Warning: Contains spoilers for pretty much every existing chapter there is for the game Sally Face (1-4). This fic deals with triggering subjects such as self harm, suicide, and panic attacks. If you are sensitive to these subjects, do not continue reading. This fic also contains gay shipping. If this assortment of ship makes you uncomfortable, click out of this story. *This is an AU where Henry Fisher and Lisa Johnson never got married*
He didn't mean to.
He honest to God didn't mean to. It was a moment of his brain being completely on autopilot. As soon as he noticed the everyday object sitting there innocently, his clouded brain kicked himself to the backseat and tainted the object with his own blood.
He was in such a shock as he continuously watched the red liquid run from his arms and drip to his carpet. Part of him wanted to vomit. Another wanted to attempt to patch up the damage he had caused himself or call someone. The other part was too occupied with shock to care about what the other parts thought.
His thoughts were racing at a mile a minute.
Am I dying?
That's a lot of blood.
Did I cut a main artery?
Oh, God, is the room getting darker?
I should get someone.
Wait...will I be put into a mental institute?
Maybe I should hide this.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
He tried to snap himself out of his trance like state, but he found it to be nearly impossible. He could barely pinpoint the exact reason why he snapped now out of all times. Was it just stress from school? He could hardly believe his boyfriend to be a factor in this. No, his boyfriend has been nothing but sweet with him.
Wait...
What was his boyfriend going to say?
That thought seemed to smack him clean out of his trance.
His hands flew up to tangle themselves in his hair. What was his boyfriend going to say? He wouldn't be mean would he? No, he would have no reason to. He knew his boyfriend had had issues like this in the past, so why in Heaven's name would his boyfriend be angry with him? Well, maybe he would be a scared angry, running up to him and freaking out over his arms, tears glazing in his eyes as he yelled at him about how stupid he was for doing this all the while trying to find something that would clot the bleeding.
No, that wouldn't happen; his boyfriend wasn't the yelling type.
Oh, goodness, what was he going to do.
Tears welled up in his eyes as the grip on his hair got harder and harder. His world seemed to be slipping out from underneath him at a faster rate than he could reclaim it. Everything felt as if it was falling apart. Was that why he had done what he did? He wasn't for sure, but one thing was.
He was scared.
Out of all of the things he had ever done, this was truly horrifying to him. That's saying a lot considering he's witnessed and helped discover murderers, and even helped dismantle a bologna industry where each slice of bologna that Chug and Travis ingested was made of once living humans. This was somehow even more terrifying than both of those combined. He's been nearly killed and possibly made into bologna, and yet this incident is the one that he's felt more nauseous over.
His knees buckled, and he fell to the floor, where sections of his carpet were stained with the precious life liquid that was dripping from his arms. Had this scene not been so messed up, maybe he would have laughed about how his blood was red and his carpet was green. Christmas colors. Christmas was a time of joy and giving.
Right now, he was anguished while the world kept on taking from him.
He hadn't lost anyone recently, that's not what he meant. His feelings were just...leaving.
Happiness, joy, ecstasy, they all just kept leaving.
Loneliness, self doubt, and fear stayed.
He wanted to say that he felt numb like what patients of depression would often say, but he always felt trapped in a prison of fear.
What if something happens to his boyfriend? What if he fails high school and can't get a good job? He fully intends on supporting his boyfriend, and perhaps a family one day, but how is he supposed to manage this when he was nothing but a failure?
He curled in onto himself, head lowered against the floor and knees pressed tightly together against the ground. His hands tugged and tugged at his hair, but the ever growing pain in his scalp never did anything to stop the tormenting thoughts and voices that screamed at him inside of his head.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" He sobbed in between his tears as he banged his head against the ground.
Not even the clicking sound of his door opening was enough to get his attention. He knew someone just entered his room, but he wasn't sure who. Unless, he was reading this all wrong and perhaps the wind blew it open, or it had never been fully shut to begin with.
"Larry!"
Nope, someone had definitely opened his door.
"Larry, what's wrong? What happened?" They were kneeling right next to him, hands hovering over his head, not wanting to touch him in case the contact was unwanted, but also yearning to do whatever was humanly possible. Larry wanted to speak, wanted to collapse into the arms of whoever had found him, but his breathing-or lack thereof-wasn't allowing such an action to be done. "You're bleeding! I'll go get something!" Before Larry had the chance to protest the person leaving, they were gone in search of whatever they could find that may clot the bleeding. In this time, Larry had found the strength in himself to sit up on his knees, arms wrapping themselves around his stomach in attempts to hold its contents. Larry was scared that the nausea would be much too overwhelming and his stomach contents would make a second coming right on his carpet.
He couldn't tell you the relief he felt when the person reentered the room.
Or how relieved he felt when he noticed the familiar blue pig-tails of his boyfriend.
Not seeming to care about unwanted contact anymore, Sal forced Larry's arms in front of him as he wrapped what seemed to be a roll of white bandages around his arms. "Larry...what did you do?" As if he really needed to ask that. Sal knew exactly what his boyfriend had done, but he wanted to be told that he was wrong.
Larry shook his head in shame as more tears trailed down his face. "I'm sorry," He managed to choke out, "I didn't mean to." Sal wasn't really listening to what his boyfriend had to say; he chose to ignore the constant apologies that he kept uttering. He didn't need apologies nor an explanation. He just continued to wrap the white bandages around Larry's arms while his boyfriend continuously sobbed. Sal had examined the gashes briefly before he had started to wrap them. They didn't appear to be deep enough to require stitches, but they looked threatening enough to be susceptible to infection. Thinking back on it now Sal wishes he would have gotten some hydrogen-peroxide or some rubbing alcohol, hell even a little bit of Neosporin to clean his boyfriend's gashes.
Larry never really cried. Neither did Sal if they were honest. Sal had maybe seen Larry cry a majority of three times in their moments of knowing each other. Once when Larry realized his father wasn't coming back, another time when he had broken his ankle, and lastly when Sal had gotten a bad infection in his worsening eye socket and the outlook seemed rather bleak. Sal had definitely cried around Larry, at least twice from the times he can remember. When Larry had first seen Sal without his mask on, and when Sal was venting to Larry about how negligent his father was becoming of him, especially forgetting his birthday that day.
This was a predicament indeed for Sal.
Sal had obviously gone through similar things, what with his horrid nightmares tormenting him each time he attempted to sleep. His thirteen to sixteen year old self had no other idea on how to cope with said nightmares. For Larry to do it was...shocking, to say the least. Had Sal done something wrong? Him and Larry had never had sex, but he would swear to you that everything they had done up to that point was completely consensual.
"Why..." Sal whispered, although he wasn't sure if it was loud enough for Larry to hear him, "why did you do this?"
Larry must have heard because he tensed up even more, placing his hand against his face so Sal couldn't see. Sal wanted to move Larry's hand away from his face, but for the time being chose not to. He waited and waited for a response for what must have been at least for five minutes, but all Larry had to offer him was a pitiful, "I don't know,".
Sal didn't pry for another answer. What Sal did do is crawl into Larry's lap, an action that almost always seemed to help put Larry's mind at ease. Once in his lap, Sal removed Larry's hand from his face and looked up into Larry's teary eyes. "Babe..." He started out slowly without knowing exactly where he was going. A part of him was about to ask 'why' again, but the other part just wanted to make it clear that Sal was here for him. "I'm right here."
If Larry had had any intentions on trying to be strong, this is where the intentions came crashing down. He wrapped his aching arms around Sal's middle and put his face in the younger boy's hair. Sal could feel Larry's tears drenching his head, but he didn't mind too much.
He was going to help Larry through this. He had to. He wasn't going to sit around and watch the one he loved suffer.
Sal rubbed Larry's back. "We'll get through this, I promise."
He should have an explanation. He should be able to tell Sal why he did this, but he truthfully didn't know why he did. "Sal...I-I don't know what came over me or why I did this, but I-"
"Sh," Sal shushed as he looked into Larry's eyes, his legs wrapping around Larry's torso, "it's ok. We'll fix this." He wanted to add a, just don't do this again, but he knew that this wasn't something that could truthfully be done.
"You're not going to tell anyone, are you?" The question took Sal by surprise. It hadn't honestly been in his mind to tell Lisa what her son had done, unless...Sal didn't want to think about the day Larry might try to do more than just harm himself. He'd rather off himself than live to see the day where Larry did it first.
"I won't tell anyone unless I know you're going to seriously harm yourself...but I don't think it's a bad idea to maybe get a therapist?" Sal knew that that offer would more than likely not reach Larry's ears, but it was worth a shot. Sal had been going to a therapist for a while now, and he would be lying if he said it didn't give him some assortment of relief. It wasn't his favorite place to go to by any means, but he would take his counselor's office over a doctor office any day.
"Wouldn't that require...telling my mom?"
Sal thought it over. Perhaps it would since it would be costly experience and insurance would be needed. In the end, it might be worth it, though. "Yeah, but-"
"I don't want to tell her. This is the last thing she needs in her life," Larry was quick to interject. "We've lost dad, murders and disappearances worry her, she has bills already, we just found out that one of our teachers was practically cannibalistic. The last thing she needs to worry about his another bill because her good for nothing son can't figure out how to handle emotions."
The last bit of Larry's speech nearly made Sal angry. Lisa loved her son to bits, Sal knew. Larry was Lisa's everything, and Sal was making himself a second great source of happiness. Lisa was supportive of Larry in everything he did and often times looked past his mistakes. Unlike normal parents who would rub their children's faces in their mistakes until the situation was engraved in their heads forever, Lisa would be angry and discipline now then leave it alone for a long time, reprimanding Larry only if he brought it back up. Lisa adored her child.
If she could hear how Larry was talking about himself, she would have slugged him.
"Now you listen here, Larry, your mom and I would never sit and let you talk about yourself in such a manner," Sal began, anger evident in his eyes. "That woman loves you to death. She would gladly die for you if it meant that you got to live a nice, long life. She'd give everything she owned just for you. Hell, so would I!" Sal was raising his voice a bit. He never did that. Sal was a generally soft spoken person who hardly ever raised his voice. "Good for nothing my ass, Larry! You don't understand how loved you are! Lisa loves you! I love you!" Sal knew he had some tears running down his face. Larry could see them dripping from underneath his mask, to which he almost instantly unclipped Sal's latches to his mask to be able to rub away the tears, but Larry thought against his usual impulses.
Sal's breathing grew labored as his hands had begun to ball into fists. He had been strong this far. Now that he had heard Larry talk bad about himself accompanied by the cuts that told more of the fucked up story that his head was going through than his mouth could, he just couldn't stay strong.
"I need you," He sniffled, hands going to clutch at the ends of his pig-tails. "If I would lose you, I don't know what I would do."
Neither boy went through that day dry eyed.
Sal didn't let one sharp edge not be covered. Not one knife wasn't stashed away and hidden out of sight. Not one razor blade remained in plain sight.
But in a few years, Sal's efforts would prove to have been meaningless.