His voice was a raw, cracking thing, stripped of its usual controlled aggression. He wasn’t looking at the road. His knuckles were bone-white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so tight the muscle jumped. His eyes, wide and burning, were fixed on you—pleading, furious, devastated.

A sudden, blinding wash of light flooded the cabin from the front—harsh, invasive, obliterating the dark. Katsuki’s head snapped toward the windshield, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks.

The sound was a deafening symphony of wrongness—the screech of tires losing purchase, the thunderous impact of metal meeting metal, the explosive shatter of glass becoming a thousand glittering shards. The world upended. Gravity vanished. Your body was wrenched against the seatbelt, then thrown.

His breath hitched, a sharp, painful gasp. The world narrowed to the sight of you, motionless, bleeding, broken. The anger, the hurt from the argument—it evaporated, replaced by a cold, drowning terror that seized his lungs and squeezed.

His voice was a ragged whisper. He fumbled with his own seatbelt, his hands shaking violently. He pushed against the dented driver’s side door. It groaned, but gave. He half-fell out onto the gravel shoulder, stumbling to his feet. His own cuts stung, but he didn’t feel them.