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“Izuku!”
Professionalism, Izuku thinks vaguely, somewhere far in the recesses of his befuddled mind. He’s fairly certain he hears the shout but there’s another part of him that isn’t so sure. Should’ve been Deku.
‘Izuku,’ though. There aren’t many people in this line of work who call him that. It draws a sense of clarity out of him, something he hasn't had before. Then his name is shouted again, and the clarity turns into familiarity. And then familiarity turns into realization.
He swings a glance over his shoulder. Something in his collar and shoulder bites and burns, and the pain is something he knows should be more than he can bear but there’s another something that keeps it numb.
‘Shock’ is the next word that comes to mind. Even if he doesn’t know where exactly it comes from.
“Shou—?” His own voice is as of a stranger, and with the attempt comes a sharp sting of metallic up the back of his throat and in his sinuses. A measured amount of panic comes with it, too, though he isn’t coherent enough to understand why it scares him.
“... Shouto...”
“Izuku!”
Professionalism. The people he’s interned with, they’re always yammering on about professionalism. Words to say, when to say them, how to say them. The rise and fall of your voice. How to control the natural influx, the natural emotion. How to wear a facade strong enough to fool even your colleagues. To fool even yourself.
Shouto is usually good at that. Or, at least, he’s gotten better at that. But calm is something he’s always been. Level-headed. Present. So much so that instructors and mentors over the years have looked at Izuku and other mentees and told them to take one out of his book. Heroes were supposed to be calm, level-headed, present.
Shouto is not calm now. His voice is tainted and frayed by a ring of raw, unbridled desperation. A hollow, echoing noise, like a scream in a canyon. The longer Izuku listens, the louder and more desperate it becomes.
“Izuku!”
Again.
His knees buckle. As if from far away he hears something skid; a sharp inhale; pounding footsteps. He falls into familiar arms. Shaking arms. Arms that do not belong to someone who is currently calm, or level-headed, or anything beyond or in between.
He didn’t realize he’d been standing at all until his legs were no longer beneath him.
“Hey, hey, I’ve got you, it’s okay—are you okay? Can you hear me?” He feels Shouto’s voice against the side of his face. It’s such a familiar thing that for a moment it chases away everything else and leaves only them. “Izuku?”
This time, it isn’t the lack of strict guidelines and professionalism laid on them by their mentors over many, many years of classes and lectures and internships. This time, it’s the tremble in Shouto’s voice, the way it breaks, how uncertain he sounds that frightens Izuku. Shouto was never meant to sound so uncertain. He never has.
“Hey, t—talk to me? Izuku, come on—”
Izuku doesn’t know what led him to be in this situation, he doesn’t know why everything hurts and why Shouto sounds so scared (he never has before, he shouldn’t, not now), he doesn’t know where he is or how any of this happened but it must have been something terrible because now that Shouto is here, now that he doesn’t have to stand on his own anymore, a sense of relief crashes over him. It comes in waves strong enough to steal the breath from his lungs. He slumps further. Shouto's already labored breath becomes even more strained.
"Izuku?"
“S’rry.” He feels the sound in his throat but doesn’t remember making it. “M’... glad y’re here...”
Shouto releases a shuddering breath, one Izuku feels more than he hears. The arms around him squeeze with controlled strength, reassuring and gentle but still so very desperate.
“It’s okay, don’t—don’t apologize.” He sounds somewhat calmer. Talking was the right thing to do. “I’m—I’m going to set us down, alright? Help will be here soon.”
Izuku isn’t sure what that means entirely, but he lets Shouto maneuver them until neither of them are standing (asphalt—they’re on asphalt) and Shouto has one hand on his face and the other on his wrist. The dizziness is back, but lessened by the new position.
“Is that better?”
“Mm.” He honestly doesn’t know. Shouto is the only thing that makes sense. “Lil bit...”
“Can you look at me?”
He cracks his eyes open. Shouto’s frame leaning over him is blurry. The sky behind him is dark, cloudy. He can’t tell what time of day it is (afternoon? evening?). It looks like it’s been raining. Shouto’s costume is tattered and torn and there’s a bruise on his cheek, just under his eye, but other than that he seems unharmed.
And, he’s smiling. And it isn’t a heroic, the day is saved kind of smile. It isn’t the kind of smile they’d been trained to produce, trained to emulate no matter what circumstances they were up against. Shouto is good at those smiles.
This is the smile Izuku saw when Shouto told him stories about him and his siblings when they were younger, before Endeavor tore into their childhood. This is the smile he wore the day he and their classmates went to the beach in their third year of high school, and they swam until night and then watched the stars over smores and a firepit, pointing up at constellations and wondrously rambling on about all the good things the future held for them. It’s the smile Izuku sees when he wakes up in the morning.
It’s softer, more endearing. Less hero, more human. Except, Izuku doesn’t remember the smile looking so sad.
“There you are.” Shouto’s hand, the one on his wrist, slides downward until their fingers wind together. His grip is anchoring, and Izuku struggles to squeeze back. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Izuku blinks, and doesn’t realize he hadn’t opened his eyes again until Shouto taps him on the cheek.
“Stay with me, alright?” Calmer still but not entirely like himself, Shouto draws him closer. The resulting comfort greatly outweighs the pain brought on by the maneuver. “I’ve got you, now. It’ll be okay. Just keep squeezing my hand, I’ll squeeze back every time.”
He tries it, if weakly. Shouto keeps his word. His reassurances are more practiced now, but no less genuine.
“...ev’ry’ne... s’...?”
Shouto’s smile grows equal parts brighter and sadder. “Yeah, everyone’s safe,” he says, gently pulling Izuku’s hair out of his face. “You made sure of that. As usual. Stupid.”
It draws a snort from Izuku, but the action isn’t worth the resulting pain. He hisses and grinds his teeth. Shouto grips his fingers.
“Sh’o?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Th’k y...”
“You don’t need to thank me.” He squeezes his hand again. It’s just as grounding as the first time. “You don’t need to. Just keep holding my hand.”
He blinks for too long again, but remembers the thing about the hand. It’s real enough and distracting enough. Shouto is the only thing that makes sense and the act of holding his hand is cementing that reality even further. Shouto is here, Shouto has everything under control, Shouto has him. It leaves a plethora of other damning, pressing questions in its wake but he doesn’t care. He squeezes Shouto’s hand again just to feel him squeeze back.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Drifting, he’s pulled upward into wake like water from a well. The sensation is a muddled one, a constant push and pull of a tide, wondering whether he’s closer or farther from complete awareness.
The words, “He’s up,” hit him distantly, sort of like clouds skirting by. The fuzzy, unfamiliar voice is followed by still fuzzy but considerably louder footsteps. A blurry silhouette leans over him, touching his face, and when they speak, it’s with a voice he knows all too well. Even though the words are choked and teary.
“Hey, hey—you okay? How do you feel?”
Izuku manages to huff in response. And that’s about all he manages to do. Another silhouette moves in the corner of his eye—a doctor, a nurse, he can’t tell which of the two, but their outfit is white so he assumes it’s one or the other—either way it doesn’t matter. Shouto matters.
“M’f’n.”
Shouto’s hand is warm, but it trembles. “You aren’t yet, but you’re getting there. A good couple weeks or so of rest and you will be.”
“Nnm.” Resting isn’t something he’s good at.
“It’ll be okay, don’t worry.” Shouto draws a breath, and even through Izuku’s distorted vision, the slump of his shoulders is too obvious. “Don’t worry,” he repeats breathlessly, and Izuku can’t tell which of them he’s talking to.
The way his brain registers the desire to move is… weird. His body doesn’t feel like it belongs to him. But, he manages to lift his hand until he can touch Shouto’s cheek—just beneath that horrid black-purple bruise. (He still needs to figure out how that happened. Why. Who did it.) There isn’t much he can say, and honestly there isn’t much he needs to say. Their relationship isn’t one that requires a lot of words. Often times a look or a touch is all that’s needed.
It’s all that’s needed now. Shouto exhales through his nose and shakes his head, but clutches Izuku's hand and smiles endearingly at him.
Doctors run tests, nurses take vitals, everything is noise and movement and sooner than later that drifting push and pull is back, though less pleasant this time. Before, awareness and sleep seemed equally pleasing, but now the lull is frustrating, because now he knows what he wants and he wants to sleep but can’t.
“It’ll be over soon,” Shouto says. Izuku knows it will, but that doesn’t lessen the discomfort.
Eventually, though, he’s moved out of the post-operation room and into a proper one, where he and Shouto are then left alone. Izuku is more awake now, with a level of coherency he didn’t ask for or want. He can tell how many painkillers he's on. He can tell how much pain he’d be in without them. He can tell how long he’s going to have to be here.
The bed dips and Shouto’s arm curves around him, drawing him close, and Izuku shuts his eyes and lets his head rest in the place where Shouto's shoulder and neck meet. He smells like icy winter mornings and coffee, with the warmth of a fireplace. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of the hospital scents. Antiseptic, stale, sterile… Shouto smells like home, and it makes Izuku think that things are going to be okay.
“It’ll be okay,” Shouto murmurs against his hair, as though he’d read his mind. His voice vibrates against his chest, and Izuku feels more than he hears. “Promise.”
Izuku finds it in him to smile, as tight and as strained as it is, and the last thing he feels before dropping off to sleep is Shouto threading their fingers together.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The next time Shouto catches him—and he really shouldn’t make a habit of falling, really, he shouldn't—it’s because he’d stumbled over his own pain while trying to cross the living room to reach the kitchen.
“Izuk—!” Shouto literally drops what he’s doing to catch him in time. The stack of books hits the carpet with dull thumps and thuds. The next time Shouto speaks, it’s following a sigh, and the shrillness is gone. “What the hell.”
“Sorry.” He uses Shouto’s shoulders to pull himself upright, but Shouto doesn’t let him go. “I just got dizzy, I’m okay, don’t worry.”
Shouto’s eyes bear into his. It’s hard to precisely read his face, but he definitely isn’t thrilled. He sighs again. “Fine, fine, okay. Come on, let’s sit on the couch.”
He guides Izuku over there, throws a blanket on him, and then leaves him and retreats into the kitchen. Izuku tugs it around his shoulders and tries to steady his breathing. He’s familiar with this sort of pain—an unholy amalgamation of dull, biting, sharp, and throbbing depending on where the injury is and how it reacted to the painkillers—but it’s a gross kind of familiar. He’s used to it and he hates that he’s used to it.
He uses the apartment as a distraction, studying the dust in the corners that’s collected over weeks and months of being so busy and so exhausted when they finally got home that cleaning was left for ‘another day,’ the coffee stains in the carpet, the loose threads on the arms of the couch. He and Shouto have lived together since they were nineteen. Izuku is twenty-two now with Shouto right behind him.
“You really did do a number on yourself.” Speaking of Shouto. “You aren’t supposed to be out of bed.”
“I noticed,” Izuku murmurs, curling further into the arm of the couch and wincing at the strain on his bones and muscles. The painkillers haven’t kicked in yet since he took them at lunch, and it’s been several hours now. Long enough to safely take another dose. He’s honestly still surprised painkillers have any effect on him at all. “I just wanted some water.”
“And the doctor said to stay down.” Shouto swings back into the room, carrying two mugs in one hand and an opened bag of chips in the other. He’s balanced a bottle of painkillers in his elbow. “And you didn’t stay down, so.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to keep reminding me…”
“Someone needs to.” Shouto sets the chips on the coffee table and holds one of the mugs out to Izuku. “It shouldn’t be too hot, but be careful.”
Izuku reaches out and takes it. The bandages around his shoulder shift, and the hurt there intensifies, but he suppresses the worst of his wince and settles back into the couch. “Thanks.”
Shouto doesn’t respond and takes a sip of his own tea. He’s wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants, much like Izuku, and the bruise under his eye looks worse than before, but that’s just how bruises are. They tend to look worse before they start looking better, and it’s only been a week.
Izuku remembers how that bruise looked when he first woke up in the hospital to Shouto leaning over him, hero costume replaced with comfortable clothes from home, smile finally more happy than sad. The bruise was still blooming then, but now it’s at its peak, nasty shades of purple and blue and green. Shouto expressed right away he thought it was ridiculous—and insufferably in-character—that Izuku asked him how he was bruised before asking why he was loaded in a hospital bed and covered in tubes, wires and the likes.
In essence, the basic gist of what’d happened.was pretty standard. Nothing super special or out of the ordinary. Some villain plus some civilians, some happenstance plus some bad luck, some negotiating and some fighting. Izuku eventually managed to incapacitate the guy without harming the surrounding civilians, but the aftermath of it wasn’t pretty. Broken ribs, torn ligaments, wrecked muscles, a head injury that miraculously didn’t turn out to be a concussion… One For All isn’t a problem anymore, but everyone has a limit. And where there exists a limit, there exists breaking that limit. Izuku broke that limit more times than he should have recovered from—’all in a day’s work’ type of stuff as it pertains to being a hero, that’s the argument, but incredibly, incredibly debilitating when it came to the recovery of a civilian. And Izuku is, as per doctor’s orders, a ‘civilian’ until all injuries have been cleared by him.
Shouto is more or less back to himself, with that ‘more or less’ a tossup between a bit shorter fused than usual and also a bit more doting than usual. Izuku takes his frustration because, yeah, he deserves that. It was reckless and he should have called in for backup, even though they both understand that under those circumstances, it was sending for backup or protecting the citizens, and of course the citizens would always win.
But.
“I’m sorry,” Izuku says, because he feels like he should. The tea is warm in his palm, against his bandaged fingers. He doesn’t think there’s any part of him that wasn’t cut, bruised, battered or otherwise brutalized in the brawl. “I didn’t—”
“I know, I know.” Shouto takes a long sip of his tea without looking at him. “I get it. This stuff happens. I’m—honestly just glad you’re okay now. And I wish you’d—” He pauses a second, finally meeting Izuku’s eyes. “Sorry, can I be harsh?”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re lucky.” Shouto squeezes his mug. “Really lucky. And I wish you’d realize how lucky you are and let yourself recover without pressing it—however long that recovery takes. Chain-Breaker already said you could take as much time off as you needed, and something tells me you’re going to make that as little time as you possibly can.”
Chain-Breaker is the hero they’re currently interning under. She doesn’t welcome slackers, people who are lazy, or people who put in the bare requirement of effort. Which is only half the reason why Izuku is so worried about a speedy recovery. The other half is a more personal matter. A matter of his nature.
He sighs hard, leaning away from Shouto and further into the arm of the couch. “I know. You’re right.”
“I am.”
“It’s just—” He struggles, and settles his tea on the table as not to spill it. “It’s hard, and—what if something happens, and you need me, or someone else needs me, and I’m just—stuck here, and what it—”
“Izuku.” He hears the clink of Shouto’s mug on the coffee table, but doesn’t raise his head. “Those are what-ifs, Izuku. We can’t live on what-ifs.”
“I know.” That’s part of what’s making this so hard. “But there’s still that part of me that—can’t. That villain, he—he was no joke, and, and you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself but—I don’t like it, it scares me, and—”
“I get it, Izuku.” Shouto’s hands envelops his, though he doesn’t get closer than that. “Believe me. Believe me, I know. It scares me, too.” He squeezes his bandaged fingers gently. “Scared me. And I know you feel like it’s your job to protect everyone because of One For All, I know you feel like it’s something you need to do because you see it as some form of ‘destiny,’ but you’re hurt, and your body’s doing its damndest, but you need to let it do its job. It’ll be okay. I can’t promise nothing bad will happen, because—let’s be honest, who can?—But I can promise I’ll do my best, be careful, not take any unnecessary risks. And you need to stay here, rest, and you’ll be back on the field with me before you know it. Just—rest, okay? It’s only a matter of time, don’t worry.”
He swallows. These lives they lead, together but separately—they’re lived with that nagging thing in the back of their minds. That conversation no one wants to have. The possibility that something could happen—god forbid and all that—and there wouldn’t be any coming back from it. Close-calls are part of the business and, beit Izuku or Shouto on the wrong end of the stick, they’ve had their fair share of them. There’s always a possibility that they won’t come home. So it’s not like they haven’t had that conversation before, as hard as it is.
It… never gets easier. That’s the hardest part.
Shouto leans into his side, the distance between them gone, and Izuku exhales deeply and shuts his eyes.
“Be careful,” Izuku says quietly.
Shouto nods into his shoulder. “Of course. And you rest.”
“Deal.”
They sit on the couch that way until their tea is cold.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Shouto falls in the middle of the night, though in a less literal way. In hindsight, Izuku is glad he’s been in pain on and off this past week, because if the pain hadn’t woken him up he may not have noticed.
He’s barely awake long enough to be aware of his surroundings when he notices. And he wonders how long it’s been happening, how many times he’d missed it when his medications knocked him out, or when they were in different rooms, or when he fell asleep on the couch instead of in their bed. He has to force himself not to dwell on the past because he needs his head here, not anywhere else.
Shouto has had nightmares in the past about things that he’s only ever confided in Izuku. They’ve gotten better these past couple of years. Izuku always held onto the hope that someday they would stop altogether, even though he knew it was unreasonable of him to wish it so.
But.
He reaches out in the darkness. Moonlight glistens in the tears on Shouto’s cheeks.
“Shouto?” Carefully, Izuku touches his face. He doesn’t respond. His nightmares are always like this—quiet. Almost in an eerie sort of way. Like he’s scared of someone hearing. Izuku bites his lip and, when Shouto doesn’t react to the second time his name is called, hugs him tight and buries his face in his hair. Shouto is a heavy sleeper even on nights like these, but it’s instinctual, the way his arms wind around Izuku’s waist and squeeze almost too tightly. It adds a strain to Izuku’s tender ribs, and he clenches his teeth, but it passes soon enough. He’d do it again.
“I’m okay,” Izuku says, and in his heart, he knows Shouto can hear him. Feel him. “I’m okay, remember? I’m not going anywhere.”
Shouto doesn’t cry or stir again that night, and Izuku is content to hold him until the sun rises, plus some. He wishes it wasn’t so routine of them—the hospitals, the injuries, the painkillers, the nightmares, the what-ifs. But there’s nothing either of them can do about that.
What he can do is keep Shouto safe, and keep himself as safe as he can manage. Occupational hazards aside, they have each other. And when one of them falls, the other will always be there with open arms, to catch them.