Lachlan's P.O.V.
Looking down at my hips, I sighed. There was raised white lines covering them, and I knew that even if I tried again I wouldn't feel the pain anymore.
I looked up when I heard the door open and jumped to grab my t-shirt, but Preston had already seen me. He sighed and pulled me into a hug, tracing the small lines with his finger. I leaned into him, feeling his fingers running along my body.
Sometimes I regretted those scars, but most of the time it sent me straight back to the bad times, when I didn't want to do anything anymore. That was during high-school, before I had met Preston or any of the others and hated everything to do with myself.
I'd always had low self-esteem, but after some people thought it was fun to bully me about my height and weight, I turned to my razor and scarred my own body. No one knew about the scars, at least not until Preston saw them when I was getting changed. I had still been cutting, so some of the scars were still new.
He had asked me to be his boyfriend, and after some thought I said yes. With my answer came something I almost regretted, and that I would never feel my own pain anymore, at least I never would if we didn't break up.
When you become someone's boyfriend/girlfriend, you would swap pain receptors and any injury they get, you would feel their pain. Their injury would remain on them, but they wouldn't feel anything.
Quite often I'd have a rather intense pain run through my toe, and I'd immediately know that Preston had stubbed his toe on something, leaving me with the pain. I knew he never did it on purpose, but occasionally I'd get my own back with a paper cut or pulling out a hangnail.
------------------------------------
I was curled up on bed, sobbing. I had had a massive blow out with Preston and he had left the house in a fit of rage after throwing a glass at me. We had been fighting over the amount of time we were spending together, because of how busy I was.
I hardly ever got to spend time with Preston anymore, YouTube taking up at least 10 hours of my day and sleep taking up another 12, barely able to function in the few remaining hours. Preston had wanted to spend more time with me, but I didn't know how I could tell him that I couldn't.
I knew I was falling, and I would go back to my old ways if I didn't get any help. In the hours I wasn't sleeping or working, I was sitting on my bed or in the backyard, staring at nothing. It could go on for hours at a time, and there had been several times Preston had caught me, so I knew he was getting worried.
It had turned into a yelling match, mostly Preston yelling and me attempting to push him away. After half an hour of yelling Preston pushed me against the wall before throwing a glass close to my head and bolting out the door and slamming it behind him.
My arms were shaking, my brain kept going back to the days I dragged the blade across my body to feel relief, which was what I wanted at that moment. Turning my head to the light, I moved almost robotically and dragged myself into the bathroom.
Fumbling with my razor, I pulled the blade out of the plastic casing and held the little piece of silver in my hand. I held it against my hip and in a split second dragged it deep into my skin, waiting for the pain. It didn't come.
I forgot, I forgot completely about the bond that swapped or pain receptors, so I dragged it across my hip again, deeper this time, over and over again. Swapping to the other hip, I dragged the blade deeper still, so far down I felt the blood on the tips of my fingers.
With still no pain, I looked down at the bloody blade and without thinking, pulled it across my wrist, something I'd avoided for the very reason the scars would be visible. I could feel the blood trickling down my hips from the other cuts and my vision was going spotty, black fading in and out.
Falling to the floor, the blade clattering across the floor and my head and body crashing onto the tiles. Feeling blood starting to pool around me, panic started to set in, but I also felt calm. I felt as if I was floating, I was no longer in my body and everything went black.
Preston's P.O.V.
I fell to the floor, my hips on fire with sharp pain. I was on the footpath a few minutes walk from the house, after I stormed out to calm down. There was some yelling around me and someone pulled me so I was looking up and I could see them.
I groaned, pain was still shooting though my entire body and suddenly I sat up. Lachlan!
"My- my boyfriend- aghh!" I grasped at my wrist, which had suddenly exploded in pain and I curled up into myself, breathing heavily. I struggled to stand on my feet but suddenly there was no more pain. It all stopped.
The way it worked was we could feel what the other person would feel, so it either ment Lachlan was unconscious- or the other option, which I didn't want to think about.
I pulled away from the person who was trying to help me and sprinted down the street, running as fast as I could. I wrenched the door open to the house, having reached it in record time and bolted up the stairs.
He wasn't in his room, or the office, or the lounge. The only room that I hadn't gone into was the bathroom, and I was terrified at what I would find. The door was pulled over but not quite closed, so when I looked down I saw a spot of red underneath the door.
I pushed it open, as far as I could until it hit something solid. There was a lot of blood. I squeezed around the door and fell to the floor, landing on my knees in a pool of blood. It was Lachlan's blood.
He was lying on his back, blood still dripping gently from the razor sharp incisions on his hips and wrist. The bloody blade was lying a little way away from his open hand, the slits on his left wrist hanging open and exposing the bone.
I knew he was past saving, he was already dead when I arrived. Slowly, I looked up to his face and let out a choked sob. The back of his head was dyed red from blood and his eyes were open, blankly staring at the ceiling, the blues faded and pupils expanded.
His face was white from blood loss and I fell forwards, sobbing.
"No Lachlan! No! Please, no! This can't be happen- happening!" Tears streaming down my face I cupped Lachlan's face in my hands, leaning down and resting my forehead against his.
"No... Please... No..." My voice faded out and I sat up, wailing and falling back against the wall. Burying my face in my hands, which were considerably bloody, I sobbed. I cried out all of the pain I had ever felt and the pain I knew I would feel.
My boyfriend was dead. Lachlan, my best friend of at least 6 years, was dead. He was dead because he couldn't feel his own pain. He was dead because of the vow we took. And I forever blamed myself.
It was all because of that unfelt pain.