped too fast down the roads, her shouting at her boyfriend to drive more carefully, her vape held tightly in her hands.
They let him smoke with them, his first time, that night.
Less than a month later, he had more razors.
His next confrontation about what others called a bad habit, was with him mom in the school parking lot. His shorts had ridden up, cuts on display. The shouting match between them was so loud you could probably hear it from inside the building. His mother’s eyes shone with tears.
He handed over a glasses case full of blades as soon as they got home.
He had more blades quickly after that.
His hands were always covered in cuts from when he had slipped pulling blades from their confinement. He has two scars on his hands from it, one on thumb, the other other on his pointer.
__
He had met Taehyung in tenth grade, his wrists and thighs destroyed by the numerous displays of his self harm.
The older boy was entirely too sunny for the world, smile spreading across his face so huge Jungkook was worried it might crack.
When he had seen Jungkook’s cuts, he hadn't understood. Jungkook went off on him, told him he couldn't expect someone as perfect and happy as Taehyung to understand. Taehyung didn't talk to him until Jungkook found him in the school’s restroom with his fingers down his throat.
Taehyung wasn't close to as happy as Jungkook thought he was.
After that, they had a system. Taehyung periodically checked Jungkook’s thighs and wrists, and if they were clean he would eat. Jungkook was getting better, but it wasn’t for himself.
“Hey Tae?” Jungkook had asked one night as the two looked up at the stars, cold from hours of laying on top of Taehyung’s roof. The older boy only hummed in reply, hands tucked under his head as he focused all of his attention on the stars above them.
“Do you ever feel like you can just reach out and grab them?” Taehyung had asked in reply, stretching on of his arms out toward the stars, palm up.
“Maybe… like maybe if I just reached a little farther I could grasp it. Possess it.” Jungkook wasn’t talking about a star.
“Tae… if I were to… go away someday, would you miss me?” The elder furrowed his brows, flipping over to look at Jungkook fully.
“Of course I would miss you! Please don’t leave me,” Taehyung’s eyes had gone teary.
That was the first time he had kissed Taehyung.
__
The first time he had tried to kill himself, he wasn’t really trying to kill himself.
Leaving his bedroom door open in hopes that someone would walk by and see him bleeding out, call an ambulance. That really wasn’t trying to die.
However, it really didn’t turn out how he wanted it to.
He heard the front door slam downstairs, his mom calling out to tell him that guess what? Taehyung was here .
So there he was eyes half lidded, blood pooling from his slit wrists to the quilt below him, staring at a screaming Taehyung.
When he woke up in the hospital, Taehyung was right next to him.
Taehyung refused to eat for weeks, before he inevitably collapsed.
Jungkook spent more time cutting those weeks than he ever had before.
__
He met Jimin his first year of college. The boy was the kind of cheerful that Taehyung was not, the kind that was hiding broken self esteem and a body made of pure bone.
Jimin was the type of cheerful that was true and sincere through and through.
The type of cheerful Jeongguk needed.
When he was Jimin, he didn’t have to watch him dwindle to nothing, and he didn’t have to be looked at with pity.
Because Jimin wasn’t bulimic, and Jimin didn’t know.
Taehyung was taking a backseat, and Jeongguk felt bad; but he just couldn’t watch his boyfriend die.
__
The second time Jeongguk tried to kill himself, he really tried to kill himself. Jimin found him this time.
The elder had come back into their shared dorm, worn down from his extensive workout routine.
He made his way to their bathroom, fully intending to take a nice, wonderful, hot shower. Instead he found Jungkook,crumpled on the floor with an empty bottle of antidepressants swaying innocently next to him.
__
When Taehyung broke up with him, Jungkook carved his name into his leg. When Jimin found the blood soaked towel hidden in their bathroom, he confronted him. Jungkook told him to leave, he did.
Jimin left.
__
When Jimin came back he found Jungkook under layers of crumpled dirty blankets, empty food bowls around him, clothes on the ground.
Jimin cleaned him up, set him up in his own room.
Jungkook didn’t get it, but he thought he was falling in love.
__
When Jimin introduced him to his boyfriend, Yoongi, he could feel his heart shatter.
He carved Jimin’s name into his thigh later that day, right underneath Taehyung’s glaring first and last name
Kim Taehyung
Park Jimin
He could hear Jimin fucking his boyfriend in the room across the hall, it hurt.
__
The third time he tried to kill himself, no one found him.