{ daiya } i’d rather swing and miss
daiya rarepair week, day 3 hope is the thing with feathers
kanemaru/eijun, 7.9k
{ AO3 } read it on AO3 for fewer missed italics!
There’s a boy with freckles and his arm hanging freakishly out of its socket smiling at Shinji when he opens the door to his room in the E.R.
Shinji has to stare at him for a minute when he enters, still holding his clipboard, mouth open to say his name when he makes eye contact. It’s by far the strangest thing he’s ever seen in the E.R, and he has seen some strange things in his time in residency here: the guy’s grinning like from ear to ear, cat who got the cream, and his arm basically looks like it’s detached.
Shinji keeps his reaction off his face. He glances down at his clipboard. “Sawamura Eijun?”
“Kanemaru Shinji!”
Okay, extra strange. His brow furrows this time, and he flips the paper shut. “That’s me. I’m going to be your doctor today—you already know my name?”
“Yup!” Sawamura says, chirps practically, and it makes his dead arm look even weirder considering the rest of the bounce in his motion—he has yet to even flinch at his shoulder, which has to be dislocated, and Shinji can’t tell if he’s impressed or if the guy’s an idiot. Maybe both.
“…right.” He finishes, and flips the page back on the clipboard, approaching him and examining his arm. It is in fact dislocated—not that Shinji couldn’t tell from a distance—but aside from what is obviously some swelling and what must be a lot of pain, it looks fine.
(His arm muscles look fine. Not that Shinji is thinking anything anywhere near that.)
“What happened to you?” he asks, instead, setting his clipboard down to raise an eyebrow at Sawamura, whose gaze flicks from side to side. He has to be the most obvious person on this planet—whatever it was, it must have been illegal.
After a moment of hemming and hawing, Sawamura blurts out, “Monkey bars!”
Shinji raises a single eyebrow.
“—yeah, monkey bars! I was, swinging with a bunch of kids and—“ Sawamura starts gesturing with his good hand, imagining what must be his ‘great monkey bar moves’, none of which Shinji believes for a literal second, but his endless chatter is kind of familiar and maybe somewhere deep in the back of his head he finds it a tiny bit endearing, “—and then I tried to go for one that was really far away, and, ow!”
That would be Shinji checking his pulse—he must have moved his arm a tiny centimeter when he touched his fingers to his wrist, checking the bloodflow through his arm, and he grunts an apology, glancing up away from his work. Sawamura’s whine dissolves into a pout, and it’s a weirdly not-freaking-out reaction for an injury that would make most people freak out.
He rolls his eyes, but it’s at the story. “Y’know, there’s this thing called doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“Confi…” Sawamura’s brow furrows, “Dential… like dentist?”
Well. Obviously he doesn’t know, “No, genius. Confidentiality. It means tell me the truth so I can treat you right.”
“I am!” he says, bristling a little, defensive, and it’s one of those. Shinji’s eyes narrow and he rolls his eyes again, because no one’s ever complimented him on his bedside manner and today won’t be the first time. He doesn’t have to make him tell the truth, but it’d be nice, and he picks up his pen to write “monkey bar accident” in the space on his chart for story, making sure to write it in quotes so Toujou will see it later and laugh at it.
“Most of the patients I get that with dislocated shoulders from—“ and here he exaggerates, repeating, “’monkey bars’ are in kindergarten.”
“Kindergarten’s awesome.” Sawamura defends, his mouth curved downwards in a pout, “You can fix it, right? I need my arm!”
“I’m a doctor, of course I can fix it.” Shinji huffs, stepping back and rolling up the sleeves of his lab coat. Sawamura looks relieved, comically so, and he has a feeling if he was able to move more, he’d be practically vibrating, “You wanna lay down or sit up?”
“What?”
“Pick one.”
Sawamura stares at him for another second and Kanemaru remembers his Hippocratic oath, harm not heal, he will not choke his patient, he will not choke his patient, and grits his teeth. “If you lay down or sit up, I can fix your shoulder.”
“Oh!” Recognition crosses his face and Shinji feels his blood pressure skyrocketing. Sawamura nods very seriously, but he still looks like a goofball. “Sitting up’s fine!”
“Great.” He mutters, only maybe partially sarcastic as he takes his place beside Sawamura, who is watching him curiously, still a little tinged with desperation in his face—he clearly wants this fixed as soon as possible. Shinji glances over his shoulder, mentally dialing up a list of anesthetics. “Do you want to be knocked out? We also have laughing gas, couple of other—“
“Oh, no, it’s fine!”
Shinji blinks. “What?”
And Sawamura, infuriatingly, just beams at him. “I’ll be fine! I thought it was gonna be okay if I just let it sit for a while but I think I need somebody to just pop it into place.”
Okay, now Shinji knows he’s looking at him like an idiot. Frankly, he’s kind of aghast. How can someone be that stupid? He’s dislocated his shoulder before and recalls very nearly crying like a baby (possibly actually crying like a baby) upon being injured, but Sawamura just keeps smiling at him, head tilted, a little clueless. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” He confirms, jerks his other thumb towards his chest. “I’m tough!”
“Tough.” Kanemaru repeats, squinting at him. He’d be more likely to lose his license by ignoring what the patient wanted, so after a moment of flabbergasted staring, Kanemaru jerks his head up and grumbles, “Fine. You want something to bite down on?”
“Nope! Just go for it, whenever you’re ready!”
This guy’s insane. Shinji puts his hand in the right place on his arm and tries to recalibrate himself back into place. Scalpular manipulation, the repositioning of the humeral head, three, two one—
Sawamura howls, and Shinji does not tell him he told him so.
--
Sent home with a lollipop—usually saved for kids—and his arm in a sling, Sawamura still has the gall to beam and wave at him with his good hand on his way out the door.
Shinji has a feeling that’s not the last he’s seeing of this guy.
--
In fact, it wasn’t even the first he’d seen of this guy.
Of that, Shinji is sure. There was something about Sawamura that was stupidly familiar, though he can’t quite put his finger on it, even hours later. Maybe it was his face, or his stupid energy, or the fact that he refused anesthesia even though Shinji very pointedly made it clear he was going to want it. Maybe it was the way he kicked his feet, or the fact that he knew him before. Whatever it is, Shinji is going to figure it out, and he complains this to Toujou with the phone cradled in his shoulder as he makes dinner in his apartment that evening.
“I’m telling you, the guy was a lunatic, Toujou.” He grumbles, “He knew my name.”
“Shinji, you’re a doctor, the nurse probably told him about it when he was waiting for you.” Toujou’s voice is trying somewhere for soothing over the tinny receiver, but Shinji has a feeling it’s more pitying, the asshole. “This is literally all you’ve talked about all day.”
“It was weird!” Shinji huffs, poking at his rice cooker to see if it’ll go any faster, and maybe he’s a little affronted. “What kind of person just smiles when you’re gonna relocate his shoulder? Do you know how much that hurts?!”
“I remember you crying about it in ninth grade, so, yeah, kind of.”
“Not helping!”
Toujou laughs, and the sound is familiar, comforting. Kanemaru sighs into the phone, heavily enough so that his traitor best friend will hear exactly how annoyed he is at this, but he’s undeterred. “Maybe you’re still just freaking out about what happened this morning.”
Shinji goes quiet for a second as he remembers. The train derailing, treating a little girl on the floor crying for her mother, the person who ripped open the broken doors with his bare hands. “…yeah.”
“I’m still freaking out a little about it.” Toujou supplies, and this time his tone does soften, worried. It’s the second phone call they’ve had today, when Toujou called him panicked as he helped pass people through the doors behind held open by the man in the mask, Shinji shouting he was okay, just a cut on his head, he’s not going to die here, get the other people off the train,“—pretty lucky that the boy wonder showed up, right?”
“His name was Sunspot.” Shinji mutters, and he feels his ears start to burn—he knows how stupid he sounds, but how often do you get your life saved by a bona fide superhero? Sue him. It was pretty dazzling.
“Sunspot, right.” Toujou says, and he can hear him smiling even over the phone—it makes a grin tug at Shinji’s cheeks, too, and though he rolls his eyes as he pops open the rice cooker, it’s pretty fond. “Anyway, maybe you should take the day off tomorrow. Trauma’s a pretty good reason to stay home from work, right?”
“Trauma’s the exact reason I don’t get to take off work.” He grumbles, but Toujou’s right. Men in tights, six am commute trauma surgery and a weirdo who thought he was too tough for anesthesia—it’s been a really, really weird day. He scoops himself a healthy, baseball sized serving and drops it on his plate, staring at it as he begrudgingly admits, “I can ask Asou if he’ll take my shift.”
“There you go.”
“I’m still staying on call, though.”
“Of course you are. Shinji, you’re going to work yourself to death—“
“Are you my mother?” Kanemaru smirks, amused at Toujou’s cluck of disapproval as he picks up the plate and drops on the couch, reaching around for his remote buried somewhere in the cushions.
“No, but I’ll totally tell your mom on you.”
“Would not!”
“Would too.”
They both peter out, and Shinji breaks first, snorting a laugh and reaching up to cover his face with his free hand. He sighs, heavy, and rubs his temples. “Look, I’m alright. I’m takin’ the day off tomorrow, and I won’t come in unless there’s a major accident.”
“Good.” Toujou says, and for a second his voice peters out, talking to someone on the other end of the line. “Shinji, I’ve got to go, Taiyou and I are going—“
“Out to dinner, yeah, yeah. Have fun.” Shinji snorts and adjusts his phone on his shoulder as Toujou apologizes again and lets the dial tone go, leaving Shinji with a warm feeling in his chest and his own dinner just a tiny, tiny bit lonelier than usual.
Flicking on the TV and long since settled in his life as an eternal bachelor, Shinji leans back and takes a bite of his curry as the news flashes across the screen.
“Today, Sunspot made another appearance in Tokyo”, the newswoman says, her voice clear and a little earnest and Shinji considers turning away, but his hand pauses on the remote control as the news report continues.
A train derailed off the subway line due to unforeseen circumstances, and eyewitness accounts spotted Tokyo’s local superhero Sunspot on the scene. As the train dangled over a bridge, Sunspot pulled the doors open on each cart and began to pull people from the train, carrying them as many as three as a time up the top of the train and back into safety. In what could have been a national tragedy, not a single life was lost, and very few were injured, thanks to the fast action of Sunspot. Reporting to you live…
The report fades to background noise as he watches the blurry form of Sunspot move up the train, fast as a lightning bolt, dressed in reds and blues. He looks just as ridiculous as he did when he ripped the doors open and rushed to ask Shinji for help the moment he said he was a doctor, all bright, shiny golden eyes and a stupid mask on his face. It was improbable and ridiculous, but with his shirt half ripped to shreds from making tourniquets, the two of them had saved the lives of at least twenty injured people, and Sunspot had thanked him profusely before throwing him over his shoulder and carrying him up like the rest of them. He hadn’t even had the strength to complain about the treatment. (Not that much, anyway.)
Kanemaru Shinji had never really believed in superheroes, up until one showed up and brought hope to a car full of people—himself included—who had resigned themselves to death.
Grunting, Shinji pushes himself up from the couch and changes the channel. He’s turning into a sap.
--
When Shinji wakes up to his natural body clock at six am, he checks his pager by habit and finds nothing, the silence of Asou taking over his early shift. It’s a weird, missing hole in his routine, and he checks it again as he’s brushing his teeth, as he hops out of the shower, as he gets dressed. Nothing comes out—he wouldn’t be surprised if Toujou called Chris, which meant that he’d be home for the day no matter what. He couldn’t have asked for a better mentor in the head surgeon of the hospital, but Shinji had a feeling that he was the scariest person in the building at any given time, particularly when it came to the health of his staff.
So it’s surprising when by the twentieth time he’s checked his pager, he’s interrupted not by a case or Asou asking for his help, but a phone call. The ringer jars him and Kanemaru fumbles with the phone before he hits receive and answers, “Kanemaru Shinji.”
“Kanemaru,” says Chris’s voice over the receiver. He sounds a little frazzled. “Sorry to bother you on your day off.”
“Oh, uh—it’s no problem, sir.” Kanemaru stutters, snapping into formality immediately and fumbling up to his feet, as if Chris could see him. “Do you need me to come in?”
“No, no--well, sort of.” Chris pauses, and Kanemaru can almost hear him rubbing his temples. They’re kindred spirits, sometimes. “My roommate’s at home alone, and I was wondering if you could check on him for me.”
Shinji blinks. One of the benefits of living close to the hospital meant that most of his neighbors were doctors, which meant Chris’s apartment wasn’t far--he’d been there a few times for dinner when he was first in residency, and there’s one little detail he does in fact remember. “You have a roommate?”
“I do. He works nights often--that’s why you haven’t met him yet.” Chris hums, “Anyway, he’s hurt and I worry for him a little, when he’s home alone.”
Is this guy a person or a dog? “Uh, yeah, okay, I can do that.”
“Thank you, Kanemaru.” Chris sounds relieved over the phone--he sounded fairly fond earlier, too. He wonders if maybe Chris has a boyfriend or something and he just missed it completely, but daydreaming about his boss’s romantic life is not just inappropriate, but weird, so he just makes an affirmative noise on his end, “He should be able to buzz you in.”
“Right.” Shinji nods, kicking off his slippers and going towards the front door for his sneakers. A quick confirmation of the apartment number--six floors up from his, a penthouse--and he’s off the phone and on his way up the stairs, trying to discern what the hell he’s supposed to do. Keep the guy company? Make him food? Chris wasn’t exactly specific, and his dog-slash-person (Shinji’s not entirely convinced he isn’t a dog) is still an unknown mystery to Shinji. He’s not really thrilled to be what sounds like babysitting, but Chris has done so much for Shinji it’d be practically criminal to turn him down. So he buzzes the doorbell and waits, hands shoved into his pockets and looking down his nose at the doorknob.
The door opens suddenly, with a swear from behind it, to a tan face with freckles and shiny, golden brown eyes
His arm’s in a sling.
Oh fuck, Shinji thinks, at the exact moment that Sawamura Eijun brightens up like a sunbeam and chirps, “Kanemaru!!”
--
“Run this by me again,” Shinji says, his hand poised threateningly over the call button on his phone, staring at Sawamura, who is looking at him with gigantic puppy eyes, the fierceness of his scowl deterred by the fact that his dumb arm is still in a sling, “You know Chris how?”
“He’s my mentor!” Sawamura says, for the fourth time, despairingly.
“Try again. He’s my mentor, and I seriously doubt you’re a doctor.”
“I’m not!” Sawamura looks like he might be grinding his teeth--he throws his good arm up in the air out of frustration, or something, and then returns to whining, a pattern that has been pretty typical for the past ten minutes, “He helps me out with other stuff--Kanemaru, I’m hungry!! Gimme back my phone!”
He makes a grab for Shinji and he immediately leans back, holding the phone up out of reach. It’s instinct at this point, and Sawamura keeps reaching for it anyway, so Shinji puts his free hand in his face. “And let you eat crap? Hell no, Chris’s gonna kill me if I let you anywhere near that takeout place--besides, I don’t believe you! How’re you affording this shitty rent, huh?”
Sawamura winces and drops back on his ass, away from Shinji’s hand, as the pout returns. “I don’t--” he starts, and then huffs, his cheeks puffing out with the force of the air expelled from his lungs. “I only help Chris out. He’s helping me, and I’m helping him with other stuff.”
Shinji pauses. He’s not some kind of live-in prostitute, is he? Oh god. The thought crosses his mind briefly and he must look horrified, because Sawamura squeals a, “IT’S NOT LIKE THAT!!” and starts to turn scarlet red underneath all those stupid freckles.
In the end, Shinji stays at Chris’s apartment for two hours, and cooks Sawamura dinner his damn self.
It’s not the worst night he’s ever had.
--
( He does wake up the next morning with one hell of a Sawamura-induced headache, though. )
--
By the time Shinji gets into the ER the next day, his head’s pounding less and he’s met at the door by Chris, who puts coffee in his hands before he’s even punched in. Not entirely convinced Chris isn’t an angel, he accepts the warm cup and Chris chuckles at him, walks with him in step to the front desk to clock in, and okay, he can’t help but ask. “You didn’t tell me your roommate was Sawamura.”
“You know each other?” He must have been surprised at the fact, considering, and Shinji shrugs, pulling a little bit of a face.
“He was my patient the other day. Said he dislocated his arm--” Kanemaru snorts. “On the monkey bars.”
“He does like the monkey bars.” Chris says sagely, typing a code into the hospital computer--one for himself, one for Shinji. For a moment he thinks about Sawamura, who last night picked half the vegetables off his curry and moved around entirely too much for someone with a busted arm, and decides that maybe he hadn’t been lying about his injury after all. “He always bounces back quickly, though.”
“How do you know Sawamura, Chris?” Shinji asks, winces mentally at his lack of smooth transition, “I mean--Craigslist, or whatever?”
“We went to highschool together. He’s your age, though.” Now Shinji’s definitely not imagining the fondness in Chris’s voice. Maybe he really is like his pet dog. “He mentioned he wanted to move to the city permanently, so I offered him a place to stay until he’s properly on his feet.”
“Oh.” That admittedly makes more sense than anything Shinji’d been thinking, and he flushes, a little embarrassed at his own insinuations. “Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s just fine.” Chris pulls his id badge from a holder and clips it onto his pocket, turning away to face Kanemaru again. He’s got this gaze that Shinji thinks is all knowing sometimes, the kind of wise face that he’d almost been willing to get on his knees to his supervisor and beg for when choosing mentors. It had been worth it: in the two years they’ve worked together, he at least knows Chris likes him.
He still can’t get a read off the guy worth shit, though. “Besides, Kanemaru, I think Sawamura likes you.”
Shinji blinks, record scratching in his head. “What?”
“He was talking about you when he came home from the hospital.” Chris pauses, as if recalling something, and then laughs, “If you pushed his shoulder back into place and he still likes spending time with you, it’s a safe bet that he’d like to be friends, I think. Sawamura’s still pretty new in town, and he needs all the friends he can get.”
“But--” All he did was lecture him, is how he wants to finish his sentence, but he snaps it shut as Chris looks at him in what has to be imploring--and he can already see exactly where this is going. Kanemaru flusters. “Chris--”
“I work a few turnover shifts this week. If you don’t mind stopping by again, I’m sure he’d appreciate it.” Just like that, Shinji feels him go in for the killing blow, oh man, “I know I would.”
And he’s fucked. He sighs. “Yeah, I guess.”
Chris claps him on the shoulder and nods, giving a squeeze, and turns to make his way to the OR. It’s all Shinji can do not to bash his head into the nearest wall, and he stops and stands there with his forehead pressed against the check-in console for a long minute, considering the fastest way to dig himself back out of the Sawamura shaped hole he just leapt into.
--
By noon, he’s forgotten about it, mostly because there’s a commotion in the hospital that’s a bit unusual.
“Sorry for the intrusion!” Someone yells from the reception room and Shinji jumps half a foot, looking up from his brief, five minute reprieve of coffee considering murder, because that voice sounds familiar, and just as he wheels on his heel to roll up his sleeve and deliver his best, most admonishing scolding at Sawamura Eijun, the doors slam open.
It’s not Sawamura at all: rather, it’s Sunspot.
In the dim hospital light, he looks just as ruffled as he did hanging over a bridge--dark hair a mess, mask still slapped across his face, blood dripping from his nose. They make eye contact and Shinji feels something in his chest twist up, something he can’t put a name to as he stares, and it’s only when he drops his gaze and notices the shape of a woman wrapped in a blanket in his arms that he snaps into action mode and he’s up, starting to yell for a stretcher and an IV, stat, and hurrying across the hall to look at the woman. “What happened?!”
“Burning building, two doors down,” Sunspot says, and he looks frantic for a second, eyes looking from the woman in his arms to Shinji and Shinji gets it, nods his head and holds out his arms. As a doctor, he’s been trained to keep his calm in treacherous situations and this is no different: he’s already analyzing her the minute Sunspot places her in his arms, moving with his team as one perfect machine to get her into treatment. The minute he takes the woman Sunspot is gone, blowing papers and ruffling Shinji’s hair as he takes off, presumably to get the rest of the victims before things get any worse.
He doesn’t have time to think: Shinji’s on the move and working as soon as he’s gone, and thirteen more patients come into his ER in the next five minutes, each one carried in by the progressively more singed looking Sunspot until Shinji is bouncing from room to room, working on as many patients as he can handle.
Crunch time always works the same way: with his mind going a hundred miles an hour and his hands possibly even faster, there's no way that Shinji has any way to think about anything besides the lives of his patients, how many people he can help in as little of time and causing as little pain as humanly possible. He loves his job: it's stressful and terrifying and sometimes heartbreaking, but the teamwork required here isn't much different than his high school baseball club. It's all about making connections, putting together great minds and great instincts.
By the time the steady stream of patients slows to a trickle and Shinji takes a breath, he has enough time to see Sunspot again, staggering past the room where Shinji had just stabilized an older gentleman, the last of his patients for the foreseeable moment. From the window, Sunspot looks like a mess, and Shinji feels the tick in his brow before he acutely realizes he's moved to the door and tossed it open. "Where do you think you're going?!"
Sunspot jumps, comical, his shoulders jerking up in the air before he whirls around. "What--me?" and to top it off, he gestures to himself, as if he's completely oblivious to how shitty he looks, to the red stain of what has to be blood on the side of his outfit.
Shinji scowls and stomps forward, grabbing his left wrist in one hand and turning on his heel. "Yes, you, dumbass--you're getting treatment. Now."
"Treat--I don't need--"
Shinji jerks his head back to give his best, thunderous glare to the superhero, who he's now dragging to the nearest open patient room, and Sunspot stares at him with wide eyes behind his facemask. "Don't need treatment, my--" Deep breaths, Shinji, remember your blood pressure, says a voice that sounds like Toujou in the back of his head, "--butt, you're coming whether you like it or not."
"What?! NO!!! HEY!!! HELP, I'M BEING DOCTORNAPPED!!! HELP!!"
The yelling and shouting bounces straight off Shinji's back, and he keeps going until he gets him onto a bed. Sunspot drops ungracefully and winces, and that's all the motivation Shinji needs to work on him as he reaches for his pager to get help from one of the nurses, if they're still running around.
He sees Sunspot open his mouth to protest and Shinji glares at him. "Look, if you saved all those people, it's the least we can do to get you proper care. Sit down, shut up, and this'll be over a lot faster."
Sunspot's mouth snaps closed. Victory.
--
Shinji doesn't actually need much help to patch up Sunspot, who had eventually given up and sat complacently, kicking his feet against the bedframe. Nurses shooed off to check on other patients and Sunspot now stripped of the top half of his dumb costume, Shinji can take care of the rest himself.
He pulls up a stool and rolls it across to the bedside, sitting down as he examines his side. There's a nasty looking cut across the tanned skin of his stomach, and though the bleeding's mostly been staunched for the time being, he's going to need stitches. Shinji looks at the anesthetic in his hand and taps the top to squeeze out the extra liquid from the syringe, flicking his gaze back up to Sunspot. He's biting his lip, and he mutters, "I hate needles" under his breath, though it's plenty loud enough for Shinji to hear.
It's charming. Really charming. "Seriously? You're a superhero. Don't be a baby."
"I'm not a baby!" Sunspot whines, sounding exactly like a baby, and Shinji rolls his eyes, though there's no less fondness to them. In the warm light of the hospital room, Sunspot, famous town superhero and apparent wuss over needles, looks just like a regular person, the sunlight from the window glancing off his skin. Even with the ugly cut across his stomach, he's hard to look away from, the sun itself.
Shinji shakes his head to clear those thoughts from his head and hopes that Sunspot's just pretty, and kind of dumb. "Alright, you big baby, I'm going to stick you with the anesthetic. It's gonna hurt--"
"I don't need it!"
Shinji jerks his head up, and this time it's with an understanding, with recognition. "What?"
Sunspot smiles sheepishly at him, reaching up towards the back of his head with his other hand as if to scratch it through his hair, "It's gonna heal itself, so, if I just lay here for a little bit, it'll be fine."
But whatever he's said has gone mostly over Shinji's head as he narrows his eyes at him. That's... impossible, because he just fixed up Sawamura's arm two days ago, so there's no way he could be out fighting crime. Plus, it's Sawamura, who Shinji discovered last night is completely incapable of doing most basic things, including all types of cooking. Someone who can't boil water without setting off his smoke alarm can't have superpowers.
Sunspot waves his other hand in his face. "Hellooooo? Shinji?" The first name snaps him out of it, and Kanemaru furrows his brow and looks down at his stomach. Inhuman healing is right: it's a weird process, watching skin start to knit itself back together. He sits back in his chair, slumping a little, and considers the cruel and terrible thought that Sawamura Eijun could be some kind of superhero. He's gotta be losing his mind. Sawamura Eijun can't be Sunspot, because Kanemaru's had some weird and embarrassing thoughts about Sunspot since the day he picked him up and pulled him out of that train, the last man standing and ready to fall to his death for his profession.
"Hey, uh, Kanemaru?" This time, his patient uses the right name, and Kanemaru flicks his gaze up towards Sunspot. He's not looking at him, his gaze off towards the wall next to his room, and the fading sunlight makes his profile look ridiculously handsome, freckles dappled like shadows across his cheeks. He grunts in response, a motion to continue. "Did everyone make it out okay?"
Kanemaru stops watching the cut on his stomach heal and feels something in his stomach twist. "Yeah. One woman in critical condition, but she'll be okay."
"Good.... that's good." Sunspot murmurs, and now he's sure he can't be Sawamura. There's no way Sawamura could look that meaningful, that pensive, and the twisty feeling in his chest returns again, brought back to the train with one look. Sunspot is a superhero, after all. His job is to save people.
Their job is to save people, really.
Shinji tears his gaze away as quickly as he can, his heartbeat rattling the bones of his ribcage, and looks down at the cut on his stomach. It's almost halfway healed now, and Shinji runs his thumb over the healed section of skin. What should have scarred left nothing, an unblemished tanned patch that seemed to be zipping up the rest as it went.
"We make a pretty good team, you know!" Sunspot says from above him, and Shinji can feel the weight of his gaze evaporate--when he looks up, he's grinning, and for a brief second he snorts, ducking his head, and feels a little like smiling, too. "You should be my sidekick!"
And just like that, the moment's gone again, and Shinji snaps, "Not a chance in hell!" and rolls his eyes. Mentally, he reminds himself that it's Toujou's shtick to get obsessed with idols. Superheroes are basically the same thing.
--
It takes about twenty minutes for Sunspot to heal up, and Shinji stays in his room the whole time, considering the storm of media standing outside the door. No matter how much he barks at them to get out of his hospital, it's mostly a losing battle, and it's after his third slam of the door that he hears enough shifting on the bed behind him that he turns around.
With a "hup!" noise, Sunspot has pushed himself up and out of bed. His stomach's completely healed, and some of the burn marks Shinji had noticed and treated earlier were gone too, leaving him exactly the same as he'd been the first time Shinji ever saw him. He flashes him a grin as he pulls his shirt back over his head and trots over to Shinji, hands on his hips. "See? I'm all fixed up! Totally better! Right as the rain and--"
"Lemme see." Shinji intones, deadpan, making a gesture at his shirt. Sunspot puffs his cheeks out and lifts his shirt, so Shinji gets an eyeful of his stomach, perfectly smooth, unmarred by blemish or pain. It really is fixed.
He leans back again, folding his arms. "I'd say someone should clone you, but no one'd ever be able to take two of you."
"Hey! Kanemaruu, that's not true!" Sunspot whines, and that familiarity returns, something warm in his stomach. Shinji snorts and yanks down the shirt again, smacking him once on the non-tender side for good measure. "Owch!"
"Fine, go out there and deal with your media circus. I'm not telling them shit."
Sunspot nods, an enthusiastic noise that sounds like osh matching his stupid, knocked off salute as he puts his hand on the doorknob. He pauses for a second there, though, and turns to look back at Shinji.
The smile on his face is blinding, and Kanemaru gets why he's called sunspot, because he sees them in his vision. "Thanks for all your help, Dr. Kanemaru! I'll see you again soon!"
And just like that, with flashbulbs immediately popping outside, he's gone. Shinji stands there for a moment, temporarily dazzled, and drops against the bed to put his face in his hands for one long, long moment. His ears are burning red.
If Sunspot actually ends up being Sawamura, Shinji's going to hate himself for the rest of his life.
--
For the next six months, Shinji sees Sunspot at least once a week. Most of the time it's for disasters, saving people and bringing them to the car of the hospital faster than an ambulance ever could, and Shinji works tirelessly on them, trying to keep their death count at zero.
He learns more about Sunspot--his powers are super speed, strength, and healing, he still hates needles, and he boasts that he's a great ice skater after a man with ice powers blusters through town and sets the place into Christmas in July--but never once his name.
That doesn't bother Shinji, though. He starts looking forward to his visits. Though he claims it's for something to do, Toujou refers to Sunspot only as "Shinji's boyfriend", much to Shinji's annoyance, and if he says that his irritation is because it's a stupid lie, it's about 95% truth.
(The other 5% is wishful thinking, but he's not about to let Toujou know that.)
--
But, same as he sees Sunspot once a week, he sees Sawamura twice a week, and that's starting to grow on him a little, too. It's helping to push away his theory that Sunspot and Sawamura are the same person, mostly because 9 times out of 10, Shinji thinks he'd rather shake Sawamura than kiss him. He's incompetent and whiny and his stubbornness is only outmatched by his stupidity. Shinji finds himself visiting him long after his arm's out of a sling, because he thinks Sawamura might actually burn the apartment complex down trying to cook when Chris isn't around, and he's not about to have his nice house destroyed because of an idiot armed with a gas stove.
He learns things about Sawamura, too. He's got a loud laugh and loves baseball, and that's what gets them to bond for the first time, rooting for the same team on the couch and jostling each other when things get intense.
He also learns that Sawamura sleeps a lot, like, more than anyone else he's ever met. He doesn't know why, but sometimes Shinji drops by in the afternoon after a morning shift at the hospital and Sawamura opens the door with bedhead and sleepy eyes, asking for breakfast.
It has to do with those night shifts he works, whatever those are.
It's definitely not cute, either.
--
The thing about this is that the streams never cross. Shinji never sees Sawamura outside his apartment, just like he never sees Sunspot outside of the hospital. A less suspicious man would ignore this, but Shinji, just once, would like to see the two of them in the same room. It might quiet some of his thoughts late at night, because he can’t stop fucking seeing the similarities, and no matter how much he ignores them (aggressively ignores them), the more time he spends with Sawamura, the more he sees of Sunspot. The whining, the puffy-cheek thing he does when he’s trying to relax, his stupid big grin: it’s all familiar. It’s driving Shinji crazy.
This tenuous little truce between people and places breaks when Sunspot crashes through his window.
Shinji hears the sound of shattering glass from the living room and leaps to his feet, swearing and grabbing the first weapon of choice he could find (a broom) to run back to his bedroom. He’s about ready to clock someone in the face with the end of it when he finds not a burglar, but a body lying prone on the floor, and a familiar one at that.
“Shit--Sunspot?!” Shinji’’s into action mode in a second, dropping the broom with a clatter and rushing across the room to drop to his knees in front of him. There’s glass everywhere and Sunspot is silent, which is more terrifying than anything Shinji’s ever seen in his life. He reaches for his face and asks, loud, clear, “Sunspot--hey, are you okay? Are you okay?”
Two times, nothing. Shinji’s heart squeezes in his chest and he starts looking him over, feeling nausea rise up in his stomach for a brief and terrible moment, like he’s back in residency for the first time and seeing his first bloodied, miserable patient, but then Sunspot gasps and Shinji feels his own bones turn to butter.
“Shit.” he hisses, again, drops his hands to either side of his face, which is still mashed into the floor. “Answer me when I ask if you’re okay, you moron--”
“‘m okay,” he rasps, and Shinji wants to shake him, Hippocratic oath be damned. From his cursory examination he doesn’t have any head trauma, so he carefully reaches to tilt his head to the side to keep him from choking in case he passes out, and when he lifts his head, the mask on his face ends up dropping, fabric soft against Shinji’s hands, and it turns out the face he’s cradling is tan skin and freckles, golden brown eyes half lidded from exhaustion, a cut on his cheek leaking blood and healing itself underneath Shinji’s fingerprints.
The face behind the mask is Sawamura Eijun, and the pure and genuine relief he looks at Shinji with socks him in the chest: when he breathes out, “I made it,” he’s not sure if it’s supposed to be Sunspot or Sawamura speaking.
Either way, Sawamura’s eyes flutter shut again, and Shinji stares at him for a second longer, his heart thundering in his ears.
He can’t even say I knew it.
--
Sawamura sleeps for two hours on Shinji’s bed once he’s been moved, Shinji gathering him up in his arms as carefully as possible, with only the knowledge that he’ll heal up after and the pile of glass on the floor keeping him from letting him lie still. It gives him plenty of time to stew over the knowledge that he was right, that Sawamura Eijun is the Sunspot, and that the first place he came in a time of some kind of trouble was here. Not the hospital.
Here.
Maybe he meant to go to his own apartment, he rationalizes, sweeping up glass shards and checking Sawamura’s vitals.
He said “he made it”, he chides himself, pacing around his room for the tenth time in twenty minutes.
By the time Sawamura’s showing any sign of life, Kanemaru’s given up, dropped into his desk chair with his head in his hands, and if he jerks up when Sawamura coughs, well, he wants answers. That’s what h’ll claim if asked, but it doesn’t explain why he pushes his chair across the room immediately and puts his hand on his shoulder. “Stop trying to move, idiot, you’re going to screw up your healing”
“Ughhhh,” Sawamura whines, and Shinji’s tiny I knew it echoes somewhere back in the back of his mind--if it wasn’t obvious before, it is now, in the way he pouts as he realizes he’s in a lot of pain. Slowly, he opens his eyes and tilts his head to look at Shinji, and it’s unfair, the way he starts to light up like a Christmas tree, at the realization of where he ended up. “Kanemaru--”
Is how he starts, but Kanemaru slaps his hand over his mouth. Sawamura yelps. “No.” he says, shaking his head, because it’s the best he can do to keep from being confused and angry and embarrassingly flustered all at once, and he’s going to keep Sawamura from opening his big, stupid mouth until he says what Shinji wants him to say, which is, “You are going to tell me everything that just happened.”
“Mmpf--”
“From the beginning.” He says, and lifts his hand off of his mouth. They stare at each other for a second, Sawamura wide eyed, Shinji red-cheeked, and then Sawamura gasps and reaches up to touch his face, his expression going from confused to comically horrified in a second.
“My mask--oh no!” He yelps, and if it wasn’t for Kanemaru’s hand on his shoulder holding him back, he might have leapt backwards: Sawamura pats at his face, frantically, as if confirming it’s gone, and then covers his face with his hands. “Don’t look!”
Shinji stares at him for a brief second, thinks, this idiot? Really, me? and feels a vein in his temple throb somewhere even as he snorts--it’s a little rudely. “You haven’t had that damn thing on for almost two hours, Sawamura, cut the crap.”
“You’re not supposed to see me!” Sawamura wails, and Shinji swears he sees red--he reaches forward and grabs his wrist to try and pull his hands off of his face. Now that he knows he’s healed, he has no mercy, and in pulling, he manages to get his hands free and up: Sawamura scrambles and Shinji locks their fingers together. It’s then and only then that he stops, wide eyed and flushed, eyebrows knit together at the discovery of his secret. They stare at each other, Shinji scowling, Sawamura flustered, and eventually, he relents. “--You can’t tell anyone--I don’t think you’re gonna tell anyone, but you can’t cause what if you got hurt cause of it--”
“Sawamura--” “Or Chris, what if Chris got hurt--well, Chris already knows, so I guess that’s okay, and Kanemaru’s a good secret keeper--”
“Wamura!” He barks, and Sawamura shuts up, mouth closing with a click. Shinji can feel his blood pressure rising, somewhere between anger and concern, and he should’ve known all along that Sunspot and Sawamura were the same person, because they inspire the same damn feeling somewhere in the back of his head. “I’m not going to tell anyone so just--shut up about that already, jesus. You’re the least subtle person in the entire world.”
“I’m not!” Sawamura starts to protest, but Kanemaru levels him with a stare again and he shuts up.
Shinji has a thousand questions now that he has a captive audience, but the one that comes out of his mouth is not how long have you had superpowers or what do you mean Chris knows, it’s “Why did you come here?”
Clearly that wasn’t the question that Sawamura expected, either. He stops squirming and tilts his head. “You mean here?”
“No, Okinawa,” Shinji rolls his eyes and the minute Sawamura looks like he’s going to protest that, he has to resist the urge to groan, “Yes, here, dumbass, here as in my apartment.”
Sawamura’s looking at him like he’s nuts, and he considers the merit of just shaking him until he understands, but his response is steady, almost as if it was the only correct answer. “Because I knew you’d take care of me.”
Shinji stops. Sawamura just had to go and say it, the most obvious thing in the world--and a part of him thinks that maybe Sawamura is just starting to figure it out too, the way realization is starting to play up in his eyes. He’s exactly right, is the maddening thing, Shinji would. He’d take care of him as Sunspot and Sawamura alike.
“Fucking hell.” He mutters under his breath, and when he makes eye contact with Sawamura again, those eyes of his look hopeful, the bastard. Like he doesn’t know he’s the one who brings half of their city hope like he carried it in on his back.
“Cause you always fix me up, and stuff, and you bring me food.” Sawamura adds, and his smile’s genuine, warm and toothy, and from this distance, he notices he’s missing one, probably spat it out midway through his fight with...whatever he was fighting before he appeared here, bedraggled and broken and Kanemaru patched him back up again. Sawamura smiles and it’s embarrassing that the skipped beats in his chest that belonged to Sunspot pick right back up and belong to Sawamura, too. “Sorry for breaking your window.”
“You better be.” Shinji grumbles, reaches forward to run his fingers through Sawamura’s bangs. He tilts his head up into it like a dog, and it’s stupidly endearing. “You’re not all healed up yet, are you?”
“Mmm--” Sawamura reaches down and lifts the blankets up, to see the mottled blue and yellow of bruises instead of what had been cuts and what had to have been a punctured lung earlier in the afternoon. He drops his blanket unceremoniously and shakes his head. “Nope. But I’m gonna get better soon, and get out and kick that guy’s ass, you can count on it!”
Kanemaru snorts. It’s a little hysterical. “Yeah,” he says, and sweeps his hands through his hair again just because, “We’ll see about that.”
--
The first time Kanemaru Shinji kisses Sunspot is not as Sunspot, but as Sawamura Eijun, when he tells him that he wants to make him dinner to make up for destroying his window. Shinji’s not really sure if it was to shut up that idea or because it was endearing, such a stupid little suggestion for a massive amount of damage, but so earnest and genuine and Sawamura that he felt the need to kiss it off his mouth.
It’s not exactly what he imagined when Sunspot pulled him off a doomed train, but looking at Sawamura’s gigantic, ear-to-ear smile when he pulls away makes him think maybe, this turned out a little better.