27

                                    

                                          
⚡COntRol⚡
Chapter 27
                          
[Kirishima's POV]
                          
My breath instantly hitches, my senses sharpening with adrenaline. There was the faint, pungent stench of raw flesh and sweat.
                          
"Kaminari?" I ask, sounding strangled. I could hear his breathing. Laboured and shaky.
                          
Just like before.
                          
I unfreeze, the door swinging shut behind me as I snap the light switch on and rush in to open the curtains, looking next to me to see him.
                          
My eyes rake his whole body. And the sight alone drives me to tears.
                          
"K-Kami! Denki! A-Are you there?!" I say loudly, shaking his shoulders a bit. My heart pounds in my ears, body trembling out of fear.
                          
He can't be dead. H-He... He can't be!
                          
His entire figure was pale, tears silently rolling into his knotted, thin hair, lips bruised from the constant biting they'd endured.
                          
What the fuck happened to him.
                          
"Y-Yeah," he croaks out, and fear spikes in my chest. Because he sounded so far away. So lost.
                          
"I-I'm here, I'm here," I try to assure him, acting fast with my frenzying panic.
                          
Why the hell am I panicking?!
                          
I take a few deep breaths, subconsciously wiping the moisture from my eyes, and manoeuvre myself to sit on his waist, slowly putting my weight down but immediately lurching back up when he chokes on a whine. I then sit on my knees, leaving a safe gap between me and the body beneath me.
                          
I then slip off his waist coat and pull up his t-shirt. A gasp gets caught in my throat.
                          
"Kaminari!" I say, eyes darting from one bruise to another, littering his chest and skin. They seemed worse than an average bruise, some breaking skin, others painted with aggressive purple. And his ribs, which poke out sharply, one of them starting to swell. And then the huge slash across his abdomen, smudged with blood that sticks to his top. "What happened!"
                          
He didn't say anything, but I didn't care. I could each bruise and welt - one, two, seven, ten, close to thirty. Some arched like the curve of a moon, puncturing his skin. Others larger than tennis balls, visually getting bigger.
                          
It looked unnatural. Dangerous. Deadly.
                          
"I'm taking you to the infirmary."
                          
Kaminari retaliates on this, attempting to sit up.
                          
"N-NO-"
                          
And then he's coughing. Blood.
                          
"THIS IS SERIOUS, KAMINARI! YOU'RE COUGHING BLOOD YOU'RE NOT OKA-"
                          
"I S-SAID BEF-" he's interrupted with another cough, the thick liquid spilling across his shirt, and I'm forced to leave the bed in favour for a large roll of tissues.
                          
"I-I said before th-that I can't..." he hisses out, probably in pain, as I stride back, and I start wiping the blood off his chin and the cluster pooling on his chest, "I c-can't tell anyo-one..."
                          
"Why," I fire back. I was too focused in treating him, rushing off to get a small bowl from last night's dinner that I'd brought up to him. I fill it with water, grabbing a flannel and heading back to place it on the bedside table, crouching beside him and looking directly into his eyes.
                          
And then I see it.
                          
An expression of defeat. Of surrender. Of giving up a fight, laid out for the consequences.