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The panic attack hit him suddenly, without warning or anything. One minute, he’s on his bed watching a movie, the next, it’s like a switch has been flipped.
First, breathing becomes hard. Midoriya tries to bring air into his lungs, but it’s like something’s compressing them, not letting more than a little oxygen in. No matter how hard he tries to breathe in, it feels like he’s suffocating.
Then, his vision goes blurry. It’s hard to tell whether this is because of the lack of oxygen or something else, but figuring it out isn’t exactly at the top of his priorities. In a hazy confusion, he looks down at his hands, which he realizes are shaking, trying to understand what’s going on.
Now, his vision starts to black out. It’s hard to tell how long it lasts when that happens; maybe seconds, maybe minutes. Screams and yells ring in his ears, and every time he closes his eyes, he sees hands, reaching out, blue fire, burning…
Smoke fills his lungs and pain lances through his hands and arm as they break and rebreak and break again. Where is he? He needs to run. Fight. Curl up into a ball and die.
Suddenly, there’s pressure on one of his hands. His first reaction is to pull away, but something keeps him from doing that in the last second. It’s because there’s a hand in his, and even though he can’t see anything, it feels good. A finger, a thumb, moves across his knuckles.
A hand finds its way to his other wrist, gently pulling it away. He does pull back then, but the hand holding his wrist moves gently, and someone’s talking to him. He knows that voice.
This time, he lets the hand guide his until it finds something soft and warm; another person. His palm is pressed against the person’s chest, and he feels it rise beneath his hand.
“That’s it. Breathe.”
He does what the voice tells him to, instinctively trying to match his breaths to the rising and falling of the chest, but it’s hard. He has to force air into his lungs, even though at times it still feels like he’s going to pass out. It gets easier, though.
After some amount of time, his vision clears back up enough to see the face smiling back at him softly. It’s only now that he realises that he had been crying, with cheeks wet and eyes heavy.
His hands still shake, but in those of his boyfriend’s, Izuku knows that they’ll stop eventually. Shouto has that effect on him.