Work Text:
“And that’s why my siblings are banned from the laundry room, ribbit,” Tsu finishes her story, a few chuckles rippling through the small group gathered in the common room.
They had originally been working on homework but upon finishing (Tenya has suspicions that Uraraka and Jirou weren’t actually done but had let it go, it was about time for a break anyway) they had begun to share stories about their families. Uraraka had told them about when her quirk manifested and she got her mom stuck on the ceiling for two hours, Midoriya talked about when his mom had read one of his hero notebooks and practically begged him to not become a villain, Jirou shared small tidbits about musicals she had seen with her parents and finally Tsu had told them about how her siblings managed to bleach and then dye all their clothes red the two times they had been entrusted to do the laundry.
Tenya had been quiet the entire time, content to listen to the stories without adding one of his own. His silence, it seemed, didn’t go as unnoticed as he hoped.
“What about you Iida? Got any family stories?” Uraraka asked after the small discussion about the ridiculousness of Tsu’s siblings had finished.
His absolute favorite story about his family quickly stuck in his mind and despite his best attempt to stamp the urge to tell it, the words were quickly out of his mouth. “When I was younger I had the habit of running off,” he began hesitantly and a couple of them were already snickering. Jirou mumbled “naturally” under her breath.
“My brother was usually the one taking care of me so it didn’t tend to be a problem but when I was being babysat by my uncles Shou and Zashi, they had to run after me all the time,” he laughed slightly at the memory of Zashi collapsing after finally catching up with him, trying to ignore the sense of wrongness he felt calling Aizawa and Yamada their given names at school. “One time, before they took me to the park Shou tied his…” capture weapon his brain supplied, but he couldn’t exactly say that, he was already toeing the line telling this story at all. “Scarf around me to make sure I didn’t run off.”
“Like those leash backpacks?” Jirou asked, amused.
“Oh my gosh Iida is totally a leash kid,” Uraraka laughed next to her. His face flushed a little, but he nodded.
“My uncle Zashi thought it was hilarious and took a photo to send to my brother. Ten minute later he showed up to the park and was yelling at my uncles for putting a leash on me. While he was distracted, Shouta gave me a hundred yen and signed to me to hide in a bush nearby.” He clearly demonstrated the JSL as he explained, Midoriya and Jirou quick to copy his movements while Uraraka and Tsu just watched. “When Tensei finished yelling he finally realized I had disappeared and Shou told him I had run off the second he took the scarf off. He spent two hours trying to find me before Zashi texted him that I had been in a bush the entire time.”
They were all laughing heartily, the image of (now retired) pro-hero Ingenium running around for two hours looking for his brother who was just in a bush stuck in their minds.
“Your uncles sound great, are they pro-heroes too?” Midoriya asked after the laughter died down, hand hovering over his hero notebook.
Tenya felt his breath catch. Did he lie? But if he ever tells a story in the future about his family (and the floodgates were open now, he had a lot more stories to tell) it would likely involved hero work. Besides, he was using nicknames of their given names, he knew Midoriya was an analyst but even that connection felt too far away.
“Yeah, and my Auntie Nem too,” he added, knowing she’d be involved in the future stories too. Though maybe not many, quite a few were not exactly school appropriate.
Midoriya quickly scribbled that down. “It seems like everyone in your family is a pro hero, ribbit.”
“It’s somewhat common in legacy families, but I can assure you my extended family differs quite a lot from my brother and parents.”
They moved on after that, helping the two he knew didn’t finish their work actually complete it and then eating dinner that Bakugo had so graciously cooked (Tenya prided himself on being one of the few people who knew how to cook in the dorms, but he was well aware Bakugo’s skills far surpassed his own) for them. Soon enough, it was curfew and they all scurried back to their rooms.
Tenya briefly debated telling his brother about sharing the story or asking Aizawa (and Yamada, but he could guess the man couldn’t care less) if he was out of line for sharing something from his personal life with his students, but ultimately deciding on going on with his nightly routine without doing either. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.
The story has managed to spread like wildfire and now Bakugo has started calling him ‘leash’ almost as often as ‘glasses’. He wasn’t sure quite where it started, but he hazarded a guess that Jirou had told Kaminari who immediately told Mina and then it spiraled from there.
Bakugo’s new nickname definitely raised a few eyebrows but none of the teachers addressed it and thankfully, nobody talked about it further in-front of the teachers.
Now that things had gone completely out of his hands, he let loose a little. Randomly dropping small anecdotes about his extended family here and there. “Oh uncle Zashi loves the candy!” “Auntie Nem hates this music artist so he’s banned from my house.” “Yeah my uncle Shou’s been arrested a few times because he ‘didn’t look like a hero’.” Simple things like that (though there were some questions he didn’t know the answer to afterward) but no true stories.
Up until now.
“Young Iida I admire your thorough plan for the grocery outing, but why not go to the grocery store closest to campus?” All Might asked, looking over his request form for him and a select few (six) classmates to make required the weekly trip to grocery store. They all stood around the man in a semicircle as he read it.
“Oh my apologies! I must have simply overlooked that one,” he said quickly, practically snatching the paper back from his teacher to correct it.
“That’s not like you,” Todoroki pointed out, the others nodding in agreement.
“I was aware it was there and indeed closer, but it’s not typically an option for me.”
“Huh? Why not?” Yaoyorozu asked. The others seemed equally as confused. “I’d understand if there were budget constraints but your family is certainly far from struggling and I don’t believe the price differs greatly between the two stores.”
Uraraka nodded, a hint of concern in her features. “Oh it’s nothing like that, my brother and extended family are just banned from that store so I was never able to go.”
They all gawked at him as he handed the paper back to All Might, who blinked a few times before looking back at the updated page.
“What did they do?!” Sato asked incredulously, confusion mounting.
“How do you get banned from a grocery store, ribbit?” Tsu added on and the group quickly quieted, looking toward him with wide eyes.
“Well, my brother decided it would be a good idea to do shopping cart races right after he got his provisional license,” Tenya admitted sheepishly. He loved his brother, but sometimes he questioned how they were such when they differed so greatly. How on earth had he thought shopping cart races would be a good idea?
He took the now signed paper back from All Might and gestured the group to the common room, all of them quickly spreading out on or infront of the couch while he sat infront of the TV to tell the story.
“While UA didn’t officially have dorms before this year, they had one layer ‘apartments’ that functioned pretty much the same. They were only for wards of UA, which my brother and family became for different reasons,” he frowned a bit at the reminder that his brother had preferred to live on campus than with him, but reminded himself that it was his parents fault for never being home. “So they had to do grocery runs like us. During one of these, my brother proposed a shopping cart race around the entire store.”
“How are you guys related…” Midoriya mumbled. Uraraka chuckles next to him and there was a ghost of a smile on Todoroki’s face.
“My brother would be pushing the cart with Zashi inside, while Shouta would be racing the other one with my uncle Roo. Auntie Nem was the referee.”
Yaoyarozu raised her hand slightly, eyebrows furrowed. “I haven’t heard about an uncle Roo before?”
Everyone else voiced their agreement and he realized with a pang he hadn’t even brought him up with the other three. He knew why, he could count the actual memories he had of the man on one hand, but it still felt like a punch knowing how far he had slipped from his mind.
“My apologies, I had simply forgotten to mention him before now since he wasn’t involved in many stories,” Tenya said before adjusting his glasses. “Now, my brother and uncles made it about halfway around the store before security tried to stop them. Instead of stopping, Roo used his quirk to temporarily blind them and told them to finish the race.”
“Damn, your family has no respect,” Uraraka said between giggles.
“Quite,” he said with a heavy amount of disdain. “They made it back to Nem before security detained them and tried to have them arrested, but since they all had provisional licensees they were simply banned from the store for life.”
Four hands shot up and he was grateful they relied on classroom etiquette instead of shouting them at him. He nodded toward Sato first.
“Who won the race?!”
“My uncle, he used his quirk before tripping my brother. Zashi still insists that it was foul play and Nem should’ve disqualified them to this day.”
“Why did your auntie Nem get banned? All she did was stand there and ref,” Uraraka asked after he pointed to her, slightly pouting.
“Well, she also tried to flirt with the security to get the ban lifted,” he admitted, cheeks dusting pink. It was a lot more than flirting if the woman’s drunk stories were to be believed, but he wasn’t about to repeat that.
“How did they even have a shopping cart race inside the store ribbit?” Tsu asked after a few seconds since Midoriya clearly wasn’t going to without being explicitly called on.
“It was very early in the morning, about four I believe, so there weren’t many customers in the store and the other employees didn’t have the energy to deal with it.”
Midoriya was practically buzzing with excitement as Tenya gestured toward him, notebook now held in his hand instead of wherever it used to be on his person. “What’s your uncle Roo’s quirk? You said it causes temporary blindness but that’s very different than the speed quirks of your family. Is it a wild mutation? Or inherited from an in-law?”
“It doesn’t cause temporary blindness, that’s just how he used it,” he corrected quickly. “It’s essentially cloud manipulation, he was able to pull them from the atmosphere and control them. He used small ones as blindfolds.”
Midoriya scribbled dutifully and he wondered if his other family members now had two entires in the boys notebook, though he’d been unaware of it.
Roo would only have one, and that Tenya was very aware of. It was easier to talk about him with his friends rather than his brother, who always avoided mentioning it altogether and any mention of the man would sour the evening, possibly the next few days. But easier still wasn’t easy, and old blips of emotion he felt about the situation were brought back to the surface even though they had long since been buried.
He explained, the best he could from second-hand recounting, Oboro’s quirk more in depth to Midoriya. The other six let him indulge in his analysis until Tenya started struggling with questions, then reminding him they were meant to be going on a grocery run.
Wandering the grocery store he had never stepped foot in, he tried to imagine his brother and his friends legendary shopping cart race. If he had told the story to other classmates (re: Mina or Kaminari) he was sure they would ask to re-create it and now he wasn’t sure he would have the heart to say no.
Tenya wanted more images of uncle Roo in his head that weren’t the news articles he had seen so, so long ago.
“I’m starting to think Mr.Aizawa enjoys torturing us,” Sero groaned as he flopped down on the couch, Kaminari practically falling on top of him seconds later. Neither of them had the energy to move to a less awkward or more comfortable position.
Tenya usually would’ve admonished them for the false words but he was also quite drained. Conditioning days tended to do that, and while he was one of the very few who tended to enjoy them, today’s had been even more exhausting than usual.
Quirkless sparring, ten laps for the loser, then full upper body workouts, a few rounds of swimming and finishing it off with sparring against Aizawa himself, who seemed far too happy pummeling every single one of them into the ground. Only Shoji had even stood a chance and for that he ended up in recovery girls office with three broken ribs after a brutal kick to the stomach with steeled toe boots.
“What’s something normal teenagers do? If I think about doing hero school stuff anymore I’m gonna vomit,” Kirishima declared, still trying to get his hair back up the way it usually was from where it was stuck to his forehead courtesy of his shower.
“Many people find meditation enjoyable,” Tenya suggested as he sat down in one of the armchairs. He usually would’ve sat on the floor but Tokoyami was sprawled out with Dark Shadow taking up even more space.
“No offense Iida but I meant something, like, fun,” Kirishima said, finally giving up on his flat hair.
“Cry. Normal teenagers cry,” Tokoyami suggested and Dark Shadow immediately started making largely exaggerated sobbing noises, though she was clearly smiling.
“We could go to a park?” Kaminari added after the creature quieted down.
“Dude if I go back outside again it’s because I was thrown out there,” Sero moped before sitting straight up suddenly, sending Kaminari flying off him and completely off the couch. “Wait, you know what’s a thing a ton of teenagers do to relax?”
Tenya glanced around the group, trying to see if they had any idea. Kaminari was rubbing at his head, not giving any indication he even heard the question. Tokoyami didn’t pick his head up from where it was flush with the ground, face turned away from him. Kirishima was the only person he could read and he seems just as confused, brow furrowed and hand resting on his chin before asking “what?”.
“Drugs!”
Kaminari’s face lit up as Dark Shadow wholeheartedly agreed. Kirishima’s mouth hung open in shock and Tenya could assume he looked as shocked as the other boy. He cleared his throat loudly to collect himself before speaking.
“Absolutely not! That is-“ he wanted to say ‘unbecoming of young heroes’ but a faint memory stopped him, “incredibly illegal at our age and most certainly against dorm rules!”
“Why’d you have to mention it infront of class prez man,” Kaminari hissed to Sero who looked incredibly downcast now.
“Says you Iida, we know you’ve pulled some illegal stunts,” Sero said boldly, smile quickly cutting through his previous expression.
He floundered for a few seconds before recovering. “Regardless! This would not be for a good cause!”
“Yeah it would, letting us chill out is a great cause,” Kaminari argued further.
“It is still against dorm rules!”
“Oh come on, we do stuff that’s against dorm rules all the time, what’s one more thing?” Sero challenged and he could feel the argument slipping through his fingers.
“Speaking from experience I can assure you it is a very bad idea!” He insisted.
“Wait, personal experience?” Kirishima asked, turning toward him fully. Tokoyami picked his head up to stare at him in shock, and suddenly he felt like maybe that was the wrong thing to say.
He sighed heavily. “My brother would occasionally indulge along with some of my family members,” he mumbled.
“Did you do any drugs?” Kaminari asked quickly, far too excited about the prospect.
“Of course not!” He replied, almost too fast. They could tell, judging by the raised eyebrows and smirk on his classmate’s face. “I did… almost eat a laced brownie once. But I never actually ate it!”
Kaminari whooped loudly and Sero was cackling, Dark Shadow also shaking with laughter. Tokoyami was blinking long, slow blinks like he was still trying to process the information. Kirishima was trying to stifle his giggles poorly.
“You’ve gotta tell us the whole story man,” he demanded after getting the giggling under control.
“My brother had Zashi and Nem over after the three of them had finished a difficult mission together, so to relax they did exactly as you all are suggesting. I was supposed to be out of the house but the plans I had ended early so Shou took me home and babysat me while they were… otherwise busy. After everyone went to bed that night I went to get a drink of water and they had left the unfinished container on the counter. Shou stopped me before I ate anything and woke the three of them up to yell at them,” he finished, burying his face in his hands.
“I can’t believe Mr.perfect almost ate a weed brownie,” Sero laughed, sparking more laughter between the rest of them.
“I didn’t know that’s what it was!” Tenya defended quickly, flush quickly rising to his face.
“I’m more surprised your family does drugs,” Kirishima said. “I expected them to be more uptight, like you.”
“My parents certainly weren’t happy about it,” he sighed. “But that was likely the numerous broken windows.”
“Who broke the windows?” Tokoyami asked as everyone else howled with laughter.
“Zashi. He lost control of his quirk and shattered all glass in the house. I’m pretty sure my brother climbed through one of the windows at some point,” he muttered. “Nem had to go find him even though she had managed to lose about half her clothing. We’re still not sure where any of it went.”
Tenya eventually stalked away after the laughter had failed to subside, dragging himself back to his dorm room.
“So we’re absolutely making weed brownies right?” Sero asked, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Oh one hundred percent,” Kaminari answered, smiling devilishly.
“Don’t even think about it,” Aizawa snapped and they all jumped five feet in the air. “I don’t know why you think that’s a good idea, but let it be known using the dorm kitchen for this will result in your expulsion.”
As he stalked away, Kirishima whispered “Sato’s room isn’t technically the dorm kitchen.”
Uraraka and Midoriya quickly sprang up from their desks and made their way over to Tenya’s as Aizawa disappeared into his sleeping bag.
He had just finished a lecture about how to deal with difficult civilians after a villain attack, a few minutes before class ended, so he told them “do whatever the hell you want, I don’t care” before grabbing the familiar sleeping bag from the podium.
Uraraka sat down directly on his desk as Midoriya stole one of the now empty chairs from nearby and scooted up next to him. He usually would’ve been more upset that everyone had immediately sprung out of their seats instead of using this time as a designated work time like it usually was supposed to be, but with such little instruction he wasn’t exactly able to reprimand them for that.
“Do you think we’ll ever actually have to use any of that stuff?” Uraraka wondered aloud. “Civilians tend to just be grateful the heroes saved them and move on.”
“Some people respond to high-stress situations differently,” Midoriya answered first. “Civilians might turn more to fight than flight and lash out even when they’re being helped. I think the running away from medical staff sounded a bit far fetched though…”
Tenya bit his tongue to avoid laughing. “It’s actually fairly common,” he said eventually. “My uncle Shou is actually considered a medical flight risk and they have to strap him down at the hospital to make sure he doesn’t run away.”
Midoriya gawked as Uraraka mumbled something unintelligible. Tsu wandered over from her place near Todoroki to add her commentary.
“Sounds like when Mr.Aizawa came back after the USJ attack, ribbit.”
He tried to school his expression to not give too much away. Recovery girl hadn’t taken the ‘flight risk’ designation (one Shouta wore with pride) seriously enough and had paid the price.
“Most flight risks tend to be patients who have medical conditions that cause them confusion, but some people just disregard medical recommendations because they want to. Actually, I remember when Shou did that once-“
“Ooo, another family story?” Kaminari interrupted and suddenly most of the class had formed a semicircle around his desk. Kouda and Shouji stayed in their own corner, not really interested, Bakugo remained at his desk poorly pretending like he wasn’t interested, and Jirou stayed where she was since she could hear well enough without being smushed against her classmates.
“When I was around seven, Shou had taken me to a park to help work on quirk control in an open field. It was later at night because of his patrol schedule and the cover of darkness gave a group of criminals confidence that they could kidnap me for ransom.”
His classmates gasped, a lot of them seemingly scandalized at the prospect. Maybe he’d ask Aizawa to talk about hero legacy families and children sometimes in the future, things like this were fairly common in his youth.
“Shou stopped them of course, but one of them had a sword and another a gun. He got shot in the foot, stabbed in the stomach twice and once in the arm before managing to scare them off,” a few more gasps, after that. He imagined there would be a lot more if he told them which hero Shou actually was. “He recovered for a couple days in the hospital and they advised he take it easy, but instead to cheer me up he offered to race me home right out of the hospital.”
He smiled fondly at the memory. He had been so distraught, especially having the knowledge they were after him, not Shou. He had been comforted and assured that it wasn’t his fault even as the man bled out in the grass, but the thought that he caused his uncle to be severely injured lingered. The race home proved to him that Shou was fine.
(Of course, a few years later and Tensei showed him the camera footage of Shouta collapsing into Hizashi’s arms as soon as he went inside, groaning about how it was a bad idea and he was pretty sure the bullet wound reopened. He was able to laugh about it eventually.)
“Your family is crazy,” Hagakure muttered, a few of them nodding.
“Who won the race?” Todoroki asked.
“Shou won again. I still was getting a handle on turning using my quirk and he took side roads that my brother wouldn’t let me.”
‘Side roads’ were actually rooftops he had climbed to the second the race started using his capture scarf. He had done parkour most of the way home and it was honestly a miracle he hadn’t fallen.
“Fuck yall got speed quirks for if you can’t even win any damn races?” Bakugo asked harshly, leaning further back in his chair.
Tenya opened his mouth to reply before the bell rang. He quickly gathered his stuff and smiled awkwardly at the curious look Aizawa gave him at all the people crowded around his desk.
Tenya yawned and stretched as the movie came to a close, quickly feeling the effects of staying up far later than he usually did start to take their toll.
“Alright, one more movie then we’re going to bed,” Uraraka said authoritatively. Everyone else nodded as Yaoyorozu grabbed the remove to find a new movie.
“I’ll go get more snacks!” Mina volunteered quickly, springing up from her seat on the floor and darting to the kitchen.
There was slight bickering about which movie to choose before they eventually settled on Spirited Away. They chatted aimlessly while waiting for Mina to return with the snacks.
Tenya gently tapped his now dark blue fingernails to make sure they were dry. While the recently named ‘Girls + 1’ night has been mostly watching movies, at some point it had devolved in a spa day with face masks and nail polish. He had refused the face mask, unable to wear one with his glasses, so they had demanded to paint his nails instead.
These nights greatly reminded him of when Nemiru would occasionally babysit him, pampering him endlessly and dressing him up in different outfits to go do mundane chores. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t reported the curfew breaking and general exclusion the hangouts performed.
(They typically happened Saturday nights, so curfew was later, but certainly earlier than 1am. He had also trashed the few reports Mineta had attempted to file demanding he be included in the wheel of names the girls used to decide who would be plus one. He was fairly certain Aizawa wouldn’t do anything about it even if they were properly filed, but Tsu had offered to put his name on the wheel twice in Mineta’s place if he threw away the papers and that was too good a deal.)
His train of thought stopped as Mina returned, though she quickly rushed away again to pick up the snacks she had dropped on her way. He observed the overly large pile of snacks now in-front of him and tried to see if anything piqued his interest.
A few more snacks were thrown on the pile and one caught his eye. He reached for the familiar packaging before even registering why exactly it was so familiar.
“Oh, these used to be uncle Roo’s favorite,” he noted aloud as he tore the cloud gummy packet open. He had never actually had them before, they tended to disappear the second Roo got his eye on them, but from how much the teenager had raved about them he could only assume good things.
“Hey, how come we don’t hear much about your uncle Roo?” Jirou asked as she tore open a bag of chips, quickly holding it out to Mina to take some as she made grabby hands.
“Yeah, he was in that one shopping cart story but this is the first time you’ve mentioned him since ribbit,” Tsu added, covering her mouth to avoid getting food everywhere as she talked.
“Is he estranged? One of my cousins is like that because she took a DNA test that said she was part Italian and immediately moved to Italy to ‘connect with her roots’ even though it was like 2%,” Hagakure asked.
Tenya didn’t catch most of that, too lost in thinking of what exactly he was supposed to tell them. ‘Oh yeah he’s estranged even though everyone in my family loved him’? It felt dishonorable to his memory to act like he had distanced himself from them purposefully.
“He’s dead,” He said bluntly after the silence had lingered for too long, regretting it as everyone’s faces fell. “He passed when I was really young so I don’t remember him much.”
There was a small chorus of ‘sorry’ and he tried to wave it off. He thought the conversation would move on as the air turned more awkward than sad before Yaoyorozu spoke.
“How’d he pass if you don’t mind me asking?”
He felt his breath hitch at the question. He could say ‘I don’t remember’ or ‘I’d rather not talk about it’ but he thought back to the last time he had talked about Oboro. How nice it felt to actually tell people about him instead of just seeing pictures hung on his walls that his brother refused to talk about.
“He was involved in a villian attack during his second year work studies at UA,” he started. “He used his quirk to shield a group of children from falling debris from a collapsing building, but couldn’t shield himself in the process. He died on impact,” he said and before he could think he tacked on “Shou saw it happen.”
There were a few soft gasps and mumbled words he couldn’t hear. He jumped slightly as a hand landed on his shoulder but it was just Uraraka, who had managed to get from her spot to his on the other side of the room without him noticing.
“That’s horrible,” Mina whispered, fiddling with the piece of candy in her hand and refusing to meet his eye.
“It was… hard, on all of us,” he admitted. “After he died, my brother couldn’t let anyone visit me anymore because they weren’t coping well. It was too dangerous for them to be around, but I didn’t really understand that. I thought everyone just disappeared for no reason.”
“Your brother wouldn’t let them see you?” Jirou questioned and he could hear the judgement.
“He couldn’t,” he corrected quickly. “All of them were falling apart afterwards and turned to things he didn’t want me around. Nem dated a lot of people and would insist bringing them whenever she tried to visit, even though Tensei didn’t really know any of them. Zashi started drinking a lot, worsening his quirk control too much to be safe. Shou was… more of a danger to himself than me, I think, but I had looked up to him a lot and Tensei didn’t want me seeing him like that.”
Uraraka held his hand tightly as he explained, not commenting on the tears pricking his eyes or when he removed his glasses to wipe them away. The admission hung in the air and the relief of talking about all this felt too little compared to the tense atmosphere he created.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to throw that on you guys,” he apologized quietly, moving to stand up and retreat to his dorm room where he could stew in his emotions without awkwardness before Uraraka tugged him back down.
“Hey, these girls nights are a safe place for everything. Yeah, that’s usually bad movie opinions, but it can be stuff like this too,” she said firmly. The others quickly nodded along and Mina practically launched herself at him for a hug after he didn’t reply, the other following suit though thankfully more calmly.
The night continued eventually, they actually watched the movie and ate the snacks and laughed, but the moments of comfort beforehand stuck with him more than he thought they would.
He slept without nightmares for the first time in ages.
“Hey Iida?”
Tenya closed his computer and looked over at where Midoriya was staring at his notebook, eyebrows furrow. His group for the group project stood behind him but they all looked more disinterested than he was.
The group project had been to do research about legacy families and he had been banned from doing his own, so Midoriya had taken the opportunity instead despite Mineta wanting to do a different family.
“Yes Midoriya?” He asked, finally getting his classmate to look up from his notebook. The chatter between Ojiro and Tsu also died off behind him.
“I’ve been looking at your families tree and I’ve found most of your family members but there’s nothing about Shou, Zashi, Roo or Nem,” He said, turning his notebook toward him. On the page was an elaborate family tree going back far enough he didn’t recognize most names. He didn’t comment on the drawing of his brother’s hero costume on the other page.
“Oh we’re not blood related,” He said simply. “They’re just very close friends of my brothers who I’ve known since I was little.”
“Oh”, Midoriya said lamely, looking mildly embarrassed. Honestly, Tenya was kinda surprised he didn’t guess that after he talked about Roo’s quirk which was nothing like his families.
“And anyway, all of those names are nicknames of their given names, I don’t think you would’ve found them easily anyway,” he added.
“What are there full names? Maybe I could write a bit about them for extra credit,” Midoriya asked, flipping to a new page as Mineta groaned.
“…Shouta, Nemiru, Hizashi, Oboro,” He said quickly, hoping maybe Midoriya would smush the names together since he was talking so fast.
Midoriya and Tsu both had furrowed brows and he could practically hear the gears turning in their heads. Not only had he not given full names like Midoriya had asked, they had heard the names before.
Neither of them managed to figure it out before Ojiro asked if they could go back to working on the main project and the four wandered off. He let out a sigh of relief once they were out of earshot.
It wasn’t until later that night when a large amount of his classmates were studying for their English test Monday that it came to a head.
Midnight had been assigned to watch them for tonight since Mic and Eraser had a mission they needed to be finished, which was supposed to take all night but from the door creaking open it apparently didn’t.
“Why aren’t you all in bed?” Aizawa asked, glaring at Kayama who vaguely gestured to the work.
“Oh let them stay up late Shouta, they have a difficult test soon,” Yamada defended and Tenya immediately heard the gears click into place in Midoriya’s head before he even opened his mouth.
“Wait, Shouta?” He asked, sounding hesitant but everyone could hear the buzzing excitement beneath it as he connected the dots.
“Mr.Aizawa to you, brat,” He corrected harshly but Midoriya seems to tune it out.
“And and your Hizashi!” He said suddenly, pointing at Mic who raised an eyebrow but nodded. “And your Nemiru!” Midnight glanced between the rest of his classmates in confusion, eyes hesitating on Tenya who looked mortified.
“Your Iida’s uncles and aunt!” He finished finally and Tenya buried his face in his hand as everyone looked between his teachers and him.
“WHAT?”
“Oh my god, Zashi, Sho and Nem… how did we not figure that out?”
“HOLY SHIT!”
Aizawa flared erasure and everyone quickly settled down, but before he could get a word in Midoriya kept going.
“Wait, but then whose Oboro?”
The girls all froze and Tenya quickly looked up in alarm. Hizashi looked like he got punched in the face, Nemiru’s mouth hung open and Shouta blinked rapidly trying to process if he heard that right.
“Mid-“ Tenya started but the boy started mumbling, just loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room.
“Would it be one of the upperclassmen teachers? Or one of our teachers who we just don’t remember the given name of? No, none of them have a cloud quirk. Is he just not a teacher? But I haven’t heard of any heroes with a cloud manipulation quirk either. Is-“
“Stop.”
They all flinched at the volume of the word, the windows thankfully reinforced otherwise they would’ve cracked.
Hizashi did stop Midoriya’s rant but the curiosity was still painted all over his face for a moment before it lost its excitement.
Midnight had a hand over her mouth, nails digging into her skin slightly. Her eyes were narrowed and the hand not covering her face looked ready to rip her costume to put them all to sleep at a moments notice.
Mic was shaking slightly and his usual smile gave way to a harsh scowl, fists clenched at his side. Everyone seemed to flinch away from his expression and the clear rage practically pouring off of him.
Eraser hadn’t even flinched at the quirk-boosted noise, eyes wide and unseeing as they stared at Midoriya who shrunk even more under his gaze. He opened his mouth to speak a few times but no noise came out.
“Sorry,” Midoriya muttered, clearly unsure what he was supposed to be apologizing for.
Hizashi sighed and dragged a hand down his face, looking decades older than usual. “No I shouldn’t have yelled, listener. My bad.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Tenya said quickly. “I should’ve told everyone about Roo.”
Nemuri made a soft noise like a wounded animal. “You still call him that?”
He felt his face flush a bit in embarrassment but nodded. It was one of the more childish nicknames and didn’t even match up completely with his real name, but he called him that as a kid and it had stuck.
“So, cats out of the bag huh? How much have you told them Tenya?” Hizashi asked after a long moment.
“A few stories,” he admitted. “Which I know I should’ve asked your permission to tell first-“
Shouta held up a hand and he stopped talking immediately. “It’s fine, kid. What stories have you told them exactly?”
He explained the four stories, not missing the way the girls turned toward him when he stopped talking without mentioning the last one.
“I can’t believe you told them about that…” Hizashi mumbled, still stuck on the brownie story. Nemiru patted his shoulder sympathetically as Shouta glared at the two.
“Hey, since you’ve shared embarrassing stories about us, I think we get to return the favor,” She said, grinning. Hizashi’s face positively lit up as Tenya felt himself go fully red.
“Wait-“
“Like the time you ate an entire bar of soap thinking it was candy,” Hizashi started.
“Or when you ‘lost’ your glasses for two hours when they were on your head,” Nemuri continued and Tenya could tell they were having far too much fun with this.
“You got stuck on the ceiling because you forgot how to turn off your engines. Three times.”
Shouta’s addition really was the nail in the coffin and soon everyone abandoned studying completely to ask for embarrassing stories and even worse photos. Tenya tried to retaliate with embarrassing stories of them occasionally but nothing even came close to childhood stupid mistakes.
After nearly an entire hour of his life being broadcasted to a majority of his class (the others would be informed soon too, he was sure of it) Aizawa finally sent everyone to bed.
“Well that was fun,” Hizashi commented as Tenya hung back to help clean up his classmates mess.
“It was embarrassing,” He corrected, heat still present on his face.
“Hey, I’m sure your brother has way more embarrassing stuff we’ve done he’ll tell you if you ask,” Nemuri said and Shouta threw a pillow at her head for the suggestion.
“I don’t think any of us need our personal lives on display more than this,” he said firmly, though he didn’t seem upset at his life being shared.
“About that…” Tenya said hesitantly. “I did tell some of my classmates about, about Oboro.”
The tension that had dissipated earlier came back quickly, though not quite as harsh as before.
“Who knows?” Hizashi asked quietly, putting the last pieces of paper in the pile.
“The girls,” he answered. “It had slipped my mind to tell the story to everyone because I didn’t expect them to find out it was you guys.”
“Honestly surprised some of them didn’t figure it out immediately,” Nemuri commented, putting the thrown pillow back in its place. “You need to tell them to work on their connection skills Shou.”
“You teach them too.”
She rolled her eyes before bidding them a goodnight and heading back to the teacher dorm, now relieved of her duty. Hizashi ruffled Tenya’s hair before heading to his home room class to tell Yagi he can head back to the teachers dorms.
“Im sorry.”
“Would you stop apologizing kid, you didn’t do anything wrong. We just didn’t expect to get ambushed like that,” Shouta waved off, tugging his capture scarf off.
“Still,” he insisted. “And not just for that. I… told the girls, about how Tensei wouldn’t let you guys visit after. I didn’t tell them specifics about why you couldn’t, but they probably figured it out.”
He sighed slightly. “I’ll talk to them. And you should talk to Hound Dog about that, I’m sure that didn’t bring up good memories.” He nodded and Shouta gave him a small smile. “Now go to bed or your going to end up with a worse sleep schedule than me.”
Before he ran up to his dorm, he gave Shou a quick hug, barely giving the man time to react before he dissapeared into the elevator.