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Aizawa's hands were shaking. Not violently, but it was noticeable. He was sitting at his desk in his bedroom, obsessively checking his phone to see what time it was. Only one minute had passed since he last checked it, and it was still five minutes before Yamada was supposed to arrive. He had been anticipating this day for a week, not knowing what it would entail. On Monday, Yamada approached him in homeroom and asked him if he wanted to 'go out with me this Sunday', of course Aizawa accepted in a heartbeat. He wasn't sure if this was going to be hanging out as friends, or if it was a date. Things had been a bit weird between them, lately, as Yamada had been a bit more... flirtatious? Aizawa wasn't sure if he was interpreting it correctly or not.
He hoped it was.
He was wearing jeans, a sweater, and a jacket, per Yamada's instruction; so he could assume they would be spending time outside. He had his gloves and hat stuffed inside of his jacket pockets, and his scarf hanging on the back of his door. He made sure he had his wallet and house key, too, not knowing what this day would consist of.
A knock on the door broke Aizawa out of his concentration on the time on his phone, "Shouta!" he heard Yamada shout from outside. "It's me, your best friend in the whole world!" he shouted again, dragging out his words dramatically. He practically jumped up from his desk, shaking his hands a a bit trying to calm down, grabbed his scarf from the door, and headed out to meet Yamada. He opened the front door and was greeted with a smiling Yamada.
Clad in jeans and an obnoxiously bright red sweatshirt, topped off with his sunglasses, he was dressed exactly how Aizawa expected him to dress for a date. Not that this was a date. Aizawa hoped it was.
"Hi." Aizawa stepped out of his house, locking the door behind him.
"Wow, Shouta, I didn't think you owned any clothes outside of uniforms and sweatpants." he teased.
"Shut up." Aizawa mumbled, looking down.
"Hey!" Yamada exclaimed, "You look good." he started walking.
"Where are we going?" Aizawa asked curiously.
Yamada smiled, "It's a surprise!"
"Hizashi!" Aizawa pouted.
"You'll love it, come on!"
Aizawa loved listening to Yamada talk, and he talked a mile a minute. He loved the way he was always so adamant about the things he was interested in, and how he always made a point to make sure that Aizawa understood what he was explaining. Especially when it came to music. Music was Yamada's favorite thing, besides being loud, and he had apparently wanted to be a radio host since he was a little boy. Aizawa loved hearing him talk about the new songs he listened to after school, and the new bands whose albums he's downloaded since they last spoke. It was always a surprising amount, Aizawa never understood how he could listen to that much music, but it was endearing.
"Okay! Here we are!" Yamada declared as they arrived at what looked to be somebody's house.
"Um?" Aizawa asked, confused.
"Look at the sign, Shouta!" He took notice to the little picket sign in their yard, with a picture of a pumpkin painted on it, that read 'Pumpkin Patch'. "I used to come here every year when I was younger with my parents, but I wanted to take you with me this year!" he explained. "Follow me!"
Confused but excited, Aizawa followed Yamada without objection as they walked to the backyard of this house. There was a big barn, and lots of people walking around. It oddly made Aizawa feel less nervous, since they weren't trespassing after all. "Do you want to get some apple cider?" Yamada asked excitedly.
"Um, sure." he nodded.
Yamada walked him over to the inside of the barn, which was set up like a store. It had all kinds of things set up in the displays and on the shelves. "Oh, Shouta, let's look around here too!" Yamada said. Aizawa nodded and walked around with Yamada, listening to him talk about what he used to do when he was little. Aizawa was listening, but he stopped hearing after his eyes came face to face with a little box of what appeared to be candy. "Hm? Shouta?" Yamada asked when he realized Aizawa had stopped walking to stare at the display.
"What is this?" he asked, pointing to the box.
"I think it's strawberry cheesecake." Yamada said skeptically. "Want to get it? I'll buy it." he offered.
"Oh, I brought money-"
"No, no. I invited you out, let me pay for it!" he picked it up and kept walking, "Come on there's more stuff to look at over here!" so they did. They explored all of the store displays, and then eventually paid for the piece of cheesecake with two forks, and two cups of hot apple cider. "Oh, Shouta! Let's sit at this table." Yamada exclaimed and rushed over to a rickety picnic table on the corner of the patio.
"Any specific reason for this table?" Aizawa asked, sitting down across from Yamada on the wooden bench.
Yamada nodded, "Every year my family would sit at this table. My mom would always say that we would be lucky and that this was our special spot." he explained.
"So how come you wanted to bring me instead of going with your family?" Aizawa wondered. "It seems like the tradition is very important to you."
Yamada smiled brightly, "It's because I want to make it a tradition with you, of course!" Aizawa didn't know what to say, he was both surprised and touched that Yamada felt that way about him, close enough to skip out on family traditions to take him instead. "Shouta and Hizashi, partners forever!" he made fake fighting punches to imitate their hero work and Aizawa smiled.
Aizawa opened up the box of cake and handed Yamada a fork. "Thanks." he said quietly and took a bite.
"Of course!" Yamada was grinning from ear to ear. "So, I was thinking that when we're finished eating, we should pick out our pumpkins!"
"What for?" Aizawa asked dryly.
"To carve! For Halloween! I think it's an American tradition." Yamada explained.
Aizawa shrugged, "If that's what you wanna do." he nodded.
"Great!" Yamada shouted, "Also, we can do it at my house because my mom already has the kits and everything to carve. She's taking my brother and sister out tonight, though, so we'll be alone until dinner time."
"Okay." Aizawa nodded and drank more of his apple cider, that he had never had before, and was now regretting everything because it was so fucking good.
"She's making curry." he hinted with a smirk.
Aizawa's eyes shot up to Yamada's and he smiled big. Well, big for Aizawa that is. "Curry? She is? Really?"
Yamada laughed. "Yeah! I told her you were going to come over and she said she's been wanting to make it anyways." he smiled. "We all know it's your favorite."
"Your mom makes the best curry in the entire world." Aizawa said with a serious expression, Yamada laughed again. "I'm serious, 'Zashi, if I was stuck on a desert island and only got to bring one type of food with me to eat for the rest of my life it would be your mom's curry."
"You're such a dork, Shouta." Yamada looked down at the cake and poked it with his fork, smiling to himself. "But you pick out good cake, so I'll let it slide. Though, my favorite is-"
"Chocolate. With caramel on top." Aizawa cut him off, not looking at him while eating another bite of cake.
"Shouta! You do care!" Yamada exclaimed loudly.
Aizawa shrugged, "It's not hard to mention it, when you tell me every time we have cake. Which is a lot." he responded dryly.
After fighting over the last strawberry, and Aizawa triumphantly winning, they discarded their trash and Yamada let them over to the pumpkins. There were so many pumpkins. They started with the smallest size on little wooden racks and then got larger the farther down the little path you walked. Yamada showed Aizawa how to properly pick pumpkins, as he called, which really just entailed picking the one that looked the most like one you would see in a cartoon. Eventually they found their 'perfect pumpkins', as Yamada said, paid for them, and carried them back to Yamada's house.
It was a short walk but carrying the pumpkins made it seem a lot longer. Despite the hero training and work it was such an awkward shape that Aizawa's arms were sore by the time they got home. "Lemme just unlock the door." Yamada set his pumpkin down on the front step, sighing in relief, and jingled his key in the lock. "We can carve them at table in the backyard!" Yamada was clearly excited, and Aizawa was too. Though he had no idea what to carve in his pumpkin.
"Okay." Aizawa followed Yamada through his house, until they finally got to the backyard where he could set the weight down.
"I'm going to grab some newspaper and the carving kits." Yamada rushed back to the house in an excited bounce and Aizawa looked around his best friend's backyard. He had been here a lot, especially lately, but he always found something new to look at. Whether it was a weird rock he never noticed before, or how his apartment was a lot nicer than his without actually being nicer than his.
When Yamada came back Aizawa helped him spread the newspaper out on the table, so they wouldn't ruin it with pumpkin guts, and then Yamada handed him a few templates for things to carve on his pumpkin. "I think you would like one of these the best." he said.
"What are you gonna carve?" Aizawa asked, since Yamada didn't have any templates.
"It's a surprise!" he insisted and sat down, marking some things on his pumpkin with a marker.
Aizawa shuffled through the pages, and eventually he settled on a cat face. It was simple and cute. "What do I do now? I want to do this one." Aizawa held up the little paper in curiosity.
"Oh! Right. Here, first you tape it to the pumpkin." Yamada helped him hold it while Aizawa put tape on it. "Then, you take this little push pin, and stab it through on the black lines all the way around!" he said. "When you're finished doing that, then you take the paper off and there will be an outline of what you need to cut out in little holes. Then you use this little knife to cut it out!" he finished explaining and sat back down on the other side of the picnic table.
Aizawa made quick work of stabbing the pumpkin, making sure to do it deep enough to make a noticeable mark in the pumpkin. His pride was a little shot as Yamada had already moved onto the carving phase, but he still took his time. After all, Yamada spent so much money on the whole day, he wanted to make his pumpkin look good for him since it would likely be displayed on Yamada's front porch. Eventually he made it all the way around and peeled the paper off, discarding it to the side. He picked up the kitchen knife and carved an opening at the top.
"This is gross." he pointed out as he stuck his hand into the cold slimy pumpkin.
"But fun?" Yamada raised his brows at him.
Aizawa nodded, "Yeah. I suppose." he slapped a big handful of guts down on the table and continued to empty it. He had to use a spoon for some parts of it, because the guts were really stuck on there and he really wanted his pumpkin to be super clean. When he was finished he wiped his hands off on one of the spare pieces of newspaper Yamada had set aside, and then picked up one of those flimsy carving knives that come in kits for children.
"Oh boy, it's getting intense now!" Yamada exclaimed as he watched Aizawa make the first incision on the pumpkin face. Aizawa rolled his eyes and continued carving. It was a lot harder than he expected, to be honest, and it took a lot longer. He was halfway done when Yamada's mom and siblings came home, his mom forcing them to leave the pair alone, which was weird Aizawa thought.
He didn't mind, though, not having to entertain the little kids. He liked them, of course, but sometimes it was nice to just be with Yamada. "I'm almost done." Aizawa announced a little bit later, the smell of the curry coming through the kitchen window to the back yard.
"Speeding up now that dinner's almost done?" Yamada asked with a laugh.
"Maybe." Aizawa said quietly and continued carving.
In the end, one of the whiskers ended up being a little messed up, but Aizawa blamed the stupid little knife because it was so damn bendy. Overall, though, he thought it wasn't too terrible for his first time carving pumpkins. "Ready to do the BIG REVEAL?" Yamada shouted dramatically.
"Sure." Aizawa turned his pumpkin towards Yamada, who immediately smiled.
"Aw, Shouta, it looks just like you! You know, if you were a cat." he laughed.
"I messed up his whisker a little." Aizawa mumbled.
"It looks so cute, though!" Yamada insisted. "Now, close your eyes!" he instructed, "And prepare to be amazed!"
Aizawa closed his eyes.
"You can open them." Yamada's voice was a lot quieter now. When the world came back into view he focused on Yamada's pumpkin, which did not have the face of a super hero on it or any face at all, instead it had the sentence "I <3 You" carved on it. Aizawa's cheeks turned red and he nervously looked up at Yamada, who was also blushing. "I was hoping you would be my boyfriend?" he asked. "Of course, only if you want to, and you can still have curry even if you say no I just-"
"What do you love about me?" Aizawa asked, he felt like he was on cloud nine. His head was spinning and he didn't even know how to respond.
"What? Oh, man, that's easy." Yamada said and smiled at the ground. "I love the way your nose crinkles when you laugh, I love the way you pretend to be so grumpy all the time but you're really just a softie. I love how you have so much dedication to become a pro hero, and how you didn't let the gen-ed classes stop you at all." he continued explaining, his mouth moving a mile a minute, and with every word the escaped his lips Aizawa felt more and more closer to tears. "I love how you care about animals so much, I love how you especially love strawberry cake and tortoiseshell cats, I love how you look when you're asleep... I love everything about you, Shouta. I love you."
"I love you too, 'Zashi." Aizawa managed to croak out while overcoming the shock value.
"So you'll be my boyfriend, then?" Yamada's voice was excited, as the nervousness left him.
Aizawa nodded, "Yes, of course I will." he said quietly.
Yamada rushed to the other side of the picnic table and pulled Aizawa into a big bear hug, Aizawa hugged him back, taking note that Yamada's mother may have been watching the two through the doorway, crying a bit while taking pictures. When Yamada pulled away he whispered, "I would kiss you right now but I don't want my mom to watch. That's kind of embarrassing." he smiled and Aizawa was thankful, because he agreed.
"So she knew about your plan?" Aizawa asked.
Yamada nodded, "She was so confident that you would say yes that she wanted to make curry as a celebration." he explained.
"Well, I think it's time to celebrate." Aizawa smiled again.