Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.

Prompt: "Yuki," he whimpered, tracing the mark with timid fingers. "It won't go away. It's permanent, Yuki. It won't go away. It'll never go away."

Rating: M for mentioned rape, dark thoughts, self-harm.

Claim

He blinked.

It stayed.

He blinked again.

Still there.

Unable to stop staring, eyes wide with sick horror and morbid fascination, locked on the reverse image of his shoulder. On the pale pink, glimmering mark so out of place on his tanned skin. It had been there – always been there – but he had hoped … hoped that it would have gone away with the others. Faded away, maybe. Dimmed until it no longer existed. He would have settled for it combusting spontaneously, burning his skin to an even more horrific scar, if it meant that it would go away.

But it was still latched on there.

"Oh…"

They had all faded, over time. All of his cuts, his bruises. It had been so much easier to look at himself in the mirror, without all the blemishes of his stupid mistake still covering his skin. Easier to forget that anything had ever happened, to forget that Tachi Aizawa and the rest of ASK hadn't actually been sent on a trip by Touma Seguchi to better their career. Easy, so easy.

"Yuki?"

Slowly, as though he feared pain, Shuichi lifted his hand, allowing his fingers to ghost over the rigged mark as he watched the action in the mirror. It felt … twisted, under his light touch. Fake, even, if he let himself go that far. He pressed down on it a little harder, forcing himself to feel it, to remember…

(Like that, you little bitch?)

Rigged bumps, a small void between each, in the form of a deformed circle. Passionately placed – a poisonous passion, but determined. Not a scratch, no – not a scar from a beating, or a knife, as he had thought. As he had hoped.

(Fuck! So … so.)

A bite mark.

"Yuki," he tried again, but it was weaker this time.

A bite mark – a claim. He remembered the hand wrapped around his throat, the arm locked around his waist as the man had bit down – the excruciating pain. The fire that had burned so brutally inside of him as the teeth had sunk in, as the act was completed. No, not a scratch. Not even a bite mark in the throws of sickened passion.

A claim. A bright, vivid claim at the base of his neck, the juncture between it and his shoulder. Shiny, no longer bruised, but pink, like his hair. Pink … pink and … permanent.

(He may let you go, but I never will. Never, baby. Never.)

"Yuki," he whimpered, tracing the claim with timid fingers. "It won't go away. It's permanent, Yuki. It won't go away. It'll never go away."

His fingernails grazed the scar, sending a tremor of something darkly pleasurable down his skin. With wide eyes of haunted violet, Shuichi watched as his fingernails pressed down, digging, seeking – saw them pierce impenetrable steel, saw the blood that flowed. So familiar. It was all so familiar.

"Yuki." And then he remembered. Yuki wasn't here today.

'Am I dreaming?' He wondered, watching as his fingers brought more blood, eyes following the trail of crimson as it dribbled down his chest. 'Why doesn't this hurt?'

(It's only in your mind, baby. All of this. Heh. Damn!)

'He isn't going to leave me. He's not … not now. Never. It's never going to go away. He said never. Never!' He gouged at the scar more, tears of pain he could not feel slipping from his eyes.

Beside him, his cellphone rang, blood dripping onto Yuki's glowing name.

Let me know? :/