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Mina very much used to think that she knew Midoriya Izuku well. She was his girlfriend, after all! She was going to get him a Christmas present that blew his socks off! A present that would have him going “Ooh” and “Ahh” and then give her ten billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion septillion octillion nonillion decillion undecillion duodecillion tridecillion quattuordecillion quindecillion sexdecillion septdecillion octodecillion novemdecillion vigintillion kisses because he loved her and she loved him and they were the best!
Or however many placement values.
However…
“What kind of present does he dream about?”
That question was absolutely weighing on Mina’s mind. How the hell was she supposed to figure something like that out?
For as much as she knew she knew her boyfriend, it was so hard to figure out just what he wanted. He wasn’t the type of person to want much, and frankly speaking, he wasn’t the type of person to even talk about what he wanted, either.
Sure, she knew that he would love receiving some hero merch for Christmas, especially if they were newer heroes without much supply, and therefore would be harder to come across. However, so did everybody else on the goddamn planet that had even heard of Midoriya’s name!
Though, apparently, he didn’t want Endeavor merch? That was a little odd to Mina, but who was she to judge? She wouldn’t be one to complain about knowing something he didn’t want, and also, maybe it made sense for even him to not like some heroes.
Anyways, yeah! Momo could literally make him some custom-made merch if she wanted to! Todoroki had the money to buy him any amount of merch imaginable (even if he stole it from Endeavor)! Iida was related to a pro hero that Midoriya liked! Uraraka and Tsu probably both had some crazy inside scoops on which heroes he was looking for things to get!
That’s not even mentioning any of the other people who knew Midoriya, but because they weren’t close, they would be able to just sort of boil down a “what do I get him” to hero stuff exclusively.
In other words, Mina getting him hero merch?
Absolutely off the table.
Ughhhhhhhh.
From what she’d deciphered, some of his other interests were also off the table. She knew damn well he did not need any more notebooks. He had about a bajillion leftover for whenever he filled up another.
Calligraphy, also probably not. She didn’t know enough about it to make a well-researched decision, and she knew that if she were to start asking around, knowledge of that would probably make its way to Izuku, and that’d ruin the entire thing entirely!
She thought about making something for him, but as much as she wished she was, she didn’t have a ton of the patience required for that. She knew Hagakure was making a bunch of crafts for people close to her with her knitting skills, and she didn’t have that sort of focus right now.
By the way, Hagakure never told her about “making different things for people.” The wrist pain she was complaining about recently sure did, though.
Regardless, it felt like she was at an impasse.
Maybe she could get him something simple and practical?
“Hmmm…a leather wallet?” She wondered out loud as she recalled how beat up his current one was, before dismissing the idea entirely. “What am I, an acquaintance?! I could just get him a wallet any day of the week!”
Yeah, that was definitely too ordinary. She wanted to stand out!
“A singing trout?” She thought, because if there was something he definitely wouldn’t expect, that would be it. “No, it has to be something that at least makes sense!”
And so began the long, long struggle of Ashido Mina in trying to figure out what to get Midoriya for Christmas.
“You haven’t finalized your gift for him yet, kero?” Tsu asked one day during one of the girls’ hangout sessions. Well, most of them. Momo and Uraraka both had to take rain checks because of some family events going on. Mina, Tsu, Hagakure, and Jirou were all there, though.
“No, not yet!” Mina groaned, leaning back against the wall. “What I should get him is a mystery!”
“Just get him, like, an All Might figurine or somethin’, trust,” Jirou suggested, knowing full well how unhelpful that was. “But seriously, though, nothing yet?” She wasn’t judging Mina, of course, but it definitely came across as a surprise considering how much she thought about him.
“No, legit!” Mina answered dramatically, putting her head in her hands. “Besides, if it’s lame, will he still want me?!”
The other girls chose not to justify the worry with a response, because they all knew that Mina was not saying that in a serious light, and that this was just another of her super drama fits. In all seriousness, even taking the fact that this was her first relationship out of consideration, they knew that she was emotionally intelligent enough to take this relationship seriously as it’s what she wanted. She knew full well that Midoriya would never do anything like jeopardize their relationship over a singular gift.
Unless the gift was, like, something making fun of the fact that his biological father isn’t going to be able to come home for Christmas. That might warrant some severe consequences.
“Could always get him a DVD or something like that,” Tsu suggested. “He’s always been a fan of getting things from the Pre-Quirk Era.”
“Really?” Hagakure asked, and Tsu nodded. “Huh. Didn’t know he was the type of person to be a fan of analog things like that. You think one of those…what are they? The great-grandfather clocks? That might appeal to him!”
Mina only deadpanned at her, “I am not getting my boyfriend a clock for Christmas.”
“Maybe one of those new videogames?” Jirou put out. “I’m getting a few of our friends some games that they’ve been interested in recently that are coming out.”
“Ehhhh, Midori’s not really that type of guy, unfortunately,” Mina pouted, which was unfortunate because that would really help her out. “Sorry guys, I’m being really bad about this.”
Tsu’s gaze softened, and she encouraged her, “It’s okay, Mina-chan. I imagine it’s really hard, especially since this is your guys’ first Christmas together as a couple.”
“Ughhhh, what does he want?” She asked, mainly speaking to the world instead of the people around her. “Something like that, or maybe one of those new digital frames?” That was a pretty good idea, honestly. He could use it to commemorate the two of them! It’d be a perfect way, and a relatively modern way, honestly, to give him a Christmas gift that’d be unique to the two of them!
But…
“No…” she ended up deciding. “That’d just mean that he’d be putting in the work to actually make it a cool gift! No, maybe it’d be something to fit his personality?”
The others could see where she was coming from, even if they didn’t necessarily agree with the sentiment.
“God, what does he want?!” Mina repeated for the umpteenth time. “The perfect present is eluding me!”
Mina plopped down onto her couch in the family’s living room with a hefty groan, and her father called out from the kitchen, “You ever find somethin’ for that Midoriya kid?”
In response, she only groaned, “My friends all tell me that I shouldn’t obsess…”
Her father only whistled in response, not taking his eyes off of the meal he was cookin’ up, “But…?”
“How can I avoid the stress?” She continued to groan in frustration, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling blandly. “I need to know, but right now, all I can do is guess!”
She only received a chuckle, “Y’know, when I was your age–”
“Yeah, yeah, Dad, you got Mom a fancy cell phone for your guys’ first Christmas together, but Izu doesn’t like getting new tech! He’s still only on the iPhone 73!” Mina sighed dramatically, stretching herself while she could as she rested further. “What’d Mom get you for your first Christmas, anyways?”
All of a sudden, Mina’s mother entered the room, pointing her phone threateningly in her father’s direction, “Don’t you dare tell her that!”
“Or what, Honey?” He teased back at her with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Are you gonna melt down that present again? Hard to destroy an already destroyed tube of grout, isn’t it?”
Before her mother could inflict some real damage, Mina snorted, “A tube of grout?”
“He was into doing that whole, y’know, DIY stuff!” Her mother defended. “And then I got to the Christmas party that he and his friends were having, the one before his family’s, and they’d already given him, like, twenty of those as a gift!”
“Oh, yeah, I remember that!” He chuckled. “Turns out Akiyama had a bunch left over from when Hana-chan made him remodel his little office thing.”
Mina giggled at the thought, “So Mom got you one when you’d literally just gotten twenty?”
“YES!” She groaned, fully exasperated. “So make sure you don’t get that Midoriya boy something somebody can just give him twenty of!”
Mina chuckled, sitting up so she could talk to her family some more, “Don’t worry, Mom, I don’t think that’ll happen for me.”
After all, she wanted her gift to him to be something that not even Momo could end up making with all her genius.
“What does he want?” Uraraka prompted, for what Mina must have heard for the ten billionth time. God, if she had a yen for every time she’d been told that as advice, she could probably buy a really tasteless golden statue of her fanning herself with money.
Yeah, that was really specific. So what? It sounds like it’d cost something like 10 billion yen!
“Man, I don’t know!” Mina grunted, frustration in her voice. “Ugh. Sorry, Ochako-chan.”
The brown-haired girl only snorted, “Don’t worry about it, Mina-chan. You didn’t ask me, anyways. I just thought I’d ask you what you’re getting him.”
“Well, what are you getting Izu?” Mina asked. If she knew what other people planned, it might help her make her decision on it.
Then, she shook her head. No, she couldn’t do that! She needed her gift to be so spectacular that he couldn’t even put it in the same tier as the other stuff he’d get!
“Oh, this!” Uraraka pulled out her phone, tapped on it a few times, and then showed her a screen. “There’s this really pricey place that he’d always wanted to eat at, so since we’re big-back buddies, my present’s going to be taking him out to that place!”
If Mina were a more jealous person, she’d be worried about the fact that another woman was planning on taking her boyfriend to an expensive restaurant, but at the same time, she knew that both her and Izuku were way too whipped for one another for something like that to be even possible.
Plus.
He was the one to ask her out, not the other way around.
Plus plus.
If Tsu found out that Midoriya was cheating?
Yeah, he’d be a dead man. Mina probably wouldn’t even have the chance to mutilate him, and she was sure Izuku knew that was the case.
Plus Plus plus.
Uraraka did not swing that way. Boom. Problem solved. Crisis averted. Huzzah.
“God, that’s a good present,” she huffed under her breath.
“So…any ideas?” Uraraka hummed. “You could get him, like, one of those coupon jars! Like the ‘hey, if you use this coupon, I would do this for you!’ kind of thing.”
“But I don’t want it to be something that somebody else has come up with before!” Mina scoffed, more to herself than Uraraka. “Ugh, I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out!”
“Uh, Mina-chan?” Uraraka raised an eyebrow. “People have been celebrating Christmas for, like, forever. I’m pretty sure any gift idea has already been made.”
“I know, but that’s not the point!” Mina scrolled furiously on her phone, seeing as many things as she could in a desperate hope that something would just give her an unbelievable spark of inspiration. “Rear-view mirror glasses as seen on T.V.? Hell no!”
Uraraka snickered at the sight of what was on Mina’s phone, “Yeah, Deku-kun would look super stupid wearing those!”
Mina leaned back on the wall with a heavy sigh, “I only wish I knew what he got me…’Cause I hear it’s perfect.”
She hung her head a little low, with a soft mutter, “What does he want?”
Mina really did feel like she was stuck. She wanted to do something to commemorate all of the time that she and Izuku had spent together! She wanted to celebrate their very first Christmas together! There were so many important things that she wanted to celebrate involving him!
She let out another hefty sigh, something she’d found herself doing quite frequently as of late. What was she going to do? There wasn’t a lot of time anymore! Christmas was basically right around the corner!
“Something that fits his personality…something relevant to me…something that you could do without technology…something that nobody else would make for him…something that nobody else could make or do with him…” Mina muttered through her criteria again. “Something that people wouldn’t know he’d want…”
Mina furrowed her eyebrows.
“Wait…something people wouldn’t know he’d want…” she repeated. “What if Izu doesn’t know he’d want it?!”
The gears in her head started to turn.
“He’s the type of person to like being organized about time…and he…” Mina blushed as she was thinking aloud. “He likes spending time with me…” She had to take a moment to enjoy the warmth that swelled up inside of her, the silly smile that popped up at the thought of it. “So something time-based, maybe? But it can’t be a regular-degular thingy, and it can’t be something he needs to put in effort for, because then that’s more of a setup than a gift…and if it’s something nobody else could do…nobody can date him except me.”
Well, that was an obvious truth, but Mina really hadn’t considered using that to her advantage yet.
And she didn’t want it to be something as simple, as straightforward as “Hey, here’s a billion kisses!” or maybe something like “Hey, let’s go on a special date here!”
(Partially because they already had Christmas-esque date plans anyways that would happen on the 26th, so they had time to fully spend with their family in the evening on the actual Christmas day.)
…
“I’ve got it!”
“Izu, come here!” Mina basically dragged him out of the common room, where the rest of Class 1-A was having their own Christmas celebration. “I wanna give you my present!”
Midoriya only laughed mirthfully, something Mina was glad she’d been able to hear more often as he responded, “But Mina, why don’t we do it here with everyone else?” He pointed his thumb towards his friends, who were only looking at the two of them with fond exasperation.
“No, no, go on, lovebirds!” Uraraka whooped in encouragement. “Just make sure to use protection!”
“Uraraka-san!” Iida gasped, mortified, but Mina couldn’t even be bothered with her remark. She was so excited that her sheer joy and whimsy had essentially formed an emotional barrier against such remarks.
Midoriya, though, not so much, as he turned beet red as he stuttered through a weak defense. Fortunately for him, he didn’t need such a defense as Mina dragged him up the stairs to her room.
Or, partway, at least, before he interjected, “Wait, Mina! Can I also grab your gift from my room?”
Mina nodded, going with the flow, “Let’s just go there, then! I have my gift in my bag!”
She did, in fact, have her gift in her bag, though it took up quite a bit of room and she’d temporarily removed quite a few things from there to make space for it.
As Mina turned on a dime, now dragging Midoriya to his own room, she couldn’t help the pep in her step from rising and rising, and Midoriya couldn’t help but smile gleefully at being able to spend time with his wonderful girlfriend like this.
“Let me go first! Let me go first!” Mina was bouncing as the two of them entered his room.
“Okay, okay,” Midoriya giggled as his girlfriend was basically jumping all over him. “Any reason why you didn’t wanna do this around the others?”
“Because,” Mina’s excitement gave way to a loving smile, one that Midoriya was so, so glad was reserved just for him. “I want this moment to be special for the two of us.”
She sat on his bed with a soft plop, and he followed suit as she started reaching into her bag.
“Do you want me to close my eyes, Honey?” Midoriya asked kindly, and was a little surprised when she shook her head.
“No, it’s okay,” she answered, starting to pull her arm out of her bag and hand the gift to Midoriya.
“...A calendar?” Midoriya asked, perplexed. He wasn’t upset with the gift or anything, but it didn’t exactly seem like the type of thing Mina would give him.
“No, Izu!” Mina laughed, nudging him excitedly. “Open it up!”
Hesitantly, he did, unsure of what he was going to see.
He saw January 4th through 8th were highlighted in a bright yellow with a red arrow pointing at it, labeled “Could we go to the park near your home here? I could teach you to ice skate!”
The 19th through the 21st had orange highlighter over it, with a green arrow wondering “Maybe you could meet my younger siblings! If it’s snowing, they love going sledding, and they’d still be on break here!”
Midoriya let out a shaky breath as he flipped over to February. The 11th had a circle around it, with an excited “HEROCON!!! We should go!!!” and the 14th, of course, had a heart over it, labeled “Expect something super cool, Sweetie!” for Valentine’s day. On the 23rd, another circle labeled “Can I treat you to this fun little spring event? I think it’d be cute!”
He flipped through month after month, seeing each and every one of them have multiple events with ideas and desires, with mini-details and locations thought out. He especially loved the one on May 17th, which just read “We should go on a date! Just for fun!” Their birthdays in July, dates to swimming pools, ideas of going on trips, hell, even one in September about going to Hokkaido for a few days together! Their anniversary.
…Their anniversary. Midoriya already knew, but seeing Mina be so bold about declaring it…it warmed his heart. She had faith in them. She wanted this to be them entirely.
Slowly, he looked up at her, and she looked bashful as she asked, “Do you…like it?”
Midoriya let out a shaky breath, his voice raw with emotion as he whispered, “I…I love you so much, Mina…”
Mina’s heart absolutely leapt for joy at the admission as she watched him hug the calendar to his chest, “I…I love you too, Izu…With all of my heart…”
Gently, he set down the present she gave him, and scooted closer to Mina, asking, “Can I hug you?” The moment she nodded, he embraced her with a gentleness and a warmth he didn’t show often.
“Mina,” Midoriya whispered. “It’s perfect. I absolutely love it…”
Mina let out a shudder she didn’t know she was holding as she hugged him back, admitting, “I’m so glad, Izu. I was so worried it’d be a really weird gift or that it wouldn’t be enough…”
Midoriya pulled away, his face one showing sheer astonishment, “Enough? Honey, this is so much! I mean, you came up with so many things!” He picked up the calendar again, pointing to a few dates. “I-I mean, didn’t you have to look into a bunch of when these were happening and think up all of these ideas and then see if that stuff was even going on in the first place?”
Mina slowly nodded, and Midoriya continued, “That’s amazing all on its own! You did so much thinking and, and, like, you put so much work into making this and figuring out when we could do stuff together!”
Mina was stunned, but it made sense when she thought about it in hindsight.
“I love this, Mina, because all of this is something I can do with you,” Midoriya explained. “And there’s no greater present than all of these chances to be with you, to be yours.”
Mina flushed, and stuttered, “H-Hey! N-Now you’re just being too sweet to be sweet to me!”
Midoriya laughed, not even trying to deny it, though he did clarify, “Even if it was too sweet, that doesn’t change the fact that I believe it.”
Mina pouted as she blushed even harder, basically jumping on him in another hug, “I…I just love you so much, Izu!” She enjoyed the sound of Midoriya’s laughter, the vibrations she felt from his chest, and the way he hugged her back.
Eventually, though, when he did pull away, he asked a simple question, “Hey, Mina, before I show you my present, can…I do something really silly?”
Mina nodded, though a little curious, “What’s up?”
Midoriya looked sheepish as he admitted, “So, I…kinda thought you’d want to show me a gift in private, so I…might have wanted to bring you here anyways.”
Mina blinked, not following his lead, “Huh? Why?”
Midoriya shot her a very sheepish smile this time around, and his only response was pointing upwards. Mina followed where he was pointing up all the way to the ceiling…
Where there was a single piece of mistletoe already hanging up there.
She blushed, her heart skipping a beat as she looked back at Midoriya, “Izu…did you want me to come here just because of that?”
He glanced away for a moment, “Uh, maybe?” He rubbed the back of his neck before looking back at Mina.
…Who was already on her way to jump him in order to fulfill the tradition of what happens when two people are under a mistletoe together.
Yeah, Izu can show me what he got me later! Mina thought to herself as she thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of making out with her boyfriend. Buuuuuut…I think there’s something I’d prefer doing right now~