oh look and that, i wrote something! miracles do happen.

title from in my blood by shawn mendes

XxX

What Hanta intends to do is run to his apartment, take the fastest shower of his life, grab some civilian clothes and something to eat for Shouto, and run right back out the door. Then come up with the fastest way to get to the hospital. He would have gone straight from the agency, would have cut his day short even, instead of hurrying now hours later, but he didn't get a call from the hospital as Shouto's emergency contact so there hasn't been an emergency to actually warrant that. The only reason he even knows Shouto is in the hospital is that Kaminari texted him earlier in the day.

That's what he intends to do.

What he actually does is run the stairs up to his apartment, open the door, and immediately stumble over a pair of shoes.

He doesn't land on his face, which is great. He takes a few awkward, wobbly steps before managing to regain his balance, and has to pause for a moment after that as he turns around to see what he just tripped over.

It's not that he doesn't recognize Shouto's shoes, because he does. It's just that those are Shouto's costume shoes – that's what makes him pause. Backtrack a little. Those shouldn't be home at all, and even if that wasn't the case, Shouto wouldn't have just left them at the door like that. Shouto is a fairly organized person, after all, doesn't like clutter and very much likes things in their rightful places. Hanta doesn't know if it's by nature or by force of habit, but in all fairness, neither does Shouto. Hanta is betting on both, though, if only because Shouto seems to genuinely enjoy organizing his surroundings but also sometimes completely freaks out when things aren't where they should be.

Which makes the shoes highly concerning. Hanta gives them another glance, imagining Shouto stumbling inside and barely managing to kick them off, and then twists his neck to see if he can spot anything else indicating that something is wrong. There's nothing, though, nothing besides the almost disturbingly white boots neglected by the door.

(Hanta's costume has white boots, too. How Shouto manages to keep his actually white, he'll never know.)

"Shouto?" he calls into the apartment, unsure and careful. Maybe he isn't even home – maybe it's just the boots. But maybe he is, and maybe – probably, definitely – something is wrong, and Hanta is just going to have to find out, isn't he? There's no answer, at least not one he can hear, so he toes his shoes off quietly, drops his bag by the door, and makes his way properly into the apartment.

Both the living room and the kitchen are empty, he determines with a quick glance as he walks past them; no two-toned hair anywhere, no blanket lump on the couch. He can't spot Soba anywhere either, but that's just another sign pointing towards Shouto being home seeing as she enjoys her tree at any and all times unless she has the option to claim Shouto's lap. Or eat Hanta's plants.

Hanta calls Shouto's name again as he enters the hallway, but the apartment around him stays dead quiet. Absently he notes that the bathroom door is ajar, though he doesn't pay it much mind since the light inside is not on. He passes it in favor of heading for their bedroom.

At this point, finding Shouto in bed is not surprising, anymore. Hanta pushes the door open quietly and feels relief wash over him as he spots Shouto's hair, white and red always drawing attention in their earth-toned home, and then the rest of him.

The feeling doesn't stay long, though, because after that initial wave, Hanta starts automatically cataloging the signs of things being off – the first being that Shouto has his back to the door, which he does approximately never unless he's trying to forget that there's a world outside of their bedroom, and the next being that he's on Hanta's side of the bed –, and feels the relief shift to make way for concern. Another thing is that Shouto isn't actually in bed, but curled up on top of the covers, and he looks to be in day clothes.

Now, Hanta wasn't expecting to find him having a good day, considering that he had to be taken from the field to the hospital, but this isn't looking like your run-of-the-mill, post-bad-day exhaustion either.

With a soft knock to alert Shouto to his presence, Hanta steps inside the room and makes his way over to the bed. Soba's head pops up from behind Shouto's legs for just a second before disappearing again, but at least that tells Hanta she isn't off somewhere eating his plants – and at least Shouto has had her for company. He sits down on the bed and turns to look over his shoulder at Shouto.

That's his hoodie, Hanta is pretty sure. Shouto looks like he's very deliberately drowning in it.

There's not that much of a height difference between them, but somehow Shouto always manages to look almost painfully small in Hanta's clothes. Maybe it's just that Hanta is still taller and likes his casual clothes loose. Or maybe it's that Shouto doesn't really steal them that often unless he's not feeling well, and when he's not feeling well, Shouto has a heartbreaking tendency to try and make himself as small, as unnoticeable as possible. Like he's trying to hide; disappear.

That's one trait Hanta is absolutely certain comes from Shouto's childhood and only that, and it's by far one of his least favorite things about Shouto; hell, about the world. Hanta has, in his career, met some of the worst people humanity has to offer, but he can't say for sure he has ever come across someone he despises quite as much as he despises Todoroki Enji. Shouto has been in regular therapy since Eraserhead insisted he at least give it a try back in their first year at UA yet he still gets like this sometimes. Hanta doesn't consider himself to be a violent person, but he'd very much be willing to make one exception.

"I was under the impression that you were in the hospital," Hanta says, turning his eyes away from Shouto's still form and towards the window to his left instead. The curtains are pulled aside, blinds open to let the sun in just like Shouto left them this morning – like he leaves them every morning. He seems to think it's funny to wake Hanta up like that. Hanta disagrees, but he's never managed to find it in himself to complain about it when Shouto's smile shines just as bright as the morning sun filtering in from behind him.

(Just because he can't complain about it doesn't mean he understands morning people, though.)

It's the fact that they're still open, though, late afternoon sun freely illuminating the room; that's what Hanta adds to the list of Things That Are Wrong Today. It's probably part exhaustion, part something else, but even though Hanta would consider himself fairly good at improvising he would still prefer having some actual answers. Starting from why and how Shouto is home in the first place, because he doubts Kaminari lied to him about him being in the hospital.

But Hanta is patient, would be even if he didn't know how Shouto responds to being pushed and even more so because he does. It's frustrating, sure, but interrogation has been proven to be a terrible tactic with pretty much everyone he knows and especially Shouto, and Hanta isn't too keen on having things blow up in his face before he even knows what those things are.

So he waits. It's clear Shouto isn't asleep, at least not completely – he's got one hand absently poking at Soba's paws, he has at least one eye open, and he's holding himself way too stiffly to be anything but awake. Hanta traces the geometric pattern on the duvet, finger lazily dragging along the muted green lines. Waits.

"I was," Shouto whispers eventually, barely breaking the silence around them. "Welcome home. Who told you that?" He sounds very purposefully monotone, though there's something brittle lurking under it that Hanta can't quite place. Shouto doesn't move.

"Kaminari. Said you looked pretty rough, but I figured it couldn't be too bad since I didn't get a call from the hospital," Hanta explains, looking out the window again. Shouto doesn't seem to have a lot of injuries, though he could easily be hiding some under his clothes, but Hanta is quickly arriving to the conclusion that physical injuries are probably the least of anyone's concerns today.

"I'm pretty sure the last time Kaminari saw me, Kirishima was dragging me into a lake so I wouldn't burn down a city block," Shouto mutters into his pillow, frustrated and miserable, and Hanta turns around to look at him to see him curling up tighter.

What the hell happened today, exactly?

Hanta knows that they made the decision to keep working in different cities together, mainly to prevent conflicts of interest on the field – how Kirishima and Bakugou do it, Hanta doesn't know –, but times like this really make him wish they hadn't done that. Shouto is kind of terrible at communication, tends to close himself off rather than talk when things are bad, so being present when shit happens would be very helpful.

That whole thing was Shouto's idea; something about how conflicts of interest played a big part in ending his relationship with Midoriya. So maybe it was more of a request than an idea, really, or a condition to even making his relationship with Hanta official in the first place. Hanta didn't mind at the time, since they were in different cities anyway and logically thinking not working together isn't a terrible idea. He still doesn't think it's a terrible idea, and he still kind of doesn't mind working separately – hell, he's a social creature, he actually likes expanding the number of his acquaintances (unlike some people he knows), and that's just one of the reasons he could list – but the not knowing sucks.

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know," comes the reply immediately, a sharp, rushed thing that is clearly a no. I don't know if I'm okay has literally never turned out to be I'm okay, Hanta doesn't think.

Instead of calling Shouto out on it, though, he asks, "Do you wanna figure that out together?"

Shouto makes a little noise and curls up more, knees pushing Soba towards his face. It's neither an affirmation nor a refusal, so Hanta waits some more.

The eventual answer doesn't come verbally; rather, Shouto lifts his left hand, pointer finger up, and Hanta watches with rising dread as a small flame flickers into life at Shouto's fingertip. It struggles to stay alive, and Shouto soon lets it out of its misery and lets his hand drop lifelessly. Hanta winces.

"They gave you a suppressant." It's not a question – there's nothing else Hanta can think of that could plausibly cause a Quirk to behave like that.

"Yes," Shouto confirms. "I can't make any ice."

"I'm sorry. Have they at least found one that doesn't make you puke until you have no internal organs left?" Hanta has personally never been subjected to Quirk suppressants, having a Mutant-type Quirk, but he has strong feelings and opinions about them. Mainly ones of immense dislike. Mainly because they have shit side-effects for people he cares about. He gets that they're sometimes necessary, but even putting aside the fact that they make Shouto sick, Hanta has also had the distinct displeasure of witnessing Bakugou damn near die from them.

(Someone – multiple someones, probably – forgot to take into account that part of Bakugou's Quirk is sweating nitroglycerin. Hanta doesn't even pretend to understand chemistry, or biology, but even he could have guessed that suddenly stripping the body of a toxic chemical that's been there for almost twenty years is probably not a great idea.)

(It was a terrible fucking idea.)

(Hanta had not been aware that Bakugou's dad could actually be kind of fucking terrifying.)

(Anyway.)

A shiver works its way through Shouto despite the hoodie he's wearing. Hanta frowns. He's already bundled up, and apparently fire is kind of in the game while ice is not – there's no way he's cold. Right? He's about to ask, concern building up in his chest again, but Shouto beats him to it with an answer to his half-rhetorical question.

"No, and I don't think they care to. Spent two hours in the hospital mostly throwing up," he says, shrugging. His voice is still monotone, a deliberately arranged front hiding something underneath, and Hanta has an uneasy feeling that if this goes on like this for much longer, something is going to break. Shouto, most likely.

"They didn't give you anything for the nausea?" Hanta asks, just before his brain catches up with his mouth. Shit. He's an idiot. He's a goddamn idiot who somehow still has not learned to think before opening his mouth, apparently.

As if to prove this, Shouto twists his head on the pillow, the first real movement he's made until now, finally giving Hanta a proper look at his face. There's a fresh bruise half-under the scar, blending into it some, but it's the haunted look in his bloodshot eyes that really delivers the gut-punch. Shit.

"No," Shouto spits out bitterly. "No, because once they find out that you've needed therapy for longer than you've had a career, everything is psychosomatic. You know that." Yes, Hanta knows that, he shouldn't have forgotten about that– "So because my dad wanted to see if I could work through a suppressant once when I was a kid, it's obviously a fucking trauma thing. I could have a broken arm and they would say it's psychosomatic."

"You don't think it's a trauma thing," Hanta says carefully. Shouto is talking, now, and Hanta would like to keep it that way; bottling things up is not good, has never been and will never be good, and if they can talk this through, they might avoid the looming breakdown, maybe even completely.

"Because it's not. It's a common side effect thing," Shouto hisses through his teeth. Hanta sees his jaw tense.

"I know. I'm sorry you had to go through that." Again, he doesn't say. It's not the first time, and it's not likely going to be the last, but that's unhelpful right now. Shouto doesn't need the reminder. Hanta waits for a moment to see if Shouto is going to say something to that, and when no words come, he asks, "Is it okay to touch you right now?" His fingers are itching to play with Shouto's hair and touch his face; to make him feel better and make sure he's okay.

But Shouto, quite predictably under the circumstances, immediately replies with a small and sad "Please don't", so Hanta keeps his hands to himself and nods.

"Okay. Do you want me to go?"

"Stay."

So Hanta stays.