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Izuku wakes up already coughing.
He's aware enough to tell that he's come down with a nasty illness, but only just. He can't tell if he's hot or cold. There's dim light seeping through the fabric of his curtains, but the thought to distinguish whether it's morning or evening doesn't occur.
The one thing Izuku does remember quite clearly is the fact that he'd, at some point, gone to bed. This is only evidenced by the fact that he recognizes the smell and feeling of his pillow. But the knowledge of just how long ago he'd tucked himself in is but a vague shape in the sauna his brain is now.
He coughs until he runs out of air.
And then he lays there for a while, listening to the air rattling up and down his throat and disliking the stickiness in his eyes.
He doesn't remember that school is something he attends as he sinks back into the welcoming arms of unconsciousness.
The sound of an alarm coming to life above his head doesn't rouse him.
…
There's a friend nearby.
Izuku knows they're a friend, even though his eyes are still closed and he's not really paying attention to whatever they're saying. He knows they're a friend in the same way he knows that he's covered in his favourite blanket right now, and in the same vein as feeling whether it'll be a good day or a bad one.
A nice hand touches his shoulder and frees his eyes from hair he didn't know was covering them. Izuku doesn't move, but is grateful. Then the hand comes back to his shoulder and starts shaking him, which doesn't feel nearly as nice. Actually it feels bad. It feels like his stomach is a coconut, swishing and sloshing around. And then it quite suddenly feels like just a regular stomach. And the feeling is nausea. And Izuku is very, very sick.
"No…" he moans pleadingly, although whoever's shaking him has already withdrawn. Saying words right now feels like pulling rocks out of wet clay. "No-thank-you…"
"Shit, sorry, man." His friend's voice is far easier to distinguish with his nausea keeping him awake, and Izuku pries flytrap eyes open to a face he knows a name for. "Are you good? You need a bucket or, or a bag or something? Hold on–"
It's Sero. The name clicks when Izuku sees the distinctive cut of his hair as he turns his head. When he turns back, a noise like a sharp thunk on the wood in his ear tells Izuku that Sero found his trashcan.
"There you go, bud," Sero says while Izuku just blinks at him out of sync, "Just lean off your bed if you feel like you're gonna puke, okay? I don't think you wanna spill your guts on your nice sheets, here."
Izuku thinks about his guts spilling - envisions his stomach splitting open if he rolls over too far, noodly insides pouring out across the All Might decals on his duvet. A gurgly noise starts at the base of his throat.
"Are you gonna be sick?" Sero's eyes rove Izuku's face suspiciously, head leaning down. "No? Yes?"
Izuku gropes for something to say and wrests it from the muck. "...I think I am sick…"
Sero chuckles. "Yeah, you're definitely pretty sick. Ahh but don't worry about it. Class prez is already going to tell the teach. Hey! Maybe one of us’ll get permission to stay and make sure you don't, like, die."
Dying sounds concerning, but Izuku is far too drowsy to take anything Sero just said to mind but the "don't worry" part. Not worrying sounds like exactly what he needs.
And so Izuku doesn't. He checks out with no further prompting and lays in queasy peace for unknowable minutes until Sero taps him awake just long enough to sip some water from a straw and swallow a pill. Then Izuku's tongue grafts with the roof of his mouth, and there's a channel of freezing air down his neck because his blanket isn't where it was before. The bubbling in his stomach becomes still water.
Someone comes in, someone leaves. He doesn't worry.
…
Young Midoriya is out sick today.
Aizawa caught the teachers up on the absence whilst pouring his second, piping hot cup of coffee that morning. He'd remarked, in his surly drawl, that the boys were insistent that their green-haired classmate was in no condition to be going to school. It was made clear by the hazardous flatness of the brooding hero’s brow that he was feeling somewhat jealous of Midoriya’s getting to lie in bed all day.
But as burnt-out and busy as he may be, Toshinori’s feelings haven’t left any room for envy.
He knows his successor. Young Midoriya is a kid who would run a race with broken feet if he could. Midoriya is a boy who HAS run a race with broken feet before, and still somehow only placed in the middle of the pack. (And did he ever get a lecture after that.)
Point being, there exists a paltry sum of things that can keep Midoriya Izuku confined to his room, and sickness isn’t even very high on the list. Toshinori knows this to be, the same way that he knows if there’d been rain overnight when he wakes in the morning. It’s an intrinsic knowledge, built up from understanding exactly the kind of person his successor is, and of how truly similar he is to Toshinori himself.
For Midoriya, who lives and breathes to be a hero, skipping training is a punishment on the same rank as being dragged outside and pelted with rocks.
So to hear that the boy is taking an actual sick day… for the very first time in the entire two years that Toshinori has known him, is…
Frankly, it’s pretty worrying.
Of course, he had to wait until classes had actually started before making a call to his successor. Not only that, but he’d had to keep up a straight face the entire time until the bell rang and he could sneak off to a separate lounge undisturbed. If he hadn’t, the entire staff room would have borne witness to his lip-chewing and fussing. And if he’d actually shot off a message the second he’d heard the news, as was his first instinct, then Mic would have teased him about it for he-doesn’t-want-to-know-how long.
He’s already doomed to their favouritism allegations. There’s no need to give them any more ammunition.
…
…
He wakes up coughing again.
It's impossible to ignore how bad he's feeling with all his air running away from him. Izuku slumps over on his chest and props himself up on numb elbows, just enough to leave a pocket of space between his face and his pillow. His blood feels stale and his face crispy.
He coughs until his eyes feel sore and wet and all the synapses in his brain are taut and pounding. And then he coughs a bit more just to try and break up the stubborn slime in his lungs that's just begging to choke him again as soon as he stops. But it's a vain effort. And he's close to passing out again when he gives in and buckles back down, sweat cold on his face and back, stomach lurching.
More cold air hits him with the rush of his dorm door opening suddenly. He whines without sound, trying to wriggle arms weak from sleep and exertion back into warmth as footsteps near the bed.
A very familiar voice murmurs hushedly from overhead, accompanied by the weight and heat of a wide hand spanning across almost all of Izuku's middle-back, "Are you still awake?"
Izuku mumbles, half his face still in his pillow, "All Might…?"
"Hey there," the man gingerly settles on the edge of the mattress - Izuku's body tilts into the dip his weight makes, "I heard you coughing from all the way down in the kitchen, kiddo… That was a bad one."
Yes, it was, but Izuku wasn't going to admit that outright. He starts trying to twist onto his side in a way he can see his hero that won't also turn his belly inside out.
"Easy, take it easy." All Might helps him, lifting the blanket and covering Izuku again as he settles on his side, panting. The return of warmth is excellent. All Might is so amazing.
"I'm sorry I wasn't here when you woke up." All Might touches Izuku's head, warming the prickly coolness at his hairline, making him breathe deep. "I had to walk Recovery Girl out after she examined you." The man looks different than Izuku remembers… he thinks for a second that All Might might have gotten a haircut, but he’s simply tied his bushy locks into a knot at the base of his head, his long bangs tucked behind his ears. His voice is muffled through the medical mask he’s wearing… but there’s some kind of other quality to it - like a slightly different version of All Might. It makes Izuku feel like a little kid.
Izuku's eyes threaten to slip shut as long fingers start carding through his hair, fuzzily watching his teacher’s eyes rove over his face. "You're pretty darn sick, my boy… but Chiyo left some medicine here for you, so that should help. Sound good?"
The panging mass between Izuku's ears can't keep up with everything All Might is saying. Instead it latches onto the very last thing. Medicine is something that sounds very attractive right now, recalling vaguely that he'd at some point earlier fell asleep after taking a pill. "Sound good," he whispers hoarsely.
The man chuffs, but his mask doesn't crease in any way that indicates a smile. "Okay. You'll get some in a minute. I need you to have some food first, though."
Izuku sours at the suggestion, already anticipating how his insides will churn like a washing machine if he so much as sits up to eat. “That would… not be good,” he tells his teacher straightly.
“Is that so?” All Might hums, messing with some things on Izuku’s bedside table. “You don’t even want to try?”
Sickness doesn’t immunize him to the little worm of shame that emerges as he admits, muffled into his pillow, “... don’t wanna throw up…”
“I know, my boy,” The man’s voice is hushed as he leans closer to Izuku’s level, and suddenly a stupid cold something is being dabbed across his sweaty face. Whilst Izuku shivers in combined discomfort and relief, his mentor carries on, “You might actually feel better, even if you do. Your body’s trying to get rid of that virus.”
A high whine escapes through his clogged-up throat as All Might strokes delicate coolness over his eyebrows. “No…” he insists, and mumbles, “... don’t want you to see…”
“Ahh, is that the problem.” All Might’s deep voice wavers with the even quieter pitch the man takes. “What nonsense.”
Unexpectedly, the man goes quiet. Izuku is lulled by All Might’s silent vigil, his ministrations with the cool compress traveling behind his ears and into the blazing heat under the hair at the nape of his neck. Things beyond the scope of his blurry eyesight don’t exist. And the iron band around his brain makes it impossible to do anything but lay there in pain and hot, sulfurous insides and let out frequent, slimey coughs. All Might tends to him, and guilt over his sickness feedback-loops in the background of every fuzzy thought.
It’s the most horrible, ever… He wants to be unconscious.
It’s also awesome .
Izuku’s feeling so honest at the moment. Putting any kind of effort into thinking about what comes out of his mouth sounds like just another layer of awful on top of everything. So, bluntly, he shares, “Sero was here.”
“Was he?” All Might asks, but with an undertone of knowing.
Izuku slides his eyes shut and accepts the fact that his mentor is the authority on what the hell is going on right now and always.
A beat passes, and All Might talks again, still using that low tone. “... Do you remember anyone else visiting?”
Izuku peeks his eyes open to blink blearily, curious at the too-careful cadence his mentor used just then. “Mmm…” He thinks, then sighs gratefully at the return of the cloth on his brow. “No.”
“Lots of people came to help you before I did.” Something delicate - even a little bit sad - blooms in the gaps between the words. His blond head gently cocks, aligning with Izuku’s eyes. “...You don’t remember?”
Izuku puffs, discontent. “No…” he moans again, shutting his eyes. “‘m sorry…”
The cloth folds nicely atop his temple, the hand moving instead to rest atop the hill of his covered shoulder. “Don’t be sorry, you silly boy.” Faintly, Izuku feels All Might’s fingertips making circles.
A deep breath wheezes in and then out again, just barely squeezing through the minefield in his lungs. Izuku feels himself decompress - like a deep-sea fish in shallow water - a rush of oxygen cooling his aching muscles. All Might’s hand weighs atop him, pressing saltwater and malaise from his body in a steady drip. Time stagnates as he lays, oozing, letting the jaw-trap clamped on his grey matter relax into a persistent gnawing.
He’s pulled from the edge of his coma by his mentor, softly bidding that Izuku open his mouth. All Might lets him stay ambered on his pillow while he feeds Izuku a tiny pill and a straw that Izuku pulls cool water from. Indeterminate promises fool Izuku into taking several sips before the curdling in his stomach starts to feel dangerous, and he whimpers.
He hears All Might laugh very quietly at him, conceding to his misery, low and considerate and fond. And there are fingers combing his hair back from his sweltering face. Izuku will never recollect his teacher's request that he eat something. He has never admitted how much his hero spoils him.
And with utter trust permeating his last shred of thought, Izuku dips back into unconsciousness.