(no subject)

In the last week of Bodhi’s medical leave, he worked himself hard. When he wasn’t in the barrack gym working out, he was studying the specs of his new ship. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was cooking. He had the freezer in Galen’s room stocked with pre-packed meals and ready-made spice blends that could be added to bland meals to make them palatable. As well as restocking his own travelling collection.

He wasn’t sleeping much either.

He was just coming back from the gym when Galen got off work, stripped down and sweaty.

OOM: Feather scratches on his wrist. Dry run with a bread knife.

Bodhi hasn’t been back downstairs for the better part of a week.

And he doesn’t look good – deep shadows under his eyes, pallor under the olive of his skin. He’s losing weight and muscle tone.

He hasn’t really eaten – some fruit, mostly tea. The tea that makes him sleep. He asked the rats to bring him pills. Pills to make him sleep. And they do.

And he has. He’s safer in the drugged sleep. He doesn’t dream there.

When he’s not sleeping, he lays on the bed and looks at the knife.

It’s a little tomato knife. A red duroplast handle. A clean, simple blade, ever so slightly serrated.

He doesn’t cut himself. He hasn’t touched the knife at all.

The blade has been sitting there for days. Just… sitting.

He can’t take his eyes off it.

He doesn’t think doesn’t about cutting himself. Not exactly. He doesn’t think about the act of pressing the blade to his flesh. Or how the bright blood might well and flow.

But he does think about how it would feel. That it would feel.

He doesn’t feel. Not anymore.

The colours have bled out. Everything is grey.

He breathes. His heart beats in his chest.

But he’s not alive.

He doesn’t feel alive any more.

All the colours are gone.

Leaving the red of the handle. And the red under his skin.

Instead he takes the pills. And sleeps. And lets a little black cat watch over him.