Work Text:
Midorima had never been so glad to finally get home. He had only been scheduled to work a single shift in the ER, but when the attending scheduled for the next shift unexpectedly called in sick, he was the only person available who hadn’t already reached the limit for time on-duty. As a result, he hadn’t been home in over twenty-four hours, and he desperately wanted nothing more than to shower and put his feet up. As soon as he walked in the door, Takao yelled to him from the kitchen. “Dinner’ll be ready in about half an hour, Shin-chan. I left your mail on the couch.”
Midorima stuck his head in the kitchen briefly in greeting, then headed to the bathroom to grab a quick shower. Once he had scrubbed off the worst of the hospital grime, he changed into more comfortable clothes and returned to the living room to relax until dinner.
He had just settled onto the sofa to read the new medical journals Takao had left for him when he heard a startled yelp from the kitchen quickly followed by a loud crash.
“Takao, are you all right?” he called, used to the chaos that tended to follow his boyfriend around. When he didn’t receive an immediate response, however, he was on his feet and running towards the kitchen before his brain had even finished consciously processing. He yelled Takao’s name again as he entered the room, where he saw his partner lying on the ground next to an overturned chair, the open cabinets above the fridge painting a clear picture of what had happened.
“Takao, don’t try to move,” he ordered as he knelt by his side, pulling out his ever-present penlight and shining it in Takao’s eyes (Takao had given him the pen, with its three colors of ink, stylus, and built-in light, as a joke a couple years earlier; he had carried it with him ever since). “Did you hit your head when you fell? Does anything hurt?” he asked, putting the light away and running his hands lightly over Takao’s skull.
“I’m fine, Shin-chan. I just slipped, then knocked the wind out of myself when I landed. Nothing’s damaged, though; I’ve fallen a lot harder on the court.
“Seriously, Shin-chan?” Takao said, trying to swat away Midorima’s hands as they continued to run over him. “I’m fine.”
Midorima caught Takao’s hand and held it out of his way. “Please, Takao,” he whispered, his free hand resting on the pulse in Takao’s neck. “Please let me make sure you’re all right.”
And with that simple statement, Takao knew that it wasn’t about him, at least not directly; it was about something Midorima had seen at work that day. Midorima may have been one of the best emergency physicians in Tokyo, but despite that, or perhaps because of it, he had a hard time leaving especially difficult or emotional cases behind when he left. When that happened, Midorima would come home unusually insecure and sentimental, and Takao would let himself be coddled until Midorima was ready to talk.
Once he knew the root of the problem, Takao relaxed and let Midorima guide his hand back to his side. He lay where he was and let Midorima run his hands down his arms, feeling for breaks and checking pulses, reassuring himself that his boyfriend was still there and still in one piece.
Finally, when Midorima’s hands had moved down to his abdomen, looking for internal injuries, Takao broke the silence. “What happened, Shin-chan?” he asked.
“There was a little girl today,” Midorima said quietly, looking down at his hands, “from a family picnic. She climbed a tree when no one was looking, and she fell. She didn’t make it.
“It was so close, Takao,” he continued, and he sounded so lost that Takao covered the hand on his stomach with one of his own. “It could have gone either way. I can’t help but think that if we had gotten to her a few minutes earlier, done something slightly differently, then maybe we could have saved her. Any little mistake we may have made, any time where I hesitated in my orders, that might have killed her.”
“Shin-chan, –” Takao squeezed the hand he held “– you can’t save everyone. You know that, especially in your field.”
“I know, Takao. It’s easier when it’s clear from the beginning how it’s going to go, or when it’s someone who’s already had a good life, or even just when it’s not unexpected. But she was so young, and it was so sudden, and she fought so hard. This morning, she was just like any other kid, and now she’s dead. There’s no reason for it to have happened to her. It could have been anyone.”
“Shin-chan, I’m still here; I’m not going anywhere. I promise,” Takao said quietly.
“I know, but when I saw you lying here, and you had clearly fallen…Sometimes I need to feel with my own two hands that you’re still here and whole,” Midorima said, freeing his hand from Takao’s and moving on to check Takao’s legs.
Takao was just starting to wish he had picked a more comfortable place to land than the hard tile of the kitchen floor when Midorima pressed on his ankle, and he flinched. Midorima’s hand stilled immediately, and he looked up at Takao, finally meeting his eyes. “That hurt?” he asked.
“Only a little. I stepped on it wrong and twisted it; it’s what sent me off the chair in the first place. It’s not bad though.”
“Can you move it?” Midorima asked, and when Takao nodded, he began gently manipulating it, noting every time Takao winced. Takao gritted his teeth and tried to be patient until Midorima finally set his foot back on the floor.
“It looks like a very mild sprain” Midorima said finally. “Ice it tonight and I’ll tape it for you tomorrow before you leave.”
Takao was perfectly capable of taping his own ankle; playing basketball competitively through college and then becoming a PE teacher had given him plenty of practice, but he always let Midorima do it for him if they had time. Takao loved watching Midorima work with the precision he usually reserved for taping his own fingers – a habit he had never dropped, though now he taped them to preserve them for the hospital instead of the basketball court. The feeling of Midorima’s firm yet gentle hands and the look of concentration on his face as he focused entirely on what he was doing was always comforting. If Midorima sometimes needed to reassure himself that his boyfriend was still alive and in one piece, then Takao needed those moments when Midorima was focused solely on him to reassure him that this wasn’t some fluke, and Midorima wasn’t suddenly going to drop him for someone else.
Takao hadn’t realized he was lost in thought until something cold landed on his forehead. He yelped and sat up quickly, the ice pack that had knocked him back into reality falling into his lap. He glared at Midorima.
“Glad you’ve chosen to rejoin us, Takao,” Midorima said flatly. “If you’d be so kind as to move elsewhere, I’ll finish making dinner. You should ice that ankle.”
Takao huffed and dragged the chair back to the table, where he sat and watched Midorima finish the curry, making sure he didn’t mess anything up too badly. Curry wasn’t exactly difficult, but Midorima, while a brilliant doctor, was a terrible cook.
“Takao,” Midorima said as he chopped carrots into rather uneven pieces, “what were you doing on that chair anyway?”
“I needed the grater.”
“The grater?”
“Yes, Shin-chan, the grater. Daikon were on sale at the farmer’s market today, so I picked one up and figured I could shred it for a salad,” Takao said, pointing to the large daikon sitting next to the stove.
“But that doesn’t explain why you needed the chair. The grater’s in the drawer next to the stove. The cabinets over the fridge are for –”
“Are for storing your Oha-Asa lucky items, since you’re the only one tall enough to reach them,” Takao interrupted. “I know. But Shin-chan, do you remember what your lucky item was last Friday, when you worked the overnight shift?”
“A grater,” Midorima said sheepishly after a long pause. “And I must have put it away without thinking when I got home. Sorry.”
“It was worth it, Shin-chan. You ran two codes on that shift, and they both survived, remember? You wouldn’t stop talking about it the next day. You said the nurses didn’t even tease you about your lucky item for once.”
“Oha-Asa said that would be a good day for Cancers, and it was right like usual. Why didn’t you just ask, though? I would have grabbed it for you.”
“I didn’t want to bother you. You had an unexpectedly long day at work. Shin-chan deserved a break after that.”
“Next time, ask anyway. I’d prefer it if you didn’t risk breaking your neck again. I may be a doctor, but I like to limit the need for those skills outside of work.”
“If I hadn’t fallen, Shin-chan, then after dinner you would’ve done almost the same thing. You’d’ve asked if I was feeling all right, then checked my temperature anyway, made sure my pulse was normal, and that everything was as it should be.
“It’s what you do, Shin-chan,” he said when Midorima stopped and turned to face him, looking embarrassed. “Most couples, when they’re feeling insecure or upset, they bring home flowers, or go out to fancy restaurants, or have make out sessions –” he smiled as Midorima made faces at his list. He would never forget the time Midorima had come home carrying a dozen roses. His first thought was that Midorima must have fallen ill, until the somewhat embarrassed doctor explained that they had been his lucky item that day, and it had seemed a shame to waste them “ –You don’t, though,” he continued. “You rely on your hands. You use the same hands that you use to save lives every day to make sure that I’m still here and that this is still real.”
“Is it enough?”
“What?”
“Is it enough? Is it okay that I don’t do those other things for you?”
“Of course it’s enough, Shin-chan. This isn’t part of your job, but you do it anyway, because you want to. To have Shin-chan focused just on me like that, and to know that you picked me over everyone else you could have had means more to me than a bouquet of flowers ever could.”
Midorima turned back to the stove, clearly uncomfortable. “At least get the stool from the closet next time,” he said as he carried the finished food to the table.
Takao just smiled and let Midorima change the subject. Some things never changed. Midorima may have become one of the best emergency physicians in Tokyo, but he was still the awkward Oha-Asa freak Takao had first fallen in love with, and as Takao ate the lumpy curry with his ankle wrapped in ice and propped up on a spare chair, he thought he wouldn’t want it any other way.