Chapter Text
Shouto isn’t sure yet if it was worth it to force himself to get up so early today, but one thing for certain on his mind is that he will most definitely need a nap later this afternoon.
He’s standing on the cement border of the crawlspace grate near his home and running his hands over his exposed arms to dispel some of the early morning cold. There are dew drops on the grass and flowers below him which make the yard look clean and mellow. The sun hasn’t risen entirely yet, but there are shades of marigold and bluebells illuminating the crowns of treetops, promising that daylight isn’t very far away. A sleepy fog slinks out over the yard and looks closer and closer to fading as the minutes pass and the night finishes leaving.
When Izuku had told him yesterday to wait here for him, Shouto didn’t know what to really expect.
I have a surprise for you , Izuku had said, unable to keep a smile from reaching his voice. They had kept each other closer over the past few days since that rainy afternoon. Shouto doesn’t know how to explain it. He has never been much of a touchy person and Izuku is hesitant to push any boundaries between them since their friendship is still so new, but something must have changed on that day. Shouto can feel it within himself now, in the undercurrent of his thoughts. He doesn’t mind being cradled in Izuku’s hand anymore when they go walking in the meadow or tucked right against his wrist as he reads in the shy light of his bedroom. He holds no reservations in telling him about his family or the residual effects of his father’s upbringing or his brother’s disappearance. Shouto feels that he knows him so well now, and he’s sure that Izuku feels something similar, something trusting. So, when he was told that there was a surprise waiting for him the next morning, Shouto truly didn’t know what that may mean.
Is it a gift? he had asked. Izuku shook his head.
Not a gift, but something I want to show you.
So early in the morning? But what could ever happen then?
You’ll have to wait and see.
And now Shouto is waiting and ready but Izuku still hasn’t arrived. It doesn’t bother him all that much like how it may with waiting on his siblings. Now that he’s gone through the ordeal of pulling himself from bed and trudged outside into the fading coolness of evening, he is actually quite content in standing and watching the morning break through. His skin is goosebumped and cold but in that satisfying summer way where you know it’ll get blistering hot later on and you’ll miss the feeling. It’s like he’s waiting for the world to wake up.
The sound of footsteps rises up to his right, bleeding into his content silence and latching onto his attention.
A moment later, Izuku rounds the corner of the house in a pair of shorts and a thin jacket with yellows, blues, greens, and black patchworking the fabric. Shouto thinks the look of it is absurdly bright, but somehow fitting for Izuku to wear. Despite the faint bags under his eyes Izuku still gives a bubbly wave hello when his eyes landed on Shouto. The thought of goosebumps and sunrises leave Shouto completely as Izuku walks along the side of the house, his mind now only focused on how much Izuku’s crooked smile has grown on him.
Izuku crouches down in front of him, his jacket rustling like paper as he moves.
“Good morning, Shou,” he greets him. “I hope this isn’t too early for you?”
“Oh, it absolutely is, but I don’t really mind now that you’re here.” Izuku grins at that and Shouto feels the goosebumps return on his arm once again. “What are you wearing?” He asks, gesturing towards the kaleidoscopic jacket which gratefully is still muted in the pre-dawn. Izuku’s eyes light up and he stands, holding his arms out and turning for Shouto to see the front and back.
“You like it? It’s called a windbreaker. I got it as a birthday present before I came here. Lots of people in the city are wearing things like this now with bright colors and lots of shapes to make themselves stand out. I think it’s a nice way for people to be more creative with how they dress every day instead of wearing the same thing all the time.”
Shouto admires the way the jacket looks on him and wonders how they get the colors to be so bright. He and his family have to make their own clothing whenever they need anything new and usually quality, lively fabric scraps are hard to come by. He thinks it may be nice to have something to wear that isn’t earthy and hard to stain. But that wouldn’t be very practical with the sort of life he lives. Maybe if he were born elsewhere then he could dress like that.
“I like it,” he tells Izuku after he crouches down to his level again. “It makes your eyes look bright.”
“Oh, um, well...” Izuku raises a hand to tug at the curls at the nape of his neck, looking out towards the yard. “Thank you, you, um, you look nice too.”
Shouto glances down at his dirt covered shoes and blue shirt with an oil stain on the hem which even Fuyumi couldn’t figure out how to remove. Just the same thing he wears all the time. He raises a brow.
“I’m not wearing anything different?”
Izuku's eyes widen just a bit before he smiles and shakes his head. “I know you aren’t,” he says. “We should probably leave or else we may be late.”
Izuku holds out a hand for him to step onto and as he does he asks: “Late for what?” Izuku sets him down on his shoulder but tsks in reply to his question.
“I already told you it’s a surprise. I’m not giving away any hints right when you’re about to see.”
Shouto asks nothing more as Izuku walks across the yard, and then into the meadow, and then to the tree line beyond that where the grove lies. They talk all the while. Izuku tells him about hazy storylines of his dreams recently which Shouto enjoys listening to because Izuku has particularly vivid dreams. Shouto normally wakes up in the morning with only a faint recollection of dreaming at all and very few details, but for Izuku it seems that his mind is especially active at night where all his wound thoughts of the day unfurl. So, Shouto listens and falls into the imagination of his companion’s lovely mind.
The woods are dark without any morning light yet passing through them. Lots of little sounds fill up the gaps between trees like frog song and the fluttering, papery flush of bird wings. Izuku’s voice flows together with all this, not once catching on any of the branches or cold spots. It is only when Shouto is just able to see the end of the tree line that there is a stop in their conversation. Izuku looks up quickly and curses under his breath, now beginning to rush out to where the sun begins to break over the far off mountain tops.
“Damn it, I hope we haven’t missed the start,” he huffs, ducking under a branch in the way and causing Shouto to hold onto his hair for dear life. Shouto is just about to ask what all the rush is for when Izuku finally steps out into a small clearing of grass which lies between the trees and an old fence that marks the edge of a cliff dropping down into the valley. They’ve been here twice before maybe, on their little walk-arounds in the afternoon. It’s just the end of the property line that looks out over the valley farms all the way to the mountain range in the back. It’s beautiful of course, but Shouto still doesn’t know what he is supposed to be looking out for.
Until something passes into sunlight and catches his eye.
At the base of the mountain, just now rising up into the dawn and kissing color into the damp landscape, are a flock of large balloons. They look so small off in the distance but he knows that their actual size is much larger than anything he could envision up close. They look the same size as the houses down below, but round and painted with colors the same as Izuku’s jacket. It’s just like the postcard in his house, the one his mother likes, the one with the windmill and bright balloons. Shouto would have not once ever imagined that something like that could take place here where his life is; it always seemed to grand to ever be brought to his tiny world.
But his world is just the same as everyone else’s, isn’t it? Izuku taught him that.
The balloons move too slowly to really watch their ascent all that much, but Shouto still doesn’t take his eyes off them, wanting to commit every detail to memory for years and years to come back to. He wants to remember the mountain range he’ll never be able to visit and the cold air on his arms that sends a shiver along his back. And if nothing else, he wants to remember Izuku. The softness of his hair, his warmth, his kindness which taught Shouto that it’s so very frightening to trust someone but it’s worth it in the end.
He reaches a hand up to set it on Izuku’s cheek from where he stands on his shoulder, patting twice and keeping it there. He doesn’t know what to say as of right now, but he feels that Izuku has understood him perfectly from that gesture. He always does.
“I was listening to the radio a couple days ago,” Izuku says, turning their quiet into something new. “Toshinori puts it on sometimes when he makes dinner. There was a report about a hot air balloon festival today that I thought you’d enjoy.”
He lifts his hand to his shoulder and Shouto steps on out of habit. He’s set down on the flat top of one of the fence posts where his field of vision is a bit clearer now. Izuku is grinning when he looks back behind him.
“So,” he says. “What do you think?”
“Do the balloons come back down?” Shouto asks, watching now three of them rising high enough to latch onto the sun.
“Yes, there are people in a basket attached to the bottom,” Izuku says. He talks with his hands to show what everything looks like as he explains. “They control something like a very large lighter which heats the air and makes the balloon rise or descend. People ride in them for fun.”
For fun , Shouto thinks. Beings place themselves in fatal heights with nothing but a balloon to support them and they call it fun. It’s something very similar to fighting, that sense of immediate danger which you survive in the end. Shouto won’t lie and say he understands entirely why beings choose to do things like this which can so easily go wrong, but he may see the appeal in it all. Meeting Izuku at first was a possible danger, but now look where he is: watching the same balloons that his mother has been looking at from a postcard window for so many years . Maybe people do dangerous things to remind themselves not to be so afraid.
He continues watching on, a heartbeat of melancholy passing through him for just a moment and cooling his awe.
“There are so many things I don’t know about,” he says.
He would have never known this was happening if Izuku hadn’t brought him here; just how many things slip under his notice every day? He loves his life and home, but it’s moments like this that he understands how confined he is to his own world.
Izuku stands beside him, plucking at the wire that runs along the fence posts. Shouto can feel the vibrations of it through the soles of his shoes.
“Maybe you can come with me someday.”
Shouto thinks Izuku meant it as a question but it came out as more of a loose thought that managed to tumble out into the world. Shouto finally forces himself away from the valley’s awakening to glance at Izuku who keeps his attention solely on the fence wire.
“What do you mean?” He asks.
Izuku shrugs. “Maybe I can come back and show you the village, take you around to see the market and houses. The ocean isn’t far off from here. Have you ever been?”
“Never.”
“Maybe we’ll go there, then. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen, and it goes so far back the sky drops into it.”
Shouto has seen pictures of the ocean before. His mother has a different postcard with a faded view of it and there are many packages of food or other goods that have a beachfront bold and center which he’s admired, but he never knew that they live so close. Like the balloons, he thought all these things belong to people who live across the world, in places he could only see through postcards. And here he is, being offered a chance to make real out of the impossible.
The sun has climbed fully over the mountains now and makes shadows out of amber on the little houses and fields below them. Izuku looks bright and lovely, even with bags under his eyes and his hair still pressed oddly from sleep. Shouto thinks that if there is ever a person he will feel love for outside of his family, it is and always will be him.
A precious thing, indeed .
“I’d... really like that, Izuku,” he says.
Izuku smiles, looking at Shouto as if he’s the only thing in the world he’d ever want to see, and keeps plucking at the fence wire.
“It’s a promise, then.”
_________________
They stay out there for quite a while, watching the sun rise and talking about everything and nothing of importance.
By the time that the balloons had risen and lowered themselves, Shouto was perfectly awake but hungry. So, he and Izuku made their way back to the house with a promise of breakfast – or a promise of Toshinori making Izuku a meal and then him sneaking up something for Shouto to have so he doesn’t have to go home to eat. Toshinori makes an amazing French toast which is an American breakfast that Shouto isn’t quite sure why belongs to two countries but Izuku attempting to explain globalization to him was a rough conversation. Slowly and surely, though he is learning more about the world he lives in.
Their walk back feels longer than the one there and Izuku speaks less by the time they reach the house.
He yawns as they reach the front door.
“I may have to sleep a little more before breakfast. Would you like to join me or should I take you back home?”
“I’ll join,” Shouto tells him. “A nap sounds good.”
Izuku enters the house, scanning the entryway for signs of his uncle, before going to make his way upstairs. Shouto stays tucked close to him behind his curls just in case, and it is a good thing he does since a voice rings out from the kitchen as they pass the doorway.
“Izuku, my boy, good morning! Did you get to see the air balloons?”
Even at such an early hour, Toshinori seems so full of boisterous energy. Shouto curls himself up closer to Izuku’s neck and waits for this to pass.
“Yeah, I did,” Izuku replies, leaning against the doorway of the kitchen. “It was really incredible to see all the different kinds since we don’t really have things like that in the city. Also, would you mind holding off on breakfast for a little while? I’m gonna go back upstairs and sleep a bit longer but I can join you later.”
“Not a problem at all.” A soft thud from a shutting cabinet ricochets around the room followed by the sound of a ceramic cup being set on the counter. “I’ll enjoy my coffee and morning paper, so come down whenever you’d like.”
Izuku thanks him and continues their journey upstairs. Shouto likes the dynamic that he and his uncle have with each other – very easy going and accommodating. It makes him happy that Izuku has other people who care for him so much.
The staircase has two landings, the first right below the entrance room window and the second as the final where all the bedrooms are. On good days Izuku may have to take a few deep breaths once they get to his room since the stairs tire him out, and on bad days he’ll cling to the railing and take a break on the first landing. Today seems to be one of his bad days. It’s something that passes after not long, and Shouto will wait patiently for Izuku to get his heart rate back under control before they continue on with whatever they have planned. It is nothing new.
But when they enter Izuku's room, after he shuts the door and gently sets Shouto onto the bed covers, his breathing doesn’t calm how it normally does.
Izuku brings a hand up to check the pulse point at his neck, counting off heartbeats in between shaky breaths - one two three four - as he walks back and forth in a small circle. Shouto doesn’t immediately panic, he has seen this done a few times, but when Izuku stops in the middle of his counting and brings his arm down to brace himself against the wall near his door, Shouto begins to understand that everything is not like the other times. He has seen Izuku struggle with breathing in the past, it’s always been fine, always been nothing but a short minute of panic in his chest then calm as Izuku recovers. But he’s not recovering now and Shouto feels his world begin to cave in.
“Izuku are you alright?”
Izuku doesn’t respond. His fingers are white from gripping the doorframe and he slides down the wall until he’s sitting down and clutching at his bright jacket. His breathing isn’t frantic but it’s deep and shaky, as if the air in his lungs simply won’t turn into breath. Shouto rushes to the edge of the comforter and begins climbing down a fold in the fabric, dropping down to the floorboards below.
“Shouto,” he says, “I don’t- I don’t feel...”
Izuku looks straight ahead as he blinks away tears that now color his cheeks with morning light from his bedroom window. His face is frightened. Shouto doesn’t know what to do but fret near Izuku’s right shoe and watch on as his panic grows more and more. Izuku sways, bracing one hand against the floor to keep himself upright as his eyes grow wide and afraid.
“I can’t - I can’t see, oh my god I can’t see...”
He blinks frantically for a second at most before his eyes close shut and he collapses to the floor. Shouto freezes, the new silence of the room deafening him before adrenaline crashes into his blood and he sprints over to Izuku’s fallen form. He sets his hands on Izuku’s cheek and tries shaking him but his eyes don’t open. His breathing is quieter now.
“Izuku, Izuku , I need you to open your eyes for me, please, come on.. . ”
He doesn’t move.
And for the first time in a very long time, Shouto feels afraid.
Oh god, what does he do? Izuku might have just gotten tired from the stairs, he could wake up any second, the stairs just exhausted him, that’s it. Shouto wants to believe this, but he knows it’s not the case. Izuku may push his heart a little too hard sometimes but it’s never resulted in something like this. He needs help, he needs someone who knows what they’re doing because Shouto just doesn’t know .
An idea shows itself in a split moment of dreaded realization.
He stares at Izuku’s emotionless, sleeping face, tear streaks still glittering under his eyes, and decides that if there is ever a time for him to be reckless, it is now.
Without another thought, Shouto sprints to the broken outlet frame behind the bed and makes his way downstairs to the kitchen where Toshinori is still hopefully having his morning coffee.
______________
Adrenaline can do funny things to people.
Shouto remembers practically nothing of racing through the wall space along familiar paths that he’s traveled for years now. Every step and climb and turn is taken without consideration or thought. His focus is only on making it to the kitchen as quickly as physically possible and praying that what he’s doing isn’t for naught. This time when he passes through the hole behind the china cabinet and steps out onto the base shelf, he doesn't bother to keep himself covered by teapots or canisters. This time he has much more to lose than himself.
Izuku’s uncle is exactly where he was when they came into the house, sitting at the kitchen counter and reading the morning paper, completely unbothered despite the panic Shouto feels across every part of his body. His legs are shaking as he walks to the edge of the cabinet, but this doesn’t stop him from catching his breath and yelling out a brittle hey! across the kitchen space.
He watches as Toshinori’s head flicks up, glancing around the kitchen with his newspaper now forgotten. Shouto tries again, this time adding in waving his arms above his head to hopefully catch his eye.
“Over here!”
That seems to do it. Toshinori’s eyes grow as wide as saucepans when he finally looks over in Shouto’s direction on the other side of the kitchen. All is still for a moment before he sets his coffee cup on the counter and rises up from his seat, mouth parted a bit in awe as he blinks down at Shouto curiously.
“Good god, this is... unexpected,” he says to himself. He gives the china cabinet a wide berth, obviously wary of frightening Shouto off like some skittish animal as he studies him. “I really hope I’m dreaming or I may have to make a psychiatry appointment this afternoon-”
“Shut up!” Shouto yells, not having time for unnecessary chatter. Toshinori’s mouth snaps shut as he regards Shouto with something between confusion and offense. “Izuku’s hurt upstairs,” he rushes, “please I need you to-”
Shouto doesn’t get the chance to finish as the moment the word upstairs leaves his mouth Toshinori is already leaving the kitchen and the sound of footsteps on the staircase ring out through the newly swept silence. He can hear the door opening to Izuku’s bedroom, lots of floorboard creaks and footsteps, and then a minute later the sound of Toshinori racing down the stairs again and into the hallway adjacent to the kitchen.
Shouto doesn’t move from his place on the china cabinet. He waits, and he listens, and he feels sick. Toshinori must be using the home phone in the hall since Shouto hears his voice, thick and lilac, rising up into the air and wafting all the way into the kitchen. Then there is more quiet, the click of the phone box, more steps onto the stairs, and Shouto is once again left in a mute haze.
He doesn’t know how long he waits standing there, but it’s long enough that he considers exactly what he should do next. He shouldn’t go back upstairs since there isn’t any way that he can help Izuku in the first place and it would take too long to make the trek. He won’t go back home, that isn’t an option when he’s so unsure as to what is happening. So, he does nothing but wait and replays the scared look on Izuku’s face in his mind over and over until he feels terribly ill. When there is sound on the stairs again, this time Toshinori returns to the kitchen and walks straight up to where Shouto is standing on the edge of the cabinet. He kneels down, so that they are almost eye level and Shouto notices a distinct lack of fear in himself in how close they are.
“Stay here and hide for just a minute,” Toshinori tells him, “I will come back after they’ve left the house.”
Shouto doesn’t know who they are but nods once and watches Toshinori leave out the kitchen before he turns to hide himself among the teacups lining the shelf space. He can hear the front door opening, footsteps of many people passing into the house and a flurry of voices take over the air like a flock of nervous birds. He peeks around his ceramic hideaway and watches beings in blue jackets pass by the kitchen door, wearing masks across their mouths and rushing back and forth. For one reason or another, the sight of them all here floods his chest with a wave of nerves and he tears his eyes away from the kitchen entrance. The teapot he’s leaning against is cool to touch. It keeps him in the moment as he sets his forehead against it and breathes in through his nose. If only Fuyumi were here. She’s always been so good at calming him down.
The clamor out in the hall breaks into a crescendo and then dies out just as quickly as it came, the beings’ voices beginning to fade away from the house. Shouto picks out Toshinori’s voice among the noisy haze, familiar among the blur of all other sounds.
“... yes, yes I’ll follow behind and call his mother to let her know. Thank you, of course, I’ll be just a moment...”
The voice of another being follows this and then there is only quiet to fall into afterward. Shouto’s ears sharpen to pick up on any extra sounds in the silence, seeking out whether he can slip away from his hiding spot yet or if it is still unsafe. His answer comes in the form of obnoxiously loud yet familiar footsteps entering the kitchen and Toshinori’s voice filling up the room.
“Are you still there?”
At that cue, Shouto hurries out from behind the teapot and to the edge of the shelf. Toshinori is slipping a jacket off the back of one of the kitchen chairs and plucking a key off a hook on the refrigerator door. When he finally turns back towards the china cabinet, Shouto speaks up.
“Is Izuku alright? Is he still upstairs?”
“He’s being taken to a hospital right now. His heart valve collapsed,” Toshinori tells him as he hurriedly tugs his jacket on and crouches down in front of the cabinet to eye level with Shouto once again. “Thank you for coming to get me. I owe you a great debt but I must be one my way now.” He stands to leave and Shouto watches him go for a fraction of a second before panic sets in and he steps forward.
“Wait! Take me with you,” he yells. Toshinori stops and looks back at him with a certain sort of reservation on his face. Shouto doesn’t let himself shrink under the pressure of his question. “Please, I need to see him, I need to know he’s alright.”
Shouto’s composure feels thin and as they both wait standing here in this kitchen he can sense it washing away even thinner. He got lucky in finding Izuku, in finding a being that wished to bring him anything but harm, but now he needs to put even more trust into Toshinori to keep him safe away from home. Shouto thinks that maybe Toshinori can sense this leap of faith as well. So as Toshinori sets his hand beside the shelf in the same manner that Izuku has done for so long, Shouto doesn’t think twice to step on.
______________
Shouto knows what a hospital is in theory.
It is a place for the sick or injured to get better by people who know medicine well, but he could have never imagined how massive the building could be. The windows surround the outside like lucent fish scales and make Shouto dizzy if he stares at them too long. He is hiding comfortably in Toshinori’s front jacket pocket, a little fabric flap covering his head and keeping him well hidden while still allowing him to look out through the very small space where light can pass through. The drive here was quick and unsettling. Primarily because Shouto had never been in a car before, barely knew how they functioned besides the basics and felt on edge the entire time they drove because of simply how fast they were going.
Toshinori was on the phone with Izuku’s mother for nearly that entire time. Shouto admired how calm he forced his voice to be while he spoke with her, since on the other end of the line Shouto could pick up a franticness in how she handled the news of her son’s hospitalization. Toshinori reassured her that he was already being set up in the emergency room, that she had lots of time to drive all the way down here once she squared away her shift at work, and that everything was going to be perfectly alright. Listening to him made even Shouto feel better about all this. Toshinori knows how to remain calm under worrisome circumstances and it’s exactly what they all need right now.
If Shouto were here for any other reason, he would have found the sedulous, crowded hospital fascinating. If Izuku were here with him, then he’d explain who all the people are and what they do, why their clothing is so boxy, why the air smells so sharply. He’d get embarrassed at appearing to talk to himself when someone passes by and laugh with Shouto after they’ve left.
If only.
Shouto remains quiet and anxious in Toshinori’s pocket as he talks with people in white and blue, a back and forth flurry of hushed responses and deep breaths. He tries to pay attention but there are so many phrases and details that fly over his head that he gives up and simply waits for Toshinori to finish and he can ask him in a minute. Shouto would have expected that travelling in someone’s pocket would be bothersome and sweaty, but it’s actually more of a comfort than anything else at the moment. It’s dark and warm and hidden away. It allows him the distance to be upset in.
Toshinori speaks with a few more people, collects some papers at a desk, and then finally breaks away from all the commotion of the lobby to sit in the back of a large area filled with cookie-cutter chairs and low tables. There must be no one in the immediate vicinity since a moment later Shouto perks up at the low of Toshinori’s voice.
“Are you fine in there?” he asks.
Shouto raises himself up just a bit to lift up the pocket flap and peer out to see if any people were nearby. Seeing none, he lifts it up higher so that his voice can carry better and not be too loud.
“I’m alright. What happens now?”
“Well… now we wait,” Toshinori says, his voice quiet and airy, the exact opposite of what Shouto has known for so long. “Izuku is in an emergency surgery right now, but they have very good doctors here who specialize in things like this. He’ll be done in no time.”
He says this so freely, as if they hadn’t rushed over here and Izuku’s mother wasn’t panicked on the phone and Shouto didn’t feel sick to his stomach with worry. It’s supposed to be reassuring, a thick blanket to cover up the discomfort of truly not knowing. For some reason, Shouto’s unease flicks over to irritation and he huffs against the fabric he’s tucked against.
“Please don’t try and make me feel better. You’re afraid too.”
Toshinori doesn’t say anything for a moment. Shouto keeps his attention on the sheets of paper resting far below him in Toshinori’s hands. The characters over the page are impossibly neat and look like a splotchy picture with how densely they’re packed together. He is reminded of Izuku’s tousled, illegible handwriting and his anger fades away in the same hasty manner that it appeared. Now he just feels heavy.
Toshinori sighs and fiddles with the sheets to make them line up at the corners.
“I was. But now I am just relieved,” he says. “Time isn’t on your side when it comes to things like this, and who knows how long it would have taken me to check upstairs, to have found him. If you didn’t come tell me, well... well things may have turned out differently, so thank you.”
He sounds sincere. Shouto doesn’t want to think about it, but Toshinori is right in being relieved that things hadn’t gone worse. In some masochistic, curious part of Shouto’s subconscious, he considers what may have happened if he and Izuku had never met and become friends. There is always the possibility that Izuku would have rested the whole summer without Shouto keeping him company outside the house and his surgery would have gone exactly as planned. Or... there is the timeline in which the events of this morning would have happened no matter what, except in this scenario Izuku would have been alone. It’s a frightening thing to be so unsure of what your actions will lead to. Shouto is glad that he was so curious all those weeks ago, curious enough to make him do something that he thought was completely asinine.
You don’t know the good luck you have until you come face to face with what bad luck looks like.
Two women walk past them into the adjacent hallway, their shoe bottoms filling up the room with faint tapping. Everyone’s clothing here is so pale, Shouto notes. Izuku would have stood out like a flash of light in his new jacket compared to all this near-white.
“It doesn’t surprise me that Izuku managed to make friends with the little people living in my home,” Toshinori suddenly speaks up again. Shouto feels his shoulders grow tense but decides to bite anyway.
“Have you known about us?” he asks. He always considered his family fairly adept at remaining unnoticeable, but after everything that’s happened these past few weeks he’s probably very wrong about that.
“Not concretely, but enough,” Toshinori replies. “You do well at staying hidden.”
Shouto sighs. The truth only hurts just a little. Hopefully Fuyumi won’t feel too worried that they’ve been known this whole time. But then again, when he returns home, Shouto will have much more pressing things to tell them about rather than their lack of subtlety.
“Izuku got curious, didn’t he?” Toshinori’s voice is lighter now, at the mention of Izuku. Shouto can hear the fondness under his vowels and it prompts himself to smile.
“He did.”
Toshinori hums in a way that affirms what he already knows. Shouto can feel the rumble of it where he rests in Toshinori’s pocket and realizes that people have very different sounds to them. It’s in the way they breathe and move and live in general. Shouto considers himself very fortunate to know the sound of Izuku compared to all others. He could pick it out in a rainstorm.
“It must have been very frightening for you,” Toshinori continues, “to leave him and come get me. Not many people know how to act when things like this happen. They freeze up and panic or think too much and lose time, but you managed to save his life, I hope you realize. Izuku got very lucky to have met you.”
It’s the other way around, Shouto thinks.
Weeks ago, this wouldn’t have been a possibility. Being here and interacting with environments and people outside of his familiarity, and despite how afraid he is right now of something going wrong, he’s glad that this is now a part of his life. He no longer feels that his world is against him. It was that first step into the unknown, that first step of being afraid and overcoming this which led him to meeting Izuku. And it was in understanding Izuku that Shouto could understand that he has been bitter at life for no reason other than that he didn’t want to understand it. It was so much easier to think that the world was out to hurt him and people like him rather than face the reality that he simply didn’t understand what his role was in all this.
To Shouto, falling in love with Izuku was the same as falling in love with the world.
And he knows that the moment he decided he wanted to change himself was when this all began. In a meadow, surrounded by marigolds, with his own spite pricking overtop his skin like the sun had that afternoon. Someone looked into his world and found it lovely, and Shouto, under all pretenses warning him not to, wanted to look right back.
So Toshinori has it all wrong. Izuku may have been lucky to have met Shouto, but Shouto felt that his life created itself so he could meet Izuku.
He runs his hands over the fabric pocket, familiarizing himself with the threading, knowing that he may be there for quite a while, and hopes Toshinori understands him perfectly.
“He is... a very precious thing that I never knew existed.”
_________________
They wait for hours...
And hours and hours and hours... the sun hasn’t gone down just yet and the number of people moving around the hospital hasn’t changed. At one point, Toshinori received a call from Izuku’s mother that a road closure would make her late from the long drive she has coming from up North, but he assured her that it wouldn’t matter if she arrived early anyways since all they would do it wait to be able to see Izuku.
A being with greying hair and a rough voice talked with Toshinori a few hours ago, explaining that Izuku’s surgery was finished and successful, that he was recovering now and held under monitoring until he woke up. That piece of news made all the difference to Shouto, made the wait just a little better to endure. Izuku is okay, his heart’s fine, the doctors are keeping an eye on him . Despite this, he couldn’t find it within himself to relax. He still felt exhausted from earlier and the emotional ups and downs of the day but couldn’t bring himself to sleep at all, even with an entire day of sitting in Toshinori’s pocket and thinking.
He just can’t rest until he is absolutely certain Izuku is fine, until he sees him with his own eyes.
That relief comes nearly nine hours after Shouto and Toshinori first arrived at the hospital.
Shouto has his feet propped up on the inside pocket wall as he relaxes on his back and stares up at the little light crack where the pocket flap doesn’t quite cover the opening all the way. He’s spent the past half hour or so watching the light strip and then closing his eyes to see a colored version of it behind his eyelids. It helped him to keep his mind on something trivial rather than the situation at hand. It was when Toshinori stood up out of nowhere and jostled him around that Shouto’s attention was brought back down to earth. He stands up to peek out over the pocket edge and catch more of a muffled conversation between Toshinori and the doctor from before, his gravelly voice a little different this time.
Has Izuku’s mother arrived yet?
No, she is still driving down from Musutafu and called to say that she may be later than usual. Is everything still alright?
Yes, yes, everything is fine. Musutafu is quite a long distance from here, are you one of the boy’s guardians?
I’m his godfather. He was staying with me for the summer until next month when he was supposed to be having his surgery done here. It was, well... supposed to be relaxing.
Emergencies happen, Yagi-san. It’s a good thing he was staying with you rather than in a town without a proper CCU to take care of circumstances such as these, and I’m proud to tell you that he’s recovering exceptionally. Would you like to come pay him a visit?
Shouto could feel his heart beating out of his chest in excitement as Toshinori followed the doctor out of the waiting room and down a long hallway which turned off into other, even longer halls. Shouto was surprised that anyone could find their way in the building when all the walls and doors looked the same in their pallid, snowy blue. Their shoes clacked in separate tunes and threw their sound onto the walls like ceramic tops. He didn’t much like all this empty space.
The doctor then stopped in front of one of the many rooms – ICU Room 12 – and gave a brief knock before peeking his head through with Toshinori standing off to the side. Shouto could feel his hands become jittery in wanting to go in already and see Izuku for himself, but it seems that in hospitals you have to take as much time as you possibly can to do something.
“Ah, Nurse Omori, I was hoping to catch you on your way out,” the doctor greets through the doorway. Shouto can hear the indistinct voice of someone inside and the man nods at whatever is said. “Vitals all checked? Perfect, his guardian is coming to visit for a little, I hope that’s alright.”
The doctor steps back as a woman with a tight ponytail shows up in the doorway, nodding her head to him and then Toshinori. She shuts the door to be cracked behind her before speaking again.
“He’s still a little sleepy from earlier,” she says, nodding her head to the room’s inside, “but he said he wanted to see you anyways. He’ll have a hard time talking for too long since his breathing is regulating itself again, but for a small visit everything should be fine.”
She smiles reassuringly to finish off and Shouto notices bright blue squares all along her teeth, uniform and exact on every one. He squints, trying to get a better look but then she turns away and he misses his chance. He’ll have to ask Izuku about it later.
With final thank yous to the doctor and nurse, Toshinori opens the door to the room and steps in.
Izuku is sitting up in a large, pale bed surrounded by dozens of wires and other machines that click and beep and read off numbers that Shouto doesn’t know the significance of. A clear wire is hung over both his ears and travels down right below his nose, the other end connected to a large box at the back end of the bed, next to many other large boxes that make the room feel crowded.
Another one of these little wires seems to be taped down to Izuku’s wrist which he’s currently picking at the edges of, clearly irritated at whatever this wire seems to be doing. His clothing is different from earlier – now he’s dressed like the nurses outside with light blue, loose clothing that makes his frame look small. It’s a complete 180 from this morning when he was spinning around, showcasing his flashy jacket and bubbling over himself with excitement to surprise Shouto.
God, the fact that all that happened only this morning makes him feel disoriented.
Toshinori shuts the door behind him fully and it clicks into place. Izuku’s head shoots up, no longer interested in his wrist, and he smiles with his slightly crooked teeth on full display in the way he does when he’s truly happy about something. It’s only now when all the distress from the past day finally washes away from Shouto’s body and the weight of his world is taken from off his shoulders.
“Hi Uncle Toshi!”
Shouto can feel Toshinori sigh from the back of his chest before stepping over to Izuku and placing both hands on the side of his face in a caring, fatherly gesture that Shouto almost feels intrusive to watch.
“Izuku, my boy, you have no idea how much you scared me. But to see you awake and happy and strong makes me feel exceptionally better! How are you doing? Do you feel ill at all from the anesthesia?”
Izuku shakes his head no which moves Toshinori’s hands along with him. “I feel fine, just a little tired, and I’m sorry for scaring you.” His tone becomes more somber. “I felt totally fine this morning so I really wasn’t expecting to be coming in for surgery today. Is Mom here? Does she know I’m alright?”
Toshinori steps back to sit against the edge of Izuku’s bed and nods his head. “I called her earlier,” he tells him. “She is driving down right now and should be here at any time. I should actually give her a call to let her know you’ve woken up and I’ve talked to you, reassure her a little. I’ll step out and leave both of you to talk for a moment.”
Izuku tilts his head a little in confusion and opens his mouth to seemingly ask him what he means, but then Toshinori opens up the little flap on his jacket pocket fully and Shouto pops his head out, watching Izuku’s expression turn to bafflement. His eyes flit back and forth between him and Toshinori, an array of emotion passing over his face as Toshinori laughs to himself and plucks Shouto out of his pocket, which surprises him quite a bit but he doesn’t struggle. He’s set onto a tray attached to the arm of the bed and shakes out his legs from being stuck in such a shaky area for so long.
“Your friend here is the one who came and got me,” Toshinori explains, a knowing look in his eyes as he glances between them. He rises up from the bed, phone in hand and makes to the doorway. “I’ll make sure to keep the nurse at bay and warn you if she needs to come in. Your mother will be over the moon to hear that you’re alright.”
With that, he leaves them alone with a click from the door marking a new form of quiet. Izuku wastes no time in filling that quiet up once more.
“Oh my god, Shouto, are you okay?” He leans forward and pulls a little on all the wires attaches to him be doesn’t pay them any mind, “I’m so sorry, this all must’ve been really scary for you and I can’t believe you actually went and got Uncle Toshi to help me and even went with him here where there are so many people around. Does your family know you’re alright? I don’t want them to worry that you’ve been gone because I know your sister gets worried about you being out too long, and I don’t even know what time it is now but it must be late, and, god, you’ve been waiting here for hours, have you even eaten? Not that I’m not just so happy that you’re here, but I- Shouto?”
For a moment, he isn’t sure why Izuku stopped talking and he mourns the loss of listening to Izuku’s voice, and then he feels a warmth cradle the curve of his cheek and he stops. He touches his hand to his face and watches it come back wet and glistening, covered in the first few tears he’s allowed himself to shed in the entirety of this emotional whiplash of a day. Izuku doesn’t really seem to know what to do. His hands hover in the air between them as Shouto tries drying off all the tears dripping down his chin that cool his cheek in their wake.
“W-why are you crying?” Izuku’s voice breaks through the fog of his thoughts and for some reason, this is what finally allows him to release all the pressed down emotions from today as they rise up into his throat and make him feel small once again. Shouto’s chest clenches and a hiccup forces out more tears that he doesn’t even attempt to swipe at this time. He feels too relieved and anxious to bother with keeping them at bay.
“Hey, it’s alright.” Izuku smiles at him and pulls down the collar of his shirt a bit to show off white bandages underneath that cover up the center of his chest to his collarbone. “I’m all good now, see? Heart’s all better.”
Shouto shakes his head to try and tell him that it’s not alright , that he was afraid and confused and even though Izuku is okay now that if just one little thing had gone differently that he wouldn’t be . His breathing is scattered and wet as he tries to say anything and when he does speak, it’s like trying to let out streams of water from a dammed up river.
“You weren’t moving…” he hiccups, “on the floor, you weren’t breathing and I-I didn’t know what to do, you wouldn’t wake up and-”
Shouto’s voice becomes clogged once more and comes to a brittle halt. He wipes at his eyes frantically, no longer wanting to feel any tears and becoming embarrassed at his own openness. Throughout today he just took things as they came and didn’t spare any time in thinking on how this all has really affected him, but that just resulted in his fears being bottled up tightly enough that now they’re just spilling out. Repression is a coping mechanism that works only in the moment. Shouto recognizes a familiar warmth press against his left side and he instinctively leans into the comfort of Izuku’s hand, burying his face into his palm and sobbing out the last of his energy.
“I’m so sorry you had to see that,” Izuku says after a moment of quiet. “And I’m sorry you had to wait here too, not knowing... You saved my life, Shouto, there’s no way I can ever repay you for that.”
Shouto takes in a few deep breaths and manages to quell some of his crying enough to control himself. With each second that Izuku holds him, some of his worry fades away and is replaced with a certain kind of solace that only Izuku can bring him. It’s sweet and clean and smells like summer mint.
Shouto pulls away from Izuku just enough to speak while still keeping himself tucked close against his hand.
“You have no idea how much you mean to me,” he says. “I don’t want to let you slip away from my life.”
Izuku smiles. Shouto would have expected him to be the emotional one through all this, but it feels comforting to be so vulnerable while someone else has the role of consoling.
“I won’t slip away,” Izuku tells him. “I’ll stick around as long as you’ll have me, remember? And now that Toshinori knows about you, it’ll be less of an issue for me to come see you. As long as you still want that.”
“Of course I do. I want anything that keeps you here with me.”
If Natsuo were here now then he’d definitely make fun of Shouto for being so sappy as he says this, but there isn’t any other way that he can think of to let Izuku know that nothing has changed, that he still wants everything and nothing from him all at once. Izuku has provided him a new way of living and Shouto wouldn’t give that up for anything, he needs to know this. He needs to know how significant he’s become to Shouto. But from the way that Izuku looks at him so dotingly now, Shouto believes that he understands him perfectly.
“I want the same thing, so don’t worry,” he says, all the fondness in the world tucked into the laugh lines of his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere. Promise.”
Shouto nods. He considers his family back home, how they must be worrying over him and how much trouble he’ll be in when he goes back and Fuyumi will scold him for making her anxious. He’ll tell them everything he’s been doing and what he’s learned and Shouto feels that they’ll understand him perfectly despite all the mistakes he’s made as well. And most importantly, maybe he can introduce them to Izuku then next time he comes back to Toshinori’s.
That thought makes him smile and Shouto presses himself into Izuku’s hand, his warmth already nostalgic. He leaves a little kiss on his palm and then looks up at Izuku to take in all the loving care in his eyes which he is sure is reserved only for him.
“Alright,” he tells him.
Izuku grins as a little laugh bubbles up from his chest, pale yellow and lovely. There’s a childish gleam in His eyes which Shouto is thankful to have the chance to know so well.
“My mom is going to freak out when I tell her what I’ve been up to this summer,” he jokes and Shouto gives in and laughs along with him.