Work Text:
Waiting is never easy.
It’s not the first time Shouta has spent hours sitting on a plastic bench in a hospital, arms crossed, slouched, hiding behind his hair the best he can to not show the way his eyes dart frantically toward each person in scrubs or a lab coat that walks through the door.
It just hadn’t ever been quite this long of a wait before.
He lets his body slip a little lower, his shoulders sliding down to rest against the stiff back of the chair.
He feels the pout spring onto his face, doesn’t bother trying to put it away.
At this point, he doesn’t have to hide his eagerness for information, for any kind of update, as everyone seems to be distinctly avoiding eye contact with the area of the waiting room he’s seated in.
He sighs, just a small, soft breath.
He lets his eyes close for a moment, tries taking a deeper breath, holding it, counting to ten the way Hizashi had always told him to when…
The air comes gushing out in a harsh exhale.
Shouta leans forward, his elbows on his knees as he places his head in his hands. He presses his fingers into his forehead.
Please , he sends out a plea inside his head, not quite sure what he’s begging for or who he’s hoping will answer.
All he knows is, I need help.
We need help.
A little over one hour later, his head tipped back to rest against the bench, he finally gets to speak to someone.
The woman is kind, despite the obvious tired strain around her eyes, one he’s very familiar with himself. She smiles at him as she approaches, adjusting the surgical cap around her head.
“Aizawa?” she asks.
Shouta nods, sitting straighter.
“We’ve finished with the surgery. I am sorry for the long wait, I assure you he’s fine,” she says, her voice calm and steady. Shouta feels his shoulders relaxing a bit. “Burns are tricky, so we always want to take our time and be very careful to get out any debris and clean them up properly to avoid any infection. Often, it’s not the injury that makes burns so serious, but the way they leave the patient so exposed to bacteria.”
Shouta nods along. It all made sense. He knew this when they brought Hizashi in, blood dripping down around his collar. They hadn’t wanted to cut off the speaker in the ambulance, not sure what they’d find underneath, and Shouta was grateful.
At the time, he wasn’t sure he could handle whatever they found.
He tries the long inhale again, this time managing to hold almost to ten.
“So what now?” he asks the surgeon, looking up at her.
She sits down next to him, turning to face him.
“Now we give him time to heal,” she says, patting Shouta’s shoulder. “The best we can do is keep the wound clean, treat his other injuries, and let his body do the rest.”
Shouta nods.
“Okay.”
“You can come back to see him,” she says, and then pauses. “But, prepare yourself. With burns, we can’t wrap them right away. We don’t want to get anything in the wound, so it’s not a pretty sight. We’ll have a healer do a few sessions on him over the next couple of days to help the regrowth process along. Once there is a protective layer, he’s going to have to wear a neck brace. There was a lot of damage to the muscle fibers as well.”
Shouta nods again, not sure what else to say.
He thinks of all the terrible things he’d seen in his time as a hero. He hardly thinks Hizashi’s throat can be more gruesome than watching someone get disemboweled, but...then again...it made him cringe to see the blond come home sporting a busted lip.
“Yeah...okay,” he says softly. He scrubs his hands over his face, then lets them drop down to his knees, gripping his legs briefly to bring feeling back to them. “Will he...when will he wake up?”
The surgeon shakes her head.
“We’ll have him sedated through the initial healing. Waking him up before the regrowth is done would be…” she gives him a painful looking smile, one that he’d seen parents use on children when they have to tell them bad news.
Cruel , Shouta finishes for her.
It would be cruel.
She squeezes his shoulder again and gets up.
“Are you ready to see him?” she asks. Shouta answers by standing as well. She guides him down the hall of the ICU.
He wasn’t prepared.
Somehow, he’d forgotten that the walls were clear here, so the staff could keep a watchful eye on all the patients who needed it most. He usually woke up outside the ICU, not remembering his stay inside the transparent rooms. He wonders if this is how Hizashi felt when Shouta had gotten himself mixed up in things beyond what he could handle.
It takes the surgeon clearing her throat to get his attention. He turns to her and she hands him a mask and some gloves.
“We don’t want to spread germs,” she explains.
Shouta takes the items and puts them on his face and hands. She then pulls a thin, paper, sleeved gown off a hook and helps him slip that on as well. The process of getting covered up just to sit by Hizashi’s side makes his heart start racing, makes his hands begin to sweat beneath the rubber gloves.
She asks him once more if he’s ready and he nods again. Then she presses a button and the door slides open. She steps aside.
“We can give you a few hours tonight,” she explains. “Tomorrow, after the first healing session, you can stay a little longer. I’m sorry, I wish I could allow more, but…”
“It’s okay. I understand,” Shouta says.
He’d follow all the rules.
He won’t complain.
He’ll do whatever it takes to help Hizashi heal.
Shouta walks into the room. Each step feels too heavy and too slow, like it takes an eternity for his foot to fall to the ground.
When he reaches the bed, a chair already placed there for him, he feels like he can’t bring himself to sit in it. Despite knowing Hizashi could never hear him, knocked out as he was, he doesn’t want to make any noise.
The heart monitor feels too loud as is.
She’d said it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.
Shouta takes deep breaths in and out of his nose as his stomach twists.
He wants to turn away, but a voice in his head says, this is your husband and you can’t look at him?
So he stares down at the angry, glossy, purple and red wound. He supposes it does look “cleaned up,” but there are still pieces of skin peeling off around the edges, deep cuts and bruises. His throat feels tight as he briefly wonders just how bad it looked before they spent hours digging out all the little pieces of Hizashi’s speaker.
He shakes his head, letting out a shaky exhale, and forces himself to sit.
He can’t bring himself to touch any part of Hizashi, despite the gloves allowing it.
Hizashi’s left eye is covered as well, but they had assured him the damage wouldn’t be lasting when they’d checked him over in the ambulance. Likewise, his shoulder and upper chest, also wrapped in bandages, would be easy to fix in comparison to his neck. His arms and hands look fine. Shouta could reach out and hold one, but clasps his hands together in his lap instead.
He sits there in silence for the two hours he’s allowed. When he hears someone outside the door getting dressed in their own protective gear, he stands up.
Looking down at his husband, breathing slow and steady, he tells himself it will be okay.
He will wait.
“I love you,” he whispers.
The door opens and the doctor calls him out.
---
Each day gets a little easier. Hizashi’s healing is progressing nicely and the promise of finally bringing him off the sedatives becomes less of an abstract notion and more of a concrete plan.
On the fourth day, when he’s taking off his gown and mask and throwing them into the hazmat bin, the surgeon he had spoken to on the first night approaches him. She’s dressed in a lab coat now, her hair pulled back into a loose bun, and looking more rested.
“Hey! I have good news,” she says.
Shouta lifts his foot off the bin and the lid falls closed.
“What is it?” he asks.
“We’ll be doing another healing session tonight, just a quick one, as Yamada’s vitals have been getting a lot stronger and we think he has some more energy to spare. With this, we think tomorrow morning’s session will be all we need to feel comfortable putting on the brace and waking him up,” she explains, her voice upbeat and excited.
Hizashi’s neck still looks awful. It’s a deep, dark bruise that to anyone else would seem like it was far from “better,” but each day the surgeon had showed him the progress. She had pointed to the edges, showed him where the deep cuts were closing up, where the skin was regrowing, and, perhaps most sickeningly, showed him how she could dab at the wound without the gauze coming away bloody like it had before.
He knew Hizashi would be shocked.
It’s hard not to see your whole throat a disgusting shade of purple and not freak out when you hadn’t been awake to see how far it had improved, but Shouta is immensely thankful for this. As hard as it had been to sit beside a silent Hizashi, to say I love you every night without hearing a response, he was happy Hizashi was spared the pain.
“That’s great,” Shouta says. “I’m happy to hear that. So you’ll wake him up tomorrow?”
“If things go as planned, yes!”
Shouta smiles and thanks her, his heart skipping a bit at the thought of finally seeing Hizashi open his eyes.
He knew it would be hard, that Hizashi being awake would be the start of the real healing, but he was happy nonetheless.
---
When Shouta comes in the next day, they don’t make him put on the mask and gloves and gown. Hizashi is laid out on the bed, a thick white neck brace wrapped around his throat. Shouta snorts a bit at the image. It almost reminded him of plush version of his speaker system.
He hoped Hizashi could find the same humor in it.
The blond would need something to smile about.
The surgeon tells Shouta they’ve weaned him off the sedative and he was just sleeping now, that he should wake up soon. With the majority of the healing done, they won’t have to kick Shouta out, and for the first time that week he’s left alone with Hizashi with no time limit.
As the doctor exits, Shouta finally brings himself to do what he’d wanted to since Hizashi had been placed onto the stretcher. He reaches out to grab his hand, bringing it up to his mouth, and presses his lips against the soft skin.
Shouta’s hand shakes.
It had been so long since he’d felt his husband.
Slowly, he lets his other hand reach out, trying to still the tremble before he touches Hizashi’s head, careful not to jostle him at all, his neck still delicate despite the brace. His hair isn’t as soft as usual, not having been properly washed since the incident. Shouta smiles, thinking about how the first thing Hizashi will want when they get home is a shower.
Home.
The word makes his chest tighten, and a lump form in his throat.
He brings the back of Hizashi’s hand to his forehead, leaning his skin gently against it, hiding behind it as the tears start to gather in his eyes. He bites his bottom lip, trying to keep it in.
Home.
He’d been fine.
Relatively speaking, he’d been fine all week. He hadn’t cried once through the worst of it. Yet, now, here he was, sobbing at the thought of opening the door to their house and helping Hizashi inside. Crying as he imagined washing the other’s hair, changing his bandages, and laying him down in their bed.
Please , he thinks again.
I want to take you home .
This time his plea is answered quicker, as Hizashi’s hand moves, fingers curling around where Shouta is holding it.
Shouta stops breathing, his head flying back and turning to look at Hizashi.
Somehow, despite it all, Hizashi is smiling at him, sending his strength to the tight grip around Shouta’s fingers.
Somehow, Shouta is the one who is a wreck.
“Hi-” he chokes out. He wants to get closer, wants to grab Hizashi’s face, pull him into a hug, kiss him, but he can’t do these things.
So he does what he can.
He says what he’d said over and over each day that Hizashi wasn’t able to hear it.
“I love you,” Shouta breathes out. “I love you.”
Hizashi opens his mouth, but Shouta doesn’t let him speak, scooting closer on his chair.
He says it again, “I love you,” and then one more, for last night, “I love you.”
Hizashi lets out a small laugh, his eye closing for a second, clearly in pain, but it seems to fade quickly.
“Are you going to let me say it back?” he asks quietly, sounding a little horse. He clears his throat a bit afterward.
Shouta smiles, wiping away a tear with the back of his hand, and nods.
“I love you too,” Hizashi says.
Shouta bites his lip. It’s hard to resist kissing his husband like this.
“Are you okay?” Hizashis asks. Shouta snorts.
“ Me? Am I okay ? You’re the one in the hospital, Hizashi.”
“You’re making a weird face…” Hizashi squints at him and Shouta realizes not only is he looking at Shouta with one eye, but he also doesn’t have his glasses on.
Shouta lets go of Hizashi’s hand to bend down and into his bag, digging around for the glasses case he’d grabbed this morning. He pulls out Hizashi’s glasses and gets up, stepping closer to gently slide them onto Hizashi’s face.
“Better?” he asks and Hizashi smiles at him, going to nod, but then wincing instead. Shouta frowns.
“Be careful,” he says, brushing his thumb over Hizashi’s cheek. Turning around to look at the chair he’d spent so much time in, he decides to sit on the edge of Hizashi’s bed instead, wanting to be closer to the blond. He lowers himself down as slowly as possible, not wanting to shake it at all.
Hizashi watches him with a look of confusion the whole time.
Ah, yeah, he probably doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.
Shouta looks outside the glass walls. No one is paying attention to them. The doctor hadn’t told him that he needed to call them when Hizashi woke up. Shouta was familiar with what had happened, he could explain just as well as them.
He turns back to Hizashi.
“How are you feeling? Does it hurt a lot?” Shouta asks, reaching for the little remote clicker tucked away by Hizashi’s pillow. There was no way Hizashi could have seen it without being able to turn his head, but it hadn’t been necessary to use it before now. He brings the clicker down and places it in Hizashi’s hand.
“This is for morphine,” he says. “If it hurts too bad, you can press this.”
“Okay…” Hizashi says, turning the remote over in his hand. He sets it down on the mattress. “I feel...okay...right now.”
Shouta eyes him, trying to see if he was lying. He certainly seemed to be uncomfortable, but who wouldn’t be with a huge brace tucked under their chin? He was speaking fairly well, and didn’t seem to be wincing unless he tried to move. Shouta decides to let it slide. It was probably better Hizashi had a clear head for a little while after being under for so long.
“What...what happened?” he asks. “I mean...I know what happened , but…”
Shouta nods and reaches down to rub up and down Hizashi’s arm.
“Yeah,” he says, trying not to think about the way Hizashi had looked that night as the EMTs peeled him off the ground.
He sighs.
“You’ll be fine,” he starts. “Honestly, the worst of it is over and you were knocked out for it. Don’t worry about the eye, that will heal, it’s just some stitches. It won’t even scar. The surgeon here is really good. Your shoulder will be back to normal after some physical therapy.”
Shouta watches Hizashi’s face as he explains these things. He seems a little more relaxed to hear his eye is fine. Shouta knows the unease that comes with waking up to no vision, and even if it’s just one eye, it’s never a good feeling to lose something. The shoulder, though, Hizashi doesn’t seem to care about at all, showing no reaction. Shouta wonders if he’s even aware it was injured, as he couldn’t look down to see the rest of his body.
“Besides your neck, there are no other injuries,” he says, hoping to alleviate any lingering fears Hizashi might have about that. “You might have noticed the uhh…” Shouta gestures around his throat. “Brace.”
Hizashi snorts and then frowns, closing his eye again.
Shouta picks up his hand and begins rubbing circles into the back of it.
“Like I said, be careful, Zashi. You got pretty messed up,” he says, waiting for Hizashi’s face to smooth out as the pain calmed down.
“Your speaker took a lot of damage, internal combustion, and you had severe electrical burns all around your neck. They kept you sedated after cleaning it up so they could do enough healing sessions that they could put the brace on. It had to be left open for a while for the skin to...well, yeah...” Shouta trails off, noticing the way Hizashi’s face was getting increasingly disturbed with his descriptions. He didn’t need to tell Hizashi the gorey details, that part was over.
“Your muscles are pretty weak right now, so you won’t be able to move around much and need to wear the brace 24/7 for a few weeks,” he finishes.
Shouta gives Hizashi some time to process it all, continuing to massage his hand.
“How long do I have to be here for?” he finally asks.
Shouta shakes his head. “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask the doctor.”
Hizashi pouts.
“I want to go home,” he says.
Shouta laughs at that. “You’ve technically only been here for...what...half an hour?”
He sticks his tongue out and Shouta’s heart sings.
This felt better.
This felt normal.
“I want to go home, too,” Shouta admits. “But you need to get better first.”
“I know…” Hizashi sighs.
“Zashi…” Shouta says, his tone serious. Hizashi’s eye jumps to his face. “It’s not pretty. When you see your throat...it’s not good. It will heal, though. You’ll be okay. It has already gotten a lot better from when they brought you in.”
“Shouta!” Hizashi whines. “I’m not that vain!”
“I know, I just meant-”
“I’m kidding, it’s fine,” Hizashi cuts him off, giving him a soft smile. “Thank you. Not just for trying to prepare me for...what it looks like...but for being here...it must have been hard to watch.”
“It was harder to wait,” Shouta says, squeezing his hand. “I’m really happy you’re awake now.”
“Me too.”
“I love you so much, Hizashi.”
“Yeah? You’re going to be proving that when we get out of here and you have to give me sponge baths!” Hizashi teases, his voice getting a little higher, more like his usual cheery tone.
Shouta groans, but if he’s being honest, he’d like nothing more than to give Hizashi a bath. He has no problem pampering his husband after all of this.
“I suppose I owe you after you did such a good job taking care of me,” Shouta says.
Hizashi closes his eye, his smile smaller.
“Yeah…” he breathes out. Shouta feels Hizashi’s hand shake a bit in his grasp.
He hadn’t meant to kill the mood.
“We should both be more careful,” Hizashi says, opening his eye.
“Please,” Shouta says, this time aloud, this time not just at Hizashi, or himself, but at everyone and everything outside these walls that wanted to take one of them away from the other.
Shouta never wanted or intended to be reckless or get hurt, but getting a glimpse at what it was like for Hizashi after USJ…
Well...next time he’ll go slower.
He’ll take a break.
He’ll listen when Hizashi tells him to stay in bed.
Healing is hard, but that’s the body’s job. The rest...the rest was harder, and often, it wasn’t just the one in bandages who was hurting.
“Shouta,” Hizashi whines, and it brings his attention back to the present. He waits for Hizashi to finish whatever it is he wants to ask.
“Will you kiss me?”
Shouta’s eyes widen. He looks down at the thick brace.
“I don’t know...I don’t want to hurt you.”
Hizashi holds up the little remote Shouta had given him.
“You’re going to give yourself morphine just for a kiss?”
Hizashi smiles.
Shouta rolls his eyes and leans forward, careful not to touch Hizashi’s chest or neck, cupping the uninjured side of his face to hold him still. He comes down slow, pressing their lips together so softly he barely feels it at first, until Hizashi shifts to try and get closer and Shouta caves, not wanting to make the other man work for it.
He gets closer, kisses harder, opening up Hizashi’s mouth with his tongue and diving in deeper. Hizashi doesn’t taste good at all, but he doesn’t care, as he pulls back, the lump in his throat starts growing again.
“I love you,” he whispers, trying to keep the tears from starting up.
“I love you too,” Hizashi says, and his are already spilling over, trailing down his cheek to the corners of his mouth, spread wide into a happy grin.