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Yuno is about halfway through braiding her hair when she first hears a great thumping at her door.
She doesn’t think much of it, at first; just that whoever is crashing around at such an early hour is very antisocial and almost certainly drunk. Her mood sours, a little, as she threads another finger through her hair.
Who would even get drunk in a prison, anyway? Whoever is out there should take things a little more seriously. They’re all murderers, after all, in one way or another – crashing around against cell doors at six in the morning would surely only lead to an eventual bruising.
Not that she’d say they don’t deserve it, of course. Not with this kind of antisocial behaviour.
There comes another thump – her door shakes on its hinges, and Yuno can only inwardly thank whichever genius had decided to make the prison cells soundproof. At least she only has to hear the banging: she’s sure there’d be a great deal of shouting, too, if she could hear absolutely everything that’s happening outside in the panopticon.
It’s far too early for something like this. She’d barely even fully woken up yet, for God’s sake – she’s hardly even standing upright! Most people aren’t conscious when the panopticon lights flicker on, and that’s due in another hour at least. Waking your fellow inmates up in such a rude, unruly manner – well, they surely have whatever is coming for them.
A string of loud, irregular knocks clang against her door; the metal rings out, rattling around in its place on the frame, and Yuno has half a mind to open the damned thing and give whichever drunkard prisoner is crashing around so early in the morning a piece of her mind.
It just isn’t appropriate. It isn’t considerate. Will it really hurt them so much to stop being so loud? Whoever it is on the other side of that metal is lucky that Yuno hadn’t been woken up by their crashing. They’re lucky she’s feeling forgiving.
Her door rattles again, so loudly her ears begin to ring, and Yuno realises she’s quickly losing any sense of patience.
The door handle is cold when she reaches out and grabs it, hair still only partially done, and lies in wait. She just has to time it right, and –
There! Just as another thump slams against her door, she swings the thing wide open.
A red blur all but collapses inside her cell, and Fuuta lands with a cracking, painful-sounding thump against the tiles tiles. He looks up, frenzied, to meet her gaze.
Her mind blanks. She freezes up. She hadn’t expected this.
There’s so much blood.
She can’t see one of his eyes from the sheer amount of it the left side of his face is caked in; Hell, it looks like some of his teeth have been knocked around, causing a great deal of reddish spit to run down his chin. Even though he’s only been sitting on the floor of her cell for a few seconds at best, there’s already a red puddle forming underneath him, covering his trousers in gross, sticky blood that’ll be hard to get rid of.
She doesn’t get any chance to linger on this. Fuuta opens his mouth and starts screaming.
“Shut it,” he yells, his voice so high-pitched Yuno’s ringing ears only worsen. “Shut the fucking door!”
Well, if a blood-soaked man is going to shout at her, she’s not exactly going to ignore his advice.
Yuno acts on instinct, slamming the door behind her – and locks it, for good measure, just as a series of beatings erupt against the metal of it. She drags a chair underneath the handle, too, some strange sort of faux-barricade, while Fuuta pants, loudly, on her floor.
Yuno gives him a moment to catch his breath, taking her time to scrutinise just how bad the injuries are. His face is thoroughly screwed, ugly wounds and dents littering his head, but that’s not all that seems to ail him – some of his fingers seem bent out of place, his back is oddly crooked, and with the way he’s cradling his chest Yuno would hazard a guess that he’s broken a rib or two.
She blinks. “What the Hell, Fuuta?”
He splutters indignantly. “None of this is my fault,” he snarls, as if he’s the only one who can see reason in that room and Yuno is incredibly stupid. He sounds strangely out of breath. “I didn’t do anything! Kotoko’s gone fucking crazy!”
Yuno furrows her brows. That doesn’t sound right at all. “Kotoko did this to you?”
Fuuta just heaves, then chokes, like a cat hacking up a hairball, before a clump of blood flies out of his mouth and lands with a sickening splat onto her cell floor. He shudders.
He’s clearly not paying attention to her. He’s clearly not going to give her any other answer. Yuno shrugs; then sighs, somewhat lightheartedly, as she shakes her head. “Guess it goes to show that women can be stronger than men, right~? She really got you there.”
Fuuta gags, taken aback, and sends her a glare through the one eye she can see. So he is paying attention! His hair, blood-soaked and sticky, hangs in front of his face – but she can still see the anger in his irises. “Now is clearly not the time for that!”
Yuno runs her hand through her hair. She twirls a strand around her finger, idly, and pouts. “Really? What should I be doing, then?”
He snarls in reply. A buildup of blood in the back of his throat causes him to spit globules of red as he does so, but he doesn’t seem to notice; and Yuno finds she strangely doesn’t really mind. He looks paler than he should. “I’m bleeding out on your floor, dipshit! What do you think?!”
Yuno giggles, dropping to a crouch and shuffling towards him. He sags, a little, at her approach, and his breathing slowly evens out – though it sounds like something is strangely wrong nonetheless. His inhales are oddly shallow. His exhales come a little too quickly.
Yuno presses a hand against his back to keep him propped up. He leans into the touch, softening, and when she places a hand against his chest he lets out a pained whimper.
“That hurts,” he grits out, between his teeth. He swallows thickly. “Be careful.”
Yuno’s sure if she placed her hand in his mouth her finger would come out coated in his blood. She nods. “Yeah,” she agrees. “This might sting a little.”
And then she pushes down.
Fuuta cries out in pain. She can feel his ribs give way under her hand like clay – he gasps, curses, and then gasps some more, until Yuno finally lifts her hand up and he’s allowed to breathe properly again.
She flexes her fingers. He stares back at her, horrified, heaving to catch his breath. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“Your ribs are broken,” she replies, deadpan. Fuuta barks an ungrateful laugh.
“Oh, really?! Well, thanks for that!”
Yuno rolls her eyes. She moves to sit behind him – a good idea, too, considering how the moment she does so he practically collapses into her, putting his whole weight into his back as he flops uselessly to the floor.
His head lands facing up in her lap. She stares down at him for a moment, before opening her mouth to speak–
Fuuta cuts her off. “I don’t owe you money,” he snaps, though the anger is clearly slowly giving in to exhaustion. “So don’t even try.”
Yuno tuts, playfully, as she lifts a hand to brush the hair out of his face – and now that she’s properly looking at him it’s clear his eyesight is a little foggy with how unfocused his eye seems. He’s not really looking at her at all.
She holds up a hand; then points up her index and her middle finger. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Fuuta takes a moment to process her question – but, once it clicks, he dismissively scoffs. “Stupid,” he says. Despite his words of protest, however, he seems to be all but melting into her lap. “As if answering that will tell you anything.”
“Tsk-tsk,” Yuno replies, nudging his shoulder with her fist. “Don’t avoid the question! How many fingers?”
Fuuta rolls his eyes. “I don’t know,” he grumbles. “Two? Three?”
Alarm bells ring in her mind at his hesitation – at his uncertainty. Yuno bites her lip – before, eventually, pushing the displayed fingers closer to his face, using her free hand to brush some of the dried blood out of his lashes.
“Try again,” she demands. “And be more specific!”
But Fuuta doesn’t get the chance to make a second attempt. He swallows down another clump of blood, opening his mouth to speak – and then there’s a banging against the door.
He yelps in shock and attempts to leap out of her lap, throwing his head upwards in an instant – but Yuno holds him down despite his struggle, pressing her hands against his shoulders, and Fuuta clearly finds himself too weak to fight back.
He grits his teeth, instead, shoulders pressed into her knees, and a clear expression of panic crosses his features. He glares up at her. Yuno stares back down at him until the banging stops.
They wait in silence for a few moments before, finally, Fuuta relaxes again. He sinks back into her lap. Yuno nods towards her cell door. “That was Kotoko, huh?”
Fuuta grunts. It is, she thinks, his best approximation of a “yes”. Yuno hums; then, ever so gently, moves her hands to his back, slowly pushing him upwards again into a sitting position.
“C’mon,” she goads. “Sit up.”
He grunts and turns his head to glare. “What are you doing?”
Yuno waits until he’s fully upright before answering. “You were looking a little too comfortable,” she points out. “And you can’t fall asleep. What if you have a head injury?”
Fuuta scoffs. “Do I seem like I have a head injury? I’m responding just fine, aren’t I?”
Yuno tuts. “How many fingers was I holding up, again?” He splutters in reply. Ignoring him, Yuno continues: “Anyway, with the way you’re protesting, you’d think you actually like laying on my lap.”
The blood rushes to his head. Fuuta goes bright pink; he scrambles uselessly for words to reply with. Yuno, eventually, giggles, tilting her head.
“I don’t care about it,” she hums, playfully. “But you owe me, don’t you? Let me see your bloody eye.”
Fuuta’s working eye widens. He recoils with what little energy he has left, and yells: “Gross! Don’t be a creep!”
Yuno leans in closer, lips twitching upwards into a grin. It must look a little bit too wide; a little bit too natural. Fuuta shudders at her expression. “Why not? What happened to it? Let me see!”
“No way!” Fuuta bats her away, protectively covering the left side of his face with his hand. “I can’t see out of it anymore! God knows what happened! Why would I show you?!”
Yuno pouts. “It’s payment…!”
“It’s not,” he snarls. “Just back off!”
Yuno whines in protest. She reaches out to brush the hair out of his eyes once again – but Fuuta recoils, curling in on himself, and shoves her hand away.
He stares at her in wide-eyes silence. He looks a little like a prey animal. It’s cute.
She sticks out her bottom lip. “Come on,” she attempts to goad, nudging his guarding hand with her knuckles. “Let me see. Don’t be shy.”
Fuuta mutters something uselessly under his breath, averting his eyes to angrily grumble at the floor instead – until, eventually, he meets her gaze again. She looks back at him, ever hopeful, and bats her eyelashes. “Well? Gonna show me?”
“Fine,” he agrees, and her stomach erupts into butterflies. “But you have to help me clean the blood off, first.”
Yuno’s face lights up. She nods fervently in agreement. “Deal!” She grins, jumping to her feet. “I have a cloth somewhere around here, I think. I’ll be right back!”
Fuuta nods her away, flopping back onto the floor, and she immediately dives headfirst into searching her cell for something to clean him off with. Strangely enough, and against her better interests, there is no evidence of a cloth in her clothing drawers, nor on the countertop; and her wardrobe, empty as it is, predictably comes up barren.
She curses herself inwardly. Damn it. “Fuuta,” she coos, hesitantly, spinning back around on her heel to face him again. “How do you feel about a compromise?”
He doesn’t respond; of course, he doesn’t. At some point between Yuno jumping up, and her turning around again, he had fallen fast asleep on the floor. He sprawls, uncomfortably, across her cell tiles. A thin trail of bloodied drool travels down his chin.
Yuno sighs, disappointedly folding her arms over. She’d really wanted to see his eye, too… And it would be weird to look while he's not awake. She wouldn't even be able to see him fluster and shy away when she attempts to prod it.
Ah, well. She’ll bug him about it when he wakes up, she supposes. She might as well get comfortable while she waits for that to happen.
Stepping over Fuuta’s unconscious body to reach her bed, she grabs the thin, scratchy blanket and drapes it over him, making sure to cover him just-so that he's kept warm. She tugs the thing up to his chin; and, in a bout of recklessness, kisses his blood-coated forehead before finally returning to lay on her bed.
Yuno curls up on her mattress. What a shame. She only hopes she’ll get to see his untreated eye before Shidou does.
That might be fun.