#poneito

There was nothing delicate about Neito Monoma. He was as rough around the edges as could be, all barbed tongue and sharp wit. Staunch as a weed, roots plunged deep into the ground and ready to resist even the fiercest of winds. Really, he was about as delicate as a twisted mass of brambles. 

Yes, Neito was indelicate as they came, and yet delicate was the only way to describe the way that he held the bright pink carnation as he carefully lowered it into the hole he’d dug into the soil. 

Hero education wasn’t all disaster response training and pummeling each other, at least at U.A. The school prided itself in its relationship with the community, and so all the courses often found themselves heading off campus to participate in service projects. One of their ongoing school-wide undertakings was the construction of a new town community center. After months of assisting in various aspects of the project, Class 1-B had been assigned to place the finishing touch—a butterfly garden. 

Neito tugged off one of his gardening gloves and used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Despite thinking to take his glove off, he still ended up smearing a thick line of dirt over his skin; apparently, there was a hole in the thumb, which he noticed as he started tugging the glove back on. He frowned at the patch of dirt-coated skin peeking out of the rip, and the wrinkling of his brow made a few flecks of the soil detach from his forehead and roll down, bouncing off the tip of his nose. 

Neito thought of Tetsutetsu and Yosetsu sneering at him earlier. They took one look at him in his collared shirt and khaki pants, and then joked about how “he was too delicate for hard labor.” With a determined huff, Neito just tugged the glove down to his wrist. A little dirt never hurt anybody. He could do this. 

Too delicate for hard labor… Tch, he grumbled silently as he leaned over the edge of the flowerbox to begin scooping the soil around the base of the flower. I’ll show them. 

He said that, and yet he could only go another minute before ripping the glove off so he could grab the hem of his shirt and use it to wipe the stripe of dirt off his forehead. It must have been the fertilizer, he told himself with a petulant pout. The fertilizer was making his skin irritated, and the last thing he wanted to do was break out in hives or something, right? He rubbed at his forehead with a frown, not sure if he was imagining little red bumps pushing up on his skin or not. 

“‘M not delicate,” he muttered under his breath. Somehow it felt like more of a detriment than a reassurance. 

“Neitoooooo~!” 

Neito looked up just in time to see Pony flouncing over with a woven basket in her hands. Her waves of golden-blonde hair swished with each over her bouncy steps, and his throat constricted at the way the sunlight played over the strands. It was like her hair was sunlight, silken threads woven by the hand of the sun god himself. Honestly, Neito wouldn’t be surprised if the god came down from the heavens himself to tell him Pony was the sun. The light in her smile, her eyes, her beautiful hair… He’d believe it, all right, without a doubt. 

Neito was rough around the edges, and Pony was delicate in the most wonderful way. Far too delicate for him to ever dare touch. 

“What’s up, Pony?” he asked, pulling a terse smile on his face to try and fake some sense of nonchalance. If she noticed the tautness of his expression, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she plopped down next to him, tucking her hooved legs at her side and setting the basket on her lap. 

“Look!” 

Neito glanced down to see the basket filled to the brim with flowers plucked off at the stem. Neito frowned, not sure if he had the heart to tell Pony that she probably shouldn’t have picked them. Before he could open his mouth, however, she piped up ecstatically, “One of the flats of flowers had some weird fungus growing on the stems and roots, so they had to trash it. But I managed to save all the pretty flowers!” She scooped up some of the blooms and tossed them into the air with an excited squeal. “So I’m going to make flower crowns!” 

“Flower crowns, huh?” Neito chuckled. His smile began to melt, turning lopsided with his bashfulness. It was always so uncanny, how she put him at ease without even trying. 

“Yup! So you can get back to work, just keep your head still for me,” she chirped, wasting no time in plopping a bare circlet of woven twigs atop his head. Without waiting for his answer, she began to insert the flowers between the small gaps in the sticks, humming a tune under her breath as she did. Neito would shake his head as he laughed, but he didn’t want to disrupt Pony’s work in progress. 

Neito picked up another one of the potted carnations from the flat beside him. He grasped it by the base of the stem to hold the flower out of the way as he flipped the pot over against his palm. He took his time easing the packed soil out of the pot, gently tugging it inch by inch until it gave way and slid all the way out. He cupped it in one hand while he used the other to pick up the trowel, reaching forward to dig another hole in the flowerbox. It was a little awkward, not being able to lean over lest he disturb Pony, but he made it work. 

“Neito, do you like flowers?” Pony asked just as he was patting down the soil. He couldn’t move his head with her weaving the flower stems into the twigs, so he just peered at her out of his peripheral vision to acknowledge he was listening. She had her gaze trained on the half-finished flower crown, but she must have felt him looking because her blue eyes flicked down to meet his. As soon as they did, Neito felt his cheeks flush with warmth. 

“I don’t really feel a certain way about them,” he admitted. 

“You don’t think they’re pretty?” 

I think you’re pretty, he countered silently. His blush furthered at the intrusive thought, coursing over his cheekbones to begin flooding his ears. He began to wonder what Pony would think if he said that, but he stopped the words short on his tongue. Neito liked Pony; he really did. But Neito didn’t know what to do with her. He was afraid, bitterly so, of hurting her without meaning to. He knew himself enough to know he couldn’t be delicate if he tried, and he couldn’t imagine treating Pony as anything but. 

So he swallowed the words, but they lodged hard in his throat, hell-bent on coming out. 

“Sure they’re pretty,” he said instead. Pony nodded, looking back to the flower crown as a flower stubbornly refused to weave in. Neito could feel her fingertips pushing his hair aside, brushing over his scalp; it made a shiver start crawling up his spine, and it took everything he had to quash it before it could send him into a full-body quiver. “I just—hmm,” he cut off with a sharp intake of breath when her fingers inadvertently brushed over the shell of his ear while she adjusted one of the flowers. “I guess I’m not a fan of these flowers.” 

“Oh? What flowers do you like, Neito?” 

Neito cocked his head to the side and frowned. He’d never really considered it. His eyes roved the expanse of the slowly-forming garden and drank in the myriad of flowers bobbing in the breeze. However, his eyes didn’t come to rest on any of the blooms contained within the flowerboxes. Now, the flowers that gave him pause were the dandelions growing in the shade next to the watering house, their yellow petals still dripping with the morning dew. 

“Dandelions,” he answered with a small smile. 

“Dandelions?” Pony echoed. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. He hadn’t looked back at her yet; he was still staring at the little tuft of weedy flowers across the courtyard. Dandelions were definitely his favorite, he affirmed with a small nod. They were just what he wanted to be—delicate, yet still unrefined. Tough enough to weather the storms, but delicate enough to be able to be soft against someone’s fingers. 

But more than that… Their sunny color reminded him of Pony, of the sunshine in her hair. 

“Why dandelions?” she asked. She’d finished the flower crown, apparently, because when he looked at her, she was just sitting there with her hands resting in her lap. She offered a smile at his look of confusion. “I’m just curious. I want to know why Neito loves them so much.” 

Neito sucked his lips into his mouth. Oh, fuck. Ohhhhhhh, fuck. He was about to do it. He was about to do it, wasn’t he? With the words from earlier still lodged stubbornly in his throat, he couldn’t swallow these. Indeed, they tumbled right out, and he couldn’t stop them if he wanted to. 

“Because they remind me of you.” 

Pony blinked, and then her nose and eyes crinkled up as her face split into a giddy smile. She shifted, planting her hands against the ground so she could lean closer to his face. 

“Me? Like a dandelion?” 

Neito’s blush had spread across every inch of his skin now, staining it as pink as the carnations in the flowerbox beside him. He simultaneously wanted to avert his eyes and meet hers, which culminated in him nervously flicking his gaze back and forth between her face and his shoes. 

“Mm,” he grunted shyly in affirmation. When he tipped his head to the side a little to scratch at the space above his head, the flower crown shifted a little, dropping down over his brow. Giggling, Pony reached up to right it, but her hands took their time coming down; her fingers skimmed slowly over the soft petals, inching their way down to lightly cup Neito’s cheeks. Encouraged by the glimmering of her eyes—like sunlight refracting on blue ocean waves—Neito continued, “They remind me of… how pretty your hair is in the sunlight.” 

His tongue flicked out to wet his lips, and he dropped his gaze to the tresses of hair falling over her shoulder. Begging him to touch, practically, but he was still so scared. He was scared they would fracture in his hands, ripping on his uneven fringes. 

“Why are you scared?” Pony asked in a small, breathy voice. He glanced up, eyes blowing wide from being so easily perceived, to find that she was nearly nose-to-nose with him. She fluttered her golden lashes, and her lips played in the space over his as she murmured, “I know Neito would never hurt me. Because Neito is soft.” 

“Yeah?” he laughed breezily, his lips forming something between a smug smirk and a bashful smile. 

“Mhmm,” she nodded. The action made the tip of his nose brush his, and it felt like lightning struck at the point of impact. The electricity surged through his body, lighting up each and every one of his nerves until he was tingly all over. He couldn’t feel his fingers, but he could watch them crawl up, up, up towards her hair—

and his sense of touch spontaneously returned the moment her hair met his fingertips. Soft was the only thing he could think as he gently took a swathe of it between his thumb and forefinger. He rubbed it between the pads of his fingers, and it literally felt like the finest silk. He was far too enraptured by it now to even consider the fact that they were in public, so he didn’t even give it a second thought before bringing the strands of her blonde hair to his face so he could place a gentle kiss on the ends. 

She smells like sunshine, too, he thought distantly. The scent flooded his nose like the pheromones of the flowers, but none of them had a perfume as sweet. Drunk on it, he kissed up the length of her hair; when he felt the side of his head nudge against her jawline, only then did he pull back. He quirked his head, waiting for any indication from her for him to stop. But she just batted her eyelashes at him, a smile on her lips and anticipation in her eyes. 

Well, Neito never had been one to refuse such a blatant invitation. 

Pony’s hair was soft, but her lips were pure velvet. His hand pushed into her tresses of hair, winding it around his fingers, at the same time he pressed the slightest of little kisses against her pursed lips. Gentle, he was so gentle, still a little scared she would shatter under his touch—but she didn’t. And that was all he needed to go all in. He swooped back down to capture her in a second, much more passionate kiss, and his eyes rolled back in his head as their mouths slotted together because God did it feel like they were a perfect fit. And she was so close, surrounding him, enveloping him in her glow. She smelled like sunshine, she tasted like sunshine, she was sunshine.