Work Text:
When Shin wakes up, he hears a quiet, steady beeping.
Everything’s white. Blank, unfamiliar walls and ceiling. He’s in bed, but it doesn’t feel like his bed; the back half is angled up, like a recliner. Or like a--
Pain thuds dully in his chest, and he realizes he’s in a hospital.
He doesn’t remember how he got here.
As panic begins to rise, so does the pain, and the beeping of what he can now tell is a heart rate monitor starts to quicken--
And then there’s a familiar figure in his field of vision.
Hiyori sits next to him, in a chair pulled up close to the bed. He’s wearing a hospital gown, and an IV stand runs into his arm. He’s a little paler than usual, but--he’s smiling.
“Shin!” he says, and reaches out to put his hand on Shin’s arm. “I’m so glad you’re finally awake. I was worried, you know.”
Shin opens his mouth to speak, but the first word is so raspy he breaks into a cough, which sends another shudder of pain through his chest. Hiyori quickly hands him a paper cup of water, and he drinks it down in a rush, the cold water flowing down his dry, aching throat.
After another cup of water, he has enough of a voice to croak out, “Hiyori? What happened?”
Hiyori’s face falls into concern. “You don’t remember? There was an accident.”
An accident? The last thing Shin remembers--
--the last thing he remembers clearly is arriving at Hiyori’s house after school, but…
Everything after that is a blur. A shifting, half-audible blur, like he could remember it if he tried hard enough. There was something…Hiyori’s in there, he thinks, but the details of it…
Pain. He remembers pain.
The pain he feels now is much, much less than whatever happened before.
Gingerly, Shin touches a hand to his chest. It throbs in response, and underneath his own hospital gown he sees a swath of bandages covering maybe most of his torso. Parts of his arms, too, which twinge when he moves them.
“A car accident,” Hiyori says, filling in the silence. “We were taking a taxi, and it got hit by another car. Don’t you remember any of that?”
Shin shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he rasps. “It’s all…blurry.” Why does his throat hurt? Is that because of the accident? He touches his hand to his throat; from the outside, it doesn’t hurt unless he presses hard.
Hiyori seems to understand what he’s doing. “I don’t remember everything about the accident either, but I think you were screaming a lot,” he says, looking sorrowful. “It must’ve affected your voice. It should get better soon.” His hand moves to rest on top of Shin’s, gently squeezes it. “I’m so sorry you’re hurt,” he murmurs.
Shin’s chest hurts for a different reason now. Hiyori’s never this nice, or at least not for this many sentences in a row. He must’ve been really worried.
Maybe being hurt isn’t such a bad thing, if it makes Hiyori act like this.
Shin looks down at his chest again. There are so many bandages. “How bad was it?” he asks.
Hiyori’s thumb strokes the underside of Shin’s wrist. “Very,” he says softly. “A chunk of metal ended up in your chest. The doctor said you almost died on the operating table--but you have the devil’s own luck, Shin; a donor came in just in time.”
“Donor?” Shin’s head feels a little fuzzy. He almost died?
Hiyori nods, and smiles, as wide as he did when Shin told him he was having trouble making friends at school. He reaches out with his other hand and lightly touches his fingertips to Shin’s chest. “You needed a new heart,” he murmurs. “How’s it feel?”
A new--
The thing in Shin’s chest pulses painfully.
The heart rate monitor had quieted down, but it ratchets up again.
Shin’s never felt as aware of his pulse as he is now. It felt normal before. It felt like his body always feels. He’s never thought about his heartbeat before; it was a background process, something that just happened by itself, but now it’s a foreign, tangible thing. A part of his body that was always there is just--gone? And there’s something new there now? Something that used to be part of someone else?
It’s like his body isn’t entirely him anymore. A percentage of it belongs to a different person. Someone else is inside him now and always will be; and if he was dying then it’s not like he would’ve objected but, but, they didn’t ask. The doctors took out part of him and replaced it with part of someone else without even asking if he was okay with it.
If the doctors didn’t tell him or Hiyori would he even have known? Would he have lived the rest of his life thinking his body was his?
He feels like he’s going to be sick.
“Shin.” Hiyori’s voice cuts through the rising panic. “If the machines make too much noise they’re going to draw in a nurse, and you don’t want to bother them, do you?”
He doesn’t. He takes a deep breath, and then another. The monitor settles as his--as the heart rate inside him lowers.
“And you didn’t answer my question, anyway,” Hiyori says mildly. “How does it feel?”
Shin swallows. “It hurts,” he mumbles. He glances up at the IV next to him--is it morphine? It doesn’t hurt as much as it would if there wasn’t any pain medication, he’s pretty sure, but it doesn’t feel like there’s enough.
“Ah, I’m afraid there’s only so much painkiller they can give you,” Hiyori says. His fingertips are still on Shin’s chest. “The doctor said it’ll hurt for a while. Better than being dead, though, right?” He smiles in a way that’s probably meant to be reassuring, but who knows with Hiyori.
“Right,” Shin mumbles. He thought hospitals would have really strong painkillers for people with serious injuries, but if that’s what the doctor said, maybe not.
Hiyori leans forward, presses his palm flat against Shin’s chest, causing the ache to ramp up. But it’s still gentle, sort of. “And how does it feel to have someone else’s heart inside you?” he murmurs. “It’s a feeling not many people get to experience, so I’m glad I know someone who can tell me.”
“It’s, um, it’s…weird,” Shin manages. He doesn’t know exactly how to describe it. “It feels like…it isn’t really my body anymore?”
Hiyori’s skin is pale, but his eyes are feverishly bright.
“Oh,” he breathes. “Oh, that’s even better than I expected.”
Of course Hiyori being a nice, concerned friend wouldn’t last. But Shin hoped it would last a little longer.
Hiyori’s not a bad person--well…Hiyori’s just a weird person, and maybe sometimes that can look bad, but that doesn’t mean it is. Plenty of people are awkward around other people. Shin definitely is, even if for him that just means he doesn’t say much. So Hiyori saying weird, uncomfortable things or asking strange questions is just who he is, and it doesn’t mean he isn’t a friend.
Besides, no one else really talks to Shin. Maybe it didn’t used to be that bad, but since the start of high school, it feels more and more like nobody cares about him. It’s a good thing that’s when he met Hiyori, or he really wouldn’t have anyone. He might not have even noticed, if Hiyori wasn’t there to point it out.
Hiyori withdraws his hand, and then suddenly leans in, places his ear against Shin’s chest instead. Shin tenses--physical affection from Hiyori can go a lot of different ways--but no, it seems like he’s just listening.
“So that’s someone else’s heartbeat,” Hiyori murmurs. “In you now, forever.”
Hiyori’s hair is tickling his chin. Shin tries not to react too much to the sudden closeness. Unless Hiyori wants him to? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
“I guess,” Shin mumbles. “I don’t really want to think about it.”
Hiyori pulls back. His face looks almost reverent, in the way that old religions revered blood sacrifices. “I don’t think there’s a greater intimacy than that,” he says softly. “Someone’s a part of you now, Shin. You can’t live without them. Oh, that’s perfect.”
Shin swallows. His throat still hurts, and he doesn’t know what to say.
“Do you, um.” His throat catches, and he has to cough for a few seconds before continuing, hoarsely. “Do you know what they did with my heart?”
“Oh, that old thing?” Hiyori says dismissively. “It was a mangled mess, they threw it out. No use to anyone.”
“Oh.” It hurts a little, to know that something so important to him was just…discarded. But he supposes it wouldn’t make sense for them to keep it.
And he realizes something. “You were in the accident too, right?” he says, glancing at the bandages peeking above Hiyori’s hospital gown. “How bad was it for you?”
“Just flesh wounds,” Hiyori says. “Nothing important. Anyway, isn’t modern medicine a marvel? A hundred years ago you would’ve been dead. They even have artificial hearts that work as well as a human’s--but that wouldn’t have been right for you.”
Shin’s not sure if an artificial one would be better or worse. He doesn’t really like the idea of having a machine inside him that could just break someday--but it would be a machine, not a person. He might not feel as strange as he does if it was that.
“For the record, the rest of you got banged up too,” Hiyori says. “See those bandages on your arms? They’re not there for show, and they’re not the only ones.”
Shin looks down at them. His arms do hurt a little. He hasn’t really been moving his legs, but he experimentally raises a knee, and it twinges too.
“Some pretty deep cuts,” Hiyori says casually. “A few burns, too. You even needed a blood transfusion--so that’s another part of someone that’s inside you, though your own body will replace it soon enough, unfortunately.” Hiyori doesn’t seem to have any bandages on his arms; maybe he got lucky there.
“Do you think they’ll scar?” Shin asks, a little uneasily. The ones on his chest definitely will. A mark carved deep enough he’ll never be able to forget it.
Hiyori’s eyes brighten. “Probably!” he says.
So he’s marked up all over, then. All from an accident he doesn’t even remember.
Where were they even taking a taxi to? They didn’t have any plans to go out. Or at least he doesn’t remember any.
He asks Hiyori, and Hiyori just shrugs. “I don’t remember either,” he says. “It’s a frightening thought, though, isn’t it? If I were you, I’d be a little leery of going out again.”
Shin kind of agrees, to be honest. “Yeah, I think I’ll just stay home for a while,” he says quietly.
Hiyori squeezes his hand again. “Of course, going to my place is okay,” he says. “And I suppose you still feel the need to go to school. But you don’t need to go anywhere else, really.”
“Yeah,” Shin mumbles. It’s not like he has anything to do outside those three places, anyway. It makes sense that he wouldn’t need to bother going somewhere else.
The fuzziness in Shin’s head is starting to catch up with him. He can feel exhaustion creeping back up, even though he must’ve been unconscious for a long time.
He glances at the clock. Late morning--if he was in surgery all night, then surely his parents know by now, don’t they?
“Where are my mom and dad?” he asks, a little blearily. His thoughts are starting to get mixed up, but they should be here, shouldn’t they?
Hiyori looks apologetic. “I’m afraid they’re busy,” he says. “No time for you even now. They really are such uncaring people.”
Are they? It’s hard to think. He vaguely remembers that once when he was a kid he had to go to the hospital for something, and they came then, but…it’s been a long time since then. People change. They’ve gotten so much colder since he started high school.
“But don’t worry,” Hiyori says. “I’m here. Go ahead and get some sleep. You’ll be out of commission for a while, but that’s okay. I’ll stay with you.”
Shin feels his eyes slipping closed. Words aren’t working anymore. He doesn’t know what he would say, anyway. He should just leave it to Hiyori.
The last thing Shin sees before falling asleep again is Hiyori saying, “I’ll always be with you, Shin,” and his eyes are so bright, and his smile is so wide.