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The common room, stair well, and kitchen were fully decked out for the holidays; sprigs of holly and mistletoe hung above each and every archway, red and silver garland was draped and taped down over the stairway handrail and mantle, snowflake decals adorned the walls, and a large tree stood proudly in the front windows decked out with twinkly white lights and baubles of all shapes and sizes and a silver star perched on top.
The students of class 3-A filled the space with their own forms of celebration. For the holiday season, for surviving the year, for the hell of it.
First, we visit the group sitting on the bottommost stairs, fully enraptured in their game of charades. Girls (Mina Ashido, Kyoka Jirou, and Tsuyu Asui) vs boys (Denki Kaminari, Hanta Sero, and Hitoshi Shinso).
As it was, Mina stood facing the group, a slip of paper crumpled in her fist. She used one hand to draw three circles- small (around her head), medium (around her torso), and large (around her legs)- one on top of the other in the air around her body. Then, using her forefinger and thumb, made a triangle over her nose. And to finish it off, she mimed tipping a hat off her head with a wink and a smile.
The boys stared at her with varying looks of confusion. The girls, however, slammed their hands against the wall and steps. It was Jirou who answered correctly. Frosty the Snowman. An old show from America that her grandmother watched as a child while visiting her cousins overseas for the winter.
Next to take the stage was Denki and as he read the piece of paper from the bowl on the floor, his features contorted, brows pulled in tight, lips thinned out, and the corner of his nose wrinkled. After a moment, Tsu flipped the timer to begin. For a second he did absolutely nothing. Then, with a shout to hurry up from Sero, he jumped into a star, legs spread out wide and his hands high in the air above his head and wiggled downward none to gracefully. Guesses ranged from avalanche to inflatable tube man. But the timer ran out and the girls got the point for a poorly portrayed snowflake.
Let’s move on to another trio gathered around the coffee table with a rather impressive block tower balanced in front of them. Katsuki Bakugo, Eijiro Kirishima, and Mashirao Ojiro sat carefully around the table, neither knees nor elbows daring to inch too close. The tower was already tall, leaning ever so slightly to the left but otherwise stable. There were hardly any original blocks left to move.
That didn’t stop Kirishima from trying though. With his fingers hardened to a point, he crept closer and closer to a row of three in the fourth row from the bottom. The centre piece to be exact. There was resistance against the tip of his finger as he tried to push it out the other side. The tower wobbled precariously, earning Kirishima a grumble from his boyfriend. He changed his approach, opting instead for gentle taps until just enough of the end was poking out for him to pinch his pointed fingers around. He pulled back slowly. Agonizingly. And just when the block was about to drop free, his finger twitched, dislodging the block beside it, and sent the whole tower tumbling to the floor. Kirishima had smiled bashfully as Bakugo smacked him repeatedly on the shoulder and Ojiro laughed loudly at their antics.
A little way in front of them and to the right was a dark section of the room, lit only by the rhythmic twirling of Yuga Aoyama where he spun in a circle, arms outstretched, surrounded by his friends- Mezo Shoji, Toru Hagakure, Koji Koda, Tenya Iida, and Ochako Uraraka.
Music played from a well used pink radio on the fireplace mantle; a peppy hot 100 hit that had them all dancing however they pleased in a world all their own. Shoji and Hagakure each had a hand wrapped around one of Koda’s wrists, trying and almost succeeding to pull him into their excitement. Meanwhile, Iida and Uraraka were already off in a universe of their own; Iida spinning his girlfriend under his arm again and again, the skirt of her dress flowing around her in a sea of red velvet, until the dizziness got to be too much, and he pulled her securely into his arms, pressing a sweet kiss against her smiling lips as she linked her fingers across the back of his neck.
At the dining table, Izuku Midoriya watched in rapt attention as Shoto Todoroki and Momo Yaoyorozu balanced cards with steady fingers in a contest to see who could make the biggest house without a single collapse. There had been some close calls from both sides- Midoriya had been forced to sit on his hands- but both held strong. Todoroki went the traditional route with a wide base that rose high into a triangle. Momo let her creativity shine with a structure that looked more like a professionally designed vacation chalet than a house. Multiple packs of cards lay empty on the table and, by the end of the night and into the early morning hours, both houses would still be standing perfectly intact on the table.
Behind them, in the kitchen, Rikido Sato and Fumikage Tokoyami worked in tandem to put together a gingerbread house.
Sato had spent a good portion of the day previously preparing and baking all the pieces they would need for assembly. As it was, they had walls propped up with tin cans to dry in place, little people laid flat on cookie sheets already decorated with multi-coloured icing and tiny candies for facial features, and bowls upon bowls of sweets scattered across the counters.
Tokoyami was on assembly duty. There were 2 houses, one for each of them. It was with a careful hand that he held the final roof in place as it dried. Sato, meanwhile, piped details with thin, precise lines of white icing- a door, outlined then filled in completely, was accompanied by a tiny red candy doorknob; the windows were adorned with mint gummies cut down to adhere better; gumdrops lined the centre of the roof where the two halves met, alternating blue and green. The last step, once all the candy decorations had been added and secured, was to pipe icicle drips coming down from the edges of the roof. It required a steady hand, something Tokoyami didn’t have with Dark Shadow watching over his shoulder. Sato, however, completed it with practised ease.
The houses would sit on the counter overnight and be moved to the dining room and coffee tables respectfully in the morning before the class vacated Heights Alliance to spend the holiday season with their families.