Work Text:
Hitoshi is stuck in a tree. Again. The only difference this time is that Aizawa-sensei isn't here to help him down. Struggling only makes it worse, and it makes him dizzy, so he simply dangles on, gritting his teeth and waiting for a passerby to stumble upon his plight.
He takes a deep breath, and thrashes around until he has a better view of the part of campus that isn't swallowed by trees. Directly across the sidewalk is a small pond with a couple plastic park benches perched dangerously close to the edge. The blood is all rushing to Hitoshi's head, so it looks a little like there are two ponds and several park benches. It's better than tree trunks, though.
He hears a splash. He shakes his head blearily, and squints hard enough that the two ponds in his vision converge. A blurry, dark shape crawls out of the water, pausing to wring out its dripping hair. Hitoshi jolts, thinking of swamp monsters from the campy horror movies he stayed up late watching last night. He realizes that he's being delirious, so he tries his best to force his oversaturated brain back into the logical zone.
He hears more than sees her approach him, her footsteps cartoonishly wet, like suction cups. Her face slowly phases into his line of sight, curious and soaked.
"Are you okay?" she croaks, pressing her large hand over her mouth to hide a smile. He grunts noncommittally.
"Hang on a second." She circles around him, finger pressed to her chin. Eventually, she seems to spot the problem- a complicated knot in the capture weapon that keeps his hands tied firmly where they are, and nowhere else. After she undoes that, it's a simple matter of tugging at his arms and slipping gently to the ground. He buries his face in the dirt and groans.
Pond girl pats his shoulder sympathetically. Water seeps through his PE top.
She's from 1-A, he thinks- Asui. God, this is humiliating.
"Is that Aizawa-sensei's scarf?"
Hitoshi turns his head and looks at her, sizing her up. She's not very expressive, but she portrays her curiosity well enough with body language. She doesn't seem wary of him, so...
"Yes." His blood slowly begins to return to its rightful place. He flails a little bit until he's sitting on his haunches, and drags his hands down his face. "Still need some practice," he posits glumly. Asui ribbits in a way that could be construed as 'amused'.
"I can see that." She crouches down beside him, cocking her head. "I can imagine that Aizawa-sensei would be pretty tough to have as a personal trainer."
"You have no idea," he scoffs on instinct. "Or maybe you have a better one than most people, since, you know..."
She hums affirmatively. He sighs.
"The point is that I'm pretty sure I'm more lactic acid than man right now."
"I know how that feels. The first few weeks of training I thought I was gonna die." A shudder rattles down her body. "And as much as I love Sensei... he wasn't a relaxing presence."
Hitoshi frowns. "That's what you have teachers like Yamada and All Might for. Aizawa's no symbol. That's kind of the point."
"He's the Symbol of Naps," Asui whispers, cupping her hand around her mouth and glancing to the side. Hitoshi gives her a weird look, but can't help smiling. He's sure it looks like some sort of amused grimace. If he hadn't been on national TV once, he'd be worried about making a bad first impression.
"Do you want to be friends?" Asui blurts. Hitoshi blinks.
So much for bad first impressions...? He goes on a complicated rollercoaster of emotions in the span of a few seconds, and looks at her with a carefully schooled expression.
"Just checking, but you do remember what my quirk is, right...?"
"Of course," she croaks. "How could I not, after hearing about Ojiro-chan's crisis?"
Interesting way to put it. "Just checking," he repeats, mumbling into his elbow.
"You know, you kind of remind me of someone I know." Asui taps her chin thoughtfully. "I bet people used to call you evil all the time."
Hitoshi almost startles, but quickly reminds himself that it's an easy conclusion to draw. "No one's ever really said it outright. Mostly."
"But they gave you the impression, didn't they?" she continues. "I bet you felt pretty lonely."
Hitoshi is getting uncomfortable with the turn of this conversation, but it is nice to have someone get it a little. Even if it makes him feel kind of nauseous.
"I wouldn't say lonely," he says, dragging it out in caution.
"It's okay." Asui's eyes turn up in what he assumes is a smile. "I understand."
She pulls her phone out of her pocket, and holds it out towards him. He stares at it. Wasn't she just underwater...?
"Want to exchange numbers?"
Hitoshi caves in. He punches his number into her phone, and she calls his just to hear it buzz in his pocket. They walk back to the dorms together. Asui asks him to call her Tsuyu-chan. She doesn't seem bothered by her dampness.
She definitely moves a little fast. It grows on him... a little fast. She's pretty weird, though- at least by his standards.
They text each other sparsely for a while. It's mostly Asui sending him pictures of odd happenings around the 1-A dorms, and occasionally her siblings when she goes home to visit them. He is particularly amused, on one occasion, to receive a picture of Aizawa-sensei in his sleeping bag, captioned with 'the Symbol of Naps'. It has him trying to hide a smile in the middle of a particularly dreary math class.
Sometimes he finds himself tentatively sending her messages, mostly of cats- Shirou, his black cat, and a few he sees on the street or cute ones he sees online.
She catches on pretty quickly, and tells him upfront that she finds him adorable. This startles him considerably.
"No one's called me adorable before," he mutters, somewhat sarcastically. He's sitting on the precarious pond bench, fiddling with his voice changer, and she's treading water in front of him. Well- sort of. Only the top half of her head is sticking out.
"It's not that hard to see it. I guess no one's ever made an effort to try and get to know you," she gurgles.
He flushes a little, and he can't tell if it's from his embarrassment or her unwarranted sincerity. She chuckles, and goes under again, leaving bubbles churning on the surface.
They see each other again at the joint training exercise. She spends nearly the whole time beaming at him. In her own blank sort of way. He can't even make his 'not here to make friends' speech without stumbling and feeling like an idiot. It's still true. He's always going to put his hero's journey before her. But... well.
Seeing her in action, she's amazing. She's smart, cool, powerful, versatile... even though she's less flashy than some of her 1-A classmates, she's the one he notices the most. He tries not to think too hard on it.
Until afterwards, when she comes up to him and gives him a delighted hug, standing on her tiptoes so she can be closer to his shoulders.
"Congratulations, Shinsou-chan, you were great! I'm so happy for you!" she croaks, and leaves him standing there, choking on his own spit and blushing. People stare.
Aizawa-sensei raises an eyebrow at him. He sinks lower into his scarf.
The day after that, she texts and asks if she can come visit him in the 1-C dormitory. He hesitates to the point of anxiety, his stomach doing cardiac in his abdomen, but he eventually agrees. He'll just... keep a safe distance.
He tries to greet her subtly, but the rest of the class still gawps at them. Asui is as subtle as he is, and she's not loud and confrontationally cheerful, which helps. He probably wouldn't like her nearly as much as he does if she was anything like, say, Kaminari or Ashido.
"Aw, he's just as cute as he is in the picture," she croons, when she walks into his room and is immediately accosted by a wailing cat.
"Nice to meet you, Shirou-chan." She crouches down to scratch at his chin, and he quiets down for a second, purring loudly. The kiss-ass.
Hitoshi scratches his neck, and mumbles a few feeble apologies about the state of his room. Asui gets settled in as he shuffles around and pours Shirou a fresh bowl of food. The idiot immediately jumps out of her lap to gobble down his meal like the ravenous glutton he is.
"Sorry for intruding," Asui apologizes. "I'm just kind of sad I don't see you as much as my other friends- kero,"
Hitoshi mumbles something that might sound like 'it's fine' if you listened really hard. He doesn't know what to do other than stand there, so he continues to watch Shirou eat like a lawnmower.
"It won't be for long, though, since you're joining the hero course." She sounds content. When he doesn't reply- doesn't trust his voice not to crack- she shuffles up beside him to watch Shirou, arms held zombie-like in front of her the way they usually are. When the cat is done vacuuming his kibble, he prances over to his water and starts slurping it loudly.
"He's a strange one," Asui says, as if diagnosing him with an incurable ailment. Hitoshi nods, and they watch in solemn silence as Shirou nearly drowns himself in a half-inch deep ceramic bowl of water.
"People say black cats are bad luck," Hitoshi comments. "There's no luck to speak of with this one. It's just feline incompetence."
Asui lifts her finger to her chin, and looks thoughtfully between Hitoshi and Shirou.
"People are pretty superstitious about you, too, Shinsou-chan." She pokes Shirou in the flank with a large finger. He turns his head to blink dumbly at her, water dribbling down his fuzzy chin.
"I guess you could say that." He scratches Shirou's cheek, and the cat leans into the touch, closing his little yellow eyes. "I didn't know if pets were allowed, so I snuck him in here. It was hard. It seemed like he was actively trying to sabotage me."
"You should have asked Koda-chan for help. He snuck his rabbit in pretty easily."
Hitoshi snorts. "I wasn't really psyched to talk to any hero students back then."
Asui's expression turns kind of sad. Hitoshi's stomach does a small dance of regret.
"I hope you're not so bitter now. I know I made a better impression than Bakugou."
"Yeah. 'Want to be friends?' is a little different than 'die, all you fuckers' or whatever."
"'I'm gonna beat you to death!'" Asui croaks, in a cartoonishly deep voice. Hitoshi blinks, realizes that was supposed to be an impression of Bakugou, and then snorts.
Before he knows it, he's laughing, face turned toward the floor and hands clutching at his side.
Shirou reaches out to claw petulantly at his sleeve, and he cuts off with an 'ow'.
"Time to break out the toys, I guess. Looks like he's trying to monopolize our time. Conniving bastard," Hitoshi complains, directing the last part at Shirou's adorable face. He scoops him into his arms, and turns to face Asui.
She's staring at him, wide-eyed, with her tongue sticking out of her open mouth. Hitoshi's fingers twitch in Shirou's fur.
"Don't worry, I call him names all the time. He has thick skin," he explains. Asui hiccups, jumping a little, and looks away at the floor, clearing her throat.
Hitoshi asks if something's the matter, to which she continues to splutter.
"It's nothing... kero..."
He tries to pry it out of her, to no avail. They resign themselves to playing with Shirou for a while. He tangles himself in two separate dangly toys, and then tries to eat a feather when Hitoshi takes a break to explain the horror posters on his wall to Asui.
Eventually, while Hitoshi is trying to get something out of Shirou's mouth again, Asui speaks.
"Um, I'm sorry about earlier. I just never saw you really laugh before."
He startles, almost shoving the pencil down Shirou's throat. The look the cat gives him is one of murderous betrayal.
Hitoshi instinctively falls back on deflection. "Creepy, right?" he deadpans, tossing the somewhat slimy pencil back onto his desk.
"No way," Asui breezily replies. "It was... er... nice. It's creepy when you smirk to intimidate people, but that was nice."
Hitoshi can't tell the difference between his smiles- they all feel the same- but he knows for a fact that they're all creepy. He's been told. Multiple times.
There's no point in trying to dissuade Asui from her opinion, though, so he just makes a noncommittal noise.
After that, she has to leave because of curfew. She gives him a hug before she leaves, rendering him as stiff as plywood. She says she really looks forward to his transfer, and bows herself out.
This is the opposite of what he's supposed to be doing. He spends the next half an hour face down on his bed, trying desperately to clear his mind.
Asui isn't stupid. She notices when he continues to politely decline her invitations to hang out, and- predictably- decides to confront him about it.
She has the courtesy to do it subtly. She sneaks up behind him in the cafeteria and taps him on the shoulder, nearly causing him to spill his noodles. He should have heard her coming, but he's off his game today.
"Can we talk?" she says, even more unreadably than usual. Hitoshi mutters a nondescript response, and keeps walking toward the door.
She silently follows him. He starts toward the classroom- where he usually eats his lunch, alone- but she grabs his wrist and tugs him in a different direction. He goes along, somewhat stiffly.
They end up at the pond. She plops down on one of the benches and takes off her shoes, dipping her toes in. She pats the space next to her, and starts swinging her legs.
Hitoshi sits, sneakers just barely grazing the surface.
"It's chilly out, I'm getting sleepy," she comments, shivering. It kind of is. He'd rather be eating inside the building. His noodles are probably cooling fast.
"Did I do something wrong?" she blurts, abruptly. "It's okay if you don't want me to hug you, but you have to let me know."
"It isn't that," Hitoshi grimaces, "It's just- you were distracting me."
"Distracting you?" She tilts her head incredulously.
"Sorry," he grits out. The words aren't really coming naturally to him. Whenever he's around her, his head gets fuzzier and his judgement clouds. This time, there's an added layer of unpleasant nervous nausea.
He knows it's because he likes her too much. The problem is, it's even worse when they're apart.
"Oh," she says, the monosyllable saturated with misery. Hitoshi's heart skips with panic.
"I meant- I apologize. It's- it's stupid. It was stupid of me."
She blinks at him. "Are you calling yourself stupid?"
"I said it was stupid of me," he sniffs.
She splashes his shoe with a playful ribbit. "Yeah, it was. Solving problems with communication is more efficient. It's just logical."
That startles a laugh out of him. Asui pokes her chin, and her mouth twists into an approximation of smug.
"No more logical ruses, I promise," he chuckles, holding out his hand for a shake. She takes it. It pains him to admit that he may hang on a little longer than necessary. "Just- don't hug me."
"Okay," she ribbits, more than somewhat mournfully.
The next time they see each other is on a hero course field trip that Aizawa-sensei deigns to let Hitoshi go on. The security is double-triple-quadrupled, even though they're just going on an agency tour. He thinks it's Midnight's building.
In no time at all, he becomes resolutely sure it's Midnight's building. She's suddenly standing in front of them, waving around her Beat Jesus-inator and prattling.
Hitoshi wants to listen and actually learn something from the experience, but with Asui next to him, it's a little hard. She's just standing there with her zombie arms, and his heart is already pounding.
Her hands are big. He's struck by an irrational, intense desire to reach out and grab one. He stomps that thought down, and then grinds it with his heel for good measure.
"If you decide to establish your own agency, you might have a large one, or you might have a smaller one," Midnight is saying. "For example- Endeavor has the biggest active agency in japan, Miruko doesn't have one at all, and yet- they're both in the top ten!"
"What kind of agency do you want to have?" Asui asks, in a raspy whisper. "If I ever get that far, think I'll go for a small one, and I'll get a building by the shore- or maybe I'll be like Selkie, and get a boat."
Hitoshi shrugs. "I'm probably going to go underground like Aizawa-sensei, so I won't need one. Interns or whatever sounds like a hassle."
"You really take after him, don't you?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" he grumbles. His hand instinctively flies to the back of his neck. Asui, of course, catches this, and shoots him a knowing look.
Midnight leads them toward the elevator, rambling unpleasantly all the while. Aizawa is at the head of the group with her, looking as dead to her antics as Hitoshi feels. He guesses he sees Asui's point.
Midnight's agency is a very tall building. Everything is white, dazzlingly modern, and glassy, with huge windows towering in every direction. Midnight announces that she's sending them up to the top floor in groups of three, which is the point at which Hitoshi is hit by a wave of dawning horror.
He's not scared of heights. He can jump on buildings and perch on light poles and get pounded by Midoriya on the edge of a roof and be fine. Great, in fact.
One thing he cannot handle, however, is glass floors.
He's about to volunteer to climb the stairs when Midnight abruptly shoves him, Asui, and Uraraka into the elevator, cackling delightedly. The glass doors close behind them like the thud of a guillotine.
He braces his arm on the glass wall, and staunchly does not look down. He can tell out of the corner of his eye that the floor is almost as transparent as air. It might as well not even be there. And there is nothing under it.
"-an? Hitoshi-chan!"
He blinks. Asui and Uraraka are looking at him with similarly concerned expressions, the only difference being Uraraka's pronounced frown.
"Are you okay?" she asks. Hitoshi grunts in the affirmative.
Asui, to her credit, does not look convinced. She holds out her hand, palm facing upward. He stares blankly at it, gears churning in his head.
"You can hold my hand if you want," she croaks. Hitoshi's jaw drops a little. He glances at Uraraka, who is looking away and clearly trying not to laugh.
"Are you serious...?" he pants. He feels like puking from sheer embarrassment alone.
"It's okay if you don't. You just seem like you're scared."
He's halfway through choking out an "I'm not-" when he accidentally looks down.
His world tilts on his axis, and he's suddenly so dizzy he feels like he's falling, which does not help. It's an easy decision to make.
He snatches her hand out of the air, squeezing it involuntarily. His nails are digging into the palm of his other one where it's pressed against the wall.
His beat-up hand, which people tell him is larger than average, looks almost small in Asui's grip. It feels just as nice to hold it as he thought. Her skin is cool. She laces their fingers together, and squeezes back. His heart rate picks up even more, but he still somehow feels calmer.
He looks at her face. She tilts her head at him, finger to her chin. He forgets about the glass floor, and that Uraraka is there- just for a second.
"Hey. When did you start calling me...?" he starts, but then the elevator stops with a clunk, and the doors slide open. He's out like a shot.
Later, on the way down, he subtly takes Asui's hand where it's dangling at her side. When Uraraka snickers, he gets the feeling it's directed at him specifically.
He does not stop being distracted by her, especially after that, when he can't get the feeling of her hand and the image of her face and the sound of her voice and her zombie arms out of his head. It's like she's the one brainwashing him.
He realizes just how much he likes her in the middle of a sparring match with Aizawa, and takes a boot to the face. Aizawa throws a water bottle at him, and tells him to get more sleep at night.
She corners him in the cafeteria again, and asks him if he wants to eat lunch with her. He's startled into agreeing, and ends up sitting with her on the bench by the pond. She sits close to him, so that their thighs are almost- but not quite- touching. It's kind of like she wants to respect his boundaries, but also be as close to him as possible. It's probably going to kill him at some point.
He talks about a help program for villains that he wants to start when he strikes it out, and she talks about how much she's looking forward to actually doing hero work in the water.
"I'd like to see that," he admits. She beams and makes to jump into the pond, which is a crazy idea because the water's probably freezing and she's in her school uniform, so he reaches out and grabs her hand to stop her.
She reluctantly concedes, and sits back down to continue eating her Deluxe Lunch Rush Hamurger™.
She doesn't let go of his hand. His body and mind react in a plethora of embarrassing ways, but she doesn't seem to notice, too absorbed in chewing to care.
He frowns, because this shouldn't be that hard. She's not some unreachable standard, she's Asui, and he's gotten used to her. She's his normal friend, but his normal friend that he also somehow has a crush on. She's not a manic pixie dream princess or something, she's Asui. She'sTsuyu. And that's why he likes her. Her weird mouth, her weird eyes, her weird proportions, her inexplicable hair bow, her cute habit of sticking her tongue out, her lopsided gait. All of it.
He went from first real friend to first real crush in the span of two months. He's going to die if Aizawa doesn't kill him first.
Another joint training exercise happens.
Monoma from 1-B attempts to recruit him- as if he can pick which class he's gonna be in- and gets dragged off by Kendou. Tsuyu wishes him good luck. He nods at her.
Tension ripples through the two classes and change when they announce the exercise. He hears Bakugou make a triumphant growling noise.
It's a complete free-for-all on an open, flat stretch of land. There's capture tape, as usual, and whoever's left at the end wins. Hitoshi is very alarmed by this concept, and wonders wildly whose goddamn idea it was before the whistle blows and the chaos begins.
Bakugou's corner immediately erupts in explosions and screaming. Hitoshi crouches, instinctively casting around for a hiding place, and finds nothing. He dodges an incoming charge from Tetsutetsu, and slides under a panicked swipe from Shiozaki's vines.
As he runs forward, looking around and up for attacks, his toe catches something fleshy and he trips. He fails to catch himself on his shoulder as he hits the ground, and his voice changer cracks ominously. He flips over, prepared to kick out or roll away- oh, it's Tsuyu.
She's using her camouflage, and the only reason he didn't see her was because he didn't know she was there. They blink at each other.
She reaches for her tape. Something clicks in Hitoshi's brain, and he resolves to go all out no matter what. He might not be the last one standing- he doesn't even want to think about fighting Todoroki right now- but he won't be the first one out, either.
The moment her tongue snaps out of her mouth, he kicks her square in the jaw, leaps to his feet, and tackles her.
It's a back and forth game of keepaway, except they're keeping each other's hands away from each other's capture tape and limbs away from the ground- he has the advantage of being taller, but she's stronger and more flexible, so it's a moot point. This is to say nothing of the added problem of trying to get her to respond. He tries jokes, insults, fake injuries, pretending Bakugou is behind her- nothing.
She ribbits when he manages to elbow her in the stomach, and that distracts her long enough for him to at least touch the tape. It doesn't last long, because her tongue is longer than three Shoujis, and it's around his wrist before he can say "fuck you".
She digs her heels into the ground and leaps away, bloody tongue sliding back into her mouth. In the few seconds between that and when it flicks out again, Hitoshi's hands have shot up to his capture weapon.
He throws it at her, and it catches around her waist at the exact same moment her tongue reaches his abdomen. They yank and grunt in sync, colliding violently in the middle.
They teeter for a few seconds, groaning in pain, before falling to the ground with a thump. Mineta goes careening by above them, shrieking with frustration. Hitoshi allows himself a split second of satisfaction, before he realizes that Tsuyu is on top of him, pinning him to the ground, and has wrenched one of her arms free from the scarf.
She's already unrolling her capture tape.
Solution blooms in his mind. He tries to think: are you really that desperate to stay in it a few more seconds when you're just going to lose anyway?
Yes. He's really that upset about this.
It's a shame. He thought he was going to do this in a better way.
"I like you!"
Tsuyu freezes. She blinks at him, and chokes out: "What?"
Bingo. Her eyes go blank.
And then Todoroki freezes them both.
When he wakes up on the sidelines, unfrozen and only slightly bandaged, he's too exhausted to be angry. Todoroki limps up to him ten minutes later and personally apologizes. He waves it off.
His voice changer is chipped. Damn.
The winner of the exercise is neither Bakugou nor Midoriya. It's Monoma. He had copied Uraraka's quirk, floated so far into the sky that those two idiots couldn't see him- not that they would look, with how invested they were in fighting each other- and eventually fallen straight down to bean Deku in the head. He then proceeded to puke, but it was his victory.
He's being predictably insufferable about it.
Hitoshi casts around idly for Tsuyu. He doesn't see her. He shrugs it off, and listens to Midnight lecture them on what they did wrong. (Of course it was her idea).
He's prepared for the fallout.
This is good, because she's definitely pissed. Every second she looks at him, she's frowning, and she hasn't texted once. He also can't seem to catch her alone, which annoys him to the point where he considers avoiding her right back.
He shakes his head to clear it. Communication. It's logical.
On sunday, he shoots her a text that says she can meet him by the pond if the whimsy strikes her- or not, he doesn't care. He throws on a jean jacket and wanders out. It's an especially cold day.
When he gets there, Tsuyu is already on the bench. She's bundled up like a hot dog stuffed into an oversized bun. She has on two scarves, three hats, and what looks like winter hiking boots. Her zombie arms are tipped off with voluminous, cumbersome mittens. He tries not to find it exceedingly endearing- this is a serious moment.
"Hey," he says, shuffling up behind her and vaulting over the back to snag a seat. She wastes no time in getting to the point.
"I'm mad at you," she croaks. Her voice is an amalgamation of sad, disappointed, and huffy. Her tongue is poking out of her mouth, embedded with three angry red teeth marks. He grimaces- he might have kicked her a little hard, there.
"Why?" he asks, neutral. She practically glares at him.
"I understand using dirty tricks to win a fight, but bringing my personal feelings into it like that was not nice."
"You might be misjudging what kind of person I am. I really want to win, and I don't hold back."
Tsuyu sighs a croaky sort of sigh. "I know that. I also want you to understand why I'm upset. No matter how noble it is, it hurts to have your feelings exploited."
"I'm sorry," he starts, hesitantly. He didn't really expect her to be this torn up about it... wait. Does she...?
"And- look, it's not like I just made it up," he says haltingly. "I mean, I was still just trying to get you, but it's not like it wasn't... true. I wouldn't have said it otherwise, I'm not that much of a dick. Sorry for messing with you."
Tsuyu is gaping at him. It's the most expressive he's ever seen her. She leans in a little closer, finger to her chin, round eyes staring into his soul.
"Really?"
Hitoshi swallows. "Yeah. I... like you."
She beams. "I like you too."
Oh. Hm. Well.
"Can I please hug you now, Hitoshi-chan?"
He grins. "Knock yourself out."
She surges forward to squeeze the living daylights out of him, arms clamped around his abdomen and scarf-cushioned face pressed into his chest. The sudden shift in weight causes the wobbly bench to tip forward slightly.
They both go careening into the pool with a splash. Hitoshi swears loudly. He feels like he's just been hit with a blast of Todoroki's ice again, the water is just that cold.
He pushes himself toward the edge, spluttering, with Tsuyu still tucked up against his chest. Her eyes are closed, and her tongue is lolling loosely out of her mouth.
He sighs exasperatedly, and brushes a lock of her sopping wet hair out of her eyes with a shivering hand. "When I said knock yourself out, I didn't mean it literally."
She stirs, and pulls back slightly, blinking out of sync. She tugs him down by the collar of his jacket and kisses him.
He feels himself melt, arms flying up around her shoulders, and almost forgets that he's nipple deep in a frigid pond with his side pressed against a muddy embankment. He tries to kiss her back as gently as possible, accounting for her brutal tongue injury. Objectively, it's not the most amazing kiss in the world, considering literally all of the circumstances. Subjectively- it's the best thing ever.
Tsuyu pulls away to snuggle up against his shoulder, sighing sleepily. He takes a second to even out his breathing.
He jostles her shoulder. "Hey, get up, it's fucking freezing and we're both wet. We gotta go inside." He would rather avoid hypothermia if at all possible.
"Nooo," she mumbles, squeezing him tighter. He resigns himself to his fate.
Getting up and out of the pond is an ordeal. He slips twice and splatters even more mud all over his clothes, all while keeping his grip on a sopping, heavy Tsuyu.
When he finally has his feet level on solid ground, he shakes her until she's lucid enough to walk.
She leans against his shoulder all the way back to the dorms, clinging to his arm and holding his hand. Uraraka greets them at the 1-A dorms and, to her credit, does not ask many questions.
They both catch colds. They spend their sick day cuddling in Hitoshi's dorm room, watching Creature from the Black Lagoon with Shirou sprawled obnoxiously across their laps. The kiss-ass.