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Winter break meant winter training, Shota informed his class. They would get the week of Christmas off to spend with their family, and then it was back to the dorms to train and work on special moves. While they got through the provisional licensing exams just fine, their moves were still spotty at best, and Shota was not about to throw away valuable time to let them romp around with snowballs when they could be working to better themselves. And so, with a week and a half of winter break still to go, the students of class 1-A filed back into the dorms, arms significantly heavier with gifts than they had been when they left, and louder than ever at the chance to see their friends.
“Dinner and meeting down here at eight.” Shota didn’t have to raise his voice to grab the attention of his twenty teenagers, “Don’t be late. First come first serve takeout.” He told them, arms crossed over his chest, already regretting the huge order he had placed because he was not getting paid to make them a giant buffet himself. If he was lucky, there would be leftovers and he wouldn’t have to cook at all these next few weeks.
All the students nodded and waved and crammed into the elevator or stairwell to run off to their dorms and unload their bags. That left Shota alone in the common room, waiting for the delivery man to arrive, and aimlessly fiddling with his scarf as he scanned the news on his phone. Nothing out of the usual, other than that the flu was particularly wild this winter and that crime was still… villains being arrested by heroes. The knock on the door was earlier than expected, but it was better than late.
He laid the takeout on the counter and tossed some paper plates and bowls next to it haphazardly. One by one his students found their way into the common area, entranced by the smell of hot food. One...two...nineteen…? Where was the twentieth kid?
Sure enough, Kaminari was missing.
“Where is Kaminari?” He asked the group, which was utterly pointless because all that it got him was blank stares and wondering eyes.
“Oh! Uh, he said he wasn’t feeling so good so he was gonna lie down before dinner. I guess he fell asleep.” Sero supplied, raking his hands through his hair. Shota nodded, fine with the answer. He could go check on the kid later anyway. Chances are it was just a cold, what with the weather in the low twenties recently, and Kaminari would be fine. Still, if he had to make a run to get stupid medication, he had to know because winter break meant Recovery Girl was not on campus, and he did not want to deal with sick kids. He could barely handle himself when sick, what made him qualified to watch a teenager?
The fact that he had a teaching license and was their homeroom and dorm adviser -- that’s what.
He let the kids dig in and settle themselves on the couches and floor of the TV area, and that’s when Kaminari made his entrance from the elevator. He looked pale yet flushed, a sheen of sweat dusting his forehead. Fever.
“Hey, uh, Aizawa-Sensei? I think I’m sick.” He cleared his throat and winced, shifting uncomfortably in his thin t-shirt and pulling at the cotton collar like it was a noose.
“Come here,” Shota sighed, stepping away from the rest of the class that looked on with wide eyes like they were watching the murder of the century. Obediently the blonde stumbled over and stood before the scruffy man with bleary eyes. One touch to the temple was all it took for Shota to confirm that indeed, Kaminari did have a fever. “Open your mouth?” He asked, though it was more like a command. The lighting in the common area was awful, but the kid’s throat was red and inflamed enough for Shota to determine that something was inherently wrong.
“What do I do?” Kaminari asked, looking very dazed, if the blinking was any indication.
“I can give you whatever we have here for a fever. Doctors in the morning.” Aizawa sighed, running a hand through his tangled hair. “There’s something in the second cabinet on the top level in the kitchen. You can take it yourself?”
“Y-Yeah.” Kaminari mumbled and wobbled off to the kitchen.
“And a full glass of water too, Kaminari.” He called after him before turning his attention back to the rest of his students who had decided that they wanted to take this opportunity to talk among themselves. “Shut up. We need to talk about what this next week will look like. I expect you all to pay attention. Am I clear?”
The nodding of the students was accompanied by wet coughing from Kaminari in the kitchen.
Dammit.
---
One doctor's appointment was clearly not enough stress for one man, according to the universe.
Shota had been awoken at the ripe hour of four in the morning by Jiro of all people, letting him so kindly know that she had thrown up. Her exact words were, “Sensei, I threw up bad,” but in his tired state (seeing as he had to wake up every hour to go check on Kaminari), he definitely heard, “Sensei, I threw up blood, ” and he just about had a heart attack right there.
Maybe he had overreacted and nearly tackled her, dragging her into the common area and checking her for signs of internal bleeding and injury before she had told him it was just normal sickness and she had a sore throat and headache.
So, in the end, Shota ended up in the doctor's office with Jiro on one side and Kaminari on the other. Both kids looked like they would rather be dead than awake, and it made Shota feel just a little something for them. It was strange and unnerving to see his students so… lifeless.
“Kaminari?” The nurse called him back, and Shota patted the boy’s back for him to go. Instead of actually moving, however, Kaminari shuffled backwards in his seat and looked at Aizawa expectantly.
“I don’t usually do this by myself…” he trailed off, voice scratchy and breaking.
Shota felt for the boy who seemed so much smaller than normal. The blonde mane of hair was practically tucked into his ribcage. Still, he sighed, and pushed Kaminari to his feet with a gentle hand on his back, “I can’t leave Jiro out here by herself.”
“I’m fine. ” Jiro insisted, but the purple haired girl actually looked anything but.
“As your teacher and guardian for this break--”
“Jiro?” Another nurse appeared in the small waiting room of the doctor’s office, the girl stood up and brushed her shirt down, “ I can actually go by myself. I’ll wait out here when I’m done, sensei.” She huffed, and took slow, easy steps to the nurse. She looked even sicker on her feet, but Shota didn’t stop her. There wasn’t a ton he could do at this point.
“Kaminari? Are you ready?” The other nurse pried, her voice sounding patient but her body language saying she was losing her temper.
“Let’s go kid.” Shota sighed, rising to join his student and face the inevitable doom of this appointment.
---
“Strep?” Shota repeated, feeling his eyebrows raise. Weren’t only little kids supposed to get strep? Kaminari was definitely sixteen.
“Yup,” The nurse confirmed, writing out a prescription in loopy handwriting, “he’ll be fine though. I’ve prescribed him an antibiotic to get him back on his feet and kill the fever. For now I suggest keeping him hydrated, making sure he takes his meds, and letting him get a lot of rest away from people.”
Well everything seemed reasonable. Kaminari seemed fine with it too. His eyes drooped shut from fatigue, but his knee wasn’t jumping up and down in nervousness like it was when they first came in. If Shota had to guess, the kid was definitely not comfortable with doctor’s appointments, even if he seemed to be okay now.
The only thing that seemed definitely not good was the fact that Kaminari and class 1-A did not do “away from people.” Even yesterday coming in Kaminari had been socializing and breaking personal bubbles.
And if Jiro had what he thought she did…
His head ached just thinking about it.
Sickness was not in Shota’s wheelhouse. His aunt had constantly been sick growing up, and it had immediately turned the kid off of anything unhealthy. Hizashi would argue that his jelly packs were unhealthy, but what did he know. Two kids being sick under his care was definitely pushing himself out beyond his limits.
But he wouldn’t freak out. He was an adult, dammit, and these kids needed to feel better so by God he would make them feel better.
The nurse pressed the prescription into Shota’s hands and guided him and Kaminari out of the cramped examination room back to the lobby. Jiro was slumped back into her chair from earlier, looking sicker than ever and very, very tired. Shota sighed. He wouldn’t be surprised if she fell asleep just walking back out to the car. When she saw him, she coughed into her elbow and stood up shakily.
“Uhm, Sensei? I… forgot my card back at home and I need to pay for my antibiotics…” She mumbled out face red from either embarrassment or her climbing fever. “Can we come back tomorrow--?”
“I’ll handle it.” Shota found himself saying without really thinking about it. He would -- it wasn’t really out of his budget because he was a frugal spender at best -- and he hated seeing the young girl so tired.
“What-- no-- that’s not--” Jiro protested, but Shota dismissed her with a flick of his wrist, turning towards the front counter.
“I’ll be needing both of their prescriptions please.”
“Oh, uh, Sensei?” Kaminari nudged his arm, looking suddenly very uncomfortable, “Iida says Asui just threw up.”
---
The plague that was strep throat spread fast.
Shota had never seen so many sick kids in his life. One day it was just Kaminari, the next took Jiro, Asui, and later that night, Koda. Shota was up to his knees in tissues, cough syrup, antibiotics, and buckets. He didn’t even know you could throw up from the illness until Asui had made it two days without keeping anything down. He assumed it was because of her stomach’s ability to already do so for other objects, but he wasn’t taking any bets.
The one trip to the doctors became two, then three when Midoriya took down Iida and Todoroki with him. On the fourth day, Kirishima, Sero, and Mina went down (he was surprised they lasted that long) and by the end of the school week all but Bakugou, Uraraka, and Yaoyorozu were looped up on antibiotics and sleeping half of the day away.
Of all the people, it turned out that Hagakure had an extreme fear of needles. She claimed it was because the nurses could never see her to find the veins and she would just end up getting stabbed over and over and over as a kid. She practically started wailing in the car on the way to the doctors, and Ojiro and Shoji were tasked with holding her down in the waiting room as she scrambled to leave.
The ordeal made Shota’s heart twist uncomfortably.
He hated prying her off her classmates and all but carrying her into the exam room. She screamed loud enough to make the whole office shake, and Shota would have felt embarrassed if he wasn’t trying to quiet the girl sobbing into his shirt. She just kept telling him that she wanted to go home and that she was scared and every snotty nose stain on his shirt didn’t help that he felt like the absolute devil carrying her into the exam room. Eventually he got her to hold her arm out for the nurse, who was unbelievably polite throughout the whole ordeal, but only on the promise that ‘yes, I will buy you a stuffed elephant.’
The blood test was over almost as soon as it started, and Shota for the life of him, could not figure out why she was so scared, but nevertheless he bought her a blue stuffed elephant and gave her the antibiotics recommended.
That was the other awful part.
The antibiotics (since his kids were sixteen, not six) were given as pills, but it turned out that Todoroki could not take a pill, which Shota found out in the rather horrifying situation of having to Heimlich the thing out of the kid’s throat when he failed to swallow it.
(If seeing your student choke and gasp for air like a fish out of water wasn’t haunting, Shota didn’t know what was.)
And so, now he was tasked with filling a thick, plastic syringe with the foul bubblegum smelling liquid and letting the kid drink it.
Every night Shota would tiredly slump into the kitchen, pull down everyone’s labeled antibiotic bottle, and watch as they all took the correct amount then put them back in an orderly fashion. The organization was not his idea, but Yaoyorozu’s, and he would be dumb to not admit that it was good.
He hated waking up at all hours of the night to comfort Asui, who still struggled to keep down anything other than toast and applesauce (though she had tried one of his jelly pouches, and they looked promising), and to make sure that Midoriya was drinking enough fluids, and picking up Hagakure’s blue elephant when she left it in places he didn’t think you could leave things. And yet, he continued to sleep for four hours at best a night, take temperatures, and manage to get Asui back to sleep every night without fail. He supposed that for any other class, he would have just had them pack their bags and sent them home, regardless of the parent permission slips that stated he was their guardian for the trip. This class however… made Shota feel a determination to nurse them all back to health and make sure they were safe and protected.
That didn’t mean Uraraka, Yaoyorozu, and Bakugou were exempt from their scheduled training though.
---
At three in the morning, Shota rummaged through the kitchen for a jelly pack. He had just woken up Iida to take his temperature, which thankfully was easier than waking up Kirishima who slept like a literal rock.
He fished one out of the cupboard and moved to go back to his room and sleep for 45 minutes if he could, but stopped when he heard voices from the common room.
“Nuh-uh, cheeks. You’re gonna fuckin’ tell Aizawa that shit.”
“Shh! Bakugou no! He’s already got too much on his plate! Besides, it was just a little bit sore! I feel fine.”
“Bullshit. It hurt bad enough that you woke up and if you get me sick I’m gonna blow your ass up.”
Bakugou and Uraraka.
He would give them credit for trying to be sneaky by having their meeting at three in the morning, but at the end of the day, both of them were terrible at whispering.
“Can I help you?” He asked, stifling a yawn and stepping into the TV space where the two were having their face off.
Both teens looked stunned to silence, then Bakugou vaulted over the couch and away from Uraraka as fast as lightning.
“Cheeks is fuckin’ sick.” He snarled, pointing an accusatory finger at the brunette that gaped at him for a whole three seconds before dissolving into a coughing fit. “And she won’t fuckin’ admit it because she doesn’t understand how a damn sickness works. You aren’t supposed to go the hell outside, dumbass.”
Shota didn’t have enough sleep for this.
---
It was made apparent, to Shota, the next day, why Uraraka was very adamant that Bakugou not tell him about her being sick.
If he thought Hagakure had a problem with needles, he had seen nothing.
Uraraka immediately broke down in tears the second he told her, scampering into the common room and shoving herself as far into the couch as she possibly could. Shota felt that uncomfortable twist in his stomach again, but pushed it aside. Pitying Uraraka would not help her feel better, and her nasty coughing fits and inability to sleep through the night made him want her to feel better. She looked like death itself had taken over her features, and Shota wanted nothing more than to snap and have the gaunt eyes and fever tremors disappear.
He approached Uraraka on the couch, feeling his stomach sink when she flinched away from him and burrowed into the couch cushions even more.
“Uraraka, it’s a simple blood test. It’ll be over before you know it--”
“NO!” She screamed, clutching a pillow to her chest like a shield, “They… they… you don’t get it! It hurts so, so, so bad!”
“Uraraka--”
“They just punch it into your body! It’s unnatural!” She wailed.
“That’s the only way to make you feel better, Uraraka,” Shota lowered his voice a few octaves, trying to remember how Hizashi talked to hurt victims in villain attacks. He always was better at these kinds of things.
“Then I would rather die!” Uraraka screamed, and hugged herself tight. All of her finger pads connected with her biceps and then she was floating up onto the ceiling out of Shota’s reach. He would have been more annoyed with a temper tantrum from any other student, but if Uraraka didn’t stop her quirk now, she would float so high into the ceiling that releasing her quirk would cause her to die.
“Uraraka--”
“ Leave me alone!”
“Uraraka you need to come down right now. Do not make me do it myself.”
“NO! You’re just gonna hurt me!” She screamed.
Shota paused, feeling every muscle in his body tense. He wished the words hadn't hurt him so much but they burned. The way her voice shattered and tears streamed down her cheeks at the thought of him near her…
He squared his shoulders, grabbing his capture weapon. “Uraraka, you have to come down now. I’m going to put you down and then we can talk about the doctors, okay?”
Uraraka didn’t respond, just fixed him with an uncertain look in her eyes, and then nodded, letting Shota throw up his capture weapon and pull her down safely.
Eventually he convinced her to go through with a throat swab, if only he bought her ice cream afterwards.
Shota could feel his wallet getting lighter. He didn’t necessarily care
---
Bakugou, as much as he would deny it, was not immune to the strep throat outbreak that overtook the dorms. With only four days left until school was scheduled to start again, the boy gave into the sickness. Shota felt bad for the boy. At this rate he would miss school (and it seemed the kid knew it too) because he was moody for the duration of his sickness.
Yaoyorozu seemed to have an immune system of steel , and Shota thanked his lucky stars for her every day. She helped him out with everything from checking on her sick peers to organizing the medicine cabinet when Shota was too exhausted to try to keep up with the swirling mess of labels and bottles.
When Kaminari and Jiro’s fevers broke for good, Shota felt a weight lift off of his chest. It was… more pleasant than he would admit -- seeing his students running around and yelling and making poor decisions in the common area. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed it until it was gone.
Slowly but surely, all of his students recovered, and the quiet common room became more lively and vibrant than ever. The cabinets soon were empty of pill bottles for food, and Todoroki looked happier to drink something other than medicine and water than he had ever looked while Shota had taught him.
“Uhm, Mr. Aizawa?” Uraraka cleared her throat awkwardly in front of his teaching podium after class. The older man couldn’t help himself from almost flinching at the noise. One sick week was plenty for him. Upon closer inspection, though, Uraraka didn’t look sick at all -- just uncomfortable.
“Yes, Uraraka?” He arched an eyebrow and leaned forward on his elbows.
“Uhm… I just wanted to say… thank you. For uh… taking care of all of us when we were sick. You didn’t have to, but you did, and it was super nice. So… uh… thank you.”
Shota fought back a smile, instead settling on a head nod when his student had finished.
“Anytime.”