Chapter Text
All Might... Toshinori blinked at Principal Nezu's face on the screen. The question was odd. Nezu was seldom so direct asking about Toshinori's personal life (mostly because he had none to speak of). Nezu calling him Toshi was odder. He'd grown so accustomed to Nezu calling him All Might ever since he took (well... begged for) the teaching job. The timing, an oddity triple whammy. They'd just finished discussing the identity of the traitor with Tsukauchi, who had just hung up and reduced the crowd of three to the solitude of two.
Unable to settle on which front of confusion to clear up first, Toshinori's train of thought defaulted to answering without really thinking. "Uh, no, Principal Nezu, sir. I'm not."
"That's a shame." Toshinori thought that'd be the end of it. Nezu tilted his head and threw All Might for a fourth loop. "Would you like to spend it with me?"
Toshinori floundered for words to say while his mouth opened and shut like a beached fish. He shook his head, recentered, and settled on, "When I ask this, I'm not saying 'no,' to be clear, but: what brought this on?"
Nezu asked, "Do you want me to be painfully honest or politely appeasing?" but the way he shrugged said you got me.
Up went an eyebrow as Toshinori joked, "Is politely honest possible?"
"As long as you don't ask me to be painfully appeasing!" Nezu's windchime of a laugh left his lips through a slight smile. Toshi's ragged laughter joined it. But both Nezu's laugh and smile were... strained. Also a little strange. "All Might... Toshi," he corrected, voice suddenly solemn, sullen, sorrowful. "Do you so easily forget I was there that day, when we both thought you'd faced All for One for the final time? The way the winds are blowing..." His ears flattened. His voice trailed off. His gaze shifted from Toshi's face on his screen to... anywhere else. "It's a shame that you have no plans for Christmas this year." In through the snout. Out through the mouth. Eyes closed, then opened, eye contact back along with a smile of both crushing sadness and blinding kindness. "It'd be a travesty, tragedy, and injustice if you were to actually spend this Christmas alone."
Because it may be your last.
Neither of them said it. But just because something goes unsaid doesn't mean it goes unheard.
Toshinori's gaze fell, his turn to struggle to make eye contact upon him. A volatile cocktail of emotions squirmed in his heart, and in his head. Bitter despair. Sweet gratitude. The sourness of inevitability and the heat of flattery. He shook his head again, not to find his center, but in disbelief, a ragged laugh rasping through a growing grin. "You already know what my answer's going to be, don't you?"
"Christmas dinner is warm and ready," Nezu cheerily confirmed, smile still rather sad but verve in his voice returning, "and your share is just decadent enough to make you feel like you're indulging without making your stomach-bereft self too sick. Even have all the fixings for a daiquiri just how you like it! Virginity optional, depending on how daring you feel."
"Really know how to spoil a guy and twist his arm while you're at it," Toshinori chuckled as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Wouldn't be much of a hero if I let all your hard work get cold, so... I'll be right over."
"Then it's a date!" The smile on Nezu's face brightened, his ears perked up, his tail swayed behind his head happily... wait- "See you shortly!"
Nezu hung up. The screen went dark. Yet the look on Nezu's face lingered in All Might's eyes. Had the inside of Nezu's ears... turned red at the end there? Was Nezu just messing with him, the way the rat so loved doing to humans given half the chance?
Was it a date?