Chapter Text
“Alright, Problem Children, let’s go over dorm rules,” Aizawa sensei says with a small smirk. “Be in your rooms by eight. It’s lights out at ten. If you’re struggling with homework time, come to me and we’ll figure out how to work more time for it into your schedule. Don’t purposely cause property damage and if you do, own up to it immediately. UA can afford replacements, but heroes can’t lie about property damage. That’s a felony. There’s a list on the refrigerator you can write down needed groceries on. You’re responsible for breakfasts and suppers, so if you don’t know how to cook convince someone who does to either teach you or cater your meals. If that’s impossible, let me know and I’ll set you up with lessons with Lunch Rush. I don’t want anyone burning the kitchen down or blowing up the microwave.
“Respect each other. If someone asks you to turn your music down, do so or put headphones on so it doesn’t bother them. No wandering around half naked. Take fights outdoors if they turn physical. Take turns with community chores. Keep your rooms clean and reasonably tidy. Do your laundry or get someone to teach you how. Other rules will be added if needed.
“And last but not least, if clothing items or blankets – shoes, raincoats and winter coats excluded – are left in the common rooms they are free game for anyone to take. This is mainly for omegas and their nests, but others are not excluded. If an item is personally important to you or you need it for some reason like it being your gym uniform top, you are free to ask for it back if you left it by mistake. I expect you to be reasonable people about this. The laundry room is exempt from this rule. Don’t borrow or steal clothes from laundry baskets. Particularly underwear. If I’m called for a dispute over underwear no one will be happy. Got it?”
“Got it, Aizawa sensei!” everyone choruses.
Frankly, Hanta Sero is good with this particular set of rules. They’re pretty easy to follow in his opinion and it’ll probably be a while before anyone starts walking off with items left in the common rooms. Just to be polite. Personally he probably won’t be taking any. His omega side is pretty laid back and he’s content with the items his family have scented. If that changes, he’s sure his friends will scent items if he asks them to. Heck, he usually doesn’t even retreat to his nest during heats. He’d rather spend his time out in the common rooms with people than wallowing in scents in private.
~
Hanta spends most of his free time in the living room, even when no one else is there to keep him company. So he sees a lot of what his classmates get up to while passing through on their way to the kitchen, laundry room, baths or elevators. Some of it is pretty funny.
Like the time Shinso tripped over his own sock and hit the floor with a concerning thud and just laid there unmoving until Hanta had been moved to ask if he was okay.
Shinso had replied in a serious tone, “I’m fine. The floor just wanted to commune with me and I decided to quit fighting it.”
Okay then?
But anyways, he really thought it would be longer than a week before someone walked off with someone else’s carelessly discarded clothing. And he’s more than a little taken aback at who the culprit is.
Yaomomo picks up a well-worn greyish blue sweater, impulsively sniffs it and then starts walking away with it.
Hanta clears his throat. “Hey, Yaomomo, that might not be a good idea.”
She turns to him curiously. “Why not? It’s within the rules.”
“That’s Uraraka’s, right? She’s pretty poor. I don’t think she has an extra sweater. And I think she’d be too embarrassed to ask for it back,” he explains.
“Oh! How rude of me!” Yaomomo then lifts her shirt part way and pulls a very nice sweater out of her stomach and lays it down where Uraraka’s sweater had lain moments before. “If she comes looking for it, tell her this is for her, please.”
“Sure,” he says after a slight hesitation. It’s no skin off his nose and he doesn’t think Uraraka will be too offended by the sweater trade.
He’s still in the room when Uraraka comes bursting out of the elevator and starts looking around with a bit of franticness. Hanta watches her for a bit before asking, “Hey, Uraraka. What are you looking for?”
“My sweater! Have you seen it?” she replies, turning to hyper focus on him.
Hanta raises a brow at her. “Oh, Yaomomo took it for her nest. She left you the pink sweater in return, though.”
She blinks at him. “Yaomomo’s a beta, though?”
“I’m not one to judge. Betas and alphas sometimes like nests too,” he replies with a shrug. Honestly, he has to wonder if this is the first time Yaomomo has had permission to hoard someone’s scent for herself. Growing up as rich as she is was probably lonely as hell.
“Oh.”
Did she not know that? He thought it was common knowledge.
She goes over to the pink sweater and holds it up to her shoulders, then sighs in relief when it proves to be the right size.
Looks like he was right about the other one being her only sweater. At least this one is in much nicer condition. He hates seeing her looking between her clothes and everyone else’s and shrinking a little in shame. She’s usually good at hiding it, but Hanta is observant by nature.
Midoriya is the next person to lose something, but unlike with Uraraka, no one bothers to replace his.
It’s not uncommon for a blanket or two to be forgotten in the living room. Nor is it uncommon for blankets to be scented via rubbing over scent glands while being used. If someone spots a spare blanket in the room, it usually gets tossed over the back of the nearest couch.
Shinso wanders through to make himself coffee while Hanta is doing math and when Hanta surfaces again, both Shinso and Midoriya’s blanket are gone.
Huh. Didn’t know he liked Midoriya well enough to do that.
That’s apparently Midoriya’s reaction too, because he looks bewildered briefly before beaming and saying, “It’s fine. I have more.”
Not two days later, Todoroki doesn’t wait for Midoriya to leave the blanket behind. Instead, he casually takes it while Midoriya is in the kitchen getting water.
Midoriya comes back and notes their absence with a bit of exasperation, but doesn’t say anything. Rather, he accepts when Tokoyami and Dark Shadow offer to share their blanket.
The next day, however, he comes down with three blankets and tosses one to Hanta and another to Uraraka. Apparently he’s decided the blanket stealing is an omega thing?
Hanta subtly sniffs. Deliberately scented. Nice! Not that he had planned on taking one of Midoriya’s blankets, but he doesn’t mind the scent.
Uraraka looks surprised and then pleased when she realizes that it’s a gift, not a loan.
He doubts these will be the last blankets Midoriya loses and he’s not wrong, but those disappear over a period of months instead of mere days.
Not that Uraraka and Midoriya are the only ones to have things mysteriously or blatantly walk off. Far from it. Everyone has at least one item disappear eventually. One could argue that it was for the omegas’ nests, but as the person who watched most of it go down, Hanta can say without a doubt that notion is almost entirely wrong. Omegas aren’t the only ones who like to hoard the scents of those they care for, after all.
~
Then there’s the whole thing with Bakugou getting sick.
Look, the last thing he expected was Midoriya carrying an Emergency Nesting box through the room and then not twenty minutes later skidding into the living room with a pile of blankets over one arm and then holding one out that has some hero with a spiderweb patterned costume on it who he doesn’t recognize and demanding, “Scent this for Kacchan.”
Hanta just blinks at him for a few seconds in surprise.
Why is Midoriya soliciting scented items for Bakugou? Bakugou, who’s always scoffed at offers of scented items when Kaminari or someone else brings it up.
“Please.”
Shaken out of his thoughts, he replies, “Sure, but why?”
Midoriya sighs beleagueredly. “You know how he has like, the bare basics of a nest and nothing else? He’s so stubborn about it, even though it isn’t good for him. But now he’s sick and he stole Kirishima’s and my laundry and won’t give it back unless we trade scented items for it. I got Auntie to bring blankets for that, but I need your Bakusquad to scent specific blankets for him so we can get our gym uniforms back.”
Hanta takes the blanket and scents it liberally. “Sounds rough. Is Kirishima with him?”
“Yes. Kacchan’s got a fever, so Kirishima is making sure he drinks enough water. Thanks for doing this. Do you know where Kaminari and Ashido are?” Midoriya asks.
“In their rooms, I think? But I can text them to come down. I’m sure they’ll be happy to be interrupted from doing homework,” he offers.
“Yes, please!” Midoriya looks relieved.
Ashido and Kaminari are down within five minutes and happy to scent the blankets and then Midoriya scurries back the way he came.
But that’s not the end of it.
Midoriya ends up coming back with more blankets to ask about other people five more times.
Sato and Kouda? Sato’s getting extra after-school tutelage from Lunch Rush. Kouda’s out back talking to the local birds.
Uraraka, Tsu, Yaomomo and Jiro? Hanta texts Ashido to get them to come down.
Tokoyami and Todoroki? Tokoyami is sunbathing on the roof. Todoroki is in his room.
Ojiro, Hagakure and Shinso? Ojiro and Hagakure are out front, flirting on the lawn. Shinso took the grocery list over to Aizawa and hasn’t returned for whatever reason.
Aoyama, Iida and Shouji? Iida’s out on a run. Aoyama is taking a nap to settle his tummy. Shouji is in the kitchen raiding the fridge.
Each time, Midoriya thanks him, looking slightly more frazzled each time.
Hanta’s aware that Bakugou can be difficult, but damn. Also, he had no idea that Bakugou liked the rest of the class that much. Maybe he should tease him about how soft and squooshy his heart is…nah, he doesn’t want to die young. Besides, there’s always the risk that if he’s embarrassed enough, Bakugou will reject the newly claimed blankets and that would do bad thing to any omega’s mental health, even one as ‘tough’ as Bakugou.
~
Apparently, Yaomomo spread the word among the girls about Uraraka’s situation, because Hanta watches several incidents unfold.
First, Tsu carries what looks like a nice dress into the laundry room and then comes back with one of Uraraka’s worn dresses.
He raises an eyebrow at her and she shrugs.
“I left her a replacement. I’m sure she’ll be fine with it,” Tsu replies to the unspoken question.
That’s probably true, so he puts the incident to the back of his mind.
Next is Ashido swiping a skirt off the floor where it dropped out of Uraraka’s basket and disappearing with it.
He doesn’t see what happens with that, but a few days later, Uraraka is wearing a new skirt.
Jiro apparently skips the pretense of needing a scented item and comes up with the good ol’ ‘I accidentally bought the wrong size’, because Uraraka comments Jiro didn’t feel like returning the new black pants she’s wearing and instead gave them to her.
Not to be left out, Hagakure sneaks into the laundry room with a package of blue material in hand and emerges with Uraraka’s threadbare, too small pajamas instead.
Sero shakes his head, but doesn’t scold her for breaking the rules. The blue material was probably new pajamas, which is something Uraraka really needs. Sure enough, a couple days later, Uraraka comes down in a pair of dark blue pajamas dotted with little stars, that actually fit her.
It’s not only the girls who’ve noticed her circumstances, though.
Midoriya quietly switches her slightly ragged blanket with a brand new Thirteen branded blanket. He puts a finger to his lips and winks at Sero, so Sero pretends he doesn’t know who did it when Uraraka asks.
She accepts his lack of explanation with a faintly baffled look. Though if she’s actually clueless, he’d be surprised. After all, who but Midoriya would think to give hero merch in exchange for a ratty blanket?
Iida shows unexpected canniness and deliberately leaves a scented hoodie on one of the couches within Uraraka’s reach when she’s not paying attention.
When she gets cold and looks around for a spare blanket, she ends up pulling the hoodie on and snuggling into it. It’s hilariously huge on her, but it’s a cute look. Iida never comments on her wearing it around after that, though Hanta is pretty sure most of the time it lives in her nest.
Sato always has extra baked treats when she’s hungry. Not that Sato is stingy about sharing with everyone else, but Uraraka is the only one he always has some for. Hanta is pretty sure Sato thinks Uraraka is malnourished. She’s not, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
Shinso always adds a small box of mochi to the grocery list and puts her name on the box when it arrives.
Hanta finds it entertaining how baffled she is. When she asks, no one admits to it.
Shinso doesn’t quite lie when she asks him, but successfully bluffs her into thinking that he’d never dream of doing it.
She wanders around looking like she’s doubting her sanity every time she can’t figure out who is doing it. So, like once a week.
As for the others, he’s pretty sure they notice she’s poor and just have no idea of how to approach helping her out or think she’s too proud to accept help.
Which makes sense. He thinks her pride wouldn’t allow her to accept their gestures if they were straightforward about ‘trying to help’ instead of disguising it. Not that he thinks the ones doing it don’t want her scent, but it is one of the sneakier ways of helping he’s seen. After all, they could just bring her a token and ask her to scent it if scent was their only goal, even if stolen clothes and nabbed blankets are more traditional. Though he does wonder how long they’ll be able to keep up helping her without her realizing they’re doing it on purpose and subsequently telling them to stop. All she’ll have to do is count the number of clothes going missing and she’ll realize something is up.
Eh, not his business.
~
It's Hanta’s first heat in the dorms and as per usual, he’s spending his free time in the living room, because as mentioned before, he’d much rather be around people than tucked away safely. A little bit to his surprise, Midoriya is the first to notice, taking a noticeable sniff, then cocking his head to regard him silently. After a moment, he leaves without comment, only to return a few minutes later with an All Might blanket, which he tucks around Hanta without asking. It’s not a deliberately scented blanket, but it still smells faintly of him, which is surprisingly nice.
Hanta’s omega approves. Good alpha. Caretaking without being forceable about it. No wonder Bakugou is attached to him, though he would swear he hates Midoriya if asked.
Bakugou and Kaminari are the next to notice, eyes homing in on the All Might blanket. Kaminari gets an ‘aha’ look after taking a sniff and Bakugou looks personally insulted. All this to say, that Hanta is not particularly shocked when they go to their rooms and Bakugou comes back with a heavily scented blanket and practically shoves it in his face, while Kaminari comes back with a more reasonably scented hoodie to offer.
He accepts them of course. They’re his closest friends and the building is a little cold, so the extra blanket and hoodie are welcome. Not necessary, but welcome.
Ashido offers up a stuffie once she figures out what’s going on and several others in the class bring by little tokens that smell like them.
So he sort of ends up with a pseudo-nest on the couch he’s curled up on by the time it’s time to head to bed. When he unwraps himself and starts gathering up everything, Bakugou rips Midoriya’s blanket from his grasp and literally throws it in Midoriya’s face.
“He doesn’t need this.”
“Oh, thanks, Kacchan.” Midoriya doesn’t seem offended, at least, so that’s nice.
Hanta’s pretty sure the blanket was meant as a loan anyways. Which is fine! (Not to mention, he already has an actually scented one.) As it is, he’s tripling the amount of scents in his nest by taking the deliberately scented items back with him. Honestly, he’s touched at how sweet his classmates are about the whole thing. He doesn’t need all the extra scents, but he’s fine with having them and having his close friends’ scents in his nest makes his omega surprisingly happy.
Huh, maybe his omega was less content with his sparsely scented nest than he thought.
He does make a note to bring a couple scented blankets with him next heat, so he doesn’t end up with a repeat, though.
~
Notes Section:
Writing Sero is weird. All he wants to do is chill and watch his fellow humans be disasters.
1A are classic disaster makers. Kaminari is absolutely banned from using the electric hand mixer after chocolate cake batter ended up on the ceiling.
They definitely ended up with both a printed version of the Dorm Rules and an Additional Rules list pinned up on a large bulletin board beside the kitchen. Much to Aizawa’s exasperation.
Ochako and Momo friendship? Enter Momo being impulsive for her own benefit for once.
Hitoshi walked off with the blanket because Izuku did succeed in becoming decently close friends with him via sheer persistence and sunshine.
Honestly? I’m not sure if Shouto actually has any other scents in his nest given how estranged his family is. Maybe his sister’s? But Midoriya is his first friend and he HAS BEEN GIVEN PERMISSION from Aizawa, so he thought he’d try it and see if it helped his omega’s inner whining. It does.
I’m not trying to personify people’s secondary genders. It’s more like impulses and cravings and feelings of satisfaction that tend to pair with socially integrated phrases in people’s head because that’s what they expect. Shouto doesn’t really know the social phrases and he certainly isn’t hallucinating whining, his omega instincts are just naggingly unhappy, something he usually represses to the best of his ability.
Sero’s POV of the first fic in the series.
He acts as the communication center. Usually there’s more than one person hanging in the living room, doing homework, playing games or watching TV, but sometimes it’s just Sero, because he doesn’t like being stuck in his room.
He’s vaguely worried about Uraraka, but doesn’t feel close enough to her to offer help beyond enabling the others.
Momo definitely told the other girls.
Iida asked his brother how he could help her without hurting her pride and the hoodie and not saying anything was Tensei’s idea once he heard about the common rooms rule. Ochako was ready to hand it back if he said something, but of course he doesn’t because Tensei warned him against bringing attention to it.
Ochako is pretty sure she knows why they’re doing it, she figured that out about the time Tsu broke Dorm Rules to swap out her dress with a nicer one, but there’s enough social excuse at work that she chooses to ignore her pride in favor of having a few nice things for once. I know that there’s a trope about poor people being too proud to accept help, but I was poor growing up and being prideful about only wearing first hand clothes becomes worse than pointless when you can’t afford anything but second-hand clothes and you’d rather not be made fun of for wearing worn out clothing.
I can imagine that Ochako’s family had it worse some of the time, but not so bad that it gave her eating issues beyond a tendency to eat anything put on her plate so long as it’s vaguely edible and a tendency to stab snatching hands headed for her plate.
She doesn’t put mochi on the grocery list even though she adores it, because it was a luxury growing up and she’s still in that mindset. Hitoshi definitely made eye contact while sipping his coffee when she asked him, pointed dramatically to himself and asked, “You think I would bother doing that?” Like it was the most ridiculous question ever. Which of course made her conclude that it couldn’t possibly be him. His siblings would’ve called him out instantly if he’d tried that on them, though, lol.
Finally, he focuses on his own circumstance.
Rather than being stubborn, he just hasn’t felt the urge to collect more scents, so he’s surprised that he likes having them.
I’m unsure how this chapter came out. I’m not entirely happy with it and feel it’s a bit rushed, but at the same time, I wanted to fit more into it than I managed. I could add another chapter with some of their shenanigans. Maybe not from Sero’s pov though.
~
Omegas: Katsuki, Hitoshi, Sero, Shouto, Ochako
Betas: Momo, Mina, Iida, Hagakure, Ojiro, Jiro, Aoyama, Sato
Alphas: Izuku, Kaminari, Kirishima, Kouda, Tokoyami, Tsu, Shouji