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Hitoshi was seventeen when Aizawa first took his scent patch off in front of him.
They had been field training, or rather, Aizawa had brought Hitoshi with him for a late night mission to make up for the internship Hitoshi missed out on from having his first year in a different class and from spending most of his second helping the country repair itself after the war.
It felt good that he trusted him this much, that Aizawa was not only willing to go back to hero work after his injuries, but that he chose Hitoshi to be his backup, even if he never said as much as loud. It would’ve been weird, and they had a job to do, and Hitoshi was already about to burst from that alone.
It went about as well as expected. Hitoshi fell off of a beam, saved by his own capture weapon, and Aizawa quickly hit a threshold for how much he could use his quirk with only one eye, but they got the guy they came for so a win’s a win.
But Aizawa wasn’t happy. Hitoshi was exhilarated, but his teacher? Hitoshi spent the last couple of years admiring his steady, level-headed, and sometimes ornery mentor, so seeing him privately devastated shattered the glass. Aizawa was angry, frustrated, and, most of all, tired. Hitoshi’s heart sank for him, but every time he opened his mouth to give him a word of encouragement, he found himself unable to speak.
What could he say? Hey, Sensei, it’s alright! Don’t let it get you down! Bullshit. It wasn’t alright. Aizawa lost too much in the war, but they’d all lost so much that for some stupid reason Hitoshi thought a haircut meant it was all going to be fine and normal again.
“Ai–,” he started, but he watched stunned and speechless as Aizawa swore to himself, defeated, and ripped off the patch over his gland like he couldn’t stand it anymore.
He knew that feeling. He was young, but he knew how his glands would itch and burn when he was restless, how all he wanted was to dig his nails into his skin and pull them out anytime he was too pent up with rage, stress, any other… unsettling emotions that needed an outlet talking couldn’t solve.
In this moment, none of those crossed his mind. Not with this mood, not with how the mission went.
Aizawa tossed the patch away like a piece of trash, not even bothering to find a bin, and Hitoshi stood in stunned silence because it seemed that Aizawa had completely forgotten he was there.
Should he leave? It made sense that since they were done, he should’ve gone back to the dorms, but a deep-seated instinct had him rooted in place. So he watched as a storm raged in Aizawa’s head as he paced around his living room, a slight limp jarring his gait because it hurt, Hitoshi realized. Even with the best tech money and support connections could buy, nothing could do anything about the pain he pretended he didn’t have.
And then the scent hit.
Hitoshi’s eyes widened as Aizawa’s scent bled across the room, soured from his rage, but beneath the uncomfortable curdle was something Hitoshi never expected to come from him. Tobacco, maybe. Coffee, for sure. Those little dryer sheets he stuffs into his sleeping bag to keep it fresh, possibly, but not this. Nothing like this.
Of all things, Aizawa Shouta’s scent was none other than pumpkin. Spiked with cloves, maybe, but not sweet as a dessert, at least not in that moment. Maybe when he was happy, Hitoshi thought, but he shook himself out of it. Dreaming about a person’s scent was… for people who intended to court each other. It wasn’t appropriate for a student to think about his teacher that way, even though he’d already thought of him in every other way, down to the points of his fangs and his one crooked tooth and what kind of impression it might leave.
He sat on the couch and buried his head in his hands, and Hitoshi finally moved.
“Sensei, are you okay?”
Aizawa looked up at him, blinking out of his thoughts, and yes, he had forgotten he was there. For a brief moment in time, Hitoshi was a floor lamp with a purple shade, and he felt himself blush, ashamed that he had had the arrogance to stop being that lamp and think that he could help him.
He took a deep breath and looked off, his shoulders sagging in quiet defeat. “Yeah, kid. I’m alright.”
The angle of his turned head exposed his gland, the source of soured pumpkin, and to Hitoshi’s horror, he saw how inflamed it was. His own itched at the thought, and it was like looking at a wound and feeling it on his own body. He moved without thinking, and even though a voice in his head screamed for him to leave it alone, to not be a little freak encroaching on this… fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He grabbed a roll of kitchen towels and folded them into a square before he ran them under the faucet with cold water, unsure if warm would be better but not willing to risk the time it would take to pick a better temperature.
Aizawa, too in his head, didn’t bother to ask what he was doing when he came back, and he didn’t move to the other end of the sofa when Hitoshi sat next to him on it.
He took a breath, pressed his lips together in determination, and he did exactly what his health books taught him for gland care. He pressed the damp wad against his neck, soaking up the oils that had leaked out first, and Aizawa looked at him, his eye wide with shock, and although Hitoshi’s stomach twisted, he didn’t pull away.
“You can’t let it get like this, Sensei,” he said, keeping his eyes on his own hand. “You’ll get sick.”
“It’s not that bad,” he said stubbornly.
“I should have taken a picture first,” he said. “Sorry, if it hurts.”
He pressed down, forcing his thumb over the pocket of flesh, and Aizawa grunted, squeezing his eye shut at the feeling of a blister bursting on his own neck.
“Fuck, stop it,” he said and swatted him away, and Hitoshi almost curled in on himself like a child before instinct took over, the same one that kept Aizawa from taking a knife to the back and hour ago.
“Hold still,” Hitoshi said, not moving or stopping. It was just a gland, and it needed to be relieved, and he didn’t trust Aizawa to drag himself to a bathroom and do it himself in this state. “We’re having a class movie night next Saturday. It’s my turn to pick, but all my favorites suck, so I’m not sure what to go with. Like, yeah, I like them, but you know how sometimes shitty food tastes better to you, and I don’t wanna get booed out of the dorms for it. Then again, it could be pretty funny to watch them all squirm for a couple hours. I like shitty movies, but I’m picky about my music. I suck at video games, apparently, so they don’t make me play, but I’ve got, like, two days to either give my class brain damage or lie and say Ferris Bueller's Day Off is my favorite.”
“No one would believe that’s your favorite movie,” he said, and although Hitoshi just fucking started talking, Aizawa didn’t call him out for it or tell him to stop. He listened as Hitoshi rambled through cleaning out the worst of his gland, and that pumpkin became a little less soured.
“I don’t know, I’m full of surprises,” he said. “Bet you would have never guessed I like the worst horror movies you can get your hands on.”
Aizawa turned to him, furrowing his brow in disbelief, and Hitoshi flushed.
“Alright, maybe you did guess that,” he muttered.
Pumpkins roasted with honey.
Aizawa cleared his throat, and Hitoshi pulled the paper towels away, releasing a strong bloom of his scent that was almost too much to inhale at one time. He kept himself together thanks to all of that stealth training and his general ability to hold onto a shit-eating poker face, but his head went light enough that he was happy he didn’t have to stand. It looked better, though. It wasn’t leaking pus, and the skin was nearly the color of the rest of his neck.
“You should leave it uncovered for the night,” he said. “I mean, since you’ll be here at home. You should let it breathe.”
“Are you giving me a health lesson?”
“It would just suck if you went down for a few days and I was stuck filling out those damage reports all myself. Sensei, how could you? I only have my provisional license.”
Aizawa snorted and took the towels from him to wipe down his neck, getting the stray water and oils Hitoshi didn’t have a chance to mop up. “I need to cover this up in front of you.”
“Why?” Hitoshi asked. “I mean, I’m not–.”
He couldn’t say it out loud, that he wasn’t close to his isolation period by a few weeks. He could talk about it with his classmates, he could even laugh when they joked that so and so’s heat or rut was going to bring the whole building down, but not with him.
Aizawa turned and pointed his hand out, gesturing towards a small case of movies against the wall. “Grab one of those.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve got better taste in movies,” he said. “Second row is horror.”
Hitoshi glanced at him before he got up to crouch in front of the shelves and look for himself. Most were titles he recognized, and he had to appreciate the selection, although a part of him was deeply tempted to sneak a copy of The Gingerdead Man on here for later.
His finger landed on Ring, the Japanese version, of course, and he pulled it back, looking over his shoulder to see if Aizawa was watching him. He was.
“Can I borrow this one?”
“Yeah, just bring it back when you’re done with it.”
Hitoshi stood back up. “Thank you.”
“Just know while you’re watching that with all of your friends, I’ll be stuck here doing paperwork for the shipping crates full of baby formula you destroyed.”
“Sensei!” Hitoshi said, betrayed. “And you didn’t know that crane was active either.”
“Mhm.”
“I could help,” he said. “I mean, I could slip out while they’re watching and come here and sneak back before they notice I’m gone.”
“No, you need to spend time with your friends while you can. You’re not going to see them as much as you’ll want to when you graduate, and that’s only a few months away.”
Hitoshi swallowed, his stomach twisting. “Yeah.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to do paperwork when you’re a pro,” he said, sitting back against the cushion. “Especially if you still plan to go underground.”
“Totally,” he said. “I’ve gotta follow your footsteps straight into the sewers. That’s the plan.”
Aizawa tutted a laugh. “Must be the fucking dream.”
He stretched one leg out, and Hitoshi wondered if he took his own patch off right now, if he would smell as bad as he felt seeing him miserable like this.
He turned back to the shelf and crouched in front of it, his eyes bouncing over the dozens of titles without being able to focus on any of them.
“What would you go for if you weren’t trying to keep a whole room of hyenas from locking you in a closet?”
Aizawa laughed again. “Anything on the top shelf, left side.”
Hitoshi’s fingers brushed over the spines until he landed on–.
Chicago?
He pulled it off the shelf and looked back to see Aizawa sitting with his eye closed, drained and tired, and he thought that if there was any time to be a little reckless, this was it.
With careful steps he walked to the DVD player, and the sound of the tray ejecting was like a hammer through a porcelain cabinet. He grimaced to himself, but Aizawa didn’t ask him what he was doing or why. He just… let it happen.
The credits rolled, and Hitoshi quietly walked across the room and sat next to him, the lights still on and everything, and he was probably a little too stiff, but it was the boldest he’d ever been.
And somehow Aizawa let him stay without getting up to cover his gland, and Hitoshi spent the next couple of hours surrounded by his scent, drinking it in as if it was his to bathe in, and as the night went on, he let himself imagine what that impression would look like on his own neck, if he could manage to stay close to him long enough for Aizawa to want to.
And what he didn’t know at the time, too careful to let himself even imagine it, was that the second time Aizawa took his scent patch off in front of him, it was in a different room in an apartment not too far from campus, covered in forgotten paperwork and crumbled up takeout receipts with Hitoshi’s heart pounding just a few inches above him, every inch of his body screaming because he didn’t isolate in time.
He didn’t need to.