Chapter Text
The trouble started at Friday, ten in the morning, which was, frankly, earlier than usual.
Ochaco was at the front desk sorting intake forms when the doors opened and four guys walked in together, already loud, already grinning at each other like they were at a theme park instead of a reproductive clinic. One of them was actively laughing at something on his phone. Another had his cap on backwards and kept nudging the guy next to him with his elbow. The last one in line looked like he genuinely did not want to be here and had lost some kind of bet.
Ochaco looked at them. Then she looked down at her forms. Then she took a quiet breath through her nose.
"Good morning," she said, with the smile she reserved for difficult situations. "Welcome to One For Life. If I could get each of you to fill out an intake form."
"Do we all get the same room?" a black haired one asked, already snickering.
"No," Ochaco said. "You do not."
Himiko materialized beside her like she had always been there, clipboard in hand, blonde hair pinned neatly back, smile very wide and very fixed. "We'll get everyone sorted out individually," she said sweetly. "One at a time. Please follow clinic protocol. Thank you gentlemen."
The electric blond guy with a backwards cap, opened his mouth.
"One at a time," Himiko repeated, still smiling.
He closed his mouth.
-----
It only got worse from there.
By noon, Himiko was standing in the hallway outside Room C with her arms crossed and her head tilted at an angle that meant she was about thirty seconds from being genuinely unpleasant about something. Two of the donors, one with the black hair and the electric blond were in front of her, one of them with his phone raised, recording the other one shuffling toward the collection room door with an exaggerated walk while his friend wheezed with laughter.
"That," Himiko said, pointing at the phone, "is a recording device."
"It's just for us, we're not posting it" the black haired tried to reason.
"You are in a medical facility." Her voice stayed sweet. Her eyes did not. "There are patients here. Staff here. People who did not consent to being in your video. So." She held her hand out, palm up, smile never moving. "Delete it. Right now. In front of me."
The guy with the phone looked at his friend. The electric blond had stopped laughing.
Tsuyu appeared at the far end of the hallway, took one look at the scene, and quietly turned around to go do something else. She had excellent instincts for when Himiko had a situation handled.
The video got deleted.
Ochaco, watching from the corner, let out a breath she had been holding for about four minutes.
-----
The afternoon dragged. There were regular donors in after the group finally cleared out, and those went fine, normal, the usual quiet rhythm of the clinic doing what it was supposed to do. Tsuyu handled the afternoon intake with her characteristic steadiness, answering every question in the same measured tone whether it was completely routine or mildly alarming. Nothing rattled Tsuyu. Ochaco had always admired that about her.
By six the waiting room was empty. By seven the last of the paperwork was filed. Tsuyu came by the front desk with her bag over her shoulder and her coat already on, which meant she had timed her exit with her usual precision.
"Good work today, Ochaco" she said, in her low flat voice, looking at both of them.
"You too, Tsu, have a good rest," Ochaco said warmly.
Himiko waved. "Go home and rest. See you next week."
Tsuyu nodded once, the same way she always did, and left.
She and Himiko drifted toward the back of the clinic together, the way they usually did at the end of a long day: slowly, a little tiredly, talking about nothing much.
"My feet," Himiko announced, as they pushed through the door to the storage lab.
"I know, those rowdy bunch at the morning sucked my energy." Ochaco agreed.
"You fucking said it! Ahhh, my entire feet. Both of them."
"Same, Himi. I wanna go home so bad."
------
The storage lab was kept at a steady low temperature and smelled faintly of cold air and sterile plastic. The lighting was bright and even, the kind that showed everything clearly and made everyone look a little washed out. Along one wall ran the cryogenic storage units, locked and labeled, each container tagged with a donor ID and date. The logbook system was meticulous: every sample in and out recorded by hand and cross-checked against the digital file.
Izuku was in the middle of it, standing at the main counter with the inventory sheet in one hand and a storage rack in the other, working through the day's collection with quiet focus. She had her big round glasses on, and her hair was coming loose from its tie on one side. She hadn't noticed.
She moved carefully. Every tube lifted, checked against its label, cross-referenced with the sheet. Date. Donor ID. Volume notation. Seal integrity. She set each one into the rack with the same deliberate steadiness, no rushing, even after a long day.
"Izuku-chan," Ochaco said from the doorway.
Izuku looked up, glasses slightly askew. "Almost done with this batch."
Ochaco frowned, "You said that an hour ago."
Izuku smiled sheepishly at her, "I meant it an hour ago too."
Himiko leaned against the doorframe and looked at the logbook open on the counter, at the remaining rack, at Izuku's general state of slightly frazzled concentration. "You're doing the whole inventory tonight, greenie?"
"It has to match the end-of-week count." Izuku turned back to the rack. "I'd rather do it now than come in early tomorrow."
Ochaco pressed her lips together. She had opinions about Izuku's overtime. She had been having opinions about it for months. "Your hours this week are already—"
"Almost done," Izuku said.
Ochaco looked at Himiko. Himiko looked back at her with an expression that said: you know how she is.
Ochaco knew how she was. She released a defeated sigh.
"Fine," Ochaco said, straightening up. "But log out properly when you leave, don't just slip out without clocking it. And don't stay past nine." She pointed. Not aggressively. Firmly. "Your overtime is becoming a thing, Izuku.”
Izuku smiled without looking up. "I clock out on time."
"Yeah, you clock out on time on record but I know you were still staying for hours after.” Ochaco gave her a cold glare.
Izuku scratch her cheeks softly, "That is clocking out on time."
Ochaco made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite exasperation and was entirely both. "Nine o'clock. I mean it."
"Mhm."
Himiko pushed off the doorframe. "She's going to stay until ten."
"I know," Ochaco sighed.
"Nine," Ochaco said again, louder, already walking away.
"Goodnight Ochaco-chan, Himiko-chan!" Izuku called after her, cheerfully.
The door swung shut. The lab went quiet again, just the low hum of the storage units and the soft scratch of Izuku's pen on the inventory sheet.
She worked through the silence without minding it. She was used to quiet. She had always been comfortable in her own company, more out of necessity than personality, but by now it was both. She liked having the lab to herself at the end of the day. Liked the order of it, every sample accounted for, every number matching, everything exactly where it was supposed to be.
Tube after tube. Label check. Seal check. Rack position logged.
She was almost through the last row when her phone buzzed on the counter.
The sound startled her badly enough that her hand jerked; she cursed “Oh shit!” and her grip tightened hard around the tube she was holding, knuckles going white. She stood there for a second, heart knocking against her ribs, holding the tube very still and staring at it until she was sure she had it, sure it was fine, sure nothing had happened.
She set it down. Let out a long breath through her nose.
Then she picked up the phone.
Shimura-san was on the screen. She answered.
"Izu-chan." Her landlady's voice was warm and slightly crackly the way it always was over the phone. "I wanted to call and thank you again for the advance payment. You really didn't have to."
Izuku's heartbeat settled. She leaned one hip against the counter, still holding the inventory sheet. "Shimura-san, please. You've been taking care of me. It's nothing."
"It is not nothing," the old woman said, in the firm gentle way she had. "You are my best tenant. My favorite, though don't tell the Haradas on the second floor."
Izuku smiled. It was small and a little tired and genuine. "I won't."
"I made too much simmered daikon tonight. And some rice. Come by on your way upstairs, yes? I left it by the door."
Something in Izuku's chest went soft and quiet. "Yes. Thank you. Really."
She hung up and stood there for a moment in the cold bright lab, holding her phone. Shimura-san had been her mother's age, give or take. She’s very grateful how her landlady was very kind and thoughtful of her.
She checked the time. 9:04 PM.
She finished the last four tubes in the rack, logged them, closed the inventory sheet. She went to the locker room and changed out of her scrubs and into her regular clothes: jeans, a soft green hoodie she had owned for so long the cuffs were slightly frayed. She washed her hands at the sink, scrubbing properly the way she always did, the full twenty seconds, dried them well.
She went back into the lab to grab her bag.
She stopped.
She looked at the rack.
She crossed the room, and checked every seal one more time. She knew she had checked them. She remembered checking them. It was just that her brain did not always believe her memory, so she checked again. Third tube from the left in the second row: the cap was not fully seated. She could see the slight gap. She pressed it down firmly with her thumb until she felt it click, then checked the one on either side of it just to be sure.
She exhaled and picked up her bag. "Okay," she said, to nobody then she turned the lab light off and went home.
-----
Shimura-san's door was open a crack when Izuku came up the stairs, a warm slice of light and the smell of dashi broth spilling out into the hallway. A tupperware container sat on the little table by the door, labeled in the old woman's neat handwriting. Izuku took it and knocked gently.
"Got it, Shimura-san. Thank you."
"Eat it warm," came the voice from inside, slightly muffled. "Don't leave it spoilt."
"I won't." she answered back.
She climbed the last flight of stairs to her floor. Her apartment was the one her mother had signed the lease on, the same door, the same key, the same particular click it made when the lock turned. She pushed it open and reached for the light switch by habit.
The apartment looked back at her the same way it always did. Small. Familiar. Quiet.
Her mother's old curtains were still on the window. She had never replaced them. She told herself she would get around to it, and then she never did, and now it had been three years and she had just quietly decided she wouldn't.
She set the tupperware on the counter. Set her bag down. Stood in the kitchen for a moment doing nothing.
Three years. She was twenty-four years old and she had been living alone for three years, after her mother passed from sickness. It was devastating but she was getting by. She had a good job and a kind landlady and a routine that held her together. She was completely fine.
She opened the tupperware and ate the daikon cold because she was too tired to heat it up despite telling Shimura-san she wouldn't do that.
After her quick meal, she sat on her bed and opened her laptop. Loneliness creeping in.
It had been a long day. It had been a long week. She's tired and the apartment was very quiet and she hadn't been close to anyone in longer than she wanted to think about.
She had tried dating, a little: a guy from her graduating class who had been sweet and boring, someone Ochaco had set her up with once who talked about himself for two hours straight, a third attempt that had gotten as far as some kissing and his hands on her waist before she had felt so awkward about the whole thing that she'd made an excuse and gone home.
She was mature enough and yet she had never gotten further than that. She was not particularly embarrassed about it, mostly she just didn't think about it. There was nothing to think about. It was what it was.
She opened an incognito window.
She knew the website. She visited it occasionally, when the quiet got to be a specific kind of loud and she needed to do something about it without having to involve another person or feel strange about herself afterward. It was practical. It was efficient.
She settled back against the pillows, laptop balanced on her thighs, the glow of the screen the only light left in the room.
She watched for a while. The man in the video was kissing the woman’s neck, licking his way down. She watched the man’s hands expertly roaming on the woman’s body. His hand found its way to her clit. Slowly, rubbing circles around and Izuku heard how the woman was getting aroused and slowly basked on her sounds of pleasure.
Izuku let herself get there slowly, the stiffness of the long day gradually bleeding out of her shoulders, her neck, the tight line of her jaw. When she felt warm enough, loose enough, she set the laptop aside on the mattress and lay back properly.
She slipped her hand under her sleep shirt first. Palmed her breast, squeezed gently, then rolled her nipple between her fingers until she felt the pull of it travel straight down her spine. A quiet breath left her. She did it again, a little harder this time, pinching until her back shifted against the mattress.
Her other hand slid down.
She touched herself over the fabric first, just pressure, just to feel how ready she already was, and the answer was: very, which was a little embarrassing and also completely irrelevant because there was no one here to be embarrassed in front of. She pushed the fabric aside and touched herself properly: slow circles over her clit, light at first then firmer, finding the rhythm her body already knew.
Her hips moved on their own. “Ohhhhh.” Small, lazy rolls, chasing her own hand.
She worked herself up gradually, in no hurry, alternating between rubbing slow and rubbing with real intention until she was breathing through her mouth and the hand at her chest had given up multitasking and just gripped the sheet. When she finally pushed two fingers inside herself she made a sound she would never make anywhere else: low and unguarded and completely honest. “Mmmmnnn fuck~”
She curled them. Kept her thumb on her clit. Found the pace.
It didn't take long after that. It built and crested and broke over her quietly, her thighs pressing together around her hand, a soft broken sound muffled into the pillow, her whole body pulling tight for one suspended second before going completely slack.
She lay still for a moment. Ceiling. Heartbeat. The hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen.
She pulled her hand free. Wiped it absently on the inside of her shirt. Closed the laptop without looking at it and clicked the lamp off.
She didn't shower. She was warm and wrung out and entirely alone and it simply did not occur to her to care.
She was asleep before the sheets finished settling around her.
She spent her whole weekend sleeping in and had to mentally slap herself to shower by Sunday evening.
-----
The morning started badly three weeks later and only got more creative from there.
Izuku had her hair pinned up, her lanyard straight, her face set into the neutral professional expression she had perfected over two years at the front desk. From the outside she looked fine. From the inside she felt like something left out in the heat too long: slightly off, slightly wrong, the kind of unwell that wasn't dramatic enough to justify going home but was persistent enough to make everything harder than it needed to be.
She had been planning to file a sick leave request this morning. Then she had seen the roster. Tsuyu was out, her first personal leave in four months, and good thing there’s a new hire, Tohru, who was bright and capable and had the energy of someone who had slept twelve hours and eaten a full breakfast.
Izuku drank hot water at her desk because the smell of coffee had been doing something unpleasant to her stomach since last week and she hadn't been able to eat much of anything for a few days.
Tohru was beside her, sorting forms with both hands and somehow talking at the same time, her yellow-green hair bright even under the clinic's lighting. She was newer than Izuku, louder than Izuku, and deeply enthusiastic about everything in a way that Izuku found either charming or exhausting depending on the day. Today was leaning exhausting, but that wasn't Tohru's fault.
"The nine o'clock batch is all checked in," Tohru said, sliding a stack of forms across. "And someone in the waiting room keeps asking if he can get a different magazine selection."
"Tell him this is a medical facility," Izuku said, without looking up.
"I did."
"Tell him again." Izuku replied firmly, hands typing information to the data base.
Tohru nodded seriously and went.
Izuku pressed two fingers briefly to her temple. Breathed. Picked up the next form.
----
The man came to the front desk at half past ten.
He was somewhere in his mid-forties, heavyset, wearing a jacket that had absorbed approximately every cigarette he had smoked in the past decade. He brought the smell with him like weather. Izuku noticed it before she noticed him, her nostrils registering something acrid and stale, and her stomach registered it immediately after.
She kept her face even. "Good morning. How can I help you?"
"I need to talk to someone about my payment," he said. Not a question. His voice had the particular tone of someone who had already decided they were being wronged.
Izuku asked for a name and pulled up his file. Reviewed it. Read it twice to make sure she was reading it correctly.
She was.
"Mr. Takeda," she said carefully, "according to the records, your donated sample was reviewed by our lab and unfortunately did not meet the clinic's viability criteria. The sample was rejected."
He stared at her. "What does that mean?"
"It means the sperm was assessed as not suitable for use in our program."
His face went through several things in quick succession. "So you're not paying me."
"The compensation outlined in the donor agreement is contingent on the sample meeting our quality standards. In this case—"
"That's not right," he said, louder. The man at the chair behind him glanced over. "I came in, I did my part, that's not my problem."
Izuku kept her voice level. "You signed the donor agreement at intake. Section four outlines that the facility retains full authority over sample assessment and that compensation is not guaranteed if the sample does not pass quality screening."
"I didn't read all of that." The man said indignantly, nose flaring.
"It was the document you signed," Izuku said, very evenly.
He leaned forward on the counter. The smell hit her like a wall: cigarettes, and beneath that something else, onion maybe, garlic, something that went straight to the back of her throat and twisted. Her stomach lurched. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and held very still.
"I want to speak to someone else," he said. Close now. Too close. His breath reached her and it was worse than his jacket, somehow, it was so much worse.
Izuku's stomach made a decision without consulting her.
She turned. She walked. She made it to the staff bathroom in about nine seconds and got to the sink right as everything came up, which would have been more alarming if there had been anything in her stomach to come up. Instead it was just her body going through the motions of retching on essentially nothing: water, bile, air. Not dignified. Not subtle.
She gripped the edge of the sink with both hands and breathed through it.
------
Ochaco appeared in the doorway maybe thirty seconds later, slightly out of breath like she had walked fast the moment she saw Izuku leave the desk. She didn't say anything right away. She just crossed the room and gathered Izuku's hair back from her face, holding it clear with one hand and putting the other lightly on her back.
Izuku retched again. Nothing. Her eyes were watering.
"It's okay," Ochaco said quietly. "Take your time."
"I'm fine," Izuku said, which sounded significantly less convincing coming from over a sink.
She rolled her eyes, "Sure."
"The man's breath just—"
The brunette grimaced, "Oh damn it must have been goddamn awful if it set you like this. Himiko's handling it," Ochaco said. "Don't worry about it."
Izuku straightened slowly when she was sure the worst had passed. She ran cold water and rinsed her mouth, pressed her wet hands against the back of her neck for a moment. Her reflection in the mirror above the sink looked a little grey. She had looked a little grey for about three weeks now, if she was being honest.
Ochaco was watching her with an expression she was trying to keep neutral and not quite managing. "Izuku."
"Hmmm."
Ochaco looked at her from head to toe and sighed, "This is the third time this week you've gone pale on shift."
Izuku lowered her head, "I know."
"And you haven't been eating."
"I've been eating."
Ochaco raised her eyebrows.
"Hot water counts," Izuku said.
"It does not count." Ochaco crossed her arms. "Go see Dr. Shuzenji."
"I don't need to see—"
"Go see her or I will walk you there myself. I will physically take you. I am smaller than you but I am very determined and you know this."
Izuku looked at her. Ochaco looked back. Neither of them blinked for a moment.
"Fine," Izuku said.
------
The fertility clinic was connected to their wing by a short corridor, close enough that Ochaco had apparently already called ahead by the time Izuku pushed through the adjoining door, because Setsuna at the front desk looked up and said, "Izuku, hey, go right in, she's expecting you," without Izuku having to explain anything.
Kinoko waved from behind the desk with both hands. "Feel better!"
Izuku managed a small wave back.
Dr. Chiyo Shuzenji looked up when Izuku came in and her expression immediately went to the particular kind of warm-but-stern that Izuku associated with being gently scolded.
"Midoriya," she said. "Uraraka sounded quite stressed on the phone. You passed out again?"
"I didn't pass out," Izuku said, sitting down in the chair across from her desk. "I just felt sick. Someone's breath was very ughh."
"Mhm." Chiyo folded her hands on the desk. "Tell me what's been going on."
Izuku listed it out. She was a nurse; she knew how to give a clinical summary. Dizziness, on and off, mostly in the mornings. No appetite, going on maybe two weeks now. Fatigue heavier than usual. Smell sensitivity, which she acknowledged sounded strange, but certain things had been setting her off that never bothered her before.
"And today," she finished, "I retched at the front desk because a man's breath was too strong."
Chiyo listened to all of this with her chin resting lightly on her folded hands. Then she stood up.
She checked Izuku's pulse. Looked at her eyes, the color of her inner eyelids, pressed two fingers gently along the sides of her lower abdomen in a way that Izuku recognized as checking for tenderness, potential infection.
"Any pain when I press here?"
"No."
"Here?"
"No."
Chiyo straightened up. "I want a urine sample," she said simply, and handed her the cup.
-----
Izuku sat back in the chair afterward and waited, which gave her nothing to do but feel vaguely unwell and stare at the anatomy poster on the wall. It was a uterus diagram. She had looked at it probably forty times across various visits. She knew it well.
The nurse came back with the results after about twelve minutes. Handed them to Chiyo without expression, which told Izuku nothing.
Chiyo looked at the paper.
She looked at Izuku.
She looked at the paper again.
Then she set it down on the desk, folded her hands, and said, with great composure: "Well. Now we know why you've been feeling under the weather."
Izuku's brows pulled together slightly. "What is it? Is it a UTI? I thought it might be, the symptoms kind of—"
"You're pregnant," Chiyo said. "About two and a half weeks along by my estimate."
The room was very quiet.
Izuku stared at her.
"...Sorry," she said. "Come again."
Chiyo turned the result sheet around on the desk so Izuku could see it. The words were clear. Unambiguous. Not the kind of thing you squinted at and wondered about.
Izuku looked at it for a long time.
"That's not," she started. Then stopped. Then started again. "I don't understand. How." She sat back slightly. Her brain was doing something strange, cycling through logic and coming up empty. "I'm not. I mean. Unless it's." She pressed her fingers to her mouth briefly. "Is this mmm. I'm not a Christian but is-is divine intervention a real thing because I was not aware that I qualified for? Am I the next Messiah’s mother?"
Dr. Shuzenji stared at her for a moment, "Midoriya," Chiyo said, gently.
"I don't have a partner. I’m neither even seeing anyone nor have the experience—” Izuku stopped. Looked at her hands. Then back up. "I'm a virgin, Dr. Shuzenji. I have genuinely never. Not once. So, I don't understand how the test is saying."
The doctor was quiet for a moment. She took her glasses off the chain and held them without putting them on, which was what she did when she was thinking carefully about how to say something.
"You know," she said slowly, "there has always been a joke in this clinic. Among the staff, for many years." A pause. "The joke was: always wash your hands properly around the samples. Or you'll end up pregnant." She said it lightly, but she was watching Izuku's face with steady attention. "It was always meant as a joke. Obviously. Because the probability of something like that actually occurring is." She paused. "Extraordinarily small."
Izuku had gone very still.
"Midoriya," Chiyo said, quietly. "Did something happen recently? At work. Something small. Maybe something you didn't think twice about at the time."
Izuku traced back her activities. The storage lab. The long shift. Coming home and not showering, not washing her hands again, just falling into bed after her self-pleasure—
The color drained out of Izuku's face so completely that Chiyo actually leaned forward slightly in her chair.
"Oh no," Izuku whispered.
"There she is," Chiyo said softly.
"Oh no," Izuku said again, louder, staring at nothing. "Oh no oh no oh"
"Breathe," Chiyo said.
Izuku breathed. It was not a very good breath but it was a breath.
In her 24 years, she had never been with anyone. She had never even gotten close, really.
And apparently that had not mattered at all.
She's impossibly pregnant.
TBC.