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With how fast Aizawa marches across the room and slams a fairly large book -- one unfamiliar to most, save for Midoriya and Yaoyorozu -- onto the podium, you’d think he’d have enough energy to spare to brush his hair.
Erasure glares open.
“Let’s see to it that you’re all prepared for the retake of your reassessment exams,” he announces. Unkempt as his hair is when it floats up, he looks he’d just crawled out of his sleeping bag; but even that seems unlikely. It’s messier than usual.
Maybe he’d run.
Kaminari’s head ducks onto the table. It lands with a thump on his desk as he groans.
“We’re so dead.”
Why do they all even have to take these new exams anyway? Initially, none of them had even failed the final theory exams, and only a few had the practical exams’ success run from them.
“Maybe you are, dunce face.” Jirou teases, her voice a whisper. “Everyone else is fine.”
One look at the rest of the classroom would tell a different story. Wide eyes all around.
Midoriya is muttering behind Bakugou, who’s interlaced his fists in front of him and clenched them nearly white with laughter; Sero loops a hand over his mouth to mumble something to Kirishima, the latter wearing a determined yet apprehensive look on his face.
Students at the front like Ojirou, Shoji, Aoyama and Hagakure don’t have such liberties to gawk, remaining blissfully silent under the watchful eyes of Aizawa.
Not that Kaminari would notice, head tucked as it was.
“I’m so dead,” he amends helplessly. “I mean, not even a good morning…? Or a morning…?”
Snickering, Jirou squints back to the board.
Despite the mounting dread that this could be the straw to break the camel’s back, a bittersweet end to their journey as heroes, Aizawa continues spelling out their doom.
“As you all know, Present Mic will be working around the clock with you for English,” he states, tone bored as it was plain, hair falling back to his sides as he blinks, “Midnight for Modern Hero Art History, Ectoplasm for Mathematics, Cementoss for Literature; and, as always, All Might for Basic Heroics. Even if he can’t participate himself any longer, his teaching is still… valuable.”
Hands shoot up.
Picking one at random, he fixes the chosen victim a curious glance. “Yes?”
“You mentioned all the other faculty,” Iida comments, glasses poised, hooking a finger inside his collar before clearing his throat. “But not yourself.”
He hums. “That I did, yes. What about it?”
“What subject are you teaching?”
Wolfish, a wide-toothed grin spreads across his face. Several students gulp.
“While I’m primarily your homeroom teacher,” he says, “Your principal badgered me into changing the pace this year, given recent events.”
“Oh shit.” Sero whistles.
Aizawa’s expression grows wilder. “We’re covering the sciences together.”
Ojirou bows over in disbelief. Midoriya’s green eyes behind Bakugou glint eagerly at the proposal, Yaoyorozu chancing a smile and Todoroki simply looking on ahead. Meanwhile, the light in the rest of their classmates’ eyes is snuffed out like a torch doused by a bucket of water.
“Plus ultra, hellion class,” their teacher muses, then blinks, wearily, as if remembering himself. “We’re all in for it now. How do you feel about chemistry?”
Iida trembles.
“Good grief,” he mutters, though his frustration is directed less at the subject and more at his peers.
“What the hell’s an atom,” Kaminari bemoans.
Jirou points to all of him. “The things that make up how stupid you are.”
“I’m better at you in English,” he protests, ticking his fingers against his mouth. He’d all but bitten the ends of his nails off before they’d even made it to Bakugou’s room to study. “And Modern Art History.”
To that, Jirou’s unsure of how to counter against.
“Wait, hold on,” Sero snickers, saving the day and her dignity, leaning against the desk leg, “Why're you still on the first chapter? Aizawa-sensei went over chapter five like, yesterday.”
More laughter breaks out.
“We went through five chapters yesterday!” Kaminari points out, aghast. He presses his lips together in a sulky pout. "You guys are so mean."
At his desk -- they’d colonized his bed and the floor respectively, not wanting to test their luck by taking the only chair present in the room -- Bakugou sneers, pen tapping away at the paper they’d been assigned yesterday. “You’re just slow, Pikachu.”
Kirishima, slumped against the bed and graciously given two pillows, the favourite that he is, rubs a hand against the nape of his neck. “Hate to say it, Denks, but he’s kinda right.”
Kaminari trills a soft sound of protest.
“This isn’t fair,” he groans. “How’re you all so good at this?”
“Not all of us are,” Jirou points out, four fingers closed and a thumb hanging out to point to Ashido hanging over the bed.
It’s faint, but her back is rising and falling, a snore eclipsing her frame. She’s even still wearing her blazer.
Sero’s eyes widen. “Wow! She’s conked out like a light-bulb! Like the one Denki fried the other day, damn. Aizawa-sensei was so pissed.”
“Hey!”
It was a miracle how Aizawa-sensei hadn't wrapped him up in his capture scarf and bled him out to dry.
“Would you extras just get back to work?!” Bakugou barks out.
“Aye aye, explosion boy! We’ll get right on it!”
“Hah?!”
“Wait, Denki, are you still on the first line?!”
By the end of the week, Shouta was sure he'd aged another decade. If he cared enough for vanity, he'd have to make a trip to the hair salon to dye the grey hairs that'd multiplied tenfold, but that would also mean addressing his partner's 'silver fox' comment, and he wasn't sure on how to address that.
Leaning his forehead against Hizashi’s shoulder without losing the battle to sleep is already a challenge by itself.
“Rough week?” Hizashi coos sympathetically.
They're in their living room, no students to be a nuisance or to fuss over, and though Hizashi's radio show would be on later, it's fortunately much too soon for him to take leave. He'd gotten comfortable, however, cozying up on the couch after extricating his directional speaker from his neck and placing it on the kitchen counter, jacket hung over the arm of the couch.
Much more unfortunately, the leather pants are still on.
He grunts, shifting. “I’m expelling all of 1-A.”
“Oh, c’mon, yo, you love ‘em too much for that.”
A false accusation. He does not love any of his kids.
Students. Not kids. Certainly not his either, Shouta reminds himself. They’re a miserable, whiny bunch of brats who tempt him with puppy eyes and sour pouts and try to wriggle out of classwork.
“I’m giving them all detention,” he decides.
Pausing, Shouta’s head is quickly lifted up by Hizashi dipping a finger under his jaw and tugging upward, until green eyes meet near jet-black. “Even Yaoyorozu?”
Favouritism is nonexistent in his classroom. Despising them all equally is preferable.
But if he had to choose anybody, besides Iida -- the Hosu incident still fresh in his mind -- Yaoyorozu wasn’t that bad of an option. Not at all. Since the Final Practical Exams, before Bakugou's... kidnapping, before Kamino; her confidence had been restored in full force by her and Todoroki's success in the practical examination against him.
Anyone arguing he’d gone easy on her team back then would be sorely mistaken. The win was justified. Coddling her was not on the table. She’d had to earn back the confidence dulled by her defeat by Tokoyami herself -- to have it any other way would render the point meaningless.
She was a recommendation student. Unlike him. For things to play out right, she had to come to the conclusion about her worth on her own, not get caught up in semantics.
After all, she was in Class 1-A. She'd come this far.
“Maybe not her,” he sighs. “Her performance is acceptable. She’s done… well.”
Beyond acknowledging her role in Bakugou’s rescue -- which he won’t do, not right now -- she’s relatively fine.
His partner’s laughter is usually the best sound on Earth. Right now, not so much, considering it’s at him.
“And you tell me not to have favourites,” the blond teases.
A harsh glare is sent Hizashi’s way.
“Sport’s festival, Seat No.5 of Class 1-A, Match Number 8,” he lists out flatly. A vision of him shooting a bandaged elbow into Present Mic’s face rests prominent in his head, the both of them sitting side by side in the booth after Hizashi had dragged him up to ‘co-commentate’.
He’d barely done anything back then other than scold a pro-hero for underestimating a student unfairly and treating the other like a devil for meeting her with the same energy. What was even the point of that, of him being there, beyond such things? Keeping an eye on him after USJ couldn't be all there was to it.
Dwelling on it much isn’t feasible, given that it’s barely even a second before Hizashi’s eyes widen with recognition.
“Uraraka's got a name, you know! You can't just call students numbers!"
“Well, then, come back to me when you stop pretending you don’t have a soft spot for her,” Shouta accuses, winding an arm around Hizashi’s back and crooking his grip into the small of it. “Then we’ll talk.”
Hizashi grumbles. "It'll mostly be me yappin' away."
Shouta spares a smile. "I like it that way."
He startles when the other groans, lifting his head up to tilt it.
"What?"
"How do you keep crushing me like this?" Hizashi says, sounding almost whiny. "You don't even know it!"
Looking down, he eyes Hizashi's leather pants. Straddling his partner had been an accident.
Oh well.
"If I'm that heavy," he comments idly, "You could've just told me. I'll get off you if you're that worked up about it."
"I didn't mean..." Hizashi pauses, trailing off when he seems to realize something.
A low hum escapes him as Hizashi, newly emboldened, elects to use Shouta's shoulder, this time, as a prop-up for his head.
"Unbelievable," Shouta can hear him mutter. "How'd I fall for you?"
That too, is a question he wonders every day. The engraved ring resting cold against his collarbone is contradictory evidence. The date etched within the titanium even more so, as it'd been the first time he'd realized that maybe it was worth staying around for.
"From heaven," he deadpans.
Earth-shaking laughter rings out in the room as the other's chest vibrates against him.
"I'm still expelling them, by the way."
The sound of Hizashi spluttering makes him cackle.
"I thought you were just gonna give 'em detention?!"
The students weren't faring any better.
"I'm sorry, you're a what, now?"
"I'm an enzyme, and you're a lock-and-key model! We've got so much chemistry together!"
"That's not even on the syllabus! That's BIOLOGY!"
'Well, yeah, but it still counts, right? I learned something new!"
"So that's where my biology books went."
"Todoroki, we're so sorry."
"No problem. I'll just order some more textbooks with Endeavour's card. You can keep it."
"No, he's not--"
"Really? Sweet!"
"You're so dead, Kaminari. Invoking the wrath of the new No.1 hero? Oh, you're dead! Even deader than dead!"
"I'm smart enough to know 'deader' isn't a word!"