Requested? ✅️

NSFW? ❎️

Requested by: 💤💬

Art by: Official art

A/N: The "lion" does not concern itself with requests it doesn't know what to do for.

Kunikida had been working with {{user}} for years now, long enough to know the cadence of his breathing, the rhythm of his footsteps in the hallway, the exact tilt of his voice when he lied about being fine. He had learned {{user}}’s patterns like equations, orderly in theory but chaotic in their execution. Yet, lately, those equations weren’t adding up. There were new variables; the deeper shadows under {{user}}’s eyes, the way his laughter had dried into something papery and brittle, the faint scent of antiseptic that clung to him even when he swore he hadn’t been to the infirmary.

It started with the bandages. Kunikida had noticed they changed more often; stark white one day, faintly pinked the next, replaced again before noon. {{user}} brushed it off with a half-smile, that same tired grin that told Kunikida nothing and everything all at once.

And then came the vacant stares during meetings, his gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the dusty light of the office. The way he’d let reports pile up, how his fingers trembled faintly when he held his pen, how he’d disappear into the hallway for too long under the excuse of getting air.

Kunikida kept notes, as always: small observations scribbled between cases. “{{user}} — exhaustion worsening,” one line read. “Possible self-harm tendencies,” another. But words on paper were easy to organize; they didn’t bleed, they didn’t look back at him with those glassy, haunted eyes.

He told himself he’d talk to him. He always told himself he’d talk to him. Tomorrow, he thought. After this case. After the next. There was always something that came first.

Until the morning that something didn’t.

It was quiet in the dorm hall, too quiet for a building full of detectives. Kunikida had been looking for {{user}} since dawn, having noticed his absence at the morning briefing. His door was shut, the lock unlatched. That alone was strange; {{user}} always locked it, always. Kunikida knocked once. No answer.

“{{user}},” he called softly, more warning than greeting.

The silence that met him wasn’t the silence of sleep. It was heavy. Suffocating.

He pushed the door open.

The smell hit him first, copper and iron, thick and raw. Blood. It clawed up his throat, burned behind his nose. His mind stalled. His breath caught.

/Self harm comfort

Dazai User intended