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Aizawa Shouta was not having a good day.
Though, according to Yamada, that’s admittedly still a pretty low bar to beat.
And, to add insult to injury, that little bastard Yagi had the audacity to enjoy Aizawa’s suffering.
“Oh, I’d hardly call it suffering ,” Yamada teased as they trod slowly through the thicket. They’re admittedly supposed to be keeping their eyes and ears peeled for potential villains in the area—the site of a rumored villain hideout is fast approaching—but it’s nothing short of difficult for Aizawa to take anything seriously, as much as he wanted to, when Yamada and Yagi were in the picture.
Aizawa jabbed a finger at his partner-in-heroism dramatically. “Yes, so says the one who conspired to put me in this position to begin with.”
Yamada raised his hands in mock surrender. “Look at Yagi, not me!”
Yagi’s grin was practically audible as he reveled in the moment. “Look at how much fun this is, Aizawa! Look at the scenery! Look at all the villains that are about to get their asses kicked! How can you not enjoy something like this?”
Aizawa scowled so hard he dimly thought his jaw might cramp. Eventually, he slumped over in defeat with an exaggerated roll of his eyes and a drawn-out sigh.
“Keep up that attitude and you’ll end up hired at UA,” he warned.
It just so happened that Yagi was the first to be approached as a candidate for a UA teacher.
“I suppose I do have a little bit of privilege, with my reputation and all,” Yagi mused thoughtfully. “But even you can’t deny this is exciting, Aizawa!” he playfully nudged the man sliding halfway out of his chair from how much he wanted to melt into the ground.
“Yes, yes. How charming. Now get off my desk.” He stuck out a hand and tried to shove Yagi off, to no avail.
Yamada giggled daintily from the armchair in the corner of the room. “I’ve got to say, I don’t think there was any doubt in our minds that you would get the job, no matter what Aizawa says. But, congratulations nevertheless.”
Aizawa rolled his eyes as Yamada continued to shower Yagi with praise. But though he sure as hell wouldn’t say it, he was secretly proud of Yagi. To teach at UA was nothing short of an enviable opportunity.
An opportunity that might be in reach of even Aizawa, one day.
But not yet.
Aizawa woke up to what sounded like a wild boar trying to break down his door like the Kool-Aid Man.
He groaned and slammed his pillow over his ears. I didn’t know Yamada was a morning person.
“Come back with a warrant.”
If anything, Yamada’s attempt at breaking and entering only seemed to grow even more enthusiastic.
“You’re going to cause property damage,” Aizawa warned. “And if you manage to get in, there will be person damage.”
The sounds at Aizawa’s door became so frantic he might have mistaken the pounding for the sound of an airborne helicopter.
“ You’re going to incur person damage.”
Yamada kicked the door off its hinges.
Aizawa turned to the side under his pillow and glared at the intruder.
Yamada stood in the now-doorless doorway, grinning ear-to-ear.
“You’re paying for that.”
“I know.”
“You don’t even have a stable income.”
“I know.”
“How do you plan on paying for it, then?”
“I didn’t say I’m going to remain without a stable income for long .” Yamada folded his arms and pouted.
“Who the hell thought employing you was a good idea?”
“UA,” Yamada said simply.
“You think you can afford to repair that on a teacher’s salary?”
“Oh. Fair point.”
Suddenly, the implications of Yamada’s words hit Aizawa in full force.
“Wait— You got hired by UA?! ”
Yamada giggled, blushing slightly. “Oh, yeah. That was what I came here to tell you about, in fact.” He pulled an envelope from behind his back and waved it at Aizawa.
Aizawa sat bolt upright. There was so much he wanted to say. Alas, Yamada was the first to speak up.
“That being said..” he began.
Aizawa looked at Yamada expectantly. The blonde seemed uncharacteristically sincere. It was putting Aizawa on edge.
“Actually, you know what, we should get Yagi in here first. He ought to know about this too.”
“Are you going to let me get coffee before he arrives?”
“No.”
“Alright, well, only talk to me again once he gets here. And do be a dear and be quiet in the meantime.”
With that, Aizawa curled up in his bed and went back to sleep. Meanwhile, Yamada did everything in his power to make as much of a racket as possible.
“Alright, out with it, before I implode from the sheer sentimental energy about you. I have a threshold for such things, you know.”
Yamada chuckled, but continued to fidget nervously. “So, I’m debating whether or not to accept the invitation,” he began simply.
Aizawa perked up. “How come?” he asked. Was Yamada stupid? Who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to teach at UA?
“I—I just.. Don’t think I can live up to the expectation.” Yamada glanced back at the doorway he had destroyed, as though he were expecting someone to walk in. “I mean, they approached Yagi first. I’ve always been more of the one to just.. Stand on the sidelines and cheer you guys on, you know?” Awkwardly, Yamada approached Aizawa and extended the envelope to him. Carefully, Aizawa slipped the neatly folded letter out of the paper and scanned it. The glossy seal of UA, the carefully printed lettering.
A strange feeling bubbled through Aizawa’s gut. What was Yamada doing, squandering such a precious opportunity? Didn’t he know how many would kill to be in his position right now?
“What I’m trying to say is.. There are others who are far more deserving of this chance than I. People like you and Yagi. But not me. It shouldn’t go to someone who can’t do the position justice.”
Aizawa took a deep breath through his nose. He let part of his unjustified irritation fade with the air. He thought about the unspoken promise of coffee on the horizon if he simply allowed himself to be heartfelt just this once and looked back to Yamada.
“For God’s sake, Yamada. They’re asking you to be an English teacher . The fate of the world is not going to rest on your shoulders.” Aizawa reluctantly shrugged off his blanket and stepped out of bed to head for his coffee machine. Damn Yamada for being so intolerably sentimental so early in the morning.
Still, Aizawa’s words seemed to have found their mark. Unfortunately, Yamada nevertheless seemed undeterred from his opinion.
“I suppose that’s as good of a heartfelt chat as I’m gonna get from Aizawa at seven in the morning,” he murmured to himself with a soft chuckle. “But still.. The responsibility of training the next generation of heroes. I can’t exactly say I’m too thrilled to spend twelve hours a day dealing with angsty teenagers,” Yamada joked. Thankfully, his typical lightheartedness seemed to be returning.
“So, what you’re trying to say is that you’re not going to pay for my door after all.”
“Absolutely not.”
“So, long story short, UA might try to hire you soon. Just a heads-up.”
Aizawa choked on his coffee.
“Oh, dear. Typical Aizawa, never paying attention,” Yamada teased as Yagi thumped him on the back.
“Excuse you? I was listening the entire time,” Aizawa defended hoarsely once his windpipe was blessedly coffee-free.
“Really?” Yamada quipped back skeptically.
“What, do you want me to prove it? Is this truly necessary?” Aizawa scowled with an exaggerated sigh. “Yamada was offered a spot to teach at UA, but declined, and had the brilliant idea of recommending me to the UA administrators instead, effectively offering me his invitation,” he finally recapped when Yamada seemed to remain unconvinced. Aizawa wrinkled his nose in disgust for effect. “As if an esteemed hero like me would need his testimony .”
“Right, because clearly, the reason why you’re not already teaching at UA is because you don’t want to,” Yamada teased.
“You think I would willingly spend my time fraternizing with those conniving amateur heroes?” Aizawa sneered.
“Are you talking about the kids or the other faculty?” Yagi interrupted.
“Both.”
As it turned out, Aizawa did, in fact, end up willingly spending his time fraternizing with the conniving amateur heroes of UA.
He spent his entire first day on campus moving furniture into his room. Not even when Yagi paid him a visit did he cease his complaining of the ordeal.
“Ridiculously convoluted thing ,” he grumbled under his breath, as though “thing” were the most insulting word in his vocabulary he could use to describe the drawer before him at the moment.
“It’s an IKEA manual. I believe in you,” Yagi hummed nonchalantly from his seat atop the only assembled furniture in the room so far.
Aizawa threw the manual at Yagi’s face.
“This could be a YouTube tutorial!” he despaired, and dramatically kicked the drawer pieces across the room as though that would help his situation at all.
It didn’t help his situation.
In fact, one of the boards broke in half.
Aizawa buried his face in his hands and resisted the urge to scream.
“The esteemed Eraserhead, laid low by IKEA. Who would’ve thought.”
“Be quiet this instant.”
The following day, Yamada ended up visiting Aizawa’s room to give him a helping hand.
That being said, “helping” wasn’t exactly how Aizawa would describe Yamada’s presence.
At the very least, he had the good sense to bring a tube of glue with him. Unfortunately, he still lacked the good sense to remember where he’d put it.
And that was how Aizawa and Yagi ended up following Yamada into a cramped closet underneath the stairs, because this was obviously a reasonable candidate for where he might have left his glue bottle.
Aizawa’s eye roll was practically audible. “How you could possibly have left your glue in here is beyond me—”
Yagi pulled his hand out of a dusty nook, beaming ear-to-ear and clutching a bottle of Elmer’s glue.
“ How. ”
“I saw a bright yellow marker floating above it telling me to look over there.” Aizawa raised an eyebrow. “No, you dumbass. I’m just not blind, unlike a certain—”
“Enough,” Aizawa warned hastily. He was not about to let his dignity be tarnished even further. He snatched the bottle from Yagi’s outstretched hand, turned on his heel, and stormed back to his office.
If Aizawa forced himself to ignore it hard enough, he could almost tune out the sound of Yamada’s giggling at his heels.
Aizawa pushed open the door to his office, one bottle of white Elmer’s glue in his hand.
Upon entering the room, which he had left dark while he scavenged the school grounds for his damn glue, he raised a hand above his head and snapped his fingers. The sound was crisp and echoed loudly off the canvassed walls. In time with his snap, the lamp standing in the corner of the room flickered on.
“Aizawa! You didn’t tell me your Quirk was also magic!” Yagi marveled.
“No, Yagi. The lamp is remote-controlled.” Aizawa lazily dangled the remote in the air with his other hand.
“Oh.”
Aizawa felt a compelling urge to smack Yagi over the back of the head.
But, he was a socially responsible hero, so he forcefully ignored the temptation. Instead, Aizawa distracted himself with attempting to assemble the furniture for the second time.
For a blessing, Yagi and Yamada stayed quiet while he worked. Aizawa was half-tempted to ask if they were going to actually help or just continue to freeload in his office and watch, but in the end thought better of that lest he give them any ideas.
An hour and a half later, a really sad-looking drawer stood fully assembled in the center of Aizawa’s room. It was almost worthy of Aizawa’s pride, if not for the massive crack that ran down one of the legs that still dripped half-wet glue.
So invested had Aizawa been in his work that he nearly forgot Yagi and Yamada were inhabiting the room with him. As a result, he nearly fell over in shock when he was suddenly bombarded by genuine clapping and congratulations at his deeply significant accomplishment of following IKEA instructions.
Somehow, Yagi and Yamada’s wholeheartedness at the endeavor was worse than sarcasm.
For the second time in not enough days, Aizawa woke up to someone pounding on his door like it was the zombie apocalypse.
“ No. ”
The pounding ceased briefly. Aizawa thought he was going to cry from the sheer relief he felt in that moment.
And then Yamada kicked his foot through the door.
Aizawa once again thought he was going to cry, but for an entirely different reason.
“ The door is fucking unlocked, Yamada!! ”
A small gasp.
The sound of the doorknob being wiggled back and forth.
A quiet click as the door swung open.
“Oh.”
Aizawa hurled his pillow across the room and nailed Yamada directly on the forehead.
“Good morning, Aizawa,” Yamada greeted cheerily once the pillow landed on the tile as though he hadn’t just manifested a foot-sized hole in the middle of Aizawa’s door.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell you’re doing busting into my room again?”
“To help you with your decorating, of course!” Yamada waved passionately at the cracked drawer from yesterday still standing proudly in the middle of the room. “Now, up and at ‘em, Aizawa, we’ve got some interior decorating to do.” He rubbed his hands together eagerly.
Aizawa had to resist the urge to throw his second pillow at Yamada if only because he wanted to keep one to sleep on on the infinitesimal chance he could fall back asleep with Yamada flouncing about within a two-mile radius from him.
“.. Oh. Well. That’s unfortunate.”
Aizawa leaned against the window and groaned. All of that, and the drawer didn’t even have the decency to fit in the nook in his room.
“Well! Guess we’ll just have to take another trip to IKEA and find you a drawer that actually fits!” Yamada chirped. Beside him, Yagi nodded enthusiastically as though he could not think of a single better place to be than IKEA.
“A splendid idea. Come along, Aizawa.” Yagi strutted towards him and steered him towards the door by his shoulders.
Aizawa dug his heels into the ground. “I will be doing no such thing.” He folded his arms and glared at the other two.
Said other two promptly had the audacity to make puppy eyes at Aizawa.
A few heartbeats of silence.
And then Aizawa released a long groan of exasperation from the depths of his soul and followed Yagi and Yamada to IKEA.
The instant Aizawa stepped into the blue-and-yellow maze, he was overcome by a sinking feeling that he was going to leave with every piece of merchandise under the sun that was not a drawer with the dimensions he needed.
His fears were only confirmed when Yagi literally froze mid-stride to turn to look at something sitting in a display cage halfway to the food court.
“Do not ,” Aizawa warned. He didn’t even pause to look at what Yagi had found. If he ignored it hard enough, it would stop being a problem.
“But!!” Yagi whined. He gesticulated animatedly at his treasure, and Aizawa rolled his eyes.
“ What. ”
Aizawa finally spun around to glare at Yagi, and found him enraptured by an entire wall of BLÅHAJes.
“Yagi. Leave the BLÅHAJes be.”
Yagi looked at Aizawa pathetically. He was already halfway to grabbing one of the infamous sharks.
“Do you know how many people have probably touched that thing already?” Aizawa scolded. “I will not be repeating myself. Leave them be. We are here for furniture and furniture alone , not shark-themed plush toys fit for children.”
“Bold of you to assume I am more than a child at heart.”
Aizawa’s retort was interrupted by pattering footsteps behind him. He turned again to find Yamada sprinting towards them from the food court with several Swedish meatballs skewered on toothpicks in his hands.
“Guys! I brought—Oh, God, not the sharks.”
Aizawa raised a singular eyebrow as though prompting Yamada to elaborate.
He slumped over in a dramatic sigh. “When I was interviewing at UA last week, they gave me a stack of essays by one of the classes to look at, who universally decided to write all their essays about sharks, of all things.”
“Oh.” That should have been the cue for Yamada to move on to more riveting topics, but of course it wasn’t.
“At first, they were largely orthodox, consideration given to such things as size and environmental impact. And then a whimsical someone thought to entertain the idea of bestowing one with flight. Another, superior intelligence. And then the floodgates burst. Sharks with multiple heads, or arms, or legs, or arms and legs, and so on and so forth. It was getting absurd. A part of me wanted to tell them to go away and find something else to write about, but in the end, I couldn’t deny their passion, and here we are.” Midway through Yamada’s rant, Yagi had snatched some meatballs from his collection and was now stuffing them in his mouth like a toddler.
Yagi’s eyes lit up a few seconds after Yamada finished. Aizawa didn’t like that look. Nothing good ever came out of it.
He swallowed a comically large mouthful of Swedish meatball. “See, Aizawa? Even more of a reason to get a BLÅHAJ!”
“And how did you come to that conclusion.”
“We can get a BLÅHAJ and annoy Yamada together! You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Yagi rubbed Aizawa on his shoulder and grinned.
Damn it, he makes a tempting offer. Aizawa couldn’t deny he’d always hoped for a chance to give the other two a piece of his mind.
But wasting his money on such a useless toy was still beneath him. “No,” he denied with finality. “It will be a cold day in hell before I am seen walking around with such a childish plaything.”
Of course, that didn’t stop Yagi in the slightest from taking a BLÅHAJ with them anyways.
When they finally arrived at the checkout register, with one (1) BLÅHAJ and zero (0) drawers in hand, never had Aizawa more fervently wished that his card would decline.
“Alright, Class 1-A. Welcome to homeroom. I will be your teacher this year; my name is Aizawa-sensei, otherwise known as the Pro Hero Eraserhead. Are there any questions?”
A hand appeared in the air.
“Yes, you there.”
“Why is there a foot-shaped hole in your door?”