#this is 6.6k words and also i kind of just got carried away in general so i'm sorry lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

python333 · 7 months

Note

Hello!! I absolutely adore your 141 platonic fics, I litterlay giggle and kick my feet when you post new storys about it. Especially since they're always gender neutral! Litteraly always check to see if youve posted a new fic, but anways!

I'm a really big sucker for found family mental health fics, especially when I'm experiencing rough times. If your comfortable with it, I was wondering if you could make the 141 catch Reader self harming or maybe just seeing the self harm on their arms accidentally and comforting them. Always love a comforting found family fic on cold nights.

If it's easier, I really love really any of your hurt/comfort type 141 fics with all my soul and eat them up anytime you post them. Especially since there isnt much gn!reader and TF 141 platonic hurt/comfort fics. So if you aren't busy than that's another option I would love to see!!

If your uncomfortable with it then that's fine and you can just ignore this post! Make sure to take care if youself aswell author. You're absolutely amazing! 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼

self-slaughter — python333

— — — —

synopsis reader is a medic and is caught harming themselves by the 141 in the medbay!

relationships platonic!taskforce 141 & gn!reader

characters cap. price, soap, ghost, gaz.

word count 6.6k

warnings self-harm [specifically using a scalpel], self-harm scars, dark thoughts [nothing too bad, but thoughts of pulling off your skin and harming yourself], painful wound cleaning [with iodopovidone], 2nd person pov [you/yours/yourself], usage of c/n [code name/call sign].

note hello anon!! i too am a big sucker for found family mental health fics, and completely understand this request, and i will happily write it for you!! a lot of this is based on my own experiences with this, so i hope that's okay and that you enjoy the fic!! as well as this request, i'll use this fic as an excuse to write a few prompts on my bad things happen bingo card, which will be displayed at the end of the fic! the prompt used will be: painful wound cleaning! expect wayyyy more angst after this LMAO. also, if this feels like glorification or anything else inappropriate for a fic like this, then please let me know! since it's mainly based on my own experiences, i assume it wouldn't feel *too* much like that, but still!

It gets kind of old after so long of doing it.

Almost like it’s a chore—as if stealing glances at your medical equipment, tools meant to save the lives of others, and wishing that it were being used to draw blood from your body was just an inconvenience. You complain about it in your head like you used to about school, like it was nothing more than some homework that was due a minute before midnight.

Right now, you’re alone in the medical bay. It wasn’t often that you were, typically two bumbling idiots would stumble in every few minutes talking about how they got injured while sparring, but for the past thirty minutes it’s been silent. While you appreciated the break from the constant explanations of why the soldiers you were to tend to had gotten injured, with the silence came very unwanted thoughts.

And with nobody to focus on came your unwilling lingering stare at the sharp scalpel on the small metal equipment cart that was just a few feet away from where you sat. It didn’t help that you felt oddly guilty today, either.

Well, the guilt wasn’t odd. You knew where it came from. It just felt odd, considering the cause for it happened a week ago.

The cause had been on a critical mission last week, where you were responsible for carrying medical supplies and ensuring the team’s well-being and general health. The medical equipment wasn’t particularly expensive or hard to get, but it was still incredibly important.

However, on that same mission, right towards the end of it, you’d been caught in the midst of an intense gunfight. Distracted by the heavy enemy fire, you dropped the small bag you’d been using to carry the medical supplies, and hadn’t noticed you did until it was too late. By the time you and the others were out and heading back to base, you had just realized you left behind the medical equipment.

All week, your fellow task force members had reassured you that it was okay and that it wasn’t that big of a deal, considering nobody got hurt. Still, even a week later, you’re hung up on it. Had someone gotten injured, what could you have done? You didn’t have any supplies to help them, so what would you have done then? Just the thought of that possibility makes you shudder.

The scalpel looks so tempting.

It’s not like you hadn’t used it before—you have the scars to prove you had, ranging from small lines that could be mistaken for cat scratches to tiger-stripe length cuts that make your thighs look as though they’d been mauled by a large animal. As elegantly as you describe them in your head, the visuals of them aren’t nearly as pretty. With the help of that scalpel, a few sharp needles, and some medical scissors, you’d successfully made it look as though a bear had tried to attack you and tear your legs off.

Ironic, isn’t it? A medic harming themselves?

Your job is to literally save the lives of others, and here you are, staring at the closest thing you have to a knife in the medbay. It’s become as easy as blinking for you—which is scary, honestly, the way you’ve developed a tolerance for cutting yourself and stapling your skin back together if you’ve cut too long or deep.

It’s no longer enough to just scrape something sharp across your skin and watch blood bubble up from the broken seams of your flesh, no, now you have to cut even deeper to actually feel anything. You have to feel the scalpel being buried to the hilt in your flesh, and you have to see the way blood spurts out of the self-inflicted wound after you pull out the tool.

You continue to stare at the scalpel, sure that you look like you’re in some sort of trance right now.

It looks so tempting. You can remember the last time you used it—three days ago, the longest you’d gone without it in a while. Similar to cigarette-addicts, you often tell yourself that you’re able to stop whenever you’d like—that you’re able to quit at any time. It’s a lie, and you know it, but you still like to pretend that it’s true.

You’re still staring at the scalpel.

Its sharpened edge reflects the overhead light, creating a bright glow that strains your eyes when you stare at it for too long. The metal of the handle is worn down from use, even though it’d only been in the medbay for maybe a few months—something nobody had questioned yet, thankfully. The clean blade, replaced just yesterday, had no traces of filth or grime on it, making it even more tempting.

You blink. You hadn’t noticed the burning of your eyes until you forced them away from the small knife.

You move your gaze to your lap, where you fiddle with your fingers, gently tugging at a hangnail that’s been lingering on your thumb for the past few minutes. As you pull on it, you feel the sting that it brings, though that sting now feels dull compared to the other things you’ve done to yourself.

It almost feels like a small pinch compared to the ways you’ve mutilated your thighs on certain nights that didn’t allow you the energy to do anything else, or the ways you’ve carved apologies in the forms of lines into your arms to try and gain forgiveness for your thoughts and temptations.

You pull the hangnail off completely and watch the miniscule droplets of blood bleed through your flesh and meet your skin and nail. Before you only had the energy to do your job and harm yourself, you would’ve hissed at the sting pulling off the small bit of skin caused you and grabbed a bandaid immediately, but now, all you can think about is how it isn’t enough.

About how much better you’d feel if you pulled all your skin off. If you could feel every inch of your skin stretched to its limits and torn off of your body, because God knows you deserve it.

The thought makes you wince. That is… disgusting. Why am I thinking about that? You shake your head in hopes that it would shake away the dark thought, but instead the action makes it rattle inside your brain and break off into tiny bits in pieces, small unwanted thoughts of wounding your flesh rolling around your mind.

Similarly to Sisyphus and his boulder, you try to push those thoughts out of your mind, your hands starting to curl into tight fists, but you just can’t. Every time you push a thought back, it comes rolling back to the forefront of your mind, the momentum it gets from being pushed back so far only to get rocketed forwards making it even more unbearable to think about.

The fists your hands have formed become tighter.

Each thought that gets pushed back only jumps forwards once again, ricocheting around your brain, the effort of trying to ignore them making your ears ring.

Before you realize it, your gaze snaps back to the scalpel.

You don’t even notice the blood that begins to spill from your palms from how deeply your nails cut into your skin.

Every thought tries to be louder than the other, creating an unholy cacophony of sound; a terrifying harmony that only grew louder every second that passed. You stare at the scalpel. It continues to reflect the bright gleam of the overhead light, and it continues to make your eyes strain the more you look at it, but you can’t find it in yourself to be all that bothered about the eyestrain.

You unclench your fists and stand up, walking the short distance over to the metal medical cart where the scalpel lays, and you grab the handle of it with shaky hands. You look over at the door for a moment, and stay there for another few seconds.

Once you see that nobody’s coming in, you rush yourself to one of the beds, sliding open the curtains in front of it and sliding them back so that they’ll obscure anyone else’s view of you using the scalpel on yourself.

You sit on the bed and although the scalpel almost slips out of your hand because of the blood from your palms, you manage to keep held in your tight fist, holding it like you would a pencil; tucked under the base of your thumb, and going through the gap between your index and middle finger.

With your hands still trembling and your breath uneven, as well as a bustling mind that only grew louder as the scalpel in your hand grew closer to the skin of your forearm, you made the first incision. Almost immediately, your mind quieted, and your headache dimmed.

Quickly becoming addicted to the feeling of a clear head, you lift the scalpel from your skin, not waiting to watch the blood bubble up from your open wound like you usually would, instead opting to make another incision right next to it.

Being a medic, there was nothing you could really do to stop yourself from thinking about how deep each incision was, and how deep you were cutting into your flesh—so while you cut yourself, a train of thought begun.

Half an inch deep, You push the scalpel deeper, Now a full inch. Should take a month or two to fully heal. Wouldn’t scar.

The thought of it not scarring should make you happy, or at least, neutral, but instead the thought makes you frown. Some odd hunger that comes from the indefinite pit in your stomach craves evidence for the malice you’ve shown towards your own skin, something that would prove your self-hatred.

So, you go another half inch deeper. Scarring would be possible, but not as high of a chance as if you went another half inch. With that thought, you go the last half inch. There we go.

You slide the scalpel blade through your flesh, the blade cutting through it like it would a firm fruit like a pear. It’s easier to cut through skin when the skin is pulled taut, You think, If only I had an extra hand.

You pull out the blade and repeat. You feel less guilty already.

All that worry about fucking up during your last assignment washes away, like the wave of guilt that overcame you earlier receded and pulled back that worry with it, lowering the tide of shame and self-reproach within you. In fact, the tide lowers so much that it almost completely disappears from your mind—like it never existed in the first place.

Reminds me of a tsunami, You repeat your actions with the scalpel, When the tides get low, so low that the ocean floor shows and you could walk where you’d originally have to swim, it’s because a tsunami is building up.

You look down at your work. Your forearm is a bloody mess, crimson red dripping down to your fingers and threatening to drop onto the stark white sheets of the bed you’re sitting on. You sigh tiredly and get up from the bed, putting the end of the scalpel’s handle into your mouth—ignoring the voice in the back of your head that reprimands you for not thinking about bacteria or contamination—and biting down to hold it whilst you slide the curtains in front of the bed to the side, walking out of the small resting area.

You grab the scalpel and set it onto the metal medical cart by your desk, grabbing the gauze on that same cart, opening the small box it’s kept in with your non-bloody hand. It’s a struggle, but you manage it open, and you shake the roll of gauze out onto the cart.

In the middle of you attempting to pull the end of the gauze off of the roll so that you could begin to wrap it around the red lines decorating your forearm, you hear loud footsteps walking near the medbay. You freeze in place, the gauze roll in one hand, your eyes burning holes through the door with how intensely you stare at it.

There’s a knock. Then another.

The door handle twists.

You stare at the door, and everything feels like it’s in slow motion for a second.

The door opens.

“Hey, dae ye hae any—” Soap walks in, the sergeant taking one look at you before cutting himself off with a confused and immediately worried, “Holy shit, whit happened tae yer arm? Are ye alright?”

He rushes over to you and takes your bleeding forearm into his hand. You almost immediately rip it away from his grip.

“Nothing! Everything’s fine! Just an accident,” You lie, holding the blood-covered forearm close to your chest, “I was just about to clean it up.”

“Dae ye need help wrappin’ it, an cleanin’ it up, or anything?” Soap asks, eyebrows furrowed and his expression beyond worried.

“Nope,” You insist, “It’s fine. All good here.”

“... Ye sure?”

“Uh huh,” You nod your head, “All good. Don’t worry about it.”

“‘kay then,” Soap tilts his head and crosses his arms, “Whit happened?”

“Just a little accident with some of the equipment,” You nod down to the bloody scalpel on the medical cart, “That’s all.”

It must be obvious you’re lying, because Soap sighs and says, “I think we baith ken that that’s a lie.”

You stay silent for a few moments, before Soap speaks up again, “Ye ken if ye dinnae tell me, I’ll jist jump tae conclusions, richt?”

You take a deep breath before mumbling something under your breath. When Soap’s eyebrows draw together in confusion, you repeat louder, “I used the scalpel. On myself.”

“Ye whit?”

“I used the scalpel on myself,” You look away, and rush out, “and I’m really sorry, I just couldn’t help it, it’s not like— like a normal thing or anything, it’s just this once, I swear, and— and—”

“[c/n], calm down,” Soap quickly uncrosses his arms and sets both hands onto your shoulders, furrowed eyebrows now taking a more concerned shape, “It’s okay.”

You take a deep breath and look at him, looking at his nose instead of his eyes because you don’t think you could handle eye contact right now, “I’m really sorry.”

“Why would ye dae that tae yerself?” Soap asks, voice soft and almost pitying, which makes you want to curl up and die.

You shrug, not wanting to answer verbally.

“Dae ye— dae the others ken?” Soap questions.

“No.”

“I’m—” Soap looks conflicted for a moment, “I hae an assignment… I’ll get Gaz tae help ye, aye? An’ I’ll check in wi’ ye as soon as possible?”

You hesitate, but end up nodding in agreement, thankful that Soap offered to get Gaz rather than one of the others. The others seemed so oddly scary right now that you don’t even want to think about how they’d react to this whole situation. It’s all gone by so fast—one moment you were sitting on a hospital bed, the next you’re found out by Soap of all people—you’ve barely had time to think about the others.

“Okay. Okay, okay,” Soap repeats the word under his breath like a mantra, thinking to himself for a second before sighing and looking down at you again, “Jesus, fuck, okay. I’ll go get him, ye stay here, aye?”

You nod again, this time your vision begins to get more blurred.

“Ye’re gonnae be okay, okay?” Soap tries to reassure you. You nod once again, sniffling a little bit, making Soap’s gaze soften.

He takes his hands off of your shoulders and gives you one last sad look before turning around and rushing out of the medbay, his thundering footsteps growing quieter as he gets closer to Gaz’s location—most likely his sleeping quarters.

You wait a moment and when you hear no footsteps, your gaze goes back to the blade. It’s not like it’ll hurt to do a few more. I’ll stop when the others arrive.

You grab the handle of the blade, and as quickly as you can, akin to an addict scrambling for substance, you slice through the skin of your non-mutilated hand. You make several quick and deep gashes before dropping the scalpel onto the medical cart again, breathing heavy, the cuts this time actually hurting. It felt like fire was running rampant through your nerves, all stemming from the self-induced wounds, and you winced at the new pain. It wasn’t anything you weren’t used to, but still.

When you hear footsteps again, you can tell they aren’t Soap’s.

The door clicks open and in walks Gaz, already looking very worried—presumably from what Soap told him about your… situation—with another person in tow. Right behind him, Price walks in, expression neutral so far.

Gaz looks over at you, his eyes widening as he sees the bloody gashes in your forearms. Without a second thought, he rushes over to you, his hand reaching for your forearm. Before you can stop him, he grabs your bloody forearm and pulls it up a bit so that he can look at it closer. You flinch, and Price quickly walks over to you two before Gaz can even utter a single word.

“Let’s not, okay?” Price’s version of ‘knock it off’, “I’m here, I’ll take care of their… thing. You hand me what I tell you to. Understood?”

“Yup— Yes, sir. Captain,” Gaz corrects himself quickly, making a slip-up that in any other situation would’ve made you at least chuckle, but all you can do now is stare at the pair as you hold your bloody arms to your chest.

Price looks back over to you and nods over to one of the many empty curtain-surrounded beds and says, “Go sit over there and wait for a few seconds.”

You nod, not knowing what else to do or say, and immediately walk over there. It’s the room furthermost to the right, the one that’s also the closest to the door and the one you’d coincidentally gone into to cut yourself.

You slide the curtains to the side and sit down on the white bed, and just a few seconds later, just as Price said, he walked in as well. He sat next to you, Gaz in tow, the latter carrying a jar of cotton pads and balls as well as a bottle of Betadine.

Betadine—or iodopovidone, whichever name you preferred—was a sort of antiseptic that was generally used for cleaning cuts and wounds. Maybe not ones as deep as yours, but it would still work just as well.

Despite it not being alcohol-based, or really having any alcohol in it, it still hurts the same as rubbing alcohol would, which you were… definitely not looking forward to.

“Sergeant,” Price takes the jar and bottle of Betadine from Gaz, “Go and grab the skin stapler for me.”

“Yes, sir,” Gaz nods, walking out of the room once again. Price sets the jar and bottle of Betadine onto the bed beside himself after he leaves.

With you and Price now in the room alone, he turns to you and holds out his hand with his palm faced up for your arm silently. You carefully put your forearm onto his hand, watching as he gently pulls it closer to him, looking a bit closer at it before sighing through his nose and using his free hand to open the jar of cotton pads.

“How did this happen?” He asks, breaking the silence.

“Soap didn’t fill you in?”

“No.”

You think about what to tell him for a moment. What’s too straightforward? What’s too vague? How do I not overstep? How do I not sound like I just want attention?

Eventually, you settle on, “I was— … I saw the uh… scalpel, and I just… decided to use it a little bit. On myself.” Definitely not the best you can do, but what else could you say? ‘Oh, I cut myself with a scalpel because I felt guilty and if I didn’t I probably would’ve had a panic attack or a mental breakdown’?

“…” Price pauses for a moment, eyes twitching for a split second before he continues his movements to grab a cotton pad and questions you, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“You know what I’m asking, [c/n].”

He’s asking why you did it. There’s not one simple answer you could give him—sure, you could tell him that you felt guilty and it was a bad habit that you’ve told yourself you could stop but never tried to, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth.

You can’t fully express or dictate why you do it, you just do. It’s like when you cut slits into bread before baking it. Without those slits, the bread would crack and split at the seams on its own, but with them, the splitting and expanding of the dough is controlled.

Except, with you, it’s like you’re cutting yourself before the tension building inside of you makes you burst at the seams. Taking a blade to your skin has given you a sense of control—maybe that’s why it’s so addicting, You think, it’s the only way I’ve been able to control my feelings.

But you can’t just say all of that. Well, you could, but did you want to? Fuck no.

Instead, you opt for shrugging, which doesn’t satisfy Price one bit.

“I could see you thinking about it,” He sighs, “I know you at least have some sort of real answer.”

Well, fuck. “It’s a long answer.”

“I never said it couldn’t be.”

He doesn’t move to grab the Betadine at all, instead waiting for you to talk.

You purse your lips and think for another moment before finally talking again, “I was feeling really guilty and tense, and I guess it just got too much, so I just kind of… had to. Like I felt like I was gonna fuckin’… I dunno, have a nervous breakdown or something. And honestly, it’s a really stupid reason, because the thing that I’m feeling guilty about happened like a week ago, but still—I’ve been feeling really guilty about it. It—It’s not like I can’t stop, if I tried I could, I swe—swear, and I just— it’s been really easy to just— you know? I— honestly, it’s not that big of a deal—”

“Hey, hey—” Price brings a hand to your shoulder and softens his voice, “It’s okay. I understand.”

“I ju—st… I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Price reassures you, quickly bringing that same hand up to cup your jaw, “You’re okay. You don’t have to say sorry.”

“But I—”

“Shh.” You hadn’t even noticed how frantic your breathing had gotten during your small word vomit. And to just make things worse, there’d been tears gathering at your water line, well on their way to spilling over and creating tear tracks down your cheeks.

You can’t help but let go of all the tension in your shoulders the moment Price starts gently rubbing his thumb back and forth over your cheek. The moment he does that, it’s practically game over for you.

Those tears spill out from the corners of your eyes and you can already feel your next breath get caught in your throat, leaving you to just let Price gently guide your head to lean forwards against his chest, letting out small hiccups and trying desperately to hold back the sobs you want to let out.

It all happened so fast, you don’t even know how you got here. One moment you were doing a good job of somewhat keeping your guard up, the next your resolve was crumbled completely by the gentle and oddly caring touch of Price’s hand.

Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door, then someone walks in while you’re burying your head further into Price’s chest—Ghost. You can tell it’s him by the way he walks. He has long strides, he never drags his feet, and the moment he slides the curtains to the side to see you, his footsteps stop. They start up again a moment later, and he sits by your side, opposite of where Price is sitting—to your right instead of your left.

Gaz must’ve let him in while he was looking for the stapler, You think, sniffling against Price’s chest. Normally, you would’ve felt some sort of shame by now, but given the current situation, you didn’t find much room to give a shit.

You feel Price’s head move up slightly, and judging by the way he occasionally nods and sometimes moves his hands a bit, you can only assume that he’s having some sort of nonverbal conversation with Ghost right now. This conversation goes on for about a few minutes longer before you’ve managed to control your breathing a bit more.

Price can tell, and he asks just for confirmation, “Is it alright if I clean your cuts now?”

You nod and sniffle once before taking your head off of Price’s chest, looking down at your lap, simply holding out one of your blood-crusted arms to him. You can see Ghost stiffen up behind you almost immediately at the sight of it.

Price grabs a cotton pad from the jar he was handed earlier, as well as the bottle of iodopovidone, and soaks the cotton pad with said iodopovidone. Once it’s soaked with the antiseptic solution, he hesitates before pressing it to your bloody arms.

Almost immediately, you inhale a sharp breath and feel tears stinging your eyes again.

“It’s okay,” Price tries to calm you down, seeing the tears forming in your eyes again, “You’re okay.”

You sniffle and shift on the bed, trying to blink away tears that threaten to spill over your water line. Ghost, sitting by your side, puts a gloved hand over your shoulder, his thumb rubbing gentle circles into your shoulder. His eyes twitch as you bite the inside of your cheek to muffle another sob while Price presses another Betadine-infused cotton pad to your self-induced wounds, and although you can barely see him, out of the corner of your eye, you still catch the glint of new tears gathering at the corners of his eyes as he watches you.

Gaz slips back through the curtains in front of the bed, this time with Soap in tow, and hands a skin stapler to Price. Seeing the skin stapler, something you used fairly often—often enough that the others knew how it worked and how to use it—automatically made your stomach turn.

“Told ye I’d come back for ye,” Soap murmurs, kneeling down to get about eye-level with you. You huff out the smallest laugh at his words and he gives you a small smile that makes you want to go lock yourself in a room with a scalpel and repeat what you’d done earlier all over again, his empathetic expression paining you more than taking a blade to your arm.

As a matter of fact, the expressions that you wish were pity coming from everyone around you hurts more than anything you could’ve ever done to yourself. Their concern was so unexpected—not that you don’t think they care, but you never thought they cared this much. You didn’t think that, if caught in the act, you would receive empathetic looks and solemn smiles, rather thinking that you would receive reprimanding. That you’d be punished for punishing yourself.

Price thanks Gaz silently with the curt nod of his head before turning back to you with a solemn expression that in all honesty makes you more guilty and disappointed with yourself than before. He holds the skin stapler like he would a hot glue gun, looking down at the open wounds in front of him, and holds your forearm closer to him so he can see the edges of the cuts better.

"Keep your arm like that," He murmurs, to which you respond with a nod and stiffening your arm so that it stays in the air where Price positioned it. He uses his now free hand to gently pull the edges of the cut you'd made closer together, aligning them the best he can before pressing the metal staple dispenser to the cut and pushing down on the trigger, stapling the two edges together with a click.

He holds it down for an extra second before releasing and pulling the stapler away from your skin, and although the process only took around three seconds, you'd never get used to the feeling of getting your skin stapled. You make a small, pained noise that has Soap wincing as well--as though he can feel it too--and Price looking more solemn than earlier.

“Finished with this one,” Price mutters as you swallow down another sob, holding his calloused-but-soft hand out for you to put your other forearm in. You do just that, nearly breaking into a fit of new sobs at the small ‘thank you’ Price utters.

You watch Price soak another cotton pad with iodopovidone with his free hand and suck in a deep breath as he presses it to your forearm, the originally white cotton pad almost immediately going red. Tears spill over your waterline and roll down your cheeks as he continues to clean and disinfect your wounds, and before you can move your free hand to wipe them away, Ghost does so for you, his rough gloved hand swiping below your eyes quickly.

You mumble a small 'thank you' that's barely even audible, sniffling as you can’t help but lean forward the tiniest bit into Ghost’s hand as it lingers on your cheek. He pauses, keeping it there for a second, before bringing that same hand up to the crown of your head and pushing gently on it to urge you to lean your head back. You do so, the back of your head quickly making contact with his Adam’s apple and the top of your head becoming tucked underneath his chin.

His hand goes back down to your shoulder and continues its ministrations of rubbing small circles into said shoulder, bringing you intermittent moments of comfort throughout the painful wound cleaning you had to endure.

Soap keeps a comforting hand on your knee as he’s kneeled down in front of you, his thumb occasionally copying Ghost’s, but otherwise remaining still on your knee, careful not to force you through too many different sensations at once.

Gaz watches you from by the curtain, seeming not to do and looking completely lost. He stands there for another moment, watching the others, seeing what they’re doing for a second, before giving Ghost a ‘one moment’ signal by holding up his index finger and stepping out of the curtain-surrounded area.

Right after he does, another painful sting shoots up your nerves from your forearm, and you make the mistake of looking down at it.

Wounds that only fifteen minutes ago had brought you to a calmer state of mind and were nothing more than incisions made by the scalpel you’d used to cut other people for entirely different reasons now almost hurt to look at. Once you could’ve compared them to marks left by wild animals, and you could’ve described them as though they were trophies, but now, as you stare down at them being cleaned by your own captain, they look nothing like the sort.

They don’t look like any of the pretty descriptions you’d given them. They don’t look like cat scratches you’d gotten in an accident, or like something you would get out of a fight with a bear—they don’t make you look strong and brave like you thought they did.

They look like tally marks. Sanguineous, gruesome tally marks, made by you, like you’d been counting down the days—or seconds, minutes, hours—until you’d had enough. Until you’d had enough of just carving your skin with medical equipment, and needed something more. Craved something more.

Price must notice you staring down at the wounds, because he pauses in his movements to clean them for a moment, the sudden stopping of the stinging sensation the iodopovidone-soaked cotton making you shiver. You look up at him, and see him already looking down at you, concerned.

“You’re thinking about something,” He points out softly, “Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”

You hesitate and look back down at your arm that Price had stopped cleaning, before mumbling, “Just thinking about how these are gonna scar.” It’s not entirely a lie, but not entirely the truth either.

Price tilts his head to the side a bit, questioningly, “Do you know how they’re gonna scar?”

“Well, when you work in the medical field for a bit, it gets easier to tell.”

You can tell he wants to ask how they’re gonna scar, so you decide to just say, “They’re all about one-and-a-half to two inches deep, so they’ll heal fully and then scar in a few months. Once they do, they’ll be visible, but not too prominent. The scarring tissue will stick above the skin a little bit, and it’ll make it look a little bit puffy.”

“Alright,” Price hums, tone neutral, “So they’ll be… visible.”

He sounds disgusted, A voice in the forefront of your mind insists, while one from the back of your mind tries to tell you, You have no way of knowing that, just see where the conversation goes. He has no reason to be disgusted with you.

“Yeah.”

“Okay then,” Price sets the cotton pad down and grabs the skin stapler he’d been using earlier, “And it’ll take a few months to heal, you said?”

“Several months, yeah.” Price considers this for a moment, pausing in his movements to hold the stapler to your skin.

“Do you think you’ll need any help re-wrapping the bandages while they heal?” He inquires, resuming his movements after asking the question.

“…” You think for a moment, Will you?, and after a few seconds, hesitantly, you reply, “… Yeah.”

“M’kay,” Price hums softly, neutrally. “And would you want me to be the one who does it?”

You think for another few minutes. Preferably, you’d be doing them yourself, but you didn’t trust yourself enough for that—so getting one of them to do it for you is your next best option. You wouldn’t mind if it was Price doing it, but at the same time, you wouldn’t mind if Ghost, Gaz, or Soap did it either.

“It doesn’t matter,” You settle on, before tacking on, “As long as it’s one of you four.”

“Us ‘four’ being… ?”

“You, Soap, Ghost, and Gaz.”

“Got it,” Price nods. You see Soap smile softly out of the corner of your eye before he quickly stops, trying to purse his lips into a line. He’s probably thinking that he shouldn’t be happy about that, You think, almost amused. You feel Ghost’s thumb stutter on your shoulder as well, before it starts back up normally.

Your words affect them more than you thought they would.

Breaking your train of thought, Price staples your skin with a muted click, making you wince.

It’s silent for a few more moments before Gaz finally comes back, now out of breath and carrying a bar of chocolate. He hands you the chocolate bar and says, panting, “I almost had to spar someone for that. Why do you have to like the chocolate one of the other fuckin’ Lieutenants do?”

You take the chocolate bar with your free hand gingerly and blink at it for a few moments before setting it down next to you.

“Nobody told you to get it,” You shrug, before tacking on, “Thank you, though.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, totally, hey so uh—” He looks at Soap and jabs his thumb towards where the door would be behind the curtains, “We’re both needed somewhere else. Again. They said they forgot something… again.”

“Worst fucking timing ever,” Soap grumbles, before clearing his throat and standing up, looking down at you, “Right, I’ll check in on ye later, and help ye wi’ anything ye need me tae, aye? I’ll come wi’ mair chocolate than Gaz did, ‘cause I’m better than him.”

“Got it,” You smile up at him, making him grin back and pat you on the shoulder Ghost’s hand isn’t occupying, before heading out with Gaz.

Then, you’re left with Ghost and Price.

“I should get going too,” Ghost mutters, slowly taking his hand off of your shoulder and gently pushing your head back off of his chest, almost regrettably.

“M’kay,” You watch as he gets up and hesitates, looking like he’s about to give you a hug, before he decides to instead give you a simple head nod and head out the same way the two other operators did.

And then, it was just you and Price.

It’s silent for a bit, until Price speaks up.

“You think a lot,” Price comments, finishing up the last staple.

“Does that surprise you?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

You pause for a moment before sighing through your nose, “It’s nothing. Just the same stuff I was thinking about before.”

“Wanna give me some more detail than that?”

“Not really, no,” You admit, letting your hand fall into your lap as Price lets go of it, “But I have a feeling you’re gonna want me to tell you.”

“I do.”

“It’s just something stupid, like earlier—”

“That wasn’t stupid, [c/n], that was you hurting.”

“I— I know. It’s just that this is actually stupid.”

“Well, tell me what it is, and I’ll be the judge of that.”

You think about how to phrase it in simple terms for a moment, before finally speaking, “I used to think that the scars sort of… symbolized how I was able to control myself and my emotions, and that made me feel…” You can’t think of any synonyms to make the simple words you want to say sound less childish, so you’re forced to say, “… brave. And strong. I just— I thought it showed that I was good at controlling my emotions and stuff, for some reason. But now I’m questioning all of that.”

“You’re very brave,” Price reassures you, and God, it sounds like he’s reassuring a child, “And you’re so strong. But this… this isn’t how you show that. This—cutting yourself—doesn’t make you either of those things. It doesn’t show that you’re either of those things. It shows that you need help.”

“But you just said that I was strong.”

“I did.”

“… Aren’t you contradicting yourself?”

“How would I be contradicting myself?” Price asks.

“You said that me— me… harming myself shows that I need help.”

“It does,” Price hums, and at your confused expression, he continues, “You needing help doesn’t mean you aren’t strong. Needing help and being strong aren’t connected like that.”

You open your mouth to argue but you close it, not knowing what to say. Price sees this and smiles knowingly, simply grabbing your hand to squeeze it once before getting up.

“I’ll check in on you later, okay? I need to get some stuff done, but as soon as I can, I’ll be back to keep you company. Or I’ll send someone else over—whichever you prefer.”

“M’kay,” You mumble, squeezing Price’s hand back before letting go. “You can do whatever. I don’t mind either one.”

“Sounds good.” Price pauses for a moment before leaning down and giving you a quick hug, and then beginning to slip past the curtains blocking any outsider's view of the bed you were sat on.

Before he can leave, you quickly say, "Thank you. For the wound-cleaning-thing."

He pauses at the curtain for a second, before smiling and replying, "You're welcome."

for those curious, the bthb card so far:

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