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There’s something wrong with him and he doesn’t know what.
Which is ridiculous, because apparently everybody else under the sun knows, and has known for a long time. They watch him go through the motions, the impulsive cycle that he can’t break away from, with nothing but calmness, for it’s nothing unusual to them.
Sagawa was the first witness to it all unleashed - it’d been happening for years, but he’d restrained it, held it back. It wasn’t easy, or fun, or comfortable, but he’d managed, barely, to keep it to himself; it was far easier to deal with his moods without witnesses. But I digress - Sagawa was the first to see it. Sagawa was the first to see the spring in his step and the look in his eye and think anything of it; Sagawa was the first to witness the cycle’s beginning.
Meeting Kiryu only seemed to push it onward, really, because his brain and his heart and his soul latched onto the younger man with an obsessive intensity that he couldn’t morally explain, and he found himself clinging to his every word and punch and sliver of attention. Kiryu was his newest obsession, his favourite thing, the meaning of life itself - and he really was, wasn’t he? Because Majima would die without him. If Kiryu ever died, Majima would keel over and die right beside him, whether he was meant to or not - that was just a fact of life. That was just the way things were.
(Nobody needed to know that, though. They’d think him crazy. They’d kill him themselves, and then he’d never get to fight Kiryu ever again.)
The more familiar part of his brain loved to rear its head at the absolute peak of his obsession, of his fantasy. He’d be knee-deep in adoration one second, absolutely over-the-moon; and then it’d all shatter, and he’d be left reeling, curling in on himself on his cold bedroom floor and sobbing.
The thing about his line of work was that nobody saw a few extra wounds as anything notable - they could be shrugged off as a scrap in an alleyway, no big deal - so when he lay and heaved and clawed at his wrists, his sides, his throat, there was nobody to stop him, nobody to see anything was wrong.
(His nails weren’t too sharp, anyway. They left his skin red-raw and flaky and sore, but after a few hours it’d be almost normal-coloured again, and after a day or two the soreness would ebb away.)
Eventually the pain - the all-encompassing agony that gripped him without warning, the deep need for death itself, the shadow in the corner of the room that wouldn’t stop staring at him - would slow and stop and morph into the more palatable flavour of pure apathy; and he’d dust himself off and get to his feet, and act as if none of it happened.
The apathy was better, but not much better.
He could pretend (the time in the hole, the time at The Grand, he’d had plenty of practice pretending) to be normal. He could pretend to obsess and shriek and fight Kiryu with all his might, even if he took more blows than he dealt and gave up far too easily. He could pretend to care, pretend to love, pretend to feel a thing when his hand came back from his face bloody.
And if Kiryu noticed that he moved too stiffly, like a puppet on a string or a doll with a motor, then he didn’t say a word about it; after all, Goro Majima was no normal man. Kiryu had grown used to seeing strangeness from him, even if that strangeness filled him with concern.
“Is it normal,” he swallowed, “to wanna claw out yer own veins, when you’d been fine just before?”
The massage therapist (who wasn’t Makoto, thank god, though he still found himself imagining her face, her voice) swallowed just as nervously. “I don’t think so, sir,” she admitted softly.
He shifted under her hands, glanced over his shoulder at her. A kind, soft face, not quite as pretty as Makoto but pretty enough to get by; a subtle sadness in her eyes. He flashed her his best encouraging grin (which made her flinch a little - maybe he should practice that on people who aren’t scared of him) and settled.
“That’s alright,” he muttered, not quite believing it himself. “I don’ think I’m normal.”
Kiryu caught him on a bridge day, once.
Bridge days are the days where everything is wonderful, but you can just feel the bad day coming; or, alternatively, the days where you want to keel over and die, but tomorrow looks so beautifully pleasing, so strangely hopeful. Unfortunately - or maybe fortunately, he can’t tell - it was one of the former.
The younger yakuza had eyes like a hawk and surprisingly good reflexes, and caught Majima’s hand just as it went to scrape at his wrist. “Don’t,” he said simply, sharply - and, at the other man’s recoil, softened his tone. “Don’t do that, Majima-san. You’ll hurt yourself.”
Majima hissed - like a cat, which was almost funny, because he’s meant to be a dog - and snatched his wrist back. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”
Barely even blinking, Kiryu reached forward and seized both of Majima’s wrists, leaving him writhing for freedom. “You shouldn’t. There are better ways to deal with things, Majima-san.”
And all of a sudden, the bridge day came to a head.
It was like gravity became too much, and his obsession reared its head, and he found himself clinging desperately to Kiryu’s jacket and leaning far too close into him, trying his best not to sob. He was shaking, maybe, in time with his heartbeat, which was far too fast - and Kiryu was holding him tight, just tight enough that he could feel it in his bones. He didn’t move, barely breathed, just kept clinging - because Kiryu is life, and Kiryu is safe, and Kiryu won’t hate you for being a freak-
“There’s somethin’,” he wheezed, pressing his face into the other man’s chest, trembling a little harder as Kiryu’s arm raised to hold him, “there’s somethin’ wrong wi’ me, Kiryu-chan.”
It felt like an eternity before Kiryu answered - just an eternity of standing there, shaking, pressed so closely into him that all he sees is darkness, and the comfortingly-familiar fabric of Kiryu’s jacket. An eternity of breathing - more like wheezing, really - whilst Kiryu pressed a rhythm into his shoulder-blades, one finger at a time, silent but soothing.
His voice came slowly, softly, warm against the cold of the night and Majima’s blood freezing in his veins; “Maybe, Majima-san.” A pause for thought, pressing another rhythm into his back, something poppy and familiar that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “But that’s alright, I think.”
Majima wheezed, sobbed, and Kiryu held him long into the night.