Burnt Out {A Hero!AU Sheith Fanfiction}

Recovery

If there was one thing that was worse than getting hurt, Shiro could say with all his confidence that it was the healing process afterwards.

Lotor's meddling with the doctors had worked perfectly, and the next time Shiro woke up he was being told that he could go home. Home to his own bed and his cats and his computer. Home, away from heart monitors and the smell of medicine and the overall feeling of discomfort in the linoleum prison they called a hospital. Even if Shiro had never really enjoyed sleeping in his own bed before, he couldn't deny the sublime sense of comfort he felt after he had finally laid down on his familiar mattress with his familiar sheets. Atlas and Black were kept out of his room while he slept due to Matt's paranoid orders, but to pet and cuddle and sit with them whenever he could was equally as calming. Shiro didn't quite know how Matt and Lotor had done it -- whenever he asked they'd both simply shrug -- but he was incredibly grateful. Even if Lotor had been a bit sharper to him when he visited for being so stupid.

The first few days -- maybe a whole week at most -- were all mostly filled with sleeping off the effects of his pain medicine. Shiro would drift off while talking to Matt at his bedside, and then he'd wake up to find Keith there instead. Then the same situation would happen but vice versa. Sometimes Lotor would be there, but not often enough to make Shiro feel bad for disrupting his busy schedule. Sometimes Curtis would be there, too. The conversation however was never that engaging. At least not as nice as it was to talk with Matt or Keith -- all Curtis wanted to do was ask Shiro if he was okay or tell Shiro he was sorry it ever happened and look at him with a damn near rage inducing pity whenever he'd give Shiro more flowers.

Shiro always had Matt take the flowers downstairs.

After the period of rest passed, Shiro grew to realize how much he hated recovery.

He was quick to become restless. Quick to realize he was falling out of shape with all of his laying around. Walking was hard with the awkward boot on his ankle and Matt always hounding him down to relax, but Shiro would get up anyways -- using his crutches to walk to the master bathroom and then back. On days where he would be particularly bored, he would sneak open his laptop and start catching up on his work whenever Matt wasn't around, snapping it closed and stuffing it beneath his pillow whenever someone would come into his room to talk or check up on him. There was even a day where Shiro had started tinkering on a new mask, using the skeleton of a prototype Matt had made him to start designing a stronger, more efficient product. Matt had caught him with that, of course, but it was worth it.

The news was always on -- displayed on the large screen of the TV in Shiro's room. Most of the time the audio was on mute so Shiro could sleep, but Shiro always had the subtitles running across the bottom of the screen. After a few weeks Shiro was no longer the topic of interest for the press, but he still checked up on it anyways. Red wasn't too busy during his time of healing -- there was a fire here and there, but they were never anything Shiro could ever think of stopping in his condition, so he tried not to dwell on it all.

A month or so had passed and the only things Shiro had to show for his injuries were the boot around his ankle and the occasional headache or dizzy spell. Shiro had even gone into the office a few times, his well rehearsed story in mind with each meeting or press conference. He was down town doing charity work again, having not learned his lesson from last time, and caught someone getting mugged in an alleyway. When he went to help he was overpowered by a few men he didn't see before. It was an easy story -- convincing, to say the least. Everyone knew Shiro was a bit mindless when it came to helping others due to his display the night of his speech, so it wasn't too much of a stretch. The only person Shiro was really concerned about was Keith but... it seemed like Keith believed him enough.