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Noiz wasn’t depressed. He didn’t have anxiety, he wasn’t very stressed, and his life at the moment was all around pretty fucking okay.
So he briefly wondered why he did what he did.
He wondered for a second why practically every day he grasped the blade and dragged it across his arms and legs, letting the blood spill out like a knocked over glass of cherry Kool-Aid.
Except, he also knew that there was no good reason to wonder. Because he knew why. He knew why he did it and he felt that his reasons were completely fucking justified.
It all started with simple curiosity. Casual Google searches can lead to very interesting articles, after all. He thought. If I cut deep enough will I feel it? After looking around for a clean knife and a place for the deed to be done, he discovered that the answer was yes. If it was deep enough, yes. He could definitely feel it. The adrenaline he felt during and after the cut only added to the strange sensation. So it started that way. After that, he decided, yeah, okay, that was cool, and that’s the only time that that’s ever going to happen ever.
The knife was cleaned and put in it’s proper location.
The second time was an accident.
He had ordered some pizza (pepperoni and cheese was his usual; sometimes he would request there be some sausage on it if he was feeling spontaneous enough) and realized that holy shit they didn’t cut the pizza right. The pieces were just in so many different sizes. Some were larger than his hand with his fingers spread out, some were smaller than a toddler’s fist, and they were all in all just plain unappealing. One would think a guy who lived off pizza and pasta and dressed the way he did wouldn’t care about a thing like that, but if someone thought that then they would be wrong. Even Noiz had standards.
So as he was grumbling about how stupid pizzeria workers couldn’t even cut a fucking pizza right, he reached into the kitchen sink and slowly recoiled. His palm was bleeding. He actually hardly felt it, but the sudden dull throb in his hand was what got him. He looked into the sink and when the hell did that get there? He must have placed the knife there to clean it. Well, now it was dirty again.
His mind faintly drifted to when, a few weeks before, he had deliberately and willingly pulled the knife across his leg. His heartbeat picked up, if only slightly, when he remembered. So he rinsed off the knife and left the unappealing pizza on the kitchen table.
The times it happened weren’t very frequent, and it wasn’t like he had a schedule. The days that he felt unusually disconnected from reality were the days the blade went deeper than normal.
It became a regular occurrence.
It was somewhat early in the year (May? June? It had been a long time since then) when he suddenly decided that long sleeves and two pairs of pants were a perfectly good fashion statement to make. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of what he did. It was just that his team would surely try to figure out what other team had started a fight with their captain and had cut him up so badly. They would try to find out why it had happened, and they would do something about it.
Unnecessary violence was not something he liked on his Rhyme team.
His prided team, Ruff Rabbit, noticed a change in their team leader after the first couple of months. They couldn’t pinpoint exactly what had changed, but they knew something was up. But they also felt that Noiz was capable of handling whatever mess he got into by himself. So, although reluctant, they left it at that.
At the hospital he had to give the doctors and nurses his information. His blood type (B), any allergies he had (none), any previous sicknesses and diseases (enough to count on two hands), anything the doctors needed.
His whole name. His family. Their information.
He could have lied, sure. He could have but he didn’t. He saw no reason to, and that was his mistake.
A week or so after he left from the hospital, he got a call. As he looked down at his coil to see who the hell would be calling him at three in the goddamn morning, he realized that he didn’t even recognize the number. Sure he would get random calls (not in the middle of the night, thank whoever’s up there), but he knew practically every area code in Midorijima, and this was not one of them.
He groaned and answered his coil.
“Yeah?”
“Is this Noiz?”
Noiz clenched his teeth. He wished that the person on the other end of the line didn’t hear his slight intake of his breath. He wished that the voice he heard didn’t still have that same tone it always had, wished that it didn’t roll their z’s in that particular way, wished that it wasn’t in fucking German, and jesus christ he wished so fucking hard that it wasn’t the voice of his younger brother.
“I’m sorry, I must have pushed a wrong number.”
Before Noiz let himself hear the click of an ending call he found himself slipping back to his native language. “Wait.”
“Noiz?"
He wasn’t sure what was happening. He never really talked to his brother. After all, he had been locked up in that goddamn room for so long. Still, even with the handful of times he had heard his voice, he was certainly one hard to forget.
“…Yes. This is Noiz.”
“Noiz! I can’t believe we haven’t talked in so long! Are you okay?”
“How did you find me?” Noiz was surprised at himself for the sudden sharpness of his voice. A small hint of hostility was present, and he was confused.
“Huh? The phone rang today, and Mom and Dad were busy, so I answered it.” The voice paused for a second. “Are you okay?” it repeated, in a slower voice, quieter, and even a bit stern.
“I’m fine.”
“Noiz I want you to keep this number saved. Please.”
“Okay.” As soon as he said that, he wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want to give his brother false hope. No he wasn’t worried. Why should he be worried? He wasn’t worried about it. It didn’t help him. It didn’t fix him in any way. It didn’t warm his heart a bit that his little brother was calling, that his little brother was worried for him, that his little brother was scared for him, that his little brother had answered a call from a lady with a too sweet voice saying that the hospital had figured that the only reason his wrists and legs were slit so bad was because of an attempted suicide, that his little brother was on the phone with him right now and he hadn’t talked to him since he was nine.
If Noiz’s emotions hadn’t been practically numbed to the point of almost non-existing, he might have felt more. He might have choked up. He might have even started crying. But no. No, the fuzzy fleeting thing he felt was gone, and what he currently felt was annoyance.
Sure, his heart night have softened a little when he heard the voice on the phone, but really? Was this supposed to change something? Was it supposed to change the fact that his family regarded him a monster, the fact that his parents hadn’t contacted him once when he left? Was this supposed to redeem them somehow? He knew he shouldn’t necessarily be angry at his brother; it was his parents that treated him like shit. He furrowed his brows and clenched his teeth and he didn’t understand.
He hung up before he realized it.
As Noiz looked down at his bandaged arms and legs, he thought about what the fuck just happened. What was happening? His heart was pounding for reasons he didn’t understand. Was he angry? Was he happy? Was he heartbroken?
In the nineteen years Noiz had been around, he had gathered up the basic bits and pieces of what strong emotions were supposed to feel like. Happiness would be like when he got a lot of money for his information (satisfaction?). Fear was when people jumped because the lights turned off. Surprised was when he randomly felt his chest clenching for no apparent reason. Annoyance was when the pizzeria mixed up his order. Love was when people fucked while they put meaning behind it. Sadness would be when his clients cheated him. That might have been anger, though. He still confused the two of them.
His understanding of emotions was basic, and that was why he was confused when he recalled the whole ordeal. He thought that one second he was surprised, and then nervous (that one was still fairly new to him, but his brain was getting used to it), and then more annoyance and anger. Finally, there was more surprise.
His emotions and mind were muddled and he felt like shit.
He left towards the bathroom, careful not to leave too large a mess in the sink.
The day Noiz battled Sly Blue was an important day because after that he found someone to challenge.
He found the kid, Aoba, and asked to battle again in the most normal way possible. No one informed Noiz that breaking into someone’s house and almost breaking their arm isn’t exactly welcome.
Aoba said no, and then Noiz became borderline obsessive. He would bother Aoba every moment. He could even say it was fun annoying the shit out of the embodiment of Sonic the Hedgehog. Aoba declined every time, though.
Apparently, some guy with a kimono came along free if you ordered an Aoba. Actually, Aoba came in a bundle complete with overprotective boyfriend, gas mask airhead, and some fucker with dreads and feathers.
Aoba was like a movie older brother, if anything. He tried to take care of Noiz, even though Noiz was a total asshole to him most of the time. The time Noiz advanced on Aoba, accusing him of wanting something, Aoba was surprised.
“What? No! I want you to be safe. I care about you.”
Overprotective kimono boyfriend was named Koujaku. He and Noiz fought all the time. All of it. They fucked with each other’s heads. It was not often they were seen not at each other’s throats. But one time Koujaku had drunkenly giggled and said something that Noiz wished he hadn’t heard, because then he felt almost guilty for picking fights with him.
“Nooz, stop. You’ll get hurt.”
The gas mask airhead was Clear. In the beginning, Noiz felt something was off about him. His curiosity and wonder of the world was something too… childish? He was just too happy all the time. He was nice. Maybe he was even a bit too nice, but his ridiculous comments made him kind of hilarious to be around. Sure he could get overbearing, but his simple nature was maybe something one could consider “endearing.”
“Noiz-san, you’re really smart! How did you learn this stuff?”
The fucker with the dreads was named Mink, and seriously what was he? He was interesting, and the way he held himself was admirable, but he hardly ever spoke. Noiz annoyed him all the time, but his emotions were hardly ever revealed. A fleeting thought Noiz had once was that maybe he was like Noiz. But he wasn’t. If you watched and listened, it was obvious.
“Hey, Maniac, stop fighting and get to work. You’ve got a good brain, put it to use.”
Noiz referred to them as the dicksquad.
Gradually, Noiz came to terms with the fact that no one really wanted anything from him, and he was even more confused than he was before. They had nothing to gain from being decent or nice to him. It was only occasionally that they had a few questions, but they were simple. But they surely had to want something from him, didn’t they? It wasn’t his body, as Aoba had established earlier. To be honest, he didn’t really believe Aoba with that, but the fucker seemed to be the kind to not really lie. Ugh. His brain, maybe? No, the questions they asked could probably he answered in a simple online search. His Rhyme information? None of them played Rhyme. In fact, Koujaku and Mink had Rib teams.
So what was it?
What would cause them to be kind (dare he say even “familial”) to him? Surely there was something they wanted, or else they wouldn’t have bothered. If someone wasn’t of use, you didn’t interact with them. It was simple as that.
Noiz mulled over his thoughts, and Aoba repeated what he had told him before.
“We’re your friends, and we want you to feel safe.”
Koujaku had always yelled at him for walking around with blood on his clothes.
“You can’t just walk around getting cut up left and right, you dumbass!”
Clear had wondered why when he and Koujackoff fought that Noiz hardly ever winced.
“You seem really strong, Noiz-san! Is it that you can’t feel anything? If you experience an error, I can help you fix it!”
Mink asked why Noiz felt the need to comment on every single thing that managed to get into Noiz’s mouth.
“It’s sour, we get it. Is your tongue hypersensitive or something?.”
Sometimes a small comment they would make made his chest clench again in that weird way that left him surprised and confused.
Sometimes he thought he felt something. Sometimes he would accidentally drop a small detail that he was sure the others picked up on. Sometimes he wished that they would just all leave so that he could go back to the days when all he had was Rhyme and his information and his money so he didn't have to deal with all the bullshit that was happening in his head.
Sometimes Noiz wished he didn't have to watch all his peers go ahead and be all buddy-buddy with each other, watch them cry, watch them be irrationally happy, watch them fall in love, watch them feel.
Sometimes.
Sometimes, even though he knew that it was going to happen eventually, and to be honest it wouldn't matter if it happened sooner or later.
Sometimes Noiz wished he was dead.