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After the Sports Festival ended, Shouta's ears kept ringing for a week. This proved to be beneficial in a way, since it made it impossible for him to hear the sudden wave of people wanting to talk to him after his devastating victory over the Hero course.
Posers.
All his life, he'd been told he'd never amount to much. That his quirk was weak. His body too frail. No friends in school and no heroes with similar quirks to look up to. Shouta called bullshit really early in his life, and behind his perpetually tired face and dry eyes lay hidden a determination and thirst for success not even the giant robots the UA entrance exam threw at him would throw down.
But he was, above all, a person ruled by logic and common sense. There was a high chance of his quirk proving useless, and even with the harsh physiscal training he put himself into there was always the threat of him not getting into the Hero course, and so he'd also applied for the Gen Ed course as backup.
Smart decision, seeing how short of running around the testing grounds, he could do nothing at the time.
There was no training in the Gen Ed course, and so no chance for him to practice his quirk with his classmates or hero teachers. His insomnia made him grouchy and no one wanted to get close to him and his mile deep frown. He was stuck.
So he'd mix it up a bit, activating his quirk during his usual training to test how long he could go; how much did it strain him, how far he could run and leap and climb and roll with it, eyes red and drying fast, hair floating away from his face.
The first time he had an actual chance to use it properly proved his dedication was worth it.
He'd bulldozed through the first two events of the festival, erasing quirks left and right as he dashed through the crowd with the opposing teams flags, or watching the others run around in circles as they couldn't add two and two and guess where everything was hidden in the treasure hunt.
He had to admit he'd gotten severely disappointed in what the Hero course entailed if the ones that made it in were this useless without their quirks.
When he'd made it into the one-on-one battles, the only one in Gen Ed, people were starting to wonder who he was. His earlier assumptions about the other kids having grown too comfortable with their quirks were confirmed when, two seconds into each of his fights, they'd be face down on the ground after a well placed flip and tied up with the capture weapon he was still getting the hang on. They were completely lost without their powers after he simply erased them.
He would've been nicer, too, if it weren't for the pityful looks and cocky smirks they threw his way before the match started, thinking they had it easy against him. Idiots.
And then there was him.
The one who had reached him to the final round, the one that had the arena shaking and the announcer's mics reverberating in a cacophony of high pitched ringing.
The only one who greeted him with an excited smile and an almost proper defensive stance. The one who saw him as an actual challenge. A threat.
Yamada Hizashi, the guy with the most obnoxious quirk Shouta had ever seen and heard in his life.
As Shouta made his way to his new desk in the 1-A classroom, he was already making plans to eat that boy alive.
Most of his new classmates would scoff at him and frown as he walked by to the only vacant seat at the very back of the room. Shouta didn't blame them; he'd kicked most of their asses in the festival, it was logical they didn't like him. He didn't want anything to do with them either. There were a handful he had seen get eliminated during the first two events or during the battles that he hadn't fought against but they also showed nothing but hostility towards him, and it was a thing of fate that the only ones who were actually smiling at him—and he was pretty sure it was the first time anyone other than his mother did in his life—were sitting in the three desks surrounding his in the back corner.
Yamada being the most prominent one, with his blonde hair styled up in what somehow resembled a cockatoo but suited him well enough. He was in the seat right in front of him, grin wide and excitement visible from the way he bounced his legs under his desk. Next to him and diagonal to his desk was a black haired boy with a softer smile that turned into a friendly grin as he approached, his arrow shaped eyebrows drawing attention to his eyes. The last one was the one to be seated right next to Shouta, agirl who he'd honestly thought had the best chance of making it to the final round in the Sports Festival if not for Yamada's screaming sweeping her out of bounds before she could put him to sleep.
Shouta was terrible with names.
“Hi there!” Yamada greeted him loudly. “I'm Yamada Hizashi, I don't know if you remember me...?”
“Not really” Shouta said, you know, like a liar. “I'm not good with faces” Another blatant lie. Shouta had trained extensively in remembering faces and always paying attention to his surrounding for heroic purposes. Yamada's face in particular, with his blinding smile and entrancing green eyes was not easy to forget.
Or Shouta was just a massively gay disaster. Your pick.
Yamada's smile shrunk a bit but then came back full force. “Oh, that's fine! It was a busy day, I'm sure you were just too focused on the fight” He swiveled around in his chair as he followed Shouta when he sat down. “Anyway, if you need help catching up with classes you can always hit me up! I take really good notes and--”
“'Zashi, stop hogging him!” The girl next to him shouted, kicking her leg out to move Yamada's chair away, screeching as it did. “I'm Nemuri, but you can call me anytime” She winked at him, and Shouta could only blink in response. He didn't get enough sleep for this.
“Aizawa” He said simply, nodding at her as she barked a laugh at how coldly he ignored her flirty greeting.
“I like you Aizawa, it was high time we got another level headed guy around here” She grinned, glasses glinting as she tilted her head in interest at her new neighbour. “Tensei was getting lonely with all these idiots”
“Don't call them that” Arrow-brows—Tensei?-- huffed, but smiled amusedly at her. He didn't look to be as stuck up as she implied, just more serious with the right amount of mischief. “Iida Tensei, nice to meet you Aizawa. I really wanted to go against you in the festival but my engine jamming cost me my first fight”
Shouta remembered that. Iida had done really well the first two events, was one of the few who actually used his brains in the treasure hunt instead of just razing the terrain looking for the items, but he'd overheated his engines during capture the flag and they had stalled halfway through his battle against a girl from 1-B who turned her arms into whips and threw him so far he flew over the walls of the arena and into the surrounding forest. Shouta had the thought, looking at his well muscled body, that even if he erased this guy's quirk he would still be able to take him down in a quirkless throwdown.
He was glad he hadn't fought him.
The teacher decided they'd have enough chit-chat with the new kid and called for silence while she started writing that day's class details on the whiteboard. Shouta managed to split his attention half on the class and half on the back of Yamada's head, wondering if his hair just went up like that naturally or he had the silkiest gel in the world.
In the end he'd accepted Yamada's offer to take his notes, and was pleasantly surprised to find the pile of notebooks to be full of orderly written material, with little add-on notes with extra information he'd most likely looked up himself. Shouta felt guilty to have once guessed the boy was as chaotic as his quirk, and should've known better than anyone not to judge by appearances considering his own record of people thinking poorly of him.
Yamada had also offered to go over the classes with him in the library after class so he could catch up faster, and Shouta accepted halfway; yes to the company, no to the library.
They ended up in Shouta's favorite Cat Café, notebooks strewn all over the table as Yamada tried to gently push a Siamese away from his cheesecake while at least a dozen cats were perched on the back of Shouta's chair, watching him drink his double shot mocha latte with whipped cream.
His addiction to sugar was a secret he'd allow only Yamada to know. Future husbands needed to know that kind of thing, anyway.
“So, where do you wanna start? We have Heroics, Modern Hero Art History, Maths if you're having trouble with that too...” Yamada drifted off, opening and closing different notebooks as he spoke.
Shouta set his cup down, resting his head on his fist. “How about we start with numbers?” He grinned. “Yours, for example”
To Yamada's benefit, he was quick on the uptake. It didn't take him more than a couple seconds and blinks to let his words sink in and the blush rise up from his neck to the tip of his ears.
“Huh?” Brilliant response. Shouta liked this guy more with every second.
“I mean your grades” Shouta was playing this game for the long run, and he wanted to have some fun too. “I need to know just how well you do in class if I'm gonna accept your help, after all”
Yamada let out a slightly hysterical laugh that cracked halfway through when his quirk activated, rubbing the back of his head. “Oh, that! Of course, yeah. Um, I'm second in the class right now, right after Tensei” He looked away, a bit sheepish all of a sudden. “I mean, if you'd rather have him tutor you then that's fine...”
Shouta shrugged. “Nah, I'm good” He leaned forward on his chair, now effectively invading Yamada's space. “Now, how about your phone number?”
Yamada made the grave mistake of taking a sip of his juice right before Shouta uttered those words. After he was done coughing, he'd slowly slid his phone over to Shouta, not meeting his eyes as he dutifully input Yamada's number on his phone and called him back to have his own number saved.
Shouta smiled outwardly and grinned inwardly. Step one was done.
Step two was a bit more...physical.
“Aizawa, you can practice with your other classmates, you know” Nezu called out, smile ever-present as he supervised how well the new addition to the Hero course held his own.
Shouta was doing great, if by that you meant flipping Yamada around like a toddler playing with their first rag doll.
He didn't want to practice with anyone else. He'd seen first hand how useless they were against his quirk and, short of Iida, none of them were on his level of physical prowess—even the engined boy was no match for him speed-wise without his quirk. Yamada at least tried to push the fight for as long as possible despite being a twig of a teen himself, wanting to prove to his new friend he was worthy of hanging out with the ultimate victor of the Sports Festival.
“Don't worry sir, he's helping me a lot!” Yamada shouted, standing up from the last flip and wiping some dirt off his face, glasses askew over his nose. “I'm learning so much about one-on-one close combat!”
“Well, if you say so” Nezu shrugged and kept sipping at his tea. Humans always did what they wanted anyway.
“Don't get distracted” Shouta grumbled, running up to him and sweeping Yamada's legs from under him, sending him tumbling to the ground where Shouta spun around him too fast to process, holding his arm with a firm lock, legs tight around Yamada's arm as he cursed and struggled to break free to no avail.
“I yield!” He screeched, tapping Shouta's leg to be freed. Shouta let him go and helped him up.
“A villain is not gonna let you go if you ask them to” He said, brushing some dust off Yamada's shirt. “You need to work more on your maneuvers, not only your voice”
Yamada nodded, panting as popped his spine back into place. “Believe it or not it's the first time I'm told that. We get a lot of quirk training but not so much the rest”
“Yeah, no wonder I kicked all your asses so easily” Shouta deadpanned, sending Yamada into a giggle fit as if he had not been on the wrong end of Shouta's capture weapon.
Which, speaking of.
Shouta sent the scarf forward, forcing it to wrap several times around the distracted boy before tightening around him like a cocoon. Yamada yelped as he was pulled back into Shouta's chest, standing inches apart from him. Shouta grinned that unsettling smile of his at the gulp this got as answer from the other.
“I can help you with that, if you want” He whispered, feeling Yamada shudder in his grasp. “Since you've helped me so much with clases and all that”
“O-Okay” Yamada said meekly, his voice a thread about to snap as opposed to his usual bellows. “J-Just one condition?”
Shouta tilted his head. “What is it?”
“Can I call you Shouta?” He asked. “I mean! You can call me Hizashi too, it's just, we've spent so much time together since you arrived and, and I really want to be your friend like, like your good friend and all and I feel it's time to be on first name basis...? Yeah?” He bit his lip, watching carefuly for Shouta's reaction.
Shouta regarded him for a minute, then nodded. “Alright” He then leaned forward and stood nose to nose with him. “Hizashi” He all but purred, a curl of a smile on the corner of his mouth.
Nemuri looked over from her fight with Tensei as she heard a thud. “Sensei! Hizashi fainted again!”
Remember how Shouta was terrible with names? Apparently this also extended to himself as well.
They were required to choose their hero names before they could go on their internships with the heroes that requested them after the festival, and Shouta had the decency to be embarrased that he had been so focused on polishing his technique he completely forgot he needed a name to go with the license.
Hizashi was leaning back on his chair, humming along to some random song he must've been singing in his head. His whiteboard was resting casually on his desk as soon as he was done writing his name, as sure of it as one can be when you've been planning it all your life. 'Present Mic' had a nice ring to it, although it's meaning escaped Shouta. English was undoubtedly Hizashi's best subject, but Shouta was absimal at it, which had the good side effect of him needing frequent tutoring from his friend.
“Hey, how's it going? Got something yet?” Hizashi asked him, leaning into his desk and looking at the blank board Shouta was holding.
He grunted in response, wishing he could wear his scarf to class so he could bury his face in it in frustration. “This is stupid. I'm gonna be an underground hero anyway; names are irrelevant. No one is supposed to know who I am anyway”
“But you need one! For your license at least. What are you gonna write down if they ask you? Pro Hero 'Shouta'?” He laughed, then stopped when he saw Shouta's face. “You are not using your own name as your hero name. Not in this house”
“But it's so much easier” Shouta huffed.
Hizashi slammed his fists on the table, unnoticed among the chatter of their classmates discussing their own names. “I'll do it then!” He stood up for dramatic effect, striking a pose and locking eyes with Shouta. “Eraserhead!”
Shouta had to admit, it had a nice ring to it. Still no idea what it meant, with Hizashi and his obsesison with saying every damn thing in english.
“Fine then” He said. “I'll go with that” He uncapped his marker and pointed it at the board, stilling for a few seconds. “How do you spell that, again?”
Short of following a vigilante, Shouta had no other choice than going with the most unknown hero he saw on the recruitment list he got handed.
The list wasn't even that long to begin with, many heroes still untrusting of picking someone so new to the hero scene, but there were enough he could have his pick. The hero he had chosen to intern with was called Eclipse, a relatively young woman with the ability to remove the light sources of any area she was in, with a limit of a 100 yards radius from her position. This only included artificial light sources, so she couldn't work under the sun and had chosen to act at night or in dark alleys if the ocasison arose. Just like Shouta, she had to trust her physical skills once she used her quirk, and the support items that allowed her to move silently and see in the dark.
It was perfect.
If it were for her, she'd show him her usual schedule at night, picking up small time villains and dismantling illegal organizations. Unfortunately Shouta needed to be awake during the day for classes, and so she didn't want to risk messing up his sleep times for the week they'd be working together, so she'd swapped shifts with another night-dwelling coworker and instead showed Shouta how to work when the conditions weren't in your favor.
“The same way i have to handpick where i go during the day to milk my quirk for all it's worth, you need to know your limits and work around them” She told him as they wandered down a maze of alleys near the downtown area. They'd already encountered and aprehended half a dozen of purse snatchers trying to run away through them and Shouta was getting antsy for something bigger. “The same way I can't turn off the sun, you can't erase mutant type quirks. You made the right choice with your support weapon” She nodded at the heavy scarf hanging around his neck. “That little thing rounds up your skills and puts you at an advantage, but there might be times when you will be overwhelmed by the enemy numbers or unable to use it; that's where your bare fists come into action”
Shouta nodded. She wasn't telling him anything he hadn't thought of before, but she also wasn't being condescending or treating him like she was teaching him the secrets of the universe; just reaffirming that Shouta was taking good decisions on his own and acknowledging them as such. It was the practical part of it he needed to work on. The capture weapon was still difficult to control, sometimes tangling around his ankle or wrist and pulling him down with the villains he captured, and it was even harder to control with his quirk activated since it kept blocking his vision as it flew up and away from him.
The sound of a trash can hitting the ground put them both in high alert immediately, Eclipse crouching low to the ground while Shouta's eyes turned red, capture weapon at the ready in his hands.
They moved silently around the corner, peeking around a wall to see into the next alley where the fallen trash can lay at the feet of whoever had pushed it as they cursed and wiped at their pants. It was stay daytime and there were no lights turned on around for her to turn off, so Eclipse gave the signal for Shouta to step forward and do his thing. He stepped around her as quietly as he could, eyes locked on the unknown person as he sent his scarf to wrap around the person's wrists. There was always the chance it was just a civilian, in which case they would just apologize and help in whatever they needed, but even regular people knew to expect this with the way hero society worked; hero's couldn't afford to ignore someone looking suspicious.
As the capture weapon turned into sturdy handcuffs, the unknown person yelped and pulled back instinctively, a noise leaving their throat that sounded like it wanted to be a scream but it didn't reach what it wanted to be.
A noise Shouta knew very well.
“'Zashi?” He asked, standing up straight but still not letting go of him. He couldn't be trusty until he was sure, after all.
“Shocchan?” The other answered, and upon finally seeing his face Shouta sighed and let go, walking up to his friend as he gave the all clear to Eclipse. “What are you doing here?”
“I should be the one asking you that” Shouta said, crossing his arms. Hizashi's hero suit was little more than a gloryfied all-leather getup, and he couldn't help thinking he looked like a sort of badass biker. “Weren't you supposed to be with Eagle this week?”
“I am! But we split up to look for a missing child” Hizashi explained. “He's searching from the sky, and I'm down here” He kicked the ground a bit. “Though my quirk is no help in this situation...”
Shouta sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You don't need a specific quirk to help someone, 'Zashi, just work it out. We've talked about this”
Hizashi nodded, still rubbing his sore wrists. “I know Sho, I'm trying” He sounded dejected, and Shouta wanted nothing more than to kiss that frown away from his face. “Hey, are you guys busy right now?”
Shouta looked at Eclipse, who shrugged back at him. “We're mostly patrolling. Why, do you need help finding that kid?”
“It'd be a great help, yes” Hizashi nodded, clasping his hands in plea. “Please?”
“I don't see why not” Eclipse said. “We're here to help after all”
After that they walked off in group, Eclipse's knowledge of the terrain paying off as they quickly found the little girl hiding behind a trash container, trembling as she held a dirty kitten in her arms. After making sure she was okay and asking why she'd run away—her mother had told her to put that cat back where she'd found it, which made Shouta frown in displeasure—Hizashi used the softest voice Shouta had ever heard from him, convinced the girl to go back to her mother, and managed to get her to let go of the kitten for long enough that she would latch onto his back for him to carry her back. Shouta had taken it as his personal mission to carry the kitten all the way, and by the time the crying mother and child were reunited, he was promising the little girl he'd give it a good home, which managed to get a smile out of her.
When they were done the sun was setting behind them, and Eclipse was saying goodbye to try to get some thugs in now that her quirk was useful. Shouta and Hizashi walked back to the train staiton in silence, the loud purr of the cat hiding in Shouta's scarf the only noise around them.
“I didn't know you were so good with kids” Shouta commented casually, hand cupping the spot were the kitten was moving around.
The words seemed to startle Hizashi, who grinned after a moment. “Ah, seriously? Well, I have a lot of little siblings, and I try to be extra careful with my quirk around them, so I learned to tone it down around kids” He fiddled with the collar of his jacket. “And I guess I always liked the idea of being a teacher?”
Shouta was actually surprised by that. And then he wasn't. “Huh. I guess I can see it” He smiled, a diminute quirk of the lips. “You're really good at teaching, at least to me”
He delighted in the blush spreading across Hizashi's cheeks, the nonchomital hum he got in response showing how flustered the other was. Instead he leaned against Shouta, looking down into the nest the kitten had turned the scarf into. “So, how are you gonna call him?”
Shouta masked his head nuzzling against Hizashi's as a shrug. “I don't know, Kitty?”
Hizashi pinched his cheek, making him wince and bat his hand away. “Wow, you really suck with names”
“Oh yeah? You give me one then, mister smarty pants”
“Pawl McCartney!”
“God that's even worse. I love it”
Shouta felt a bit intimidated at being in Hizashi's house.
He wasn't kidding when he said he had a lot of siblings. It seemed kids were crawling up the walls. Every time he turned around there would be a new pair of green eyes or a flash of blonde hair, a tiny hand tugging at his pants and talking to him a mile a minute—no wait, that was just her quirk, she was just a speed talker.
Hizashi himself was by the kitchen, signing rapidly as he talked to his parents about Shouta staying over to study for the English final they had the next day. Hizashi had told him how he'd ruptured their eardrums when he was born and, though they weren't completely deaf, JSL was their main form of communication considering Recovery Girl had warned them Hizashi was also on his way to losing a good part, if not all of his hearing from the kickback of his own quirk. Hizashi had a strict rule of not using his quirk in the house since none of his siblings had volume related quirks and so he didn't want them to get the same side effect he did.
He walked back to Shouta, thumbs up and a grin indicating all was well. “Dinner won't be ready for a couple of hours but I've got snacks in my room! Let's start now, we still need to get enough sleep to do well in the exam”
Shouta nodded. Even though his insomnia would most likely prevent him from getting a full night's sleep he wasn't about to keep Hizashi up.
Hizashi had a little kotatsu in the middle of his room were he dumped his bag and moved to the mini fridge sitting next to his desk, pulling a couple of cans of coffee and a few bags of chips from the box on top of it as Shouta sat down and pulled his books out. Hizashi's room was clearly soundproofed, since they couldn't hear anything from the mess the kids were making downstairs, which made sense if Hizashi were to, for example, activate his quirk in his sleep.
And it suddenly hit Shouta, how he was going to be alone with Hizashi for almost 24 hours, with no one bothering them since everyone downstairs knew they needed to focus, studying a subject Hizashi knew Shouta was terrible at.
His chance had come.
“Hey, um, so did you write what Hibari-sensei wrote on the board about participles? I kinda dozed off and didn't catch it” Shouta asked , hoping it sounded convincing enough. Truth was he took mini naps during class more often than he should, so it should be believable.
Hizashi hummed afirmatively. “Yeah, got it right here” He slid the notebook over to Shouta, his attention drawn to a book on his other hand.
Shouta grabbed the notebook and tapped his pen against it, eyes burning into the pages. He glanced at Hizashi, seeing how he kept biting at the cap of his pen, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. His eyes shining in concentration as he jotted something down without even looking at it. They had an interesting shape, completely unrelated to his quirk; like how Shouta's hair would float for no reason.
Shouta bit his lip.
“Hey, what's this say?” He asked casually, pointing to a random line and leaning towards Hizashi.
Hizashi looked at the notebook, which was kept just enough out of reach he had to lean back into Shouta to read it. He went off on a tirade of explanations Shouta was not in the right state of mind to process. He could only focus on Hizashi and the way his blonde hair was falling down from his do and tickled his cheek, or their shoulders bumping together, or the way his breath smelled like the caramel coffee he'd just downed a minute before.
Shouta leaned in the final inches and kissed the tip of his nose, bumping against his orange tinted glasses as he did.
Hizashi froze on the spot, eyes wide and mouth gaping as he stared into space. “Uh” He said, with all the brains of the second best student in the best course in the best school of the country.
Shouta hummed, not missing a second to plant the second kiss on his cheek, which actually sent Hizashi crawling backwards across the floor, crashing with his back against the bed.
“S-Shouta!” He screeched, quirk threatening to activate at the back of his throat. “W-What are you doing?!”
“Kissing you” Shouta answered simply, never one to go around in circles. “Duh”
“Oh my god” Hizashi whispered, not moving as Shouta crawled to be in front of him, effectively caging him with his body. “This is happening”
Shouta hummed, his lips falling on the other cheek this time. “About time, don't you think?” He kept peppering kisses all around his face, never going for the prize without Hizashi's say-so.
Said boy was slowly coming out of his shock, biting his lip and hands twitching on top of his legs every time Shouta kissed him, as if he wanted to do something with them but didn't dare move them. Shouta grabbed one of his hands and intertwined their fingers together, giving it a light squeeze as he finally leaned back a little.
“'Zashi” He muttered, only loud enough for Hizashi to hear. “You have to tell me if you want me to stop”
Hizashi looked away, frowning. He squeezed Shouta's hand tightly. “I-I” He stammered. His eyes fixated on Shouta's as he finally looked at the other head on. “I don't want you to stop” He said determined, still shaking a bit and red faced as ever.
Shouta smiled, the softest one Hizashi had seen yet, and a small blush tinted his cheeks as he inched closer once more. “Okay” He said, changing tactics and burying his face in Hizashi's shoulder, wrapping his free hand around his waist as he melted against the other, sighing dazzedly in disbelief that this was actually happening.
Hizashi breathed deeply, carefully testing the waters and petting Shouta's hair, then his back, then grabbing his shoulder firmly to pull him away. Shouta looked at him, surprised and a bit confused, until Hizashi finished the job and pressed their lips together.
It was clear none of them had any experience with it, since they pretty much just stood there, eyes clamped shut and noses uncomfortably on the way. But when air was making itself scarce and they had to break away, the smile on Shouta's face was bright enough to make up for it.