10. Sleepover

Izuku isn't entirely sure what to think of his current situation. He still feels groggy from both sleep and lack of sleep. His body protests all the way to Aizawa-sensei's apartment, the fire at his ankle traveling up his leg the longer he jostles it with each hop. It's all he can do to keep the pained whimpers from making their way out of his mouth, so the whole walk there is silent all along.

He's pleasantly surprised to see a cat greeting them happily when his teacher opens the door to his private apartment. Izuku knew that teachers were allowed pets. Ironically, he's seen Inui-sensei walk his dog in early mornings a few times during his runs.

The cat that came to greet them at the door is a black and white one with golden eyes. It rubs itself all over Aizawa-sensei's legs as soon as they pass through the door, but the man chases it away when it goes to do the same to Izuku.

He wants to pet it.

Instead, his teacher has him lean against the wall as he quickly removes his combat boots, then helps him inside the apartment.

It's a bit bigger than he imagined. To be honest, he expected the teachers' dorm to have a similar layout to the students' buildings. While each student had their own bedrooms with common spaces, the teachers had whole apartments to themselves.

Aizawa-sensei leads him to the living room couch, before leaving him alone to go gather sheets and pillows. Izuku settles on the edge, absolutely uncomfortable with being in his teacher's space, and tries to not let his eyes roam about the room curiously while he waits. He doesn't want to pry in the man's private life, it would be extremely rude.

He hears Aizawa-sensei rustling about somewhere in the hall. There's the sound of a door opening, which Izuku guesses is a closet, then the rustling of cloth as, he presumes, the underground hero rummages through the storage to find spare blankets and pillows. But then he hears him talk, voice low and gravely and someone else replies.

Izuku feels his heart skip a beat, because there's someone else in here and he doesn't know what to think of it. His ankle throbs sharply when he instinctively plants both feet firmly on the ground, ready to bolt if necessary. He can't make out what they're saying through the sound of his own beating heart, but he hears hushed voices, one whispering and the other unmistakably Aizawa-sensei's tone of voice.

Izuku holds his breath as he hears shuffling of feet approaching the living room once they've stopped talking. He had hoped for the appearing figure to be his teacher, but he finds himself staring at a dishevelled man clad in pyjamas. The man has long blond hair tied up in a lose bun at the top of his head and once Izuku forces himself to look at his eyes he notices one is blue and the other is green.

The stranger offers him a small smile and a wave, which breaks Izuku out of his frozen state. He feels his face turn red when he realises he's been staring for what's probably an inappropriate amount of time and bows excessively from his seated position in apology. To which the stranger merely shakes his head with a chuckle.

"It's all good, kiddo," the blond assures, but the man's voice has him reeling.

"Mic-sensei?" His own voice comes out breathy in surprise. Now that he recognized the Voice Hero, he can see the resemblances in the blonde's traits. The hair should have been a dead give away, he muses, but in his defense he's only seen the man in his hero persona with the gelled up hairdo.

The eyes are the most strikingly familiar, not just because of the peculiar colors, but also in the gentleness they hold. They're slightly slanted, and now that he can look at them without the hero's usual glasses, Izuku notices how long his lashes are, though they're not obviously apparent because of their light color. Which actually rules out his hypothesis of Present Mic dying his hair that color to fit his public character.

Mic-sensei scratches his cheek with a self-conscious grin, and Izuku is reminded all of a sudden that he not only just invaded his homeroom teacher's space, but also Present Mic's apparently, and the guilt readily eats away at him.

All for a stupid sprained ankle.

He blames himself, absently, for even reacting at the slight pain when Aizawa woke him up. Any other time and he would have sucked him up, but he was so very tired and taken aback at the underground hero waking him up that he failed to realise the sting in his ankle.

Now he not only prevented Aizawa-sensei from going to sleep after his night patrol, he also had to wake up his English teacher too.

"Hizashi, could you get some ice?" Aizawa-sensei asks before he emerges from the hall with arms full of blankets. He tosses a pillow to Izuku, who barely reacts in time to catch it, before making his way to the couch.

Izuku feels awkward as he sits on the coffee table temporarily while none other than Eraserhead prepares his makeshift bed in his living room. Aizawa-sensei is just finishing up when Mic-sensei shuffles back with a gel ice pack and a glass of water. The blond hands him a pair of pills when he accepts the water, for the pain he says. He helps him situate himself on the makeshift bed comfortably, and delicately places the icepack on his ankle once he's settled down.

Aizawa-sensei orders him to go to sleep while Mic-sensei sends him a tiny wave with the instruction to come find them if he needs anything, then they head down the hall, closing the lights behind them.