Chapter Text
Ranboo looked at the pills in his hand. All he had to do was take them and it would all be over, just like he wanted. He wouldn't have to worry about what others thought anymore, he wouldn't have to look at himself anymore. He could free himself.
But was it worth it? Was all of this worth his face being one of the last things he ever saw? The stupid thing that he'd hated his entire life?
"This is so dumb" he muttered. "Why am I fighting myself over this?"
With that, he closed his eyes, pulled down his mask, and swallowed the pills. Ranboo laid on the cool tile and scrolled through the gallery on his phone.
The usual symptoms started kicking in: achy limbs, muscle tremors, lack of feeling. He couldn't concentrate on the faces in the photos any more and his stomach began to churn uncomfortably. He started forgetting simple things like what he'd eaten for breakfast and what day it was. Then he had trouble remembering where he was and who he was. As time slowed to a crawl, Ranboo felt regret but he didn’t know why. He could hear scratching and yowling at the bathroom door. The click of the front door unlocking. Someone calling out someone else's name. The nausea became overwhelming and, just as he started dryheaving, everything went dark.
°°°
Not 45 minutes after Ranboo had lain down, Toby walked through the door of their shared flat. "Ran, I'm back!" He called out, hanging his backpack up. Toby searched the apartment looking for his partner, assuming that they were probably asleep. He saw Ranboo's cat, Callie, scratching at the bathroom door and yowling loudly.
"Oh hey, darling…" Toby cooed gently, picking up Callie. "What's wrong?" She mewled sadly and pawed at the bathroom door making Toby frown softly. He could smell a stomach churning, anxiety inducing combination of iron and bile. He dropped Callie and struggled to open the bathroom door for a minute.
When the door was finally opened, Toby was met with the carnage of Ranboo’s most recent mental health crisis. Blood, clearly Ranboo’s own, had dripped all over the cheap veneer of the counters and smeared onto the floor. The bottle from Ranboo’s anxiety medication was on the floor, empty and discarded. In the middle of everything was Ranboo himself, curled up on the tile in a pool of his own vomit. Ranboo’s blue Garfield shirt, a gift from Toby, was now stained purple with blood. Toby whimpered, frozen. He'd thought that Ranboo was getting better. His partner has seemed so happy the past couple days. He should've seen it…
Adrenaline flooded and rushed through Toby's veins. He fumbled for his phone and dialed the emergency number. The operator’s questions were quick and to the point and Toby tried to answer them as clearly as he could manage through the lump in his throat. He followed all directions given to him by the operator and the EMTs that came soon after the call ended. Once Ranboo was out of the apartment, Toby held Callie close and stroked her fur, sitting where Ranboo had been laying just minutes earlier. He sat there all night, awake. In the morning, Toby tried (and failed) to make the bathroom look pristine again. The vomit had dried out, practically cementing itself to the tile. The tile had probably been permanently damaged.
They were not getting their security deposit back.