Rebel Red Carnation {Kiribaku}

XI

haha i barely edited this, sorry :-)

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The first thing I do upon waking up is shuffle my way out the back door and down to the patch of dirt to relieve myself. The place was built with a toilet once upon a time, but when this city was abandoned and left alone before the homeless found it and took refuge in it, all of the pipes rusted and corroded and rendered it useless—not that we have plumbing, anyway.

It's dusk when I go out, and by the looks of things—the way the grill is still flaming a bit—Mom had just settled in to sleep before I got up. She hasn't moved an inch when I return from my bathroom break, my teeth fucking chattering.

When I step back into the room, tugging the door shut behind me and moving to relight the lantern, Eijirou's awake, halfway sitting up with bleary, sleep-clouded eyes. He doesn't look like he's slept a wink even though he was completely quiet when I first left.

I'm grateful to find that the blankets, tattered and worn as they are, to have retained the warmth from my fever when I sit back down and wrap myself in them and try to keep the shitty chattering sound as quiet as I can.

"You still got a fever?" Eijirou mumbles, sitting up beside me as he rubs an eye, looking like a little kid. The wig has completely shifted on his head and red strands of hair are beginning to fall out—not that it matters, if the wig were to fall off, it's not like my mother would be able to see him, and Ochako always knocks before she comes so we'd at least have a warning.

I spare a mild shrug. "Probably."

"Mind if I check?"

"...whatever," I quip, looking away toward the flickering flame that provides the only light in the room. Once upon a time, too, there was a window, but we'd boarded it up for lack of any better way of keeping out the cold during the winter months.

A gasp sucks into my throat when suddenly there's a face a mere two centimeters away from mine. I jerk back, hissing at the pain in my back as it makes contact with the wall behind me.

"The... the fuck are you doing?!" I growl.

"Checking if you still have a fever," Eijirou says innocently, eyes big and bloodshot. I swear he looks like a little fucking kid, especially with the messy ass wig and a wrinkle mark on his cheek. Something inside me seems to break in that moment, under his liquid gaze. It stuns me enough to keep me still, and he takes that as his opportunity to rest his forehead gently, ever so gently, against mine. I feel his brow furrow before he pulls away and nods. "Yeah. 'S pretty bad, too. Maybe you should take more of those meds, since it's been a few hours..."

I'm still much too stunned to remember how to speak; all I seem to know how to do is keep my eyes glued right to him as he retrieves the bag of pills and the water bottle from the corner of the room. Once he's moved back, finally having shed the stupid wig, he holds them out to me, but when I don't take them he actually cocks his head slightly.

"Katsuki? You okay?"

My eyelids flutter without permission and I sit up a little, muttering some semblance of a 'yeah' as I take the water and the pills, swallowing them both in one go. The sudden presence of something in my stomach alerts me to how empty it's gotten, seeing as I haven't eaten since we were on the train.

"How're you holding up, anyway?"

"'M... fine," I tell him, burrowing my arms back under the blankets. "What about you? Starving yet?"

The corner of his mouth quirks up. "Little bit, but I'm savin' the rest of the food I brought for you guys."

"Hmph. Doesn't matter," I say, maneuvering myself so I can lean a shoulder up against the wall. "We'll find something to eat no matter what."