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Izuku Midoriya coughed up his first sunflower petals at nine years old.
It took him an entire evening to realize what they were, reluctant to share the startling news with anyone, even his mother. It took him another week to realize what — or rather, who — they were for. It had been two weeks since he had last seen All Might in the news, and it had been a year since he had last seen his own father. So, during those first weeks of his life with no father and no hero, Izuku developed a strange case of hanahaki.
He knew what it was. Sort of. Not really. Not at all. All he knew was that they had a neighbor who had coughed up deep red rose petals in the hallway one afternoon. Izuku’s mother had said something about confessing, to which the woman had shaken her head. A while later, his mother had to introduce herself again. The young lady seemed to have forgotten her, and Mom had only seemed sorry about it.
So it took nine-year-old Izuku a while to understand that he had something similar happening. But once he did, and once he looked it up, he could not for the life of him figure out who it was for. Did he love anyone? His mother, he supposed. Izuku didn’t even know if he was happy most days, so how was he supposed to know if he loved someone?
Then, All Might’s face appeared on his screen again, smiling wide as ever, and the hacking Izuku had experienced for days suddenly stopped.
It didn’t return again for five years, so Izuku put it in the back of his mind.
The day he found himself on a rooftop, face-to-face with his childhood hero, a tickle formed in his throat. The memory of something long forgotten lingered in the back of his mind. But a petal didn’t come up then, not yet. A question came out of his mouth instead.
“Can I hope to be a hero, even without a quirk?”
The petals didn’t come until his hero closed the door to the staircase behind him, leaving Izuku to wallow with sunflowers and shattered dreams.
Perhaps he thought it would kill him eventually anyway, the hanahaki. He understood enough to know by then that he had some sort of love and longing for All Might to be his family, or at least in his life. But that dream had not only had been firmly rejected, it could quite literally kill him if the petals were any indication.
And perhaps that’s why he ran after the villain.
Izuku did his best to hold back the petals as he walked home, trying to decide what to do next. Before he could get far, All Might appeared again. And with the most extraordinary offer of Izuku’s young life, the coughing ceased at the sudden turn of events, at the realization that All Might would, in some way, be in his life.
The petals came and went during their ten months of training. The harder All Might pushed, the days he was too busy or ill to appear, even the days where he frowned more than he smiled, Izuku would find deep recesses of trash to cough into, working as hard as possible to hide the small yet violent sunflowers. Fortunately, All Might’s coughs often hid Izuku’s own, and the trashed beach seemed surprisingly floral with white petals that occasionally floated on by, keeping Izuku’s shame well hidden.
Otherwise, Izuku did fine. He could breathe fully when All Might gave him his first head pat, on the days he told him he did good work, on the days he was there to watch Izuku with his wide smile. And Izuku would work harder to earn those days, not only to breathe better but also because they filled his heart.
Then, the week after the entrance exam, before the results came in, Izuku began to cough up larger blooms in All Might’s silence. They were large enough and violent enough that Izuku had difficulty keeping it from his mother for the first time.
“Izuku, honey?” she called to him as he remained hunched over their bathroom toilet. He tried to call out to insist he was fine when another bout of flowers came out of his lungs and into water before him. They might have been beautiful, the way they floated in a clump like that, if it wasn’t so awful.
Before he could hide them, Izuku’s mother came in and hovered over him, eyes growing wide at the sight before her.
“Izuku, when did this start?”
Izuku turned his tired gaze from her to the petals. His phone rested beside him, and he glanced at the screen once more, hoping for some sort of sign from All Might. When he received none, he coughed again as his mom rubbed his back.
“Honey, we really need to take you to the doctor for this.”
“Let’s wait a week, Mom,” he said after wiping his mouth with a towel. “I’m sure it will be fine in a week.” He wasn’t sure of any such thing, but he figured if he didn’t get into UA (as he suspected he wouldn’t), then it wouldn’t matter much to him after that. He also knew his mother was far too polite to argue with him, at least in the short term.
So, as Izuku predicted, she simply nodded and did her best to care for him in the time being, saying nothing about the way he glanced at his phone or didn’t take comfort in his All Might figurines as he normally would.
To his surprise, he got into UA, greeted by All Might himself. And when the man called, the coughing slowed considerably.
Izuku’s breath still hitched when he saw All Might wave in greeting to him, smiling wide and offering a high five at his success. But in moments like those, moments of All Might’s pride and warmth, Izuku could trick himself and his disease into pretending that All Might, despite all odds, was somehow a father to him.
The hanahaki acted up sporadically throughout Izuku’s first couple weeks of the school year. He saw All Might in class, sure, but it wasn’t as personal as their time on the beach. Still, the coughing wasn’t too bad, and his classmates didn’t know him well enough to know it wasn’t normal. Sometimes Izuku would need to scramble to hide a stray petal, but he thought he did better more days than not.
Then, the Sports Festival happened, and broken bones weren’t the only thing Izuku needed to worry about.
Holding his slung arm, Izuku hacked and hacked as All Might himself stood right beside him. He was sure the man would see at least a petal, if not an entire flower, but in the only stroke of good luck Izuku had all day, Recovery Girl shooed the man away to prepare for surgery before anything serious came up.
Unfortunately, he was unable to hide the truth from her.
“How long have you had your hanahaki, young man?” Izuku held the fully-formed yet miniature sunflower in his hand. He had stopped bothering to save them long ago, the box under his bed already filled.
“Years, ma’am,” he said weakly. She hummed at that.
“The friendship or familial kind, then,” she said as a matter of fact. “Romantic hanahaki would have killed you long ago. Still, this seems to be pretty severe. I won’t ask who it is, but I would be remiss to not at least strongly urge you to confess. Chronic hanahaki can take a toll on the body in other ways.” Izuku frowned at the flower as she stared at him. “I’m sure you have your reasons,” she said, more quietly this time as she joined him in observing the flower, “but I have a feeling it’s not something you need to worry about.”
Before Izuku could respond in any way, she prepared him for surgery where he blessedly couldn’t cough after his sedation.
When Izuku woke up, the coughing slowed when he saw All Might waiting at his bedside. But he could feel the familiar tickle in his throat every time he thought about how much he must have disappointed his mentor with his inability to announce himself to the world as the festival, with his inability to control One for All. So, he continued to cough after leaving the infirmary until All Might made a startling confession.
“I was quirkless, too, you know.”
Izuku’s breath hitched for a completely different reason. He spun around to stare at the man who beamed before him. Tears started to prick at Izuku’s eyes. By that point, Izuku had all but forgotten what his father had even looked like, what he had been like. And with All Might’s confession, with his insistence that Izuku was, indeed, still his choice to be his successor, Izuku dared to let himself believe that his mentor could be something more in a way he never had before.
It kept his lungs clear until the final exams.
Izuku was determined to take this exam very seriously, but it seemed All Might was, too. And Izuku knew it was an act, he knew it. Yet something about All Might’s assumed villainy was so different from the man he had come to know and love, it took Izuku off guard. He had powered through the fight, but as soon as he dropped an unconscious Kacchan to the grass and heard the medical vehicle in the distance, Izuku started to hack once again.
It didn’t let up, only getting worse during the training camp, only getting worse on the way to Kamino Ward, only getting worse as Izuku watched All Might fight against All for One.
What if I never get to confess? Izuku thought for the first time. All of his reasons for not confessing before suddenly seemed so ridiculous to him. He feared the rejection, believed wholeheartedly that All Might couldn’t possibly return his feelings, feared the sheer awkwardness of it all, and feared his broken heart. All that fear disappeared at the biggest fear of all.
What if I lose him?
All Might lived, and Izuku cried and cried. He coughed up one of the largest sunflowers he had to date and held it preciously, taking note to keep it even though he had many more. This, after all, was the flower that changed his mind. This was the moment he knew he couldn’t let this go on.
It took a full day after that. Izuku couldn’t reach All Might, and even if he could, they had to take Kacchan to the police, and Izuku had to go home to his mom. So all he could do was wait. Cough and wait. And with each passing hour, Izuku became less sure of himself. But he stared at that larger sunflower beside him and knew what had to be done.
When he finally called, Izuku sprinted to their beach to meet All Might.
They ran towards each other, tears of relief filling Izuku’s eyes when he was greeted with something unexpected.
All Might’s fist.
“You have some bad influences,” All Might said to him, and everything Izuku had been holding in became too much. Unable to stop himself, Izuku started coughing more than he ever had before, certainly more than he ever had in front of All Might himself. Hunched over in the sand with his body racking, Izuku vaguely heard All Might call out his name, but he didn’t notice how he kneeled beside him until they were both staring at the sunflowers on the ground before them.
“Young Midoriya…”
Izuku held one in his hand. He wanted to say it right then. They’re for you, the words formed in his mind. I’ve wanted you to be a father to me forever. They’re for you.
But they both simply stared, a silence hanging between them.
“How long has this been going on?” All Might asked him.
“Years,” Izuku croaked. He managed to look up at All Might, whose face had twisted into some unrecognizable expression. It seemed so pained, so uncertain.
“Why haven’t you confessed?”
“I…” Izuku didn’t know, and tears sprang to his eyes over how sad All Might had sounded when he asked that question. “I thought I could handle it,” he finally said. “I wanted to be able to handle it, to smile through it.”
All Might started to cough again himself. Izuku pulled out a handkerchief, one he kept with him at all times now, wanting to be worthy of his mentor’s attention. But Izuku was surprised to find that it wasn’t blood in his mentor’s hand, but a flower.
“All Might?”
Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, All Might gave Izuku a small smile as he held his own flower between them. A small white gardenia, Izuku recognized the petals from their ten months of training.
“It’s okay, young Midoriya,” his mentor croaked. “You aren’t the only one who thought you could handle it.”
All Might set the flower in his hand gently on the ground, then took the sunflower from Izuku’s hand and set it on the sand beside it, holding it quite delicately. Then, before Izuku could register what was happening, All Might reached forward and pulled him into a hug.
“I’ve… grown to see you as my own,” All Might said quietly into Izuku’s ear. “I’ve loved you as a father would love a son for a long time, ever since we started training. But I thought you only loved me as your hero, not me as I am now. That’s why I didn’t tell you. After that fight, though, I knew I couldn’t keep it from you anymore.” All Might sighed, holding Izuku’s head with his one good arm. “And maybe those flowers of yours are something else, but if they—”
“They’re for you, All Might,” Izuku said, holding him as tightly as he could. “I’ve wanted you to be my dad for as long as I can remember. I coughed up my first one when I was nine. They’re for you.”
Each of them took a deep breath at the same time, the deepest breaths either of them had taken in over a year. Then, they started to laugh. Who laughed first, they couldn’t say. But they held each other tighter as they laughed and cried in relief that the other was okay and they had confessed. They did it, and the other felt the same.
“What did I tell you about cooling it with the waterworks?” All Might sniffed.
And all Izuku could do was laugh and cry some more as they held each other tighter. And when the night summer wind threatened to take the flowers away, they each picked up one, only this time, they picked up the other’s flower as an agreement.
“From now on,” All Might said as they stepped away from the beach, hand to Izuku’s head, “no more holding it in. There are many things to be strong about, but this,” he said, holding up Izuku’s sunflower, “I hope you’ll tell me things from now on, just as… as you would a parent,” he said. Izuku leaned his head against All Might’s side, buzzing from the contact.
“I will.”
A week later, Izuku helped All Might unpack his things into his new UA apartment. As he placed some books upon the shelf, something fell out of one: a familiar gardenia, pressed between the pages.
Izuku picked it up, holding it in his fingers with great care as All Might stepped closer to him.
“I’ve been looking for that one,” he admitted with a small grin. “I wanted to keep it somewhere for safekeeping, perhaps on display.”
“You want to display how stupid we were?” All Might laughed.
“I, do, my boy,” he said, taking the flower in one hand and brushing Izuku’s hair with the other. “To remember how similar we are. Like father, like son.”
So, Izuku brought over one of his pressed sunflowers and they placed both of them in a display. All Might kept it in his apartment in a quiet spot, away from visitors but as a reminder to him, to both of them. Izuku couldn’t help but smile every time he saw it. They were fools, yes. But there were worse things, Izuku decided, than caring so deeply for someone it hurts to breathe.