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Shouta swims towards awareness, too hot and bogged down by blankets. There is a tiny body tucked along the curve of his back, pointed feet like spades against his vertebrae. He snuffles, poking his head out of the quilt, and is immediately assaulted by light.
“Paaaapaa,” Eri’s speaking in a semi-whisper. Her hands, cold and slightly sticky—Shouta knows better by now than to try and figure out why they’re sticky—press against the back of his neck. “Are you awake?”
Shouta considers the merits of laying back down and passing right back out. Instead, he turns and smiles up at Eri. She’s come into her own in the year since coming to UA to live with him and Hizashi. Right now, she’s clearly trying very hard to be patient for him to wake up. He reaches out of the blanket to grab her, settling her on his lap as he yawns and leans against the pillows.
“How long have you been in here?” Shouta asks plainly.
Eri begins to count on her fingers. “Um, four—no, five.”
He blinks down at her. It’s pretty early still—despite his vampiric reaction to the light, it’s just past dawn. He wonders if it was Eri that woke him, then has an immediate answer in the form of Hizashi’s curses as he drops a pan. “Four or five what?” Shouta murmurs distractedly. He really should go help Hizashi with whatever he’s attempting to make for breakfast. Hizashi is the light of his life, an amazing pro-hero, and the worst cook Shouta has ever met.
Eri is squirming on his lap so he lets her crawl back onto the bed. “You’re too hot,” she whines, then bites her lip as if worried he’s going to admonish her.
Shouta runs a comforting hand over her hair instead. He’s too warm? He presses a hand to her forehead, as if to check for fever, but her brow is perfectly cool. Too cool, actually.
Maybe he is too hot. He feels salt-cured almost. There’s a slow, throbbing ache in all his joints, and, while he can hear Hizashi in the kitchen, he can’t smell what is most certainly half-burnt toast and eggs.
He doesn’t share any of this with Eri. Instead, he takes the quilt off the bed and, half-bundled, sets off toward the rest of the apartment. “I’m sure the living room is cooler,” he says, as Eri follows.
Hizashi is bent over a skillet that is smoking an alarming amount when Shouta pads barefoot into the kitchen. He looks up at Shouta, making an obvious attempt to cover the skillet—and whatever burnt-on food is stuck there forever—behind his back. “You’re awake!”
Shouta grunts in reply. Eri rushes past him to settle on the couch. The living room is inundated with her toys and books. He notes, a little proud, that she picks up the next book in a series they bought her last week. Confident that she’s out of ear-shot and sufficiently distracted, Shouta sinks into one of the kitchen chairs and rests his forehead on the cool wood.
He feels a hand sink into his hair to pet his scalp.
“Did you come down with the playground plague?” Hizashi asks, a note of amusement in the words.
Shouta groans. He can’t really breathe like this, but the table is cold enough against his feverish skin that he doesn’t care. “Who knew kids were such germ machines?”
“Both of us,” Hizashi sighs. “We’re teachers.”
Hizashi has a point. Shouta slowly raises himself out of his bubble of misery. His eyes are tacky when he blinks them, and he can feel a tickle in the back of his throat he is sure will be a full-blown burn by the end of the day. Hizashi got the same thing around a week ago after Eri came back from UA’s daycare with the sniffles. There was something going around. Shouta was just happy it hadn’t reached the hero students yet.
It’s not the end of the world, but Shouta is resigning himself to a couple of days of soup and couch time while he tries to cough his lungs out of his chest. “Do you think you can get Eri to daycare today?”
Hizashi’s still petting him, and Shouta is trying his hardest not to melt back into his quilt. “Of course. Mind if I stop and get her a treat?”
Shouta knows that a treat means breakfast at the campus cafe. He eyes the abandoned pan on the stove, which is still smoking faintly. For once, he’s glad he can’t breathe out of his nose. “Sure. Just make sure she actually gets something to eat that isn’t pure sugar.” Shouta doesn’t want a phone call later that day that Eri has a stomach ache.
Hizashi pouts playfully. “Eraser, you’re so mean to me!”
Shouta stares at his husband, psychically beaming the time he let Eri convince him that caramel corn and candy apples were a suitable dinner. Hizashi’s smile doesn’t dim in the slightest. Shouta sniffs, his telepathic attacks never work on Hizashi. Maybe he doesn’t have the brain cells to receive them.
“Can I get hot chocolate?” Eri’s voice is very small, but hopeful.
Shouta isn’t sure when she got off the couch, but Hizashi doesn’t seem surprised to see her by the table, so Shouta chalks it up to the sickness taking out his carefully honed instincts.
Hizashi confirms that Eri can get hot chocolate if she’s very good and gets her coat on while he takes Papa to the couch. Shouta hides his soft smile at that. Eri is always good. It’s one of the things that quietly breaks Shouta’s heart. That, for all she’s bloomed in their care, she hasn’t quite kicked the instinct that she’s supposed to be seen and not heard, to be on her best behavior at all times.
Eri doesn’t have to be told twice before she’s off to grab her favorite black mary-janes and her unicorn backpack. Hizashi hooks his arms under Shouta’s armpits. “Do you want me to check on you on my lunch break?”
Shouta lets himself be half-carried to the couch, too busy keeping a death grip on his quilt to mind being cared for so obviously. “I’ll be okay,” he says once Hizashi’s helped him settle in. There’s a glass of water on the side table, the remote on the arm rest, and—courtesy of a shy Eri—a plushie of Hizashi as Present Mic in his lap. “I’m just going to camp out and sleep.”
Hizashi nods. “Of course! That doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.”
Shouta bites back his instinct to tell Hizashi not to bother. Shouta knows it’s as much for Hizashi’s benefit as his own. “Can you bring me wonton soup?”
Hizashi’s answering smile is blinding. “Of course,” he says. Eri has returned, dressed and packed for school. Hizashi easily lifts her into his arms. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll see you later.”
Shouta kisses Eri on her cheek, then Hizashi on the mouth. “Be good at school,” he instructs them both and Eri giggles. Hizashi gives him one last look, as if asking Shouta if he’s really okay.
Shouta looks around at the apartment. Hizashi’s hero costume is abandoned on a pile in the entryway, and there are more toys out of Eri’s playbox than in. Shouta himself feels liquified, too warm and achy in that flu-like way. But all of this, the sickness and the messy household and Eri and Hizashi in front of him, remind him of what he has. Who he has.
Teenage Shouta never could have imagined this. So Shouta gives Hizashi a reassuring nod, content with the knowledge that it’s true. Shouta is more okay than he could fathom, even full of snot and wishing someone would unplug his awareness of his throbbing knees.
Shouta wouldn’t trade it for the world. Then he sneezes and, well, maybe he’d trade one thing.