Chapter Text
Ask anybody, and they’d tell you that Aizawa Shouta was the epitome of a seasoned pro hero. They also might add that he was one hell of a teacher.
Shouta made a point to ensure that his students were as prepared for the hero world as possible. The number of students he’d lost was a grand total of zero, and he planned on keeping it that way.
He prided himself on protecting his students- the incident at the USJ was a prime example of that.
So all of this was a huge blow to his legacy, to put it simply.
Their mission had been simple- they were supposed to go in, stay in the shadows while recording information, and then drop down and apprehend the villains. Simple. Shouta could do that with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back, and he had trained Shinsou to do the same. It would be a piece of cake.
It was not simple.
Everything had gone according to plan- down to the letter, actually. But when they were getting ready to take down the group, Shinsou had faltered, just for a second, and paid the price.
Shouta could have stopped it- that was the damning thing. He could have turned and linked the man that had appeared seemingly from the shadows in his capture weapon and put an end to it right then and there. Shinsou would have been fine, fighting by his side and laughing about it once it was over.
But he didn’t. He had left Shinsou to handle it, and his student had suffered from his mistake.
Now he was sitting in the hospital lobby, sleep tugging at the edge of his senses. Shouta pushed it down- he couldn’t. He needed to be there once Shinsou was awake.
The knowledge that Hizashi was on his way was the only reason Shouta had allowed his own wounds to be treated. His husband would chew him out if he knew he’d pushed any doctors away, so he let them prod at him as much as they pleased to lessen the unavoidable blow.
He wondered how Shinsou was doing.
“Shouta?”
He looked up at the sound of his husband’s voice.
“Hizashi,” he called hoarsely, raising a hand to draw his attention.
“Hey.” The blonde was a lighthouse in the middle of a sea of unfamiliar faces. He sat down beside Shouta, taking his hand. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” he responded curtly. “Who’s watching Eri?”
“I dropped her by the dorms, don’t worry. Midoriya’s watching her.”
“Okay.” That was one of many weights off his shoulders, one less thing diverting his attention from his protégé’s status.
“... any updates?”
“No.”
Hizashi’s arm snaked across his shoulders and pulled him against his side. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing we can control.”
“I know, but I also know you worry. What happened?”
Shouta sighed. “We miscounted. Someone came out of the shadows, and punched him in the throat.”
Hizashi took a sharp breath, and Shouta didn’t need to guess where his mind was wandering.
Shouta took another look at his phone, groaning when he saw that only three minutes had passed since he last checked.
“Do you want to go home..?”
“No.” His response was instant. He couldn’t leave Shinsou here.
“Okay.”
There was a pause, until Hizashi looked over at him.
“Have you eaten?”
“No.” He couldn’t even if he wanted to. He would be frozen in that chair until he knew what was going on.
“Alright. Will you?”
“No.”
“Shouta-“
“I know, I just… can’t. I have to know.”
Hizashi sighed, a bit of fondness sparking in his eyes. It had been the same every time this had happened with a student.
“Okay, sugar. I’m going to go get something, though, okay? Just coffee.”
Just coffee. As if the taste wouldn’t drag up even more reminders that his student was hurt.
“Okay,” he found himself saying, if only to appease his husband’s worry. It wouldn’t do well if both of them were dysfunctional.
Hizashi nodded and squeezed his hand once before standing. As the sound of his shoes hitting the hospital floor trailed off down the hallway, he checked his phone once more.
It had been two minutes.
“Aizawa.”
Shouta sat up with a snap, blinking groggily as the nurse came into focus.
“You have partial guardianship over Shinsou Hitoshi, correct?”
“Yes.” He had partial custody over every 2-A student in the dorms.
“Can I get a confirmation of date of birth?”
“November eighth.”
“And you’re thirty-one, correct?”
He nodded, and a bunch of paperwork attached to a clipboard was pushed urgently into his hands.
“Your signature is needed- we’ve tried getting in contact with Shinsou’s foster parents, but they haven’t picked up the phone.”
Shouta growled low in his throat, but said nothing, instead reading over the top of the stack.
“Acknowledgement of corrective surgery..?”
“He, um. He wasn’t breathing,” the nurse answered titteringly, fidgeting with a pen in her hand. “We need some legal acknowledgment in case of, um… the worst case scenario.”
Shouta’s heart clenched in his chest as he skimmed the rest. Care requirements, check ins, milestones, recovery, side effects…
Potential partial paralysis of the vocal cords
“What-“
He hadn’t noticed the nurse trade places with a doctor in front of him, and the woman in question reached out to shake his hand. He did so hesitantly.
“The procedure is life-saving, but even now, it isn’t an exact science.”
“Which means..?”
“He may be mute when he wakes up.”
He was still shell-shocked when that nurse from earlier approached him and cleared her throat.
“Do you think you could try to get in contact with his caretakers? They still haven’t picked up the phone.”
He nodded numbly, the bags under his eyes feeling even heavier with that statement. He turned his phone over in his lap and began scrolling through his contacts.
Shinsou’s foster parents were one of the biggest thorns in his side that he’d ever had the misfortune of dealing with. He’d disapproved of them ever since Shinsou had come to him for their first training session with a hastily scribbled note, telling him that his caretakers didn’t care what he was doing with his time as long as he got home in time to make dinner.
One would think that, since they had been so dismissive of his training, it would be easy to get permission from them in other cases. But getting Shinsou into the 2-A dorms had been hellish. There had been numerous heated phone calls, Shouta fighting with all he had not to snap as he explained for the fiftieth time that no, they would not be losing their government sanctioned money because Shinsou wouldn’t be living under their roof. And that was all they had cared about- once they were finally assured that their bank account wouldn’t suffer, they had signed the paperwork in a heartbeat.
Shouta was positive that they wouldn’t be picking up the phone any time in the near future.
As if to confirm his suspicions, the line picked up with the answering machine recording that he had memorized by now.
Hizashi sat beside him just as his phone went dead. Shouta sighed, reluctantly taking the can of coffee that his husband pressed into his hands.
“How’s it going?”
He didn’t respond in favor of all but collapsing against Hizashi’s side. The arm of the chair that dug into his ribs was the only thing keeping him awake.
“Hey, hey. Talk to me.”
That made the pit in his stomach grow deeper. He pushed the condensed paperwork he had been given into Hizashi’s hands, pointing to the words that occupied his mind.
“He-“
“It’s not for certain,” he choked. “But it’s decently common.” He was just recycling the words the nurses had given to him, and even just that was taking more and more out of him.
“Shouta, he’s going to be fine. He’s a trooper, this’ll be nothing to him.”
He prayed it was true. Shinsou did seem to have a knack for overcoming everything tossed in his direction. From the scepticism of his earlier peers, to the entrance exam’s biased formatting, to his own weakness, to the literal scum of the earth that he’d been placed under the care of- who still hadn’t picked up the phones.
Shouta just prayed that this wouldn’t be the one obstacle Shinsou would find insurmountable.