Chapter Text
Yuuei Academy had always been loud.
Between explosive quirks, explosive personalities, and the occasional actual explosion courtesy of Bakugou Katsuki, the campus was rarely quiet enough for anyone to forget where they were. Even so, some students stood out among the chaos not for noise, but for the absence of it.
Midoriya Izuku was one of those students.
He had always been anxious, but since the villain attacks began, the tension in him had grown tight enough that even the teachers noticed. Aizawa Shouta had reported it during one staff meeting: "Midoriya's running himself into the ground. He's close to burning out." Snipe agreed. Cementoss nodded. Even All Might, in his sunken skeletal form, looked guilty and worried.
But no one felt the strain of it quite like Yamada Hizashi.
As Present Mic, he was used to noise, movement, momentum his own life was a constant stream of energy. But being a teacher meant learning to read the quiet too, and Midoriya's quiet had always been loud with nerves.
So when he stepped into his English class that afternoon, papers in hand and voice ready to trill through another enthusiastic greeting, he immediately noticed something different.
Midoriya wasn't vibrating.
He wasn't scribbling notes at a frantic pace.
He wasn't darting glances between classmates.
He wasn't even whispering muttered analysis into the margins of his notebook.
He was... still.
And that was strange enough that Mic's voice automatically dipped to a gentler volume well, gentler for him.
He watched from behind his tinted glasses as Midoriya's eyelids fluttered, heavy in a way no teenage hero-in-training should look at two in the afternoon. His arms folded on his desk, head pillowed on them, curls falling messily across his face. He looked small like that, curled in on himself, shoulders slack instead of braced for impact.
Mic blinked.
Then blinked again.
The kid was asleep.
Deeply asleep.
He almost laughed out loud not mockingly, but with something warm and relieved uncoiling in his chest. For the first time in weeks, Midoriya Izuku looked at peace.
He hesitated.
He really did.
He could wake him, tell him to push through class like everyone else. He could remind him that heroes needed to be alert. He could ask if he was okay, if he needed the nurse, if he had been sleeping at all.
But instead...
Hizashi Yamada looked around the classroom, at the quiet students flipping through vocab sheets, and he made a decision.
"Alright, kiddos!" he announced, but softened his voice so as not to disturb the sleeping boy. "Today is a review day! Work quietly I'll be walking around if you need help!"
Then he moved past Midoriya's desk with the exaggerated nonchalance of a man pretending he hadn't just chosen to let a student nap through his entire class.
Every so often he glanced over.
Midoriya remained dead to the world.
By the time the bell rang, Mic knew there was no way the kid was waking up on his own. Not when he'd slept through his voice, which was basically a biological impossibility.
The next class's teacher, Midnight, peeked inside the door, her eyes landing on the sleeping green-haired student.
"He's still out?" she whispered.
Mic shrugged helplessly but fondly. "The kiddo's exhausted, Nemuri. Poor thing didn't even twitch when I said homework."
That was... concerning.
Nemuri arched a brow. "You sure he's okay?"
Mic nodded, though the uncertainty flickered inside him. "I'll watch him through your period. You go on and take the class."
And so Midoriya slept through his second class too, curled up tighter as if burrowing into safety. Two hours passed. Two hours in which Izuku didn't mutter, didn't panic, didn't tremble just breathed, slow and deep. Yamada Hizashi stayed in the room the whole time, shuffling through grading with one ear tuned toward the soft rhythm of Midoriya's breaths.
Finally, with the next bell ringing and the halls filling with new commotion, Mic stood and approached the desk.
"Hey, Midoriya?" he tried gently.
No response.
He crouched beside the desk. "Midoriya, sunshine, you've been asleep for two periods. Time to join the land of the living."
Midoriya shifted. His curls flopped.
A small groan escaped him quiet, vulnerable, genuinely sleepy.
Hizashi tried to hide the smile tugging at his lips. Kid's adorable like this, holy
"C'mon, kiddo," he said, lightly touching Midoriya's shoulder. "Wakey wakey."
Green eyes cracked open blearily, unfocused and soft. He blinked up at Mic with zero comprehension.
"...sensei?" Midoriya mumbled, voice slurred with exhaustion.
"There he is," Mic chuckled. "Welcome back. I was startin' to think you fused with the desk."
Midoriya pushed himself up, rubbing his eyes with both fists, curls sticking in every direction. His usual panic didn't rise right away he was too far gone in sleep-fog.
Mic should have stopped there. Should have let the kid gather himself, send him to lunch, let Aizawa handle the rest.
But tired kids don't guard their words.
And teachers who care too much sometimes ask one question too many.
"Hey," Mic said softly, "you feeling okay? You've been really tense lately."
Midoriya froze mid-blink.
Mic instantly regretted the question.
The boy's half-asleep brain fumbled for an answer and failed spectacularly.
"I... I didn't sleep because the hallway alarms kept going off in my head well, not actual alarms, just, um, like remembering alarms because of the training exercise and then Kacchan almost fell and I thought everyone was gonna get hurt again and All Might looked really tired and I "
Mic blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Oh no.
That was not a normal tired-student ramble.
That was weeks of stress spilling out because the filter was gone.
Midoriya kept going, voice small and spilling over itself.
" and I know I shouldn't stay up that late thinking about what could go wrong but sometimes I can't stop and I didn't wanna bother anyone because everyone else has more important things and "
Mic lifted both hands.
"Okay, okay, breathe, kiddo. I didn't mean to interrogate you "
Midoriya blinked again, the meaning of his own words slowly dawning on him. Horror crept onto his face as the fog lifted.
He slapped both hands over his mouth.
Mic felt his heart crack a little.
The kid looked like he'd confessed to a crime.
Mic sighed, soft and aching, and rubbed the back of his neck. "Alright. I think we're gonna take a walk to the teachers' lounge, yeah? Get you some water. Then we'll... talk if you want to. No pressure."
Midoriya nodded weakly, still red to the tips of his ears.
Hizashi placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and guided him toward the door, feeling every ounce of the boy's trembling.
This was more than exhaustion.
More than nerves.
This was a kid who'd been carrying too much alone.
And Hizashi Yamada, loudest hero in Japan, swore silently that he was going to help him really help him before things got worse.
Because no student should ever be that tired.
That scared.
That alone.
And certainly not Midoriya Izuku.