Work Text:
Shouta should have been better at waiting than he was.
And he was good at parts of waiting, but it was the parts that required tension. Parts that had him on the edge of the rooftop with his ears straining and body tense, ready to leap down into the fray of battle in the darkened streets below. That kind of waiting had something like a promised end, not an uncertain weight on his neck as he sat next to his revived friend’s hospital bed.
Shirakumo Oboro’s chest rose and fell, unburdened by the weight of Shouta’s gaze.
“Oh Oboro,” he said quietly. “What the fuck are we going to do with you?”
It’s not a coma, according to the doctor. Apparently, it’s coma-adjacent. Shouta’s not sure how something could be called coma adjacent, but such is the world he lived in. Quirks were fucking wild. Whatever turned Kurogiri back into Oboro left him in a coma adjacent state. Shit was fucked, and Shouta was meant to deal with it all.
Hurray.
He couldn’t keep a continuous bedside vigil by Oboro’s bed. Life was in the way. Dorms were being built, parents to convince, school board members to talk with, and dealing with the fallout of some of his students going rogue and trying to rescue Bakugou on their own. Oboro’s sudden return meant that Shouta didn’t get to see him as much as he would like.
Hizashi and Nemuri came as well. He even thought that Nedzu sat with Oboro a few times. It was hard to keep a continuous stream of people. But they tried their best to make sure Oboro wasn’t alone for too long.
Still, the waiting for something to happen…
It was hard. There was no guarantee that Oboro would wake up from being coma adjacent. Maybe, there was no hope at all. Oboro’s body had been through too much: death, resurrection, Nomufication…
Maybe. It. Was. All. For.
N O T H I N G.
Shouta took a deep breath in and out, ignoring the acrid taste of bile that was starting to claw its way of his throat. He forced down the sudden nausea, wouldn’t do at Oboro’s bedside, willing for him to wake.
Willing for him to live.
“I was angry at myself for a long time,” Shouta said when he took over bedside duties. “Because I didn’t want to be angry with you. It didn’t feel fair to be angry with someone who died. But I was angry. Very angry.”
Oboro slept on.
Shouta leaned back in his chair.
“It was easier to direct that anger onto myself. Because I should have been better, right? I was the weaker ones in our year. And you…”
He breathed out.
“I just wish this never happened. And I was angry at you. For risking yourself, for being so fast and loose with your life. And it…I feel like a part of me died with you, Oboro. And it wasn’t a part that I was ready to let go of yet. And it was a part that I didn’t get back for a very, very, very long time.”
Shouta held Oboro’s hand.
“I’m mad at you and I’m mad at me. I’m mad at fucking All for One and the Doctor and everything. We were kids. We deserved better. You deserved better.”
He squeezed the hand.
“I’m going to make sure you get the better that you deserved,” he promised. “Now please. Wake up.”
To Shouta’s surprise, he doesn’t immediately run to Oboro’s bedside when he finally does wake up. He imagined it differently, running down the hallways and into his room like some sort of movie.
Instead, he sat on his bed and stared at his phone for a very, very long time.
“Don’t be a creeper and watch me sleep, Sho,” Oboro said in the dark of his bedroom at the hospital. He opened a blue eye at the figure keeping vigil. “Big boy words, buddy.”
Shouta shifted awkwardly. God, he was simultaneously so old and still the same guy he last remembered. Oboro felt like he was getting the weirdest case of double vision.
“Hey Oboro,” his friend said, his voice a soft rumble. “I missed you.”
Oboro smiled.