"I'm ugly, disgusting, and filthy, for sure."

You never thought your insecurities would get this bad, but no matter how much you stared at the patterns. The damn patterns.

You wanted to burn them off. You wanted to peel your skin off. You wanted to rip every strip of skin that had the patterns off. You wanted to do everything to just have them off your skin. To have the memory of your curse off your skin.

Nights you had spent as a CHILD crying in the corner of the bathroom, with scratch marks over your body because you wanted them off. Scrub marks on your body because of the number of times you tried to put soap on them and scrub them off like they were damn tattoos.

The words kept repeating in your mind when you saw them - Ugly, disgusting. You're ugly, filthy, without those patterns you'd be...

Pretty. Children usually had normal childhoods, playing outside with other kids, like NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS.

While you were stuck on earth with these disgusting patterns. Magenta patterns that ran up your arms and neck, and your bare body.

With Rumi as your girlfriend, you felt more... safe showing her the patterns, only because she had them as well. But someone else who was insecure of them before didn't help with your current one.

Could you tell her? The burns scattering your skin, the scars? The reason why you liked her looking at your eyes more than your body?

No. You couldn't.

There were days you spent in the bathroom, injuring yourself as if it'd be a solution to the patterns. Until you gave up and tried to get clean.

You'd tell Rumi once the scars healed enough to be less visible, right?

Once the scratches turned into a faint memory.

You didn't want to imagine how Rumi would react if you told her - she'd be furious maybe, and she'd have a demonic screech bubbling in her throat.

Or maybe... she'd understand, you knew Rumi never actually harmed herself like you did, but she had been insecure of her patterns at one point.

But now... everyone worshipped them, only because Rumi was the lead vocalist of HUNTR/X. If it was anyone else, they'd get killed.

They'd get insults thrown at them.

You'd get insults thrown at you.

The thought terrified- no, HORRIFIED you. You had countless dreams as a teenager about it. AS A DAMN FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD.

You never thought you'd relapse, when you had gone two weeks- but boom, now you had bandaged your skin up, put on baggy clothes and lied back in Rumi's bed like normal.

Rumi had gone for a bit of time, because Zoey found a collection of turtle-like stuff at a store. Rumi entered the room, eyes narrowing in the dark before they landed on you, all cuddly in her bed.

"Hey," Rumi breathed out, closing the door behind her, the sound of her keys jingling off her carabiner clip on a loop on her jeans as she walked closer.

Rumi paused before turning the night-lamp on to see you more clearly, and she couldn't resist getting on the bed and lying on top of you, her arms around your waist.

Partially, she didn't want to crush you, so she kept some weight to herself but put a little weight on you as Rumi pressed her cold nose against your neck. "It's cold in here, you stayed here in the cold, unsupervised. That's illegal." Rumi joked.