Work Text:
Shouta never really thought about his Problem Child's hands.
Well, that's a lie, technically. He has thought a lot about the scars, about the grip strength, about the chronic pain and trembling and constant shaking-out on rainy days. He has talked to Recovery Girl about them, kept a spare hand warmer or two in his podium and his utility belt, made the case for Midoriya to be able to type or hand-write his essays and homework regardless of what the class-wide requirement is, making sure that the kid had a voice-to-text app downloaded too.
Shouta has felt those hands wrap around his arm, pulling him into a flip, or punch him in the nose, or grapple with him. He has watched the kid pull dummies, civilians, classmates out of rubble, or climb ten-story buildings with barely a blink.
He never realised how small Midoriya's hands really are. They were capable hands, a hero's hands, not a child's.
But now, limp in his own, they feel impossibly small.
It gives Shouta the odd urge to tug gloves onto them, to keep them warm and safe and wrapped up, because it's cold out here (they're so cold already, it feels impossible, but the blood circulation to them has been bad for a long time already so it actually makes far too much sense-) and the kid's chronic pain gets worse when it's cold outside, Shouta knows. He's passed the kid a handwarmer mid-class plenty enough times. It's not his fault that the kid forgets them often enough that it's just more logical to carry a few spare ones at this point.
(It is his fault that he looked away for those few moments, the precious, awful few moments that let this happen, the moments that made all of the difference, and Shouta should have fucking known, he's meant to be a fucking hero, yet ten steps and fractured attention and aching eyes was all that it took for him to fail, for his kid to- )
Instead of any of that, Shouta forces logic to overtake the sheer emotion trying to drown him right now, shifting so that he's holding both of the kid's hands in one of his own (they're so small, truly, this shouldn't be as easy as it is, so sweet and small and heart-breaking-), able to press his palm against ribs that somehow feel too prominent, even though he knows the kid is at a healthy weight. Perhaps it's the vulnerability of simply pressing on Midoriya's chest that makes it so feel so disconcerting.
Except he can't feel any movement, no breathing or heartbeat. (No life.)
The chill of realisation, of too-awful reality, is beginning to settle in. Shouta wants to keep on denying it. He yearns, desperately, with every piece of his fracturing self, to be wrong, to ignore how much is wrong here, for it to all be okay.
(Shouta was fighting, fighting, he saw his kid fall and did not think long enough to do anything but remove the threats around them, a throat in his hands, capture weapon writhing around him, throwing people away, where they can't hurt his kid, before toppling down beside Midoriya-)
The thing about Shouta that many people around him don't realise is that he is not naturally logical. Or, rather, he is to a degree, too intelligent and arrow-straight-minded not to be, but his rationality is a learnt skill, a coping mechanism to help him push down every tumultuous, fierce emotion that threatens to overwhelm him. As a child, he couldn't afford to be weak. As an adult, he couldn't afford to act impulsively on his own feelings, not when it could get other people killed. Shouta taught himself to prioritise his logic over his emotions. He wouldn't have survived, couldn't have been a hero, couldn't have saved people, if he didn't, not when he feels so deeply and utterly.
If he isn't logical in this moment, he has no hope of ever possibly fixing what has gone so very, very wrong. If he lets himself fall apart, his Problem Child will-
Shouta drops the kid's hands without a second thought, already starting a count in his head, or maybe it's out loud, he doesn't know, doesn't care, as he rushes to kneel properly at Midoriya's side, to reposition his own hands, fingers lacing together, to start pressing down and down and down again, violent and careful all at once, desperate. He has to try. He has to.
The tarmac is warm beneath Shouta's knees, but the air is cold, chilled on Shouta's cheeks. Or perhaps he's just over-warm, shoving his whole body, every piece of his terrified being, into just trying to make his kid live. Time blurs away. What use does he have for time, for coherence, when he has to try and save his Problem Child. (It's too late, too awful, his fault for not saving his Problem Child in the first fucking place-)
Something snaps, multiple things, and Shouta doesn't know if it's the kid's ribs or his own heart, maybe it's both, but either way the sensation of it shuddering all the way through Shouta's arms and chest and mind is a nauseating, hideous thing. He wants to curl up and just- just not, but he can't do that, can't fail his kid yet again, can't let his kid-
Everything burns. It is embers and lightning and grief, sinking in his bones, evaporating any tears before they could form, threatening to rend Shouta apart from the inside-out, and his cheeks are too fucking dry for this, his throat too raw. He needs to fix this.
Finally, eventually, too-soon, Shouta slumps back, and can only hope that that tiny twitch of his Problem Child's hand isn't his imagination.