Whumptober 2020 - Saiouma Collection

[No.1 Waking up Restrained | Hanging]

[Warnings: Car Crash. Implied Character Death. Injuries]

The first breath he takes is choked. The moment is shocking, bloodshot eyes flew open, a stifled cry escapes his lips, and the intense pressure swelling in his ears and behind his eyes continues to build. His memory is shot, blurry bright images stain his thoughts, he blinked again, biting his split lip.

Steam and smoke erupt and grow in mass a foot from his head. His blood-red fingers dangle above him, welling with numbness. Cuts mark and streak across his forehead, his left shoulder pulsed and throbbed in a painful chorus. His lungs trembled as he breathed again. His bleary eyes cleared as he blinked.

And he gasped when he caught sight of the wheel. The dashboard. The shattered windshield, and blood peppering the thousand of fractures and bursts of glass.

A crushing weight dropped into his stomach. Making him feel sick, spurring on a roaring headache. Getting worse the more blood coursed through his hammering temples.

A flash of memory bled into his mind, his hands on the wheel. Feeling panicked. Feeling terrified. A slip on the road, two screams, and a sickening thud with a groan of pain being the last he heard.

His thoughts blanked. His ears, pounding and ringing, opened up and allowed him to hear it. His ears weren't the one pounding. Rain thundered around him. Water pooled in the space above his head. Though, the storm raging on couldn't compensate for his horrifying thoughts.

He crashed, they flipped. And he was hanging, struggling to breathe, inside his car.

They flipped.

Two screams.

Nearly numb from the way his body was crushed and pinned in his seat, he jerked his head to see the person beside him. Shuichi choked back a sob as he stared.

Kokichi's hands hang past his head, but his face is visible. Rather red like Shuichi's, it's violently bare and pale. His complexion is deathly white, grey even. Blood drips, and splatters on the broken windshield, seeping from a gash opened along his forehead.

"...Kokichi," He gasps, rain roaring like a beast hungry for the need to feed. It crashes over the car, whatever fire had started was put out, but heaps and bundles of toxic smoke unearth itself from the busted engine. "...K..Kokichi..." His tongue feels like lead, his teeth chatter in the striking chill of the air, "...K-K..." A sharp inhale burns his throat as the smoke bellowed inside the car.

Desperation fills him, fueled by pain, he bites his cries as he brings his hands to the buckle. He groans as his left shoulder popped and ground against bone. He shoved his wet slicked fingers in the buckle, and in a painful motion, he crumpled from his seat and landed right on top off his left shoulder.

He coughed and wheezed, now soaked with rainwater, he shoved himself by Kokichi in the small cramped crawlspace of his car. "Kokichi..." He hissed, wheezing with each strained breath. His lungs still felt condensed. He fumbled his hands around his belt buckle.

It snapped free and Kokichi tumbled from his hanging position. Limp, lifeless, one-touch to his skin sent chills down Shuichi's back.

He pressed his index and middle finger against his neck, checking for a pulse, any pulse. As the wind roared, and rain crashed onto the car, he hunched over Kokichi's flaccid and slack body. Blood dripped down his colorless face, but Shuichi felt it, a faint and terribly soft thump.

It was hard to detect, but Shuichi sucked in a thankful breath at the feeling of the struggling heartbeat beneath his fingers.

His heart raced, his breath caught, even though Kokichi showed signs of life, he was dying. His breaths that puffed from his blue lips were shallow and strained. Shuichi could feel the rattling in his lungs with each inhale as he pressed his palm against his chest.

Before he could lose his breath and little composure, he jerked at the sound of the door windows being shattered. Glass fractures crumpled into small pieces onto the road, rain pummeled the world, making it nearly impossible to see who stood outside.

A flashlight shone inside the car, blinding him for a moment. A deep voice of a man shouted over the booming of the rain, "You alright in there?"

A hand reached for him, then two, and a few more. He hadn't realized his body had gone numb. Succumbing to shock the moment the man asked. He meant to tell them his boyfriend was unresponsive, but fortunately, he was pulled out onto the road beside him. Rain poured, thunder rolled, lightning cracked, muddled view of red and blue lights blinded him.

He was helped into an ambulance, sheltered by the rain. Kokichi was strapped into a stretcher. Dark splotches of maroon grew in places over his lithe body. Bleeding into his clothes, catching the water that soaked him.

Shuichi remembered hearing "he may not make it" , before waking up in a hospital room.

Alone.