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All Might was in trouble.
Being a hero meant always being in some kind of trouble, of course, but this was less a “deathray” situation and more a “being a decent human being and honoring delicate social mores” kind of thing. One of them had a snappy resolution and applause. The other ... he exhaled tensely, hanging back and toeing the line that would put him into the fourth hallway of the second floor of Aizawa Shouta's apartment complex, just a few feet away from his door. He leaned his bony shoulder against the wall and absently patted at the box of tea under his arm, like he was concerned it wanted to wander off as much as he did.
No, this situation was not likely to end with so much as a smile, and he had to admit he was still getting used to that shift in work satisfaction.
Aizawa wasn't the friendliest person, to be sure. It was clear from the beginning that he and the 1-A homeroom teacher weren't going to be fast friends, but that was before USJ. Something was needed to cross that gap, so there he was with a peace offering (a compact set of designer teas, which he assumed was something you got someone you knew absolutely nothing about) and a few messages from the staff to use as excuses to open up a conversation. To ... be friendly.
Nonetheless, he still hovered uneasily, absolutely certain that his fellow instructor had no wish to see him or speak to him about anything or anyone. Whenever he thought about the chilly homeroom instructor and any capacity for relating they might have, it all went back to the first time they'd actually interacted. All Might's jaw clenched at the thought.
They stood in the hallway leading to the main presentation room, during one of his very first days on campus as All Might, and he was already caught in some sort of awkward keep-away game with the grim-looking specter of 1-A. Without saying a word, his fellow hero and instructor had somehow managed to block his way forward with miserable efficacy for about five minutes as he reached for the door, until, beaming, All Might physically picked the smaller hero up and placed him aside with a glib politeness, and even a salute.
Aizawa had likely been given an unofficial assignment he was less than thrilled about, but All Might still thought there was a chance he was just particularly bad at reading social signals. He strutted forward, not a care in the world, practicing his next little speech. Then he heard Aizawa sigh behind him and, the next second, a snap of fabric. He was cocooned, hoisted several inches off the floor by the other hero's reins.
He sputtered, yanked, muscled form creaking against the rigid restraints as his arms were locked more tightly to his bulging chest. Aizawa's long-suffering expression only made the moment more perplexing.
Despite himself, All Might flexed hard out of habit, grimace absorbing the twinge of pain from his side.
“Wh-what are you up to my friend,” he boomed, “you know the rules, sensei – no quirks in the halls!”
“I'm supposed to be keeping you here while the others finish up, but you're very bad at reading social cues,” the other hero muttered behind his scarf, digging out his phone and leaning against the nearest wall.
All Might gulped – so he decided to resort to full body restraints? Then he leveled with himself. He had physically relocated the other man, albeit affably, so he had set the tone for this little hostage situation. He cleared his throat, trying not to wiggle in the wraps.
“Ah, I see,” he forced a laugh. Tried to salute, realized he couldn't. Frowned. “I apologize for my enthusiasm. Message received!”
He waited expectantly, but the only sounds were little blips coming from Aizawa's phone. He was playing some sort of game. That cat collecting game? All Might flushed. He had that on his phone, too.
Focus.
“I-Isn't the kind of thing Mizz Midnight gets up to in her spare time, haha?”
“That's Midnight-sensei to you,” Aizawa replied dully. Blip. Blip-blip.
All Might was physically sweating by this point. Although the restraints weren't tight, the psychological pressure was immense, and he was already stressed out by the prospect of this first week on campus. How to dress, what to say ... when to hide? He had to be let go, and soon, or else this afternoon wouldn't go to plan at all. He bit the inside of his cheek.
“A-aizawa-sensei, if I didn't know any better ... I'd say you were enjoying this, you cad!”
“You don't know anything about my tastes.”
Aizawa looked over at him, expression unreadable under his dark curls. Registering what he'd just said, All Might's own face froze, paling.
“I'm just a lowly underground hero. Not nearly famous enough to give dirty interviews in the back of adult magazines.”
All Might's jaw practically dropped to the floor, but the sudden gout of steam from his body blocked everything else from view. A second later, not-so-All Might cracked his ass on the tile, little more than skin and bones stranded in a pile of clothing and slack bandages.
“That's better,” Aizawa said, almost to himself, hardly sparing the scarecrow man a glance. Toshinori's brain locked up, looping the phrase as he coughed it into his baggy sleeve.
“D-dirty interviews ...?!”
“Just the one. Pretty clear your PR team tightened up your course after that. Just the family-friendly All Might we all know and love ... Ah, good morning Principal.”
All Might nearly fell onto his back, hiding a mortified mouthful of blood by turning into his gaping shirt collar and coughing. Their fuzzy mentor was standing in the doorway with his arms out, beady eyes flashing excitedly.
“Aizawa! All Might! So fortunate to find you two here! We have a surprise prepared for you, All Might,” he squeaked, then put a paw to his finely groomed whiskers. “But my gracious, my good man, what are you doing on the floor?”
“I dropped my reins,” Aizawa offered in way of explanation, something so thin he shouldn't have spoken at all.
Dying of the heat in his face, All Might struggled to his feet, hating, sharply, the way his clothes caught and bunched and even snagged the heel of his shoe, making him trip on the way up. Once upright, he let out a shaking breath and nervously straightened his oversized jacket. The principal clapped his paws together, beaming at the other faculty who had accompanied him into the hallway, who looked considerably less convinced of the situation as stated.
“That's our All Might! Always helping out his friends!”
The hero opened his mouth to respond, but Aizawa was already halfway down the hallway, his part of the deal fulfilled.
All Might sighed.
That mess was his first real interaction with Aizawa, beyond the slip-up after the kid's physical training day. He had been considerably more cautious around the other instructor since then, treading lightly and erring on the side of silence when it came to him and the children.
He was unreadable ... though well-read, apparently. All Might sighed again, face reddening.
Aizawa's opinion of him had to be lower than dirt, which was a stupid thing to worry about, but there he was fretting nonetheless. Honestly, he had completely blocked that interview from his mind. A rookie mistake, confusing any press with good press. It wasn't anything shocking – he wouldn't have agreed to it otherwise, and he blushed through half the questions anyway – just a titillating little exchange that implied that he was a real human who had sex sometimes.
Having Gran Torino read it aloud and physically beat him over the head with the magazine issue, however, made him never want to touch anyone again.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. All Might grimaced, shaking his head. Where had the man even found such an antique?! He did the math and reddened even further. About the time he blustered his way through that interview, the other man would have been in high school. At UA. Prime time to acquire adult magazines.
He rubbed his neck miserably, feeling his age.
They'd managed to maneuver around each other since then, but now, it was all more serious. So much more serious than he'd ever thought teaching could be, and the reality chilled his bent, tired body, just recently freed from all manner of slings and bandages. Now, the faculty were all picking up the pieces from USJ and, on a more personal front, Toshinori was tangling with the fact that despite being in the hospital room next door, he couldn't bring himself to visit his fellow instructor after what had happened.
It wasn't so much that Aizawa needed the comfort – he was out like a light, couldn't see visitors through the layers of bandages even if he weren't in a medically induced coma – but All Might's own cowardice shamed him grossly, because he felt responsible for the courageous man's broken body. He was responsible.
If not him, then who?
All of which, combined with the concern from the rest of the staff, found the renowned and thoroughly shrunken hero at the door to Aizawa's apartment with a humbly wrapped gift and a sense of dread, knowing this was a bad idea but seeing no way around it. Especially not if they were to be teaching together for the foreseeable future.
Taking a deep breath, All Might raised his hand to knock and hesitated, taking one more look down at his thin, bowed body with a distant sense of disgust. His own purple knuckles had healed, but it still smarted, in a different way, to rap on the cheap fiberboard with his bony fist and wait.
The door swung open after a long minute and the first thing he saw was the scar, undercutting Aizawa's right eye, making him seem even more gaunt than usual. He bowed stiltedly, saying something polite and routine about checking up on him, hands already clammy. Making sure to keep it short and simple without an ounce of flair. Offered the box.
Aizawa regarded him carefully from the other side of the door, then stepped back and motioned him through without a word.
All Might tried not to map out the darkened apartment out of habit or nerves, but followed the other man to his simple kitchen and took a seat at his tiny table when motioned. It was oddly high and modern, like a cafe table. The rest of the kitchen was clean, counters bare, but stank strongly of coffee. The other man took the box of tea with a nod and placed a dark blue mug in front of All Might's steepled hands, along with a few battered packets of sugar scavenged from different restaurant chains.
“If you like it the American way,” he said, giving Toshinori something else to be excruciatingly self-conscious about.
They were quiet for a while, accompanied by just the clink of cups and hum of boiling water. It was surreal but not uncomfortable. Possibly the first time he'd been alone with the other instructor. He tried not to swing his feet at the high table and refrain from all manner of small talk.
After a bit, Aizawa came and dropped a teabag in his mug, covering it with boiling water. Stirring his tea gingerly, a distant peach aroma wafting up, All Might grasped half-heartedly at all of the convenient messages from the staff, which had rattled out of his head like bingo balls after seeing Aizawa standing upright and moving, albeit slowly.
He was looking fine enough. The bandages were off, at least, and even before then he'd managed to push his way through running commentary on the tournament. His signature reins were dumped in a pile by the door, probably where he stowed them after school. He looked fine.
But the thing that cut him, as the younger man padded around his apartment in a short-sleeved t-shirt and sweatpants and socks, were the cracks in his arms. They were fine shiny lines like fissures in the earth, ringing his forearms and branching malevolently up over his elbows. One elbow in particular.
Sometimes, when the damage was widespread and required surgery – a particularly messy break bristling with bone shrapnel – even Recovery Girl's powers left marks like that. All Might's hands lifted, fingers poised as if to trace them, although he was across the room. Then he stowed them under the table, in his lap.
Just say it. Say it now.
“I'm sorry,” he said, deep in his throat.
Aizawa harrumphed, absorbed in fixing his own mug at the counter.
“Ah. So that's why.” He stirred slowly, spoon clinking against the mug. He huffed, blowing stray hair out of his face. “Forget it. Unless you made that thing and sent it for us, I don't want an apology.”
Us. All Might clenched his fist, wound in his side twinging sharply. Was he included in that number? Though he couldn't put it into words, Aizawa always seemed to draw a line and place him on the other side of it when it came to the school. The class.
“It's my fault you were even put in that situation. You and the children. If I hadn't wasted all my energy dealing with those ... purse snatchers ...” He trailed off, throat tight with everything he'd struggled with for weeks and weeks.
“Yeah. It was incredibly stupid.”
All Might dropped his head into his hand, exhausted. Aizawa's talent for brutal honesty wasn't surprising anymore, but a slap still stung even if you knew it was coming. He deserved it, even leaned into it. Pathetic.
But the memory of Aizawa crumpled underneath that glistening knot of dark blue muscle, bulging eyeballs rolling till they pinned on him... He shuddered. The shattered goggles, the widening pool of blood. Long ago were the days when his victories came free.
“You can't do that anymore, you know,” Aizawa said, leaning against the opposite counter and sipping his coffee with a leg propped up. He shouldn't be drinking that so late in the evening, All Might wanted to say, but sleep was clearly a complicated issue for Aizawa, who never looked anything less than haggard on a good day.
“I have to do what needs to be done.” All Might glared down at sugar packets scattered across the table, as if they were to blame. “Otherwise, who am I?”
Aizawa scoffed derisively into his mug.
“You sound like you never got past first year. Self-effacing platitudes, after all this time?”
His frown deepened. Self-effacing platitudes stung comfortably, in this body, and his lifetime of duty chafed at his withered frame more the weaker he became. He had barely managed to get there in time, barely managed to save them, with three hundred strikes. Frustration and spite stiffened his hands around the warm mug, which he distantly realized he wanted to smash to pieces.
Fifteen minutes. That's all he was now.
Not even a particularly good lay.
“You wouldn't understand,” he grit out.
“I wouldn't? Your unerring, unthinking duty to the public was what almost got us killed,” Aizawa snapped. “You're part of a team and you're working at a serious disadvantage. You have to pick your battles now.”
“No, I don't,” he countered. Then, “I can't.”
“You can and you will.”
The anger boiled up, old and new. He hated the way it fouled his breath, clogged his chest, almost as much as he hated ...
“Maybe that's the kind of hero you were –”
All Might heard the spite in his own voice, and he dug his fingers into the mug. The ceramic creaked, like the clench of his teeth. He tasted blood in the back of his throat and bore down with his shaking fingers. Then something zipped in his periphery and his wrist jolted to the side with an audible twang, subjected to a vice so severe his fingers were forced apart.
He grunted and released the mug, which teetered then clattered to the side, spilling hot peach tea over the table. He stumbled off of the seat, nerves singed. On the other end of the white rein encircling his wrist, Aizawa stared at him coldly, hands twisted deftly into the fabric that trailed, almost comically, all the way back to the side of the apartment door.
“That's my favorite mug.”
Time froze, captured in bullet-proof reins meant for villains. All Might expected something more, but nothing came. Then, that same anger obligingly filled the void.
“Enough of your cheap tricks,” he snarled, body abruptly prickling with heat, and yanked his arm away.
Instead, it just left him open: the restraint jerked tight and another captured his free wrist with a snapping noise, coarse material zinging against the pathetic bird-bone joint. Pulled tight. Held.
In that unexpected moment, with his fellow instructor's blank gaze on him and his wrists bound, All Might went from frustration to rage in a solar flare of shame. All of the pent up anger and futility – the ironically weightless burden of his withering form, the scrape of the concrete against his knees as he had waited for someone to physically carry his bloodied body from the ruins of USJ – chose there and then to loose itself against the bandages.
One For All flared in his cavernous chest, bitter with rage and the fear of restraints and powerlessness and his own torturously slow sunset. His muscles swelled grotesquely like dying coals splitting and shredding from one last burst of heat, blood welling in his throat from the strain of the transformation. Once effortless, now it was agony, and he only bore down harder into the pain, power snapping across his neck and back.
It had little to do with the man in front of him, but rather what he was saying. What All Might – Toshinori – already knew. As usual, his body simply moved on its own, this time lashing out in grief at what it just couldn't do anymore.
Between the jets of off-white steam, Aizawa's sunken eyes glittered red, curls trailing weightlessly above his shoulders.
Toshinori finally glimpsed him through his own insane haze, recognized his face. His look. A feeling of sheer panic seized the hero a moment before every scant bit of golden power flooded down and out of his body like he'd been punched in the gut – through the gut, ice water chasing any warmth out of his veins. His knees hit the floor. He gasped.
Too soon. Too much.
All Might coughed, dry-heaved. Tears stung at his eyes, one more pain crowding his broken body.
Not enough. Never enough.
Agony stabbed through the fallen hero's thrice-sutured gut. He hacked, blood peppering the laminate tile in front of him once, twice. His chest heaved, a diffuse wheeze coming from somewhere inside his remaining lung.
“If I didn't know any better,” Aizawa's voice was soft and dangerous above his bowed head, “I'd say you were trying to provoke me, All Might.”
The hero Eraser Head towered in front of him in nothing but sweatpants and a black t-shirt, legs braced wide, reins secured around his own torso and fanning from his bloodless fists. His biceps and forearms bulged, crackled scars catching the dim light of the kitchen. All Might stared, vision dim and red at the edges. He hadn't even felt the new reins encase his arms and shoulders, mummifying him.
“I wasn't thrilled when I heard you were joining the school,” Aizawa said icily after a long silence, glaring down at the bent hero. “Your lack of credentials aside, I voiced some concerns to the principal about the transition between your old role and the job of a teacher, and any childish behavior that could result if mismanaged.”
“How dare you,” All Might gasped through the blood in his mouth. He struggled to fill his chest enough to speak. “You call this childish, as you're using your god-given quirk in such a way, on a fellow hero?”
“Your days as a pro hero are over, Toshinori Yagi.”
His name – his full, given name, and the boy who watched his master die – was anti-matter, collapsing the last of him. Though impossible, he shrank further, bowing his head. It was a secret. Who had told him his secret?
“And if you didn't get the memo, you no longer belong to yourself.”
“I never did,” Toshinori hissed, shoulders shaking. The reins tightened – a warning jerk. Toshinori spat blood on the floor with all the disdain he could muster, then collapsed into wet, booming coughs.
“But you have office hours now. You can't come and go as you please with a swish of your silly cape anymore. Not with the children,” Aizawa snapped. “We are fighting to reform a system that rewards glamorous suicide – they have symbols of self-destruction a-plenty, and I don't intend to lose this class to rash decisions and short plays.”
The young hero's face burned with anger, disdain in the curl of his thin lip.
“What they need is stability, guidance, personal responsibility. And if I feel that you are not providing that, I will have you removed.”
With that, Aizawa blinked. In the silence and the void that followed, his hair drifted down like black smoke to cloak his shoulders. He breathed out.
“Now, do you understand how this is bigger than you? No matter your size.”
The last malevolent streaks of cold left Toshinori's bent body, but little else changed. He knelt without moving, shell-shocked, grief and anger battling in the burned-out hollow of One for All and that moment. The violence of Aizawa's care for his students rocked him, shamed him. Was he even good enough to be here?
A rustle of fabric in front of him. Toshinori's arms were lowered to the floor, led by the slackening reins, until Aizawa was kneeling in front of him.
The quiet was deafening, counted out only by Toshinori's frantic heart beat. Warm blood dribbled down his chin, spattering down onto the blood already smearing the floor. His breath, low and fluttering, tore at his throat. Wherever he went these days, he left stains. In a way, wasn't he too just a remnant?
“I'm tired,” Aizawa sighed at last, head in his hand. He brushed his hair out of his face, rubbing his eyes with a grimace. “Aren't you tired, Toshinori? We both look like hell, and I need sleep.”
“Peace never rests.”
It was a bare whisper. Automatic. Pathetic.
Lord, but he hated himself, like this. Even Aizawa sighed impatiently.
“Except that you aren't peace, you idiot. You're flesh and blood.”
Toshinori's oversized clothes were in disarray, half pulled apart by the botched transformation. His shirt had ridden up on his emaciated torso, and Toshinori didn't even have reason to notice until Aizawa moved, hand outstretched, into his field of vision. The man's pale fingers, painted in pink stripes from the torque of the reins, drifted down and left, toward his scar, and Toshinori physically shuddered, inhaling as if struck then bending double in a frantic fit of coughing.
Aizawa's hand froze. It hovered above the knotted mound of scar tissue, edges barely visible underneath the cheap scratch of the dress shirt. Then it dropped away. Like a bandage had been peeled off, Toshinori's wiry torso sagged imperceptibly, trembling with the effort of breathing clearly.
One piece of respect, a crystal-clear boundary.
Aizawa's dull gaze seemed to take stock and calculate the line drawn. The ragged shake of the other hero's body, the shattered mug and smears of tea and blood. The awful silence.
“You need rest,” he said again, gaze drifting far away. His voice was heavy, almost bored.
Unceremoniously, the reins retracted with a slithering sound, leaving Toshinori's limbs tingling viciously. His joints swung free, and he barely managed to catch his full weight. He sat motionless for a moment, staring at the puddle of blood in front of him as Aizawa stood abruptly, making a bitter tsk-ing sound.
“So rest. I don't care how you get it. Just get it, and come to class prepared tomorrow. I don't have time for this.”
Toshinori slowly rose to his feet, numb. Hurting. He couldn't lift his head, and when he did, all he saw was the box of designer tea on the counter and the entire nightmare became more and more real. How could he face his co-instructor the next day, the next week? The students?
“I'm ... so sorry,” he said softly, body shuddering with the intensity of his regret and his unfolding mess.
“You're a pain in my ass,” Aizawa muttered, turning and bending to right the table that had fallen at one point or another. Then he gathered towels from a drawer, movements leaving red tracers in Toshinori's blurry eyes. He piled them on top of the sopping ground, then paused, towel clenched tightly in his fist. “Do you need a written invitation?”
To leave. He should leave. Toshinori shook his head.
He should have left when he finished apologizing, and not taken out his problems on this man. He automatically tucked his shirt in and picked up his coat, surveying the blood spatter on his dress shirt and slacks without really seeing. He would have to wear his coat home, to avoid startling a passerby.
He clenched his eyes shut. So much for your apology. Yagi, you idiot, what have you done?
“Please don't hold this against me,” was all he could say at the door, hardly having the guts to say anything. Aizawa didn't look up from mopping up the tea. The bottoms of his socks were soaked and red tinged.
“Don't give me reason to.”
The mug was broken, little shards of navy blue scattered in an arc. Must have happened when the table flipped. The hero's eyes avoided the sticky red stain right beside it. His favorite mug.
Toshinori stepped out and shut the door, wiping the last of the blood from his cheek, and limped with crushing, careful slowness down the stairs and out into the street.
Maybe these days, instead of being in trouble, he was just trouble.