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Toshinori is no stranger to nightmares.
The dreams had started long before he sustained his injury—before Nana, before Yuuei, before everything —back when he was young and quirkless and vulnerable. He remembers, rather vividly, jerking awake in bed with a scream still fresh on his lips, his bedroom door open and his mother’s silhouette dark against the too-bright hallway pouring in from behind her. He remembers being small and afraid, hiccupping into her chest and blubbering about the monsters that were coming, they were coming to get him . He remembers his mother’s hands in his hair, smoothing it down and humming to him until he fell back asleep, curled up against her.
The dreams had changed over the years, turning from fictional monsters to real-life threats that only seemed to get more dangerous as time wore on. For most of his career as a professional hero, he’d avoided sleep like the plague, preferring instead to drive himself to the brink of collapse before finally giving into the exhaustion that weighed his limbs down, made his mind foggy. A sleep borne of utter and complete exhaustion bears no nightmares; it is dark, and heavy, and dreamless.
But Toshinori is not a professional hero anymore. He is retired, and his body is frail, and he has promised more people than he can keep track of that he will take better care of himself from here on out. Besides, he’s a teacher at Yuuei now; it wouldn’t do well for him to show up sleep-deprived and cranky to a class full of promising future heroes. His students already have their hands full with Aizawa.
So, Toshinori tries his best to go to bed at a reasonable hour. It feels wrong, at first, to ease himself down onto his too-soft bed and not feel fatigue clinging to him like a leech. But this body tires easily, and it drags him down into the warm darkness of sleep shortly after he rests his head upon his pillow no matter how unnatural it feels. It takes some getting used to, but it’s actually a bit of a relief to sink into sleep so easily after his official retirement is announced. He doesn’t dream much these days, which would have been an even bigger relief if not for the fact that, on the nights when he does dream, they’re more vivid than ever before.
Toshinori has a death grip on his cellphone, pressing it desperately against his ear, listening to the heavy, ragged breathing on the other end.
“Who is this?” He demands, his voice coming out shakier than he’d meant it to.
The disconcerting panting on the other end stops for a moment. Then an unfamiliar voice comes through, chuckling hoarsely. “We’ve got Izuku,” the voice tells him, sounding amused, and Toshinori’s eyes blow wide in shock.
For a moment he doesn’t know what to say, panic gripping his throat like a vice. He stares at the wall in front of him, unblinking, unmoving, before repeating his question. “Who is this?” His tone is different this time, more aggressive but also more fearful.
“Doesn’t matter,” the voice rasps. “D’you wanna talk to him? Bet he’d like that,” they tell him, and Toshinori hears footsteps, the creak of a door opening, and then he hears the sound of faint, anguished sobs.
The footsteps continue and the cries grow louder until they’re practically reverberating through Toshinori’s skull. He recognizes the voice that’s crying out without hearing a single word from them, knows instinctively that it is true, that they have Izuku before his captor ever presses the phone to his ear. That doesn’t stop his heart from beating wildly against his ribcage when Izuku’s captor coaxes him into speaking.
“ All Might ,” Izuku rasps, voice wet and shaky, into the phone.
The bottom drops out of Toshinori’s stomach. He grips the phone tighter in his hand, as if he could hold onto Izuku through it.
“That’s right,” Izuku’s captor laughs, “call for your hero, why don’t you? Tell him what a nice time we’ve been having over here.”
Izuku’s sobs are muffled over the phone. Toshinori clamps a hand down over his mouth to stifle a pained whimper of his own. “What do you want?” He demands, desperate and shaky, tears budding in the corners of his eyes as he listens to Izuku cry out loudly.
Loud, raucous laughter grates against Toshinori’s ears in response to the question. “What do I want ?” The voice echoes, amused. “This kid is fucking annoying. I want to kill him, and make you listen as I do it. That’s what I want. Sound good?”
“No,” Toshinori gasps out, trembling, feeling as though he could faint right there but no, Izuku needs him, he needs to do something! He’s useless in this body; he can’t protect anyone like this. “Please, what do you—I’ll—I’ll do anything ,” he tells them, trembling all over, frozen in his spot.
“Hearing All Might beg is more than enough,” Izuku’s captor responds gleefully. “Don’t worry; we’ll put the kid out of his misery. He’ll barely feel a thing,” they say, and giggle.
Toshinori can’t breathe. “No,” he rasps, shaking all over. “NO!”
An agonized wail comes through the phone, so loud Toshinori would have pulled the phone away from his ear if it weren’t for the fact that it was Izuku, that was his boy screaming and he needed to help him protect him save him—
Izuku screams so loud his voice goes hoarse, and he’s sobbing and begging and calling for Toshinori, pleading for him to come and save him until he can’t anymore because he’s begun to cough viciously. Toshinori can hear the boy hacking and spitting and wailing, loud and agonized. Through it all he listens, begging feebly for Izuku to be spared because it’s all he can think to do. Panic tears him apart viciously, sinking it’s razor-sharp teeth into him, bearing down and ripping him open as Izuku’s screams grow louder and more pained before cutting off entirely.
The line is dead silent for a moment. Then, the voice of Izuku’s captor comes through again. “...Whoops. Looks like I got a bit carried away. I was gonna wait a bit longer before I killed him, but I guess there’s no helping it now.”
Toshinori opens his mouth to scream at the top of his lungs, and—
—and he wakes up, jerking forward with a pained cry. He’s scrambling out of bed in an instant, desperate to see Izuku and see him now . He sprints to the dorms barefoot, tears drying on his cheeks, and practically kicks open the boy’s door in his haste to get in.
Izuku is sitting upright in bed, sleepy-eyed but with his fists raised in front of him, poised for an attack. At the sight of Toshinori, huffing and panting in his doorway, his shoulders slump and his expression immediately melts into a mix of shock and concern. Before Izuku can even get out of bed, Toshinori is slamming the door shut and surging forward, throwing his too-thin arms around the boy’s shoulders to drag him closer.
His cheat heaves when he feels the solid weight of Izuku falling into him with a sputtered cry, relief flooding Toshinori’s system. Tears spill down his cheeks unbidden, and though he does his best to stifle the hiccups that seem desperate to tear themselves from his lips, Izuku notices and pulls back instantly.
“Toshi?” He asks, reaching up reflexively to wipe the blood that has dripped from the corner of his mentor’s mouth away. “W-What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Toshinori can’t help it; he cups Izuku’s freckled cheeks in his hands and gives him a watery smile, so relieved to see him here, alive and unharmed and staring up at him in wide-eyed concern that it almost makes him lightheaded.
He shakes his head, still sniffling pathetically, and resists the urge to draw the boy into him and squeeze with all he’s got, just to make sure Izuku is real and solid against him. “No, my boy, nothing happened,” Toshinori starts, because he doesn’t want to worry Izuku. Then he pauses, because he doesn’t want to lie to the boy either. “I’m sorry to startle you,” he says in lieu of answering immediately, choosing his words carefully. “I was just… having some trouble sleeping, and I wanted to make sure that you were alright.”
Izuku stares up at him, unblinking, for a long moment. Then his eyes grow wet, and he nods and murmurs a soft “oh,” of understanding. His arms slide around Toshinori’s bony figure without hesitation, resting against the elder man with a soft, gentle sigh. “I’m sorry you aren’t sleeping well. I-Is there anything I can do?”
Despite himself, a small smile comes to Toshinori’s face at the offer. Izuku is so selfless, so genuinely kind and giving, he could weep. But he doesn’t want to worry the boy any more than he already has, so Toshinori holds the tears back and settles for reaching a hand up to stroke at Izuku’s messy bedhead.
“You do more than enough just by being here, Izuku,” Toshinori tells him. He feels the boy tense up underneath him at the use of his given name before he relaxes again, seeming to melt into Toshinori. “And besides, it’s not your responsibility to take care of me, though I appreciate the thought.”
“Maybe not, but I still want to,” Izuku argues, as Toshinori had expected him to. He chuckles and ruffles the boy’s hair, his heart feeling lighter than it has in days.
“I know,” he whispers into the quiet of the room, worry ebbing away with each steady rise and fall of Izuku’s chest against his. He knows he should let go, but he just can’t bring himself to yet. “I apologize for the inconvenience, my boy, but may I sit with you for a bit longer?”
“No,” Izuku says, and for a moment Toshinori’s heart drops, but then he continues, “but you can lay with me, if you want. ‘M tired.”
Toshinori laughs warmly and agrees. Izuku wastes no time in getting situated, guiding Toshinori to lay down beside him. He frets briefly about whether or not Toshinori is warm enough, or has enough room—but Toshinori doesn’t want space. He curls a protective arm around Izuku’s back as the boy settles in beside him, nudging him closer until Izuku rests his head upon his chest and fits himself against his side. The boy is out in what feels like seconds, drooling into Toshinori’s nightshirt while the man smiles fondly down at him.
Before he knows it, Toshinori has drifted off as well. His arm is sore and numb from bearing Izuku’s weight when he wakes up the next morning, but it’s still the best sleep he’s had in years.