Paul wakes up knowing, beyond all doubt, that something awful happened over night. The details aren't clear (in and of itself alarming), but the evidence of his external and internal senses are excruciatingly so even before he opens his eyes.
His mouth tastes horrible. He's dehydrated and riddled with the byproducts of liver processes that have gone awry, his blood a gummy, imbalanced mess in his body. Some thin metal mesh is pressed against the bare skin of his back where his shirt has ridden up, and on the other side of him -
On the other side of him are two bodies. The one whose chest Paul's head has fallen on is firmly muscled, with a heartbeat strong enough to worsen the throbbing in Paul's head. The other one, the one whose sternum Paul's outstretched hand presses against, is slim, bony, and pulseless.
In the first blurry moments of waking up, peeling one eye open while the other stays crusted shut, Paul forgets that Kaworu doesn't normally have a heartbeat. He lifts his head and digs his fingers against the thin lattice of sensitive nerves over bone, which will make for a rather rude awakening as soon as the sensation cuts through the fog of sleep.
dude, where's your heart? | midoriya "deku" izuku | kaworu nagisa
His mouth tastes horrible. He's dehydrated and riddled with the byproducts of liver processes that have gone awry, his blood a gummy, imbalanced mess in his body. Some thin metal mesh is pressed against the bare skin of his back where his shirt has ridden up, and on the other side of him -
On the other side of him are two bodies. The one whose chest Paul's head has fallen on is firmly muscled, with a heartbeat strong enough to worsen the throbbing in Paul's head. The other one, the one whose sternum Paul's outstretched hand presses against, is slim, bony, and pulseless.
In the first blurry moments of waking up, peeling one eye open while the other stays crusted shut, Paul forgets that Kaworu doesn't normally have a heartbeat. He lifts his head and digs his fingers against the thin lattice of sensitive nerves over bone, which will make for a rather rude awakening as soon as the sensation cuts through the fog of sleep.