Chapter Text
“You ready?”
“Just take them off already,” Shota grunted.
“All right,” Hizashi hummed.
The light of the guest bedroom was low and the bed creaked a little under their combined weight. When Hizashi’s fingers met his face, Shota had to resist the urge to lean into the touch like a cat.
“Tell me if it hurts,” Hizashi said.
Shota didn’t dignify that with a response. He closed his eyes.
Hizashi’s gentle hands started to unravel the bandages from Shota’s face. His hands had always been so delicate and yet so expressive, and it was a shame they were hidden so often by leather gloves. Those hands told stories and imparted love with every touch. Shota’s were rough, calloused, hands built for and forged by violence. He could spend a thousand lifetimes memorizing how Hizashi’s hands felt in that moment, unwrapping Shota like he was something worth revealing.
Finally, the bandages were gone. Shota ached with something that wasn’t pain from his injuries. He opened his eyes. Hizashi was staring at him. His dark green eyes, normally so bright, were full of sadness as they traced his face.
“What?” Shota asked.
Hizashi reached out a hand holding a wet cloth and dabbed tenderly at the contusion on Shota’s forehead. Shota bit back a cough.
“I hate seeing you like this,” Hizashi said. His voice was quiet, as if he’d left it in the closet with his costume. It wasn’t quiet like Hizashi. It was quiet like a man grieving. “I’m…I’m sorry I was too late.”
Shota blinked. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m always too late. I’m never there when you need me.”
“I need you now. And you’re here.”
The idea of Hizashi not being there for him was ludicrous. Hizashi was always there. Hizashi would always be there when Shota was hurt, when he was struggling, when he was broken. His dumb shoulder pads would always be there to cry on.
Shota wondered if there was any possible universe where he didn’t fall in love with Hizashi Yamada.
Hizashi withdrew the wet cloth and touched the bruises on Shota’s cheek with tender fingertips. In the sunlight, Hizashi was loud, abrasive, all sharp punk edges. Here, he was soft. Shota wondered if he was soft for anyone else. He hoped not. He held a selfish, unfair love for Hizashi’s quiet moments.
“Let’s clean you off before I change all that gauze.”
Shota accepted and prepared for his impending death. There was no way his lungs would survive this. But he couldn’t say no. He’d already gone way too long without showering.
“C’mon. Into the bathroom.”
Hizashi helped Shota up and to the bathroom. He didn’t need the help, but he couldn’t bring himself to shake those splayed fingers from his back. It was nice to lean on Hizashi, anyway. His head had been feeling a little fuzzy, and his legs ached. He’d forgotten how it felt to breathe easy.
“Good thing I got that detachable shower head, huh?” Hizashi said as he arranged Shota in the bath.
“You sure you didn’t just get that for weird sex?” Shota responded.
Hizashi snorted. “Haven’t you ever had sex in a shower? Having the head be detachable doesn’t help in any way.”
“I have never had sex in a shower,” Shota deadpanned. He raised his cast-clad arms to allow Hizashi to help him out of his loose button-up shirt. This was another reason he had to stay with Hizashi: only Hizashi was allowed to see him shirtless. Only Hizashi knew about the curving scars on his chest.
“Hm. Seems like it would totally be your thing, cuz you don’t have to clean up afterward.” Hizashi grinned. “It’s rational.”
That sent Shota’s brain to some places that were decidedly bad for his breathing. Hizashi finally finished removing his shirt, and Shota desperately reminded himself that his friend was just helping him bathe. Just a bro helping a bro out with a shower head and a wet washcloth. It was too late. He coughed.
“Shota,” Hizashi warned. “Stop that. Just stop thinking about whoever it is. Think about that time I screamed and fainted at the sight of a spider in our first year.”
He’d collapsed into Shota’s arms, and Shota had killed the spider. Hizashi had blinked awake as if coming out of sleep. At the time, Shota had been simply annoyed at Hizashi’s weakness.
Shota coughed again. And again. He doubled over in the bath and hacked up his lungs, bitter blood dribbling from his lips, flowers clawing up his throat with a vengeance. Hizashi didn’t have to help him like this. He didn’t have to touch him so softly, like Shota was something precious.
“Shota.” Hizashi’s voice cracked. “Please.”
“Yeah, sure,” Shota snapped. “I’ll just stop coughing. You’re such a genius.”
“I meant confess. Please tell them how you feel. It’s killing me to see you in this much pain.”
Shota gritted his teeth. He couldn’t win. If he said nothing, Hizashi would be hurt because he couldn’t help. But if he said something, Hizashi would be hurt knowing Shota’s pain was because of him, and he couldn’t help because he didn’t reciprocate. Of course he didn’t. Stars didn’t fall for the planets that orbited them.
“Okay,” Hizashi sighed. “Okay.”
He threaded a hand through Shota’s hair, and Shota just couldn’t take it anymore. His chest spasmed and his shoulders shivered. Hizashi’s fingertips were against his scalp. Petals filled his throat until he couldn’t breathe. His eyes widened as his raspy coughs spewed blood. He’d forgotten what painless breathing was like. Shallow breaths came one after the other like ducklings.
“Hizashi,” he wheezed.
“I’m here, I’m here, please, please just breathe.”
Hizashi awkwardly wrapped Shota in his lean arms. This did not help the situation. Shota’s coughs grew more and more violent. He couldn’t stop. His lap was filling with petals.
His just-healed ribs were definitely going to break. All his bones were going to break like twigs if his body kept shaking like this.
“Please,” Hizashi whispered. “I can call them. Just confess, please!”
His voice was so tiny and broken that something beneath Shota’s ribs broke too.
He couldn’t hurt Hizashi. But there was no way to avoid it. He’d been selfish enough to fall in love, and now Hizashi was paying the price.
“I’m sorry,” Shota choked out. His words made bubbles in his blood.
He pulled away from Hizashi’s touch, sliding into the bottom of the bathtub. The white porcelain was streaked with blood and mangled yellow petals. It smelled like iron and delicate perfume.
Shota let out a hacking, violent cough that wracked his whole body, and he felt something snap. He gasped for breath in a pitiful, painful wheeze. He couldn’t breathe. He was choking on something.
“Hizashi,” Shota managed to choke out. No other words came to his tongue before he again devolved into coughs.
“Just hang on. I’m calling an ambulance.”
Shota pressed a hand to his side. His rib was definitely fractured. He tried to take short, small breaths, but he just couldn’t stop coughing.
Love was going to kill him. He was going to die in this stupid bathtub because he fell in love with his best friend. At least Hizashi didn’t know. He wouldn’t want Hizashi blaming himself for his death.
The last thing he remembered before passing out was Hizashi’s hand on his cheek and Hizashi’s voice pleading words Shota did not recognize.
Shota was probably not dead.
The first thing he registered was a fucking killer headache. The second thing was his too-hot fingers. He couldn’t really figure out where any other parts of his body were. He was just hot fingers and an aching head, and maybe there was some stuff in between.
He tried to say something, but whatever parts of him made words felt fuzzy, so all that came out was a thin whine, which he heard with his ears. Right, those were things that existed.
His chest hurt. His lungs, specifically. But the pain seemed to reach him through a cotton curtain.
He was definitely on a ton of drugs, wherever the hell he was.
One of his hands was suddenly pleasantly cooler. He felt the outline of delicate fingers.
He cracked his eyes open. They were met with stark, headache-enhancing white. He closed them again.
“Hey,” said a soft voice, a comforting voice. Shota trusted that voice.
Shota squeezed the hand holding his. “Wanna sleep.” His voice came out as little more than a rasp. It hurt to talk.
“All right. Go ahead and go back to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Hizashi’s voice was thick, as if he’d been crying. Shota felt the echo of a cough in the pit of his stomach. It didn’t escalate into a full cough, though, even though Hizashi was right there and holding his hand. At his bedside, just like he’d been when this whole thing started.
Oh, no. No, no, no. He wasn’t coughing. Hizashi was right there, waiting for him to wake up as he lay convalescing, and he wasn’t coughing. They’d removed the flowers. They must have saved his life by doing that surgery—no, no, no. He wanted those flowers. He needed them there. He’d thought they were a nuisance, but now that they were gone, he could hear the heartbeat monitor start beating in alarm. He loved Hizashi. He had to love Hizashi.
They couldn’t take that away from him.
“Zashi,” Shota wheezed. His words came out rough around the edges. “Zashi, what did they do?”
“Hey, hey, calm down. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re in Musutafu General, and you’ve been asleep for a couple of hours. They had to take your casts off for the IVs, so try not to move your arms. You’re on a cocktail of intravenous sedatives and cough suppressants, and, ah, you sort of have pneumonia. They weren’t even looking for it, they were just scanning for the cracked rib. Which you also have, by the way. So I think it’s safe to say you’re going to be here for at least another day.”
“I have class to teach,” Shota grunted.
So it wasn’t just Hizashi who was going to suffer thanks to his ill-conceived feelings. He wasn’t going to be there for his students. The heartbeat monitor went quiet, content that Shota’s heartbeats were regular. They hadn’t done the surgery. He was just sedated.
“Nope. You’re not redirecting, and you’re not leaving this bed until the doctors say so,” Hizashi said.
Shota didn’t have the resolve to argue. He didn’t want to leave the bed. He just wanted to stay here forever, swaddled in blankets and bandages and Hizashi’s cool hand.
“Shota, this is getting out of hand,” Hizashi said. “Once you leave the hospital, your lungs and rib will need to heal, and they can’t if your Hanahaki stays as bad as it is. You need to confess or get the surgery or they might not let you leave.” He paused, a signature “Hizashi-has-an-idea” pause. “Or, hey, if you fall for someone else, would that help?”
“Maybe temporarily,” Shota snorted. “Probably not long enough to get my lungs healed.”
Not that that was going to happen. There was no one else for him. Falling in love with someone who wasn’t Hizashi would be like flinging a planet into a different orbit. It would take a meteor, and he didn’t know any meteors.
“What if you fell for someone who then told you they loved you?”
“Then we’d be fine.”
“I have a brilliant idea!” Hizashi crowed, and Shota just knew he was grinning like a dazzling idiot. “I am going to make you fall in love with me.”
Shota barked out a shocked laugh.
“Hey, man, don’t be mean! It’s the perfect plan! I’m totally irresistible, yo. I could totally woo you. I know what kind of coffee you like and everything.”
“Yeah, totally, except for one small problem.”
“I see no problem here. This is a perfect plan.”
“The Hanahaki would only stop if you loved me back. That’s a pretty big problem.”
Rather than continuing the banter, Hizashi went quiet.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “That’s…that’s why it would work if it was me.”
It took Shota’s drug-addled brain about 30 seconds to catch up. When he did, he burst into helpless giggles.
“I…okay.” Hizashi sounded baffled. “This was not how I expected you to react to me telling you I love you.”
With those three little words, Shota finally took a breath free of tangled vines. He hadn’t realized until now how constricted his chest was. But now, the only thing keeping his breathing shallow was the pneumonia that he apparently had. And also the cracked rib that he apparently had.
“Look, I know we’re best friends, and I’m sorry for making this awkward,” Hizashi continued. “I swear I wouldn’t bring this up if I didn’t think it could help. But we’re kind of in dire straits here, and, well, it’s better than keeping you sedated till your ribs heal.”
“We’re both idiots,” Shota said fondly.
“Hey, speak for yourself! I think it’s a pretty smart plan! Maybe you’re a bit of an idiot for not confessing when your rib is literally cracked, but I am the height of intelligence.”
Shota curled his fingers around Hizashi’s. Though his arms had been shattered, the Nomu had the decency to leave him this.
“Of course I could fall in love with you,” Shota told him. “I already did.”
“Wh—so, ah, wait, shit, I’m the one who’s been choking ya?”
“Let’s not dwell on that. Look at it this way: by confessing your feelings, you’ve dealt with the problem. The next logical step is for you to kiss me.”
Hizashi laughed. “Very forward for a man who’d crack a rib to avoid confessing.”
“Shut up.” Shota mumbled. He tried unsuccessfully to stop a smile creeping across his face.
“Make me.” The light still hurt Shota’s head too much to open his eyes, but he knew Hizashi was grinning smugly.
“I want to kiss you to shut you up but I can’t.”
“Because of the cracked rib that’s your fault?”
Before Shota could retort, Hizashi swooped down and kissed him.
Shota had imagined kissing Hizashi in a thousand ways in a thousand choking moments, and all those imaginings vanished in an instant when Hizashi’s lips met his.
It was not fireworks and rushing heartbeats. No sparks flew. It didn’t feel like dancing in the rain.
Hizashi kissed him, and Shota remembered how to breathe easy. It felt like actually waking up from a good sleep, like coming home to a cup of hot tea, like throwing himself into bed after a long day, like realizing the number in a particularly tough Sudoku puzzle that made the rest of the answers cascade into place.
His lips were soft and his hands, which gently cradled Shota’s half-bandaged face, were delicate as a butterfly’s wings. He didn’t dive into a long and messy kiss, instead peppering Shota’s lips with little pecks to give him time to catch his precious breath. Hizashi’s long hair tickled Shota’s face, and Shota wished fervently for the use of his arms so he could run his fingers through it.
As it was, there was no way to deepen the kiss. Hizashi’s angle was awkward, propped up on one elbow on a hospital bed. Even as they kissed, Shota felt twinges of pain through his ribs.
It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t their last. No, they’d have plenty of chances to get this right, and Shota was determined to take every one of them. He was, after all, a bit of a completionist.
“That okay?” Hizashi murmured, and Shota felt the curve of a smile against his lips.
“Yeah,” Shota breathed.
Hizashi kissed him again, and Shota melted into the pillow. Hizashi pressed a kiss to his still-raw throat, and Shota gave a breathless laugh.
“So,” Hizashi said, “does that mean we’re dating?”
“Obviously.”
Hizashi kissed him on the cheek. “God, Shota, you have no idea how you make me feel. I love you so much.”
Shota cataloged every part of Hizashi touching him: the knuckles of his fingers, the tickle of his mustache, the cold of his skin.
“I love you,” Shota whispered. He didn’t need to say it. The flowers spoke for themselves. But words meant a lot to Hizashi.
He got tired of saying redundant things, but he would never tire of telling Hizashi those three words.