Work Text:
Midoriya is sick.
Or at least, Kacchan insists he is.
“102 degrees.” Bakugou clicks his tongue as he takes the thermometer out from under Midoriya’s own. “Dumbass. I told you to take it easy.”
“Mmm hmm.” Midoriya bobs his head listlessly. “Head hurts.”
“Surprise surprise.” A palm presses up against his forehead, and his breath catches. “Even I can tell that you’re burning the fuck up. Goddamnit.”
“Kacchan, work...”
Bakugou looks at him with incredulity, brows wrinkled so deeply that it’s a wonder they don’t stick that way. “You’re shitting me. Work? Fuck you, I’m calling off for both of us. You’re a dead man walking.”
Midoriya catches him weakly by the wrist as he moves towards the landline, caught between nodding and shaking like a deranged bobblehead. “I can’t just. Can’t take the day off. Evil never sleeps.”
“And that’s exactly why villains always get their asses beat. You’re not going anywhere.”
Midoriya is left pouting as Bakugou shakes off his pathetic grip, straining to hear the ebbs of conversation with their presumably incensed agent in the hallway outside their room.
“...No. I already said I’m not coming in either. I already told you, Deku’s in no state to look after himself. He still wants to — hah?! Oh for — fuck it. Later.”
Bakugou promptly returns with a towel in hand, pulling up the cherrywood chair from the bedroom desk before plopping down by the bedside. The light from the wide arching window hits his hair enticingly, casting his entire head in an ethereal golden glow. A makeshift halo.
“S’not fair.” Midoriya sniffs, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “All Might didn’t get sick.”
Bakugou snorts. “Says who? Dumbass. You’re not four anymore — you know damn well as I do that All Might was never invincible.” An icy towel presses pleasantly against Midoriya’s burning forehead, eking a pleasured little exhale out of his mouth. “No matter how much we liked to think otherwise.”
“Ugh. Kacchan, you’re mean.” Midoriya bats at him in a way that he’s sure would be scathing if he was in any way lucid.
“And you’re delirious. We all got our own fuckin’ cross to bear.”
There’s an abrupt and loud growl, the sound reverberating through the room. “Kacchan.” He tugs urgently at Bakugou’s t-shirt, waiting until he leans in to whisper conspiringly into his ear. “There’s a monster here.”
Bakugou stares blankly at him before his mouth pulls down into a scowl. “That’s your stomach, dipshit.”
“Oh.” A brief beat. “I’m hungry.”
“Of course you are.” Bakugou rises from his bedside perch, piercing Midoriya through with the crossest look he can muster. “Get out of this bed and I’ll kill you. Got it?”
Midoriya moves his head vaguely. It's seemingly enough to satisfy Bakugou, and he leaves the room. Without him there as an anchor an unshakable haze of delirium pervades, the bright spots swimming in Midoriya’s vision coalescing into dancing shadows. His mouth is dry. His eyes are wet. His fingers tremble enough that it's a wonder they don’t phase through the blanket clutched to his chest. Space and time are meaningless, and he is but cosmic dust swirling in the maw of the universe.
The smells of spice and sautéed veggies gradually permeate the air, coaxing another growl out of Midoriya’s stomach. He’s starving, but also distractingly nauseous. Every muscle fiber screams their perish song with each infinitesimal movement, leaving his body feeling achy and feeble.
“I don’t like being sick,” he declares aloud, to no one in particular. Besides, he battled the forces of evil enough to do it with his eyes welded shut. How could he let a little bug conquer him?
Bakugou returns after twenty minutes to find Midoriya curled into the fetal position, buried miles beneath the sheets in defeat. He lets the air hiss through his teeth as he approaches the shivering lump of swathed blankets, dusting his hands on the pale pink apron wrapped around his waist. “Deku.”
The lump moans, barely audible.
“Don’t be a baby,” Bakugou snaps, though he pries back the duvet cocoon with softness. “I made vegetable soup.” He crows triumphantly as he manages to free Midoriya’s head and chest. “Come eat.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes, fucker. I didn’t slave over a hot stove for you to turn up your snotty nose.”
Midoriya insists on taking a blanket with him despite his boiling temperature, eyes and mouth both watery as he grudgingly takes a seat at the kitchen table. “Thank you,” he murmurs as Bakugou plops a bowl in front of him.
With a little thrill, he notices that Bakugou is wearing that ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron Kaminari had bought him a year or so ago. He hasn’t worn it in months. Maybe ever. Dreams and reality did walk a fine line these days, given the snug gold band around his finger. The fever probably wasn't helping to keep that line defined either.
With considerable effort, Midoriya smiles weakly. “Can I?”
Bakugou follows his gaze before vigorously shaking his head. “You’re diseased. Hard pass.”
After washing the dishes he plops down across from Midoriya, watching him alternate between pouting and slurping down his bowl of soup. “Well?”
Midoriya nods, sniffling pitifully. “Tastes good.”
Bakugou squints. “Can you even taste it? You sound like you have one of Cementoss’s concrete slabs stuck up your fucking nostrils.”
“I can!” he insists. He rubs at his eyes with a grimace. “Aren’t you going to eat, Kacchan?”
“Later,” Bakugou says, distracted. “You need to take cold syrup while you’re still up.”
Midoriya whines low, drawing the blanket around him a smidge tighter. “I don’t need it.”
“Deku.”
“It’s so gross.”
“And you dripping and coughing all over the place isn’t?”
Midoriya’s lips are still stubbornly sealed when Bakugou approaches with a spoonful of orange arsenic. “Fuckin’ — are you five? Open your goddamn mouth!”
With a baleful glare, Midoriya shakes his head. Bakugou chews his cheek in a failing bid to control his temper, foot tapping before his brows shoot up tellingly. Then he grins briefly, cocksure and vibrant, before bending just low enough to delicately press his lips to Midoriya’s flushed temple. Midoriya’s mouth pops open with surprise — and a spoon is immediately shoved halfway down his gullet.
“Kacchan!” he eventually hacks out. He’s positive half of the cough syrup ended up dripping down his lungs. “That’s terrible. You’re terrible.”
Bakugou is unrepentantly smug. “Like your swallowing.”
Midoriya wrinkles his nose. “Bullying a sick person isn’t very heroic.”
“Neither is ignoring your goddamn health.” Bakugou’s gaze is cutting. “Take a nap.”
Under Bakugou’s watchful eye he shuffles off to bed, muttering incoherently all the way. It’s largely unrestful, plagued with tosses and turns so violent that Midoriya finds himself sprawled on the floor on three separate occasions. He wakes up around midday to poorly muted voices and dazedly weighs the likelihood of them being auditory hallucinations. As soon as he hears the front door creak open and slam shut he sits up, ramrod straight.
“Kacchan,” Midoriya calls. Bakugou almost immediately appears in his doorway, with a nasty glower affixed on his face and a soup ladle in hand. “Who was that? Did someone come in?”
“The idiot brigade,” Bakugou says, clearly wired. “Those dumbasses came in here demanding to see you. Who the fuck thinks it’s a good idea to barge in a sick person unannounced? Don’t they have jobs?”
“You didn’t have to kick them out.” Midoriya sneezes juicily, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand. “I could’ve at least said hello.”
Bakugou rolls his eyes. “A waste of energy. They brought you some shitty flowers and an even shittier-looking curry. Told me to wish you well or some shit. You can thank them for the inevitable food-poisoning after you get better.”
His next attempt at sleep stretches far longer — long enough that when Midoriya jolts awake in a cold sweat the sun has long since slipped down the horizon.
Bakugou is situated at the desk, donning a smart pair of reading glasses as he works through a hefty stack of documents by soft lamplight. The whole room seems to tilt as Midoriya sits up, and he slaps a hand to his mouth as his stomach lurches.
Sick. Gonna be sick sick sick —
He mindlessly scrambles for the bathroom, catching a glimpse of Bakugou’s halfway panicked expression before stumbling to the toilet. With a moan he drops to his knees, desperately licking his chapped lips as he rides another dizzyingly queasy wave of nausea. He can feel the soup rising and falling like a barometer in his insides, swallowing drily as his chest heaves.
Nothing.
Midoriya hums with frantic frustration, balance rocking back and forth. Then like an answered prayer, Bakugou’s fingers are in his hair, pulling it away from his sweaty forehead. Midoriya feels the convulsions and rolls of sick, relishes the cool of the porcelain against his cheek and the caress of heated fingers along his back. His vision is a smear of nauseatingly bright colors, so he lets his eyes shutter closed.
“Kacchan.” Midoriya’s voice is a pitiful croak. “I’m really sick.”
He feels Bakugou’s scoff ghost over his nape. “Hadn’t noticed.”
Midoriya groans, pallid fingers clutching the seat. “Feels bad.”
“Uh huh.” The hand at his back rubs soothing circles into his shoulders. It’s nice. “Just stop talking and let it out, dumbass.”
“Feels good,” Midoriya mumbles.
“Which is it, idiot?”
“You, your hand — “
Bile burns up his throat, and with a rasping heave, he vomits into the toilet. He feels empty and frail, arms trembling as they brace against his own weight. It’s not until Bakugou dabs at his tear-streaked face with a tissue that he realizes he’s sobbing weakly, the hiccups painful in his raw throat.
“Shut up, nothing to be sorry about.” A thumb rubs into his nape. Was he apologizing? He didn’t know. All he knew was that everything was awful and wrong and that he felt way more exhausted than someone who had slept all day had any right to feel.
Midoriya sniffs. “I hate this.”
Bakugou grunts. “Yeah.”
Another sniffle. “I love you.”
“Damn right you do.”
Warm fingers gentle down his spine. I love you too, they whisper along the bump of each vertebra.
Time seems to blur, the transition from puking into the toilet to rinsing his acetic mouth in the sink as clipped and disordered as the walk from the bathroom to the bedroom. He remembers the calloused hands guiding his own. Recollects how his fevered cheek pressed into Bakugou’s shoulder. Recalls the curt kiss to the crown of his curls as he was deposited like a fragile parcel into bed. The fragmented memories spiral like cotton candy in his dreams, sweet and sugary.
Midoriya wakes up an indeterminable amount of hours later, entrapped in Bakugou’s warm arms. His own skin is refreshingly cool. He turns until they're lying nose to nose, Bakugou’s eyes liquid fire in the dark. “My fever broke.”
Bakugou tilts his head ever so slightly in acknowledgment. “Figured.”
He tucks his head under Bakugou’s chin, laughter bubbling in his chest. “Guess you really meant it.”
Bakugou's voice is a comfortable rumble against Midoriya's ear. “Meant what?”
Midoriya nuzzles his face against Bakugou’s neck, heart awash with fondness. “In sickness and in health.”
He knows for a fact it isn’t fever that makes Bakugou’s body burn against his.