for chopstick
The blade seemed to glow in the soft luminescence of Eren's dim night light. It was nothing important, really; just the pocket knife he'd had since he was fifteen. It had never tasted the sting of blood and the brunet in possession was tempted to water the metal.
Others told him he had depression. 'Go see a doctor,' they would reprimand with that horrible condescending expression on their faces. Still, another portion of the people he spent his awful time with told him that he was insane, that there was something wrong with him and that any right person would at least have the sense to cover up their wounds, their scars, their pain.
It was not out of sadness, of despair, that he brought blades to his skin and now maybe the one piece he had kept away from it all, but out of a desire to hurt that he would go to such lengths to cause himself suffering.
Truly, the sensation was something. Even as he felt the sting of metal on flesh, as he saw the thin red line blossom on his arms, ankles, palms - even as pained tears leaked out of his eyes and he suppressed pitiful groans - his mind was set on fire as though nothing else could start it and his heart raced even faster than those who experienced mortal terror. The feeling was something Eren would not and could not relinquish, was something that he could not function without.
Exhilarating, that's what it was. He really did enjoy the warm blood that would trickle down his raised arms and he relished in the pleasure that came with the pain. It was, for him, completely normal.
And yet, this was not all he would focus on; like any other, he sat and laughed and talked with his friends, many of whom felt uncomfortable in his presence and would later gather to ridicule him; like any other, he did fine in his studies and had the occasional flop here and there; but unlike any other, he lived completely alone in a cold empty house with no career to explain his comfortable lodgings.
The only thing that was out of order was his fascination for the morbid aspects of life.
No, he would argue constantly, it was not morbid if one truly and honestly saw it as a light. So what, Eren would flippantly remark, if one enjoyed what others saw as frightening?
One might as well take away all sense of independence and all the things that do not conform to society's iron rulings, the green-eyed college-goer would finish up. With that said, he always walked away, leaving more and more to wonder why they tolerated him and sending Eren's subconscious into fueling the frenzied longing for pain that he had nursed for so long.
So that he did and this he continued, until he found himself alone in his cold dark room with a virgin blade resting on his skin, hanging only a thread away from cutting into the brunet's arm and drawing out the thing he desired most.
In the end, it all came down to pain; nothing more and nothing less.
Now, though, finished with his second's-time reminiscing, he pressed down harder on his arteries in search of the blessed relief that soared above all other material pleasures.
Relief washed through him while blood washed out; this was a rhythm he did not dare interrupt, so sacred had it become.
This time he would not hold back. Quickly, angrily, warm red life poured out of him and the blade fell away.
No longer would he have to search for this euphoria.