[There's no easy goddamn way to articulate anything of what he wants to relay. Things like: Relax. I'm not dying. If I were dying, I'd already be dead. Things like: I've probably had worse. Don't worry about it. Things like: It's not your fault.]
[Or the other thing: It's not on you to fix this.]
[But there's a hand trying to...oh god, trying to force the reddened lips of uncurled flesh back into the cracked-open eggshell of his abdomen, and the sound he makes is strangled and unavoidable, his ruined hand snapping up to clamp onto Shouto's shoulder, pinioning it with a split-second arched-finger injection of pure, agonized adrenaline - the sound of someone screaming, compressed down into one spasmodic motion.]
'S - okay. [And his grip slides away, much like his stare, once boiling molten with the searing fucking white-cloud phosphorous of static pain that is his side, now falling rapidly out of focus.]
no subject
[Or the other thing: It's not on you to fix this.]
[But there's a hand trying to...oh god, trying to force the reddened lips of uncurled flesh back into the cracked-open eggshell of his abdomen, and the sound he makes is strangled and unavoidable, his ruined hand snapping up to clamp onto Shouto's shoulder, pinioning it with a split-second arched-finger injection of pure, agonized adrenaline - the sound of someone screaming, compressed down into one spasmodic motion.]
'S - okay. [And his grip slides away, much like his stare, once boiling molten with the searing fucking white-cloud phosphorous of static pain that is his side, now falling rapidly out of focus.]
[Words, half-mumbled, but nonetheless sincere:]
'M not dying.