Chapter Text
Something is blinding her. It’s hurting her eyes.
Her eyes are closed, she realizes. They’re heavy too, because it is very hard to open them.
She can’t move her limbs. Everything seems to be too heavy.
Something is beeping at a constant rate right next to her. It’s piercing her sensitive ears.
She forces her eyes open, but she can only crack them. Whatever she is seeing straight at her it is blinding her, so she tries her best to avert her eyes away from it. She looks to the side without moving her head because she notices something very distinguish that it stands out to the brightness.
A black figure.
Her blurry vision is not allowing her to make out its feature. She doesn't know who the person is.
As quick as she is awake, her eyes slowly draw close and she falls unconscious once more.
The light is blinding her again but it does not hurt her eyes. She is a lot more aware, more awake. Her eyes are closed, but she knows she is awake now. Moving seems a lot less heavy, a lot easier. She could feel her face twitches into a grimace as she lets out a strangled groan.
The first thing she hears is a quiet rustle that does not belong to her.
She finally cracks her eyes open, much easier than last time. She slowly blinks the drowsiness and blurriness away. The light above her is shining directly above her. She can turn her head now. She looks to her left and sees the heart rate machine right next to her head, the source of the beeping.
The room is empty.
“I see you're awake,” a familiar gruff voice passes over her ears. A familiar black figure walks into her vision and places something onto a small table right beside the machine. “I'm calling a nurse over.” As quickly as he enters he is gone, as silent as ever. She didn’t even get to call out his name.
The beeping slows down considerably.
When he returns, he has a nurse with him who instantly goes through the usual procedure that she always loses in her thought as she lets her mouth do all the work. She doesn’t like doing it even if she is forced to, but today she feels more halfhearted with it. Finally, the nurse leaves but only to go and find a doctor. She turns towards the other occupant in the room who had been leaning against the wall.
“You finally came to visit?”
“You awake before?”
“Once, but not for long.”
“Hm. My k- students saw the news. They made those for you.” He gestures towards the basket right beside her. It is full of carrot flavored candies – and very few of other flavors – and a “get well soon” card. “They're not authorized to visit you, so I am forced to be the messenger.”
“That's nice of them.”
“I'm going now.”
“Leaving so early?”
“You're fine now. Bye.”
Her mouth hangs open in stun as she gazes at his back until he is gone. She didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye back to him.
The beeping stutters for a second.
Just then, a doctor enters, replacing his presence. They do the procedure once more, pretty much repeating what she had done with the nurse earlier. This time, though, her automatic replies are a lot more halfhearted, she’s a lot more lost in thought.
She slowly remembers what had happened. She was on her solo patrol as usual and caught a simple thug dragging a woman into an alley. She thought it was a simple arrest, but high powered villains started to appear all over the place. It turned out was a trap set out for a Hero, who happened to be her.
She almost died, but she managed it out throughout the end.
“That man in all black outfit. Is he someone special?” the doctor suddenly asks, deviating from the usual questioning. It startles her a little bit.
“N-No… just a colleague,” she answers, trying not to think too much that he only came by just to drop off some stuff his kids had made for her. But the doctor gives her a look of mild disbelief.
“Really? He had been staying by your side for all three days and rarely left.”
She blinks at him.
“…What?”
“Yeah. He didn't talk and only left to get coffee or when the day got late but he had sat on that chair all day.” The doctor nods towards one chair that is sitting right next to her, very close to her bed. She stares at the bed, recalling the blurred black figure she had saw when she first woke up before.
It’s the same angle.
Then the doctor picks up the basket to place it somewhere not intrusive to his work, creating a familiar rustling sound.
She blinks again.
So that black figure she saw when she first woke up… it was him…
And when she heard the rustle, he quickly got up and out the room and only entered when he was sure she was aware enough to see him entering, to give her the illusion he had just entered for the first time.
This entire time… He… He was…
Her heart is beating so hard and her face is so hot.
She instantly beeline for UA the next day she got released from the hospital. It’s a little later than her usual time, but she’s taking it easy for her injuries. She’s a little sore but she can manage. She’ll have to take a break from Hero work for a couple of days and that really bummed her out.
But right now, that is not her main objective. She has one man to see, to appease her warming heart.
When she enters the main building of the school, she hears the bell ringing. She left around noon, so she thinks lunchtime is over. Then, she hears thunderous footsteps coming from one end of the hallway. A bunch of familiar faces appear around the corner, shoes screeching against the floor before they start sprinting down the hallway trying to outrun each other.
“Ms. Miruko!” one of them notices her, Ashido, she thinks. She’s ahead of the pack so she arrives first. Ashido slides to a stop right in front of her but one of the boys, Kaminari, slams into her back and causing the pair to fall onto the ground. The rest of the group doesn’t even bother to pick them up, opts to stop right in front of her. Most of them seem to have a relief smile on their faces.
“Ms. Miruko! You're okay now!”
“Manly!”
“We’re glad you’re back to full health now!”
She could feel her lips curl up into a soft smile. She feels touched that they care for her, enough to send her stuff in order to make her feel better. They really do care for her.
“Mr. Aizawa told us you were hospitalized.”
She blinks at them.
“…Huh?”
“Yeah, and then he said he was going to visit you so we made a few stuff for you.”
“We can't visit you due to restriction but Mr. Aizawa was with you.”
“Yeah! He’s barely here too, taking every chance to visit you.”
“He’s so manly!”
“…I…see.”
She could feel her chest expanding and tries to compensate it by breathing deeply but it merely grows bigger than she could recover. It’s also growing warmer, very warm. And so does her face.
“LETS’S GO ALREADY OR YOU EXTRAS WILL BE LATE!”
“Shit!”
“Language!”
They all collectively start sprinting away, probably to their class, not trying to outrun one another this time.
“Where’s Eraser!?” she yells out to them before they get too far and disappear.
“He’s at the lounge, no class for the afternoon!” Iida yells back the answer before finally disappearing around the corner before she could thank him. She huffs but she has a smile graces her lips. She then turns around and heads over to find the lounge area for the teachers.
The entire way there, her heart is beating pretty hard.
She opens the door and her eyes automatically trail to one spot in the office. There he sits, hunching over his desk, a red pen in one hand and a paper in the other. In front of him on the table is a large stack of paper, and right next to it is a steaming mug. Without looking away from his form, her feet carry her to him.
“I don't like being lied to, Eraser,” she says as casual as possible while grabbing the swivel chair next to him and sits down in it.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he replies instantly without even looking up from the paper. So he knows she was coming. And is he wearing reading glasses? A little ironic, isn’t it. For someone who needs clear line of sight to make use of his eye based Quirk, he needs a pair of glasses to read.
He looks attractively hot though.
She reaches over and quickly but carefully plucks the glasses from his nose. He drops his hands on the table in displeasure and gives her a narrow look as she dons the glasses.
“Your kids saw the news, you said?” she says, crossing one leg over the other while resting her elbow on the table and props her head with her hand. She smirks at him behind her glasses.
“My glasses please,” he commands gruffly, ignoring her question as his eyes still narrow down at her.
“Answer me then,” she replies while not making any move to take off his glasses. “Why you lyin’?”
“I never lie.”
“Your kids said you told them, but you said your kids saw the news. So which one is it, Eraser?” she asks. She could feel the corners of her eyes starting to crease due to her growing smirk.
“You’re delusional.”
“Stop denying.”
“I have nothing to deny nor a reason to lie now give me back my glasses.”
She huffs but the smirk stays on her lips. She regretfully takes off the glasses and hands it back to him. He wordlessly takes it back and swiftly puts it on his face. Without missing a beat, he picks up the pen and paper once more and continues grading.
“How are your kids holding up?”
“Still a lot of room needs to improve for them to become a Hero.”
“What had Bakugou been doing since I was away?”
“He wasn’t happy that he couldn’t go on patrol. Then again, since when had he ever been happy?”
She snorts.
“Who made all the stuff in that basket?”
“All of them had a hand in it. You should thank them for it.”
Her smirk softens into a smile. She sinks further into her hand as she stares at him. She had seen him interacting with his kids a bunch of times. He will show affection and his soft side to them once in a while, but he will never, ever admit it, even when threatened at gunpoint. She guesses he had done the same thing with her.
He is not any different right now that what he had been doing the past week. He looks at her the same, interacts with her the same, and talks with her the same. One would say nothing has changed and everything has stayed the same. But just a single moment out of the ordinary spoke volume loud enough to say his intention and the fact that it is in between his standoff demeanor highlights it even more.
Could it be that he had been…?
“Alright, I'll be going now.”
“Hm.”
She gets up from the chair, making it squeaks in relief and walks past him. He doesn't bother to look up, eyes glue onto the paper at hand.
But she stops right behind him, gazing down the top of his head with soft eyes. The paper rustles as he flips it to another page. The red pen scribbles onto the paper, circling one part and crossing another. He seems unaware of her presence behind him, or maybe he is fully aware of her but ignores her. She isn't bothered by either option.
She looks around the lounge area. No one is around; it’s just the two of them.
Without hesitation, she tucks her hair behind her ear before dipping her head down and brushes her lips on his cheek, feeling his stubble chin rubbing against hers. She feels him instantly tenses up.
“Thanks, Eraser,” she whispers into his ear before straightening and briskly walks the room without looking back.
She did it. She had done it. She had made her intention clear. That was brave of her, to drop a cheeky little kiss. She knows her cheeks are very red because her face is hot. She knows she has a dopey smile on her lips because her cheeks are hurting.
As soon as she is out the gate she immediately jumps her way home, enhancing her hops by her Quirk. She could feel her injuries aggravated but they are dulled out by her heart. She keeps on jumping, higher and higher by each step.
Because she is feeling like soaring.