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He doesn't mean to do it, not really.
He's not trying to hurt himself.
It's just that the hurt is everywhere, throbbing alive under his skin, and the skies are so dark and endless above them. There’s pain. Deep in him, there’s pain.
It makes everything seem. Flat. Distant. Like there's glass between him and the rest of the world. Like he might not be there at all. Might not be real. Might not be alive.
He needs to do something. Let it out. Make it real. Prove it false. He’s not sure.
There isn’t then, a thought of hurting himself, or much thought at all. There’s no gap, between thought and deed, nothing to tie them, happening as the idea bubbles up and bursts.
The sight of his own blood shocks him, bubbling up red and hot around the tip of the letter opener he'd pressed into the raised, ice-blue vein.
He standing then, staring at it there, right there, mesmerized by the welling of it, the way it surges and thins as it drips shockingly hot over the knob of his wrist when his door opens and closes.
Maybe he had made a noise when he'd done it, though none he’d heard himself.
Or John had just had a sense of it, of him, felt his teeth ache and spine throb on the other side of a thin wooden wall. Perhaps he’d had a message from God.
He doesn't ask.
Neither does John, careful to first slide the door shut behind him and then to come to him, to wrap a firm hand around his arm, thumb pressing down hard on the cut, turning the flesh around it white.
Stopping the bleed.
He has such strong, capable hands. Sure, steady and decisive. Ned has always admired them.
"It's a sin, this," John murmurs, at the wound and not at Ned.
Not looking at his face.
For a moment, Ned thinks he might mean press his head forward, like a man to a cross, might lean his forehead or his lips onto it and be smeared with blood.
Like those gathered around Jesus' dying, and he wonders, disjointedly, if John meant the attempt it seems to be or the heresy of imitating His wounds.
"I'm sorry," he hears himself say, wet and thick, like he's underwater, "I did not mean it."
That he does mean, and wonders if he will be believed.
He can only hope.
John is quiet for a moment, focused on wrapping his wrist tightly with his own handkerchief.
Or Ned thinks it's his, it's the one he always uses, but now that it's set against his skin he can see and feel the monogram: W.E.M.
He does not ask, just lets himself be tended.
"I know," John says, finally, thumb pressing on the other side now, up instead of down, pushing Ned's hand onto his own shoulder, wrist hidden against his chest.
The blood will flow down, not well. Not anymore.
"I'll pray for you," John says, standing close.
His eyes are still turned to the floor, but his lips are close to Ned's cheekbone, his breath fanning over his skin.
"I always do, but I'll…"
Ned doesn't know the rest of it, what he means, because as he's speaking they're moving and their mouths slot together.
It's not a kiss, not exactly, not with the way they just breathe into each other's open throats, chests heaving. Like John is trying to make sure his blood is still circling, his heart still beating, his soul still in his body and not yet bound for Hell.
"I'm sorry," Ned repeats, after a while, cheek against John's, chin too, corners of their lips still offset.
John shakes his head, and puts his tongue back in Ned's mouth.
It takes like a sacrament. It makes him feel alive. Again. At last. Awake.
"We cannot…I cannot do this without you," he says, like a confession, whispered.
Ned nods, understands all he means, moving them both where their foreheads pressed together.
John’s feels so warm, the skin so solid, so real, so present.
John shakes, and folds into his arms, lets Ned hold him, smear blood on the back of his jacket.
They’ll be smelling it for a long time to come.
"You'll pray for me?" Ned asks, just wanting to hear it.
Just wanting to know.
To feel it, deep inside.
"Every night," John says, and does.
On the floor of Ned's own cabin, with hands and lips and tongues and legs intertwined.
And the next night.
And the next.
And when they're walking over the shale, ice in their veins and scurvy in their joints, Ned feels the sting in his wrist of an opening wound and remembers.
It gives him the strength to carry on.