#readerxerasermic

Chapter 2

That day you walked home in your new coat; the wind’s bitter teeth unable to gnaw at your bones like it used to. When you reached your front door, you didn’t want to shrug it off and toss it into the pile of sweaters and hoodies you kept near the door for cold days. You wanted to keep it on even if that meant, for the first times since the weather had changed, you’d be sweating through your clothes. It was new, you like new. It was a gift; you’d forgotten how much you like gifts. You cooked in the coat, did your homework in your coat and eventual fell asleep on your couch swaddled in the warm fur hood.

When the sun broke through your blinds the next morning you uncurled yourself, reluctantly peeling off the coat in favor of getting some fresh air on your sweaty skin. You checked the time on your phone, 5:32 AM. It was still early and you wagered you could sneak in a couple more hours of sleep before you had the be in class, but you overflowing kitchen garbage can caught your eye and you decided you’d rather use this time to maybe take care of somethings you’d let slide. First order of business was to clean your dishes, the counters, and gather all the miscellaneous trash scattered around your apartment. The second was to take said trash to the complex’s communal waste bin across the parking lot. Your apartment was starting to look like a functioning home again, the next thing to go was the pile of warm layer next to the door, you wouldn’t be needing those anymore.

The snow crunched under your feet, more had fallen throughout the night and it hadn’t yet been disturbed by the day’s traffic. The sky was pink and the rooftops white, and in the early morning silence your neighborhood didn’t look half bad. You lifted the heavy metal lid to the trash bin, tossing your over-stuffed bag before the seams could give way. With a clang you dropped the lid, the sound resonating through the streets. A dog barked in response and the world returned to silence.

You took a deep breath of crisp clean air and for a moment everything faded, only the blazing sky and your swirling breath mattered. Then the snow behind you started to crunch, footsteps moving closer. You turned around, suspicious of anyone else up and about this early in the morning. You were met with two familiar sleepy eyes peeking out from behind a thick grey scarf.

“Mr. Aizawa, G-good morning?” you greeted awkwardly.

“Uh, yeah. Good morning.” He said back, his hands shoved in his pockets. “I’m- just heading back from a night patrol. Sorry if I startled you.”

“I didn’t know you patrolled around here.” You’d never seen him before, which you guessed was technically the point.

“I-” he paused. “Just expanded my patrol range recently.”

“Oh, good to know.” You smiled at him; you rarely saw heroes here. If you did it wasn’t for long.

“Okay, well, I’ll see you in class.” He started to turn away.

“Hey, Mr. Aizawa?” An idea suddenly popping into your head. He paused and looked back at you. “I- since I have my provisional licence I’m allowed to patrol with a licensed hero and if you’re in the area on my night off-”

“No.” He said, turning back away. “You’re too loud. I’m sure Mr. Yamada would be willing to take you on patrol, if you ask nice enough. He can’t stealth to save his life.”

“I am not!” you huffed. “I can stealth if I want to!”

Still turned away from you chuckled. “Prove it in class today, then maybe.”

He started away again and in mere second scaled your building and leap across the roof out of view. You made you way back to your apartment, taking care to step slowly and as carefully as the snow would allow it. You’d show him stealth!

Mr. Aizawa wasn’t kidding about class. The whole obstacle course was built around stealth, evade capture for thirty minutes with no use of force and pass. It was in teams, you failed, your team also failed. You, as you were fully aware were, the least subtle out of your teammates. He had grouped you together on purpose, you knew it. You had to think logically, you had to plan to move around as little as possible. You ended up pulling a cluster of debris around you and your team in the middle of what looked like a junk yard, using your power to keep them in place as All Might thundered around looking for you.

        While it definitely was suspicious that this pile of debris wasn’t moving while the world’s strongest hero was lunging around, shaking buildings with each impact Mr. Aizawa passed your team. You were dismissed early for lunch with your team, beaming as you left the training grounds. You’d passed, proved you were stealthy.

        After you had wrapped up your lunch you decided to head back to your home room early, you were tutoring a first year in history and needed to take time to refresh your memory. Why not in an empty classroom?

        You knocked on the door tentatively, hoping Mr. Yamada had taken his lunch outside of his room. That, however, wasn’t the case. “Hello?”

        You slid the door open a fraction. Mr. Yamada and Mr. Aizawa sitting across from each other on two student desks, a convenience store bought bento open between the two of them. “Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt I was looking for a quiet place to study.”

        “Your always welcomed in your homeroom! Come in, we’ll keep the talking to a minimum.” Mr. Yamada waved you inside as he hopped off his desk to grab a white steaming cup from the edge of his desk. “What are you studying?”

        “First year history.” You held up your worn out textbook. “I tutor some of the underclassmen.”

        “Any from my class?” Aizawa asked.

        “E-Eijiro Kirishima.” You were pretty sure he was in Mr. Aizawa’s class, the kid sure complained about him enough anyways.

        “Hm.” He shrugged to himself. “I wondered how he suddenly started passing most of his tests.”

        “Speaking of passing…” you trailed off looking at Mr. Aizawa expectantly.

“Yes, you did.” He sighed into his coffee.

“See, I can be stealthy!” you exclaimed, clutching your book to your chest.

“No, you can hide. You tripped over your own feet leaving for lunch.” Mr. Aizawa grumbled.

“But you passed me!” You chirped. “You said that if I passed you’d take me on a patrol!”

“I said maybe I’d consider it” he corrected you.

“Sho.” Mr. Yamada chided him, eyes peering over his orange glasses.

“I-” Mr. Aizawa looked at his partner, then over to you. You gave him the sweetest smile you could muster, Mr. Yamada doing the same. “When’s you’re next night off?”

“Thursday.” Your smiled grew genuine.

“I’ll be in your neighborhood around 8, take a nap after school and don’t be late the next day.” He instructed, eyeing Mr. Yamada frustratedly.

“Yes, sir!” you bowed. You began backing out of the room.

“Aren’t you going to study?” Mr. Yamada called as to were just about to breach the doorway.

“Right! Yes, thank-you!” You scurried forward, taking your usual desk and opening the textbook.

The next few days passed, work claiming your evening, classes taking up your days until you found yourself lacing up your boots at your front door waiting for 8 o’clock on Thursday evening. You’d seen Mr. Aizawa once in your neighborhood since Tuesday morning, and he was sporting a bruise that seemed to disappear by the beginning of class that very same day. You supposed he had access to Recovery Girl’s powers in the morning before the building filled up with students.

You leaned against your window frame, staring out into the parking lot waiting for the familiar darkly dressed silhouette to appear against the snow. When he finally leaped down from your roof you raced out the door to meet him. you slide to a stop in the slippery snow, spattering his legs with wet slush.

“Subtle.” To your surprise an entertained grin tugged at his lips. “I have a specific surveillance target tonight. I want you to get your patrol experience but if I tell you to turn tail or stay back you do as I say, got it?”

You nodded. “Who is it?”

He stared walking; his footsteps impossibly silent in the dense snow. You now realize, if had wanted to hide his presence the other morning, he could have. You tried to mimic his soft steps, but your pace suffered and you found yourself trailing behind him.

“His alias is Earth Breaker, he’s an elemental type villain. He can control earth at his will, that means projectiles of stone and a solid defense.” Mr. Aizawa briefed you.

“Any we’re surveying him because?”

“Remember that apartment complex that went down last month about six block from here?”

“That was him?”

“Yeah. He killed lots of people in that building.” Mr. Aizawa paused and looked at you. “I’ll tell you when we need to stealth you can just walk normally for now.”

You straightened up and jogged to catch up to him matching his strides until he began to slow about six blocks later.  He held up a hand and turned to you. “Stay fifteen feet back, don’t lose me.”

You nodded and strayed off to the side of the sidewalk where a hedge of wild bushed would give you quick cover if you needed it and began to follow Mr. Aizawa from a distance. He ducked into an open gate, melting into the darkening yard, you hugged the fence and peered into the dark until you caught a glimpse of him moving again. He darted across the yard and you ducked into the gate just in time to see him jump the farthest fence. You dashed to the fence, careful to slow down so you didn’t make a loud impact against it. On the other side Mr. Aizawa’s rough voice whispered through the gaps in the wood. “The house across the street to the east, you see it?”

You looked to the east along the fence, you were in a perfect position to keep an eye on the top floor of windows. “Yeah.”

“Keep an eye on the top windows, I’m moving in. Text Mr. Yamada- Hizashi- the street name and district if things go awry. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary. Understood?” this a quiet thud a phone landed at your feet, a text chain with Hizashi already on the screen.

“Roger.” You nodded, grabbing the phone from the ground. You heard him leave but not where he went, and for several long minutes you waited in silence. Nothing in the windows stirred save the lights going on in a room, then going out again. You pre-typed the text to Mr. Yamada in case you had to send it quick and waited. You kept waiting. The street was so silent that you felt as though outside of yourself time had stopped.

You sat in limbo until suddenly the ground beneath you began to tremble. Waves of tremors rolled past you, flowerpots clattered on their saucers and fences began to sway. You stood up and dashed toward the gate, fighting against the tremors to stay on your feet. A loud bang rang out through the streets, echoing from the house across the street. You latched onto the top of the gate and peered over it just in time to see a cloud of dust washing towards you. You ducked until the worst of it washed passed you, by this time lights all around the neighborhood had begun to turn on a civilian peaked out of windows and doors.

You held your breath and hauled yourself over the fence, landing in a bed of flowers, you felt a tinge of guilt about crushing. Through the settling dust you could see the front of the house you’d been watching; it was covered in dust and the front door was hanging on by a single hinge. In the doorway a hulking man stood, his arms braced against the door frame which had fishers running through it that bled into the walls. His eyes were a light with an animalistic rage, the type of rage only a mad man could carry inside.

As the dust continued to roll back you could see more of the street, rocks and dirt scattered everywhere. Shingles and chunks of siding rained down from the house and bounced off the street. Mr. Aizawa crouched in the street, dust rolling off of him as he shielded the bottom half of his goggled face. You looked at the phone in your hand then back at him, he still seemed so calm. You left the message unsent.

“A SPY?!” The man in the doorway roared. He brought one of his great fists down onto the stone walkway at the front of the house and a fissure formed, snaking across the ground towards Mr. Aizawa. “THEY SENT ANOTHER SPY?!”

Mr. Aizawa launched himself backwards, barely escaping the crumbling ground beneath him. He should have been faster; you could have gotten away quicker than that. You watched as he landed, quickly shifting his weight to his left foot immediately after hitting the ground. He’s hurt.

You hit send. Better safe than sorry.

Earth Break fired off two quick fire blasts, Mr. Aizawa easily skirting one but heading straight into the middle of another. You shot out your hand and thought about pulling him towards you out of the way. He grunted as he was jerked backwards, landing and sliding into the grass. He side glanced at you, keeping his head turned towards the enemy. His hand hung at his side flinched, his fingers motioning for you to back up. You did as you were told, scrambling sideways into some bushes that lined the yard you were in. He stood and took off, even on his injured leg he managed to fade away into the night.

Behind you a low creak altered you to someone peeking out of the front door. You turned around and saw a man wrapped in his house coat staring wordlessly at the behemoth across the street currently smashing apart the driveway. You whistled quietly at him, his eyes darting to you. He stopped himself from shouting in surprise with a hand over his mouth and a calming breath. You crawled closer to him with a finger help to you lips.

“Get back inside, to the rear of the house!” you whispered.

He looked back across the street and his eye swelled with fear as he took a step back inside the house, this time a yell escaping him. You spun around to see a chunk of the road hurdling towards the house. Thinking quickly, you darted towards it and just as it passed over head pulled it towards you with your quirk. You rolled to the side narrowly escaping being totally crushed, instead getting away with a nasty gash in your arm from a stray piece of rebar. You jumped to your feet and looked back at the house, the owner was a few feet inside frozen with fear.

“Run!” you shouted at him. With a tremendous grunt behind you another chucked of road was launched towards you.

“ANOTHER ONE!” he roared.

You darted in the only direction you could at the moment, the house. You rushed in through the door,  and pushed the man inside along as you did. You breached the kitchen just as the boulder crashed through the doorway, tearing into the walls as it did. Debris flew everywhere, pieces of wood and insulation filling the air. You pulled the man through his house until you both burst through into the backyard.

“Keep going!” you huffed as you spun around and darted back through the house.

You breached the crater where the front door had once been, the shadow of a massive dust storm beginning to swallow the top of the house. Rocks and dirt and chunks of boulders began whipping around, leaving the house was next to impossible unless you wanted to be bludgeoned with debris. Windows shattered, the ground shook and the foundation began to crumble beneath you. The cement base tore through the carpeted floors in spears, you had to jump left and right narrowly avoiding serious injury until you made it to the stairs where the spears were having a harder time getting at you.

Then everything stopped, the spears crumbled into sand and the ground stilled. The house moaning as it settled back into its uneven foundation. The street quieted, almost back to the timeless silence before the chaos had begun. A single roar of anger pierced the air, cut short with a grunt. You steadied yourself on the stair railing and made your way on uneasy legs to the front yard. Mr. Aizawa stood, covered in dust and debris, with a single boot pressed into Earth Break’s chest. His hands pulled tightly on his capture weapon, restraining the boulder of a man below him.

The street began to fill with lights and sirens, the cool blue darkness of the night flooded with red and white. Police piled out of their cars and vans to load the villain into an armoured truck for transport. You plopped down onto the front steps, brushing aside an uprooted plant. You sat and watched the arrest, watched how many officers it took to contain just one man. He was the definition of raw power, one stray kick tearing off a police car door.

Once he disappeared into the truck you leaned back onto your arms, you were beat. You were sore and exhausted, but you were also in a strange perverse sense happy. Perhaps it was the adrenalin of what you’d just gone through still coursing through your system or the afterglow of a technically successful patrol, but you felt like this was what you were meant to be doing. This hero thing, this was for you.

When a pair of ambulances arrived, you watched as the paramedics jumped into action. One of them offering medical treatment to Mr. Aizawa who, you had only just noticed, was making a b-line towards you. He waved off the paramedic, limping towards you on his injured leg.

“Are you alright?” He grunted, lowering himself onto the step next to you.

You looked over yourself, your sleeve was torn, and arm was scratched up from the rebar in the boulder but you would live. It immediately started to thrum with pain when you looked at it, the blissful ignorance of adrenaline wearing off as soon as you actually took stock of the injury. You were covered in dirt and dust, but you still felt good, despite your injuries.

“Yeah. Just a scratch.”  You shrugged. “How’s your leg?”

“I’ll live.” He grumbled looking down at his torn pant leg. “Thanks for that by the way, the save earlier. Even if you did put yourself directly into harm’s way, like an idiot.”

You chuckled to yourself. There was always a learning opportunity with him.

“No problem?”

You both sat in silence for a moment, watching some of the police cars start to leave.  It was him who spoke next. “So, where’s my phone?”

“Oh,” you looked over your shoulder at where you had dropped it, a large boulder sitting in the wake of a deep groove in the lawn. “it’s-”

“Under that boulder?” he sighed.

You nodded solemnly; you couldn’t afford to replace that phone.

“Well, at least it’s not you under the boulder.” He turned back to face the street.

Was that… a glimmer of fondness? You smiled to yourself, a familiar warmth blooming in your chest. You still missed that, people being glad to have you around. You didn’t really spend enough time around people to feel that anymore.

“Okay,” Mr. Aizawa pushed himself to his feet. “let’s get that armed checked out.”

“It’s a scratch, I’m fine.”

“It’s flesh eating bacteria waiting you kill you.” He said, pulling you up with surprising strength for a guy with a bum leg. It wasn’t quite the same as Mr. Yamada’s unbridled kindness, but you got the feeling this was Mr. Aizawa’s version of fussing over you.

***

“Hey.” There was a quiet knock at the door of your room. You looked away from the fuzzy TV screen to find Mr. Yamada leaning up against the door frame, a disappointing looking cup of coffee in his hand.

“Hi. What’s are you doing here?”

“Sho- Mr. Aizawa had to get an x-ray for his ankle so I thought I’d stop by and keep him company while he waited.” Mr. Yamada looked over his shoulder, sighed, shook his head and turned back to you. “It would seem he needed so such company though.”

“What do you mean?” You gestured at the chair in the corner of the examination room for him to sit.

“Well,” he gladly took the seat, propping his boot clad feet up on a basket of magazines. “he’s been on the phone passing around the emergency room, probably hurting himself even more. He’s giving the station an ear full right now, he’s not very happy with them.”

“Why? They came pretty quick.” You picked at the paper rolled out across the bed.

“You.” Mr. Yamada placed the cup in his hands on the ground and looked up at you. “He only let you patrol with him because the report he was given on Earth Breaker misclassified him in threat level.”

He leaned back into the chair, sinking down like a bored teenager trying to slip away. “I’ve never heard him chew someone out for so long.” Mr. Yamada grumbled.

“Really?” You didn’t really know what to say, partially because you couldn’t picture Mr. Aizawa being upset and the other part because you were trying not to fall asleep. The adrenaline had worn off about half an hour ago and the pain meds the nurses gave you were strating to lull you to sleep.

“Yeah.” Mr. Yamada pushed himself back into a proper sitting position, tucking one leg under himself. He was obviously uncomfortable in the wooden waiting chair. “I was surprised when the nurse said you were still here, I thought you’d have gotten stitched up and went home.”

You blinked a few times, begging your eyes to stop drooping.

“I have to wait for my case worker to come get me, since I’m a minor leaving the hospital after treatment is kind of tricky. I can’t check myself out.” You shrugged.

Mr. Yamada sighed, not particularly happy with his new position but seemingly not bothered enough to fix it either. “How long have you been waiting?”

“I called and left a message like, an hour and a half ago.” You looked down at your phone, there was a new crack in the screen. No New Messages.

“And?” Mr. Yamada asked.

“Well, it’s currently 2:30 in the morning,” you breathed, “so I assume she’s asleep. If I don’t hear form her in another 30 minutes the hospital will call child services and they’ll send an overnight clerk to get me.”

“Shit.” He mumbled. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah. Mr. Yamada?”

“Mm?” he looked at you, his body sliding down in the chair.

“Don’t expect me to make to class on time tomorrow okay?” you grinned. You were tired and it was the best approximation of a joke you could make.

“I’d be upset if you even showed up.” He huffed, pushing himself up.

You both sat in silence for a few minutes, the distant gruff voice of Mr. Aizawa lecturing someone filling quiet. You looked at the TV for a bit, our eyes burning with exhaustion. You tried to read the medical posters, but the reading made it hard for you not to nod off. Eventually, after a particularly long blink Mr. Yamada spoke up.

“Lie down, go to sleep. I can wake you up when someone comes to get you.” You were about to protest when he reached up a turned off the lights. The open door still letting in the cool light from the hallway. “Shhhhhhhh.”

You could have sworn you’d seen his silhouette sink down in the chair as his shush came to an end. While you hated the idea of sleeping around other people you couldn’t fight the urge to close our eyes and fine rest.

***

“Should we wake her?”

“We have to, she has to sign a form before she can leave, Zashi.”

“Shit, right!.....Hey Sho?”

“Mmmm?”

“Thank-you.”

A hand gently shook your leg, waking you from your shallow sleep. You blinked into the dark room, a figure leaning in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall lights. At the end of the paper topped bed was Mr. Yamada, or rather his very recognizable silhouette. Still dazed with sleep you rubbed your eyes and started to pull yourself up, the paper crinkling and tearing under you.

“Hey, kiddo.” He greeted softly.

“They here?” you mumbled, stifling a yawn.

“No, no, no.” he seemed somewhat nervous, glancing behind him at the figure in the doorway. “Mr. Aizawa called in a favor with someone at Child Services, he got permission to check you out. We’ll give you a lift home.”

You blinked. You weren’t entirely sure if you understood what was happening, you were too tired to really care. Home sounded good and he said you could go home. You nodded anyways and slid off the table, Mr. Yamada putting a pre-emptive supportive arm around you. You were on auto piolet, the pain meds and sleepy daze that hung over your head making it impossible for you to fully wake up. You signed some paper, a nurse said something nice. Mr. Aizawa looked…soft. No, nice…nicer than usual.

Then you were in the back seat of Mr. Yamada’s car, drifting off against the car door and dim streetlights passed you by.

***

You woke up to the sun piercing through your blinds, hot rays of light warming your chilled skin. Your room, perusal was chilly, though you were curled up under several blankets. You stretched and groaned, the that fog that hung over. You last night lifting. Lifting. Lifting. Lifted. Panic. You shot straight up, your aching muscles expressing their displeasure at the sudden movement. You looked around for your phone, it was usually under your pillow but then again you didn’t even remember getting into bed.

You didn’t really remember getting home or leaving the hospital. You ran your hands up and down the bed until your phone caught your eye as it rested atop to dresser across the room. You crawled across the bed, stumbling to your feet and looked at the time. 12:14 pm. You’re heart sank. It was Friday and you were late, again. Then your eyes caught sight of a folded piece of paper, a hastily written note on the back of your grocery receipt.

‘Don’t you dare come to class today. Here’s my number, send me message when you wake up. Let me know you’re not dead. -Mr. Yamada.’      

        You looked down at yourself as the panic subsided. You were in the most basic configuration of your hero costume, the jacket, gloves boots and utility items were folded up next your phone. All that remained what your pants and undershirt, both in need of some patch work and cleaning. You dethatched all of the pieces that couldn’t be washed and gathered up those that could and threw them in the communal washing machine on the floor below. When you reached your apartment again all you wanted was to eat and shower, but you typed out a brief, to the point text and sent it.

               ‘Not Dead. – Y/n.”

        A hot shower warmed you right up. You got a better look at the bruising on your arm and knees, noting too serious nor life threatening. In fact, you’d think you’d probably gotten worse during training. When you got back to your phone you quickly found out Mr. Yamada was an emoji texter. You could only imagine how he and Mr. Aizawa’s message exchanged must look now.

               Glad the hear it! Got something I wanna talk to you about when you have time!’

                    ‘IT’S NOT BAD! I promise!’

                    ‘Is there a time I could stop by this weekend?’

‘Mr. Aizawa would be there too or course! Not like a one on one thing, that would be weird.’

        You could see his energy channeling into texting anxiety. You checked your work schedule, you had day shifts this weekend so any night would work. You responded as such, suddenly realizing you had invited them over to your dumpy apartment. You could kick yourself. You looked around; this place was so rundown that it needed to exorcized of its dust. You flopped back onto the bed, dreading all the cleaning you had ahead of you. To top it off you had a night shift to get ready for.

***

        Saturday. Within the next day you had gone to work twice and between shifts thrown out everything that wasn’t wearable, washable or too offensive to be allowed continued existence. By the time you were moderately happy with your place it looked like a college dorm pre-move in. It’s not that your place had much personality to begin with, but over the last few months the mess had become your only sense of self here. Between your busy schedule and lack of motivation to do anything outside of work and school, you had gotten comfortable living in the product of that life.  Despite the stress of having guests over to a home you were ashamed of, the cleanliness was…nice. You could get used to this.

        You were almost able to enjoy the new environment when a knock sounded at your door and your gut squeezed in on itself. You tried to relax, telling yourself that they weren’t going to judge you. They fought villains for a living, you were not their idea of a bad person. A bad apartment doesn’t make you a bad person. You still felt shitty, though.

        You opened the door. The two of them stood in the hall, shoulder to shoulder, in casual clothes. Mr. Aizawa looking tired, but not as frustrated as he seemed to be when lurking in the halls at U.A. Mr. Yamada was bright and smiling, without the cockatiel hair he seemed less larger than life, more puppy-esque.

        “H-hi!” He greeted.

        “Hey.” You smiled back politely. Okay, now let them in. “C-come on in.”

        It took you a second to open the door wider and step aside, hopefully they didn’t notice. Who were you kidding, Mr. Aizawa definitely noticed, hopefully Mr. Yamada was still unaware of your currently mortified state. You turned around; they were taking in your space. You followed their eyes. Your walls were too bare, your couch sagged awkwardly in the middle, you didn’t even have a kitchen table.

        “This is nicer than your place when you first moved out.” Mr. Aizawa mumbled under his breath, ginning as he elbowed Mr. Yamada.

        “I mean,” Mr. Yamada blushed. “there’s a reason that building doesn’t exist anymore.”

        “Did you guys want to sit? I have… water?” Yes, those were things you said when you had guests.

        “No, thanks.” Mr. Aizawa said, nudging Mr. Yamada towards the couch.

        “O-okay.” You rubbed your arm awkwardly.

        The three of you went towards the couch, the couple sat on the couch and you leaned against you leaned against the T.V. unit. Silence hung in the air; it was a dense silence filled with unspoken words. You were nervous, it felt like you were doing your own parent-teacher interview. Mr. Aizawa remained ever calm, he looked almost serene compared to, not only how you felt but also, to how Mr. Yamada’s vibrating leg betrayed him to be feeling.

        “So,” Mr. Aizawa started.

        “So,” Mr. Yamada trailed behind. With a stern look from his partner he continued. “I know, when you lost your parents you didn’t want to be mix matched with other families.”

        A strange feeling began rising from your stomach, it was somewhere between anxiety and comfort. It made no sense, but you pushed it down and let him continue.

        “And since you’ve been on your own you’ve done really good for yourself.” He fiddled with a loose thread on a tear in his jeans. “But there are some drawbacks, like last night with the whole hospital thing, right?”

        You nodded. Wanting desperately not to jump to the conclusion you felt tickling the back of your mind.

        “I, uh, I was… Well, we were-” Mr. Yamada swallowed hard.

        “We were wondering if, just until you turn 18, you would consider letting us foster you.” Mr. Aizawa has said it but all you could see, and feel was the sheer panic and surprise of Mr. Yamada’s face.

        “Y-you want…to-” you breathed. That warm feeling refused to be repressed any longer and spray forth, a bright shiny joy engulfing you. You had thought you didn’t want this, that you were better off just waiting out your years as a minor. You hadn’t thought about how much you missed family in a long time, how much you missed having people fuss over you and worry about you and even make assholes of themselves for you.

        “It’ll also be easier if you go on school trips or want to apply for a licensing exam, we can even help out with, like, normal everyday life stuff maybe.” Mr. Yamada threw in.

You grinned to yourself. You had five months left to be a kid.

It was the dead of night by the time the bars at your back had begun to feel properly cool against your skin. They were chilled enough that you could slouch back and not have to worry about needing to muster up enough strength to throw yourself forward anytime soon. You'd spent much of the first day in the cage curled forward into yourself, trying to hide from the eyes of the villagers who walked by to gawk at a witch. You had been stripped of the blood-soaked clothes you wore when you were arrested for fear that you could use the blood as a component in one of your spells. You were sure that there was also the added satisfaction of the amplified humiliation you suffered on that first day. After that you grew uncaring about your body being on display as it began to peel away under the sun, you were in too much pain and too weak to suffer anymore through humiliation.

You closed your eyes and rested your head between two bars, this was about as comfortable as you could get. It was almost peaceful at night, there were no townsfolk out due to fear of the monsters of the night and the small shy animals would come and scavenge what they could from the streets. You could hear the little pitter-pattering of bunny hops in the grass behind the hanging cages and the occasional clink of scaled bird feet pattering atop your cell. There was a creek that ran through the eastern side of town that you could only hear when no one was around to make so much noise. You could hear everything, which is why it came as so much of a shock to you when a gruff voice sounded in front of you.

You tensed and opened your eyes. Shouta stood in front of your cage, his hair tied back and the beginnings of first shaped bruises marked his cheekbone and jaw. His hands were raw and one of his knuckles had a deep gash, likely from a poorly parried sword. You'd bandaged up a few adventurers in your time as a healer and had heard every story that could be told about how a wound could be secured, from gryphon talons to great bear mauls. It was almost always, in fact, humans cutting each other up. He was calm, it was hard to tell in the dim wavering light of the small torch he held but he looked as though he might be smiling. It was a friendly smile; one you might throw on when reunited with an acquaintance.

"D'you think you can hold this?" he asked, holding the torch out toward you.

You nodded and tried to straighten up, the muscles in your back screaming for you to stay still. You winced and held your breath but persisted in your struggle. Shouta reached his hand through the bars, palm open in offering. Lifting your arms was easier than sitting up and with the help of his unexpectedly gentle grip you were pulled forward. You held onto the bars in front of you with one arm and took the torch with the other, holding it above one of two dangling padlocks that held you in your cell.

"Thanks." Shouta huffed as he crouched and fished around in one of the many pouches stung upon his belt. He withdrew a roll of leather-wrapped with a cord; an ornamental crest stamped into the leather's surface. He unwound the cord and let the leather unroll to expose a litany of small metal tools organized into pockets.

"Try not to light my hair on fire, please." He side-eyed the torch next to his head and guided it a little farther from his with a single finger, you could have sworn there was a small grin pulling at his lips as he settled back into his work. Dick. You were weak but you weren't that weak. Not yet anyway. You let the torch fall a little farther back, not quite far enough away so that he couldn't see the lock but far enough that it was noticeably dimmer.

"Ah, the witch has a sense of humor." Shouta grumbled as he sorted through his roll of tools. He settled on a pair of small metal utensils, one was hooked at the end and the other was an L shape.

"Alleged." You corrected, leaning your forehead against the bars to watch him work at the lock.

Shouta just hummed at that, his mind now clearly focused on his task. You were feeling more and more paranoid as time went on, any stirring of bushes or rustling of leaves made you tense up and try to maneuver yourself into a position to scout out the possible onlooker. Instead, you found scavenging rabbits, lively birds, and one slightly limping street cat. You'd have fed her if she had wandered up to your cottage, and perhaps tried to mend the kink in her tail.

With a click and a small groan from the lock, Shouta unhooked the first of two locks, stood, and began his work on the lock at the top of the door. You maneuvered the torch so that it wasn't directly below his hands and wafting uncomfortable amounts of heat directly at his hands, but off to the side. It wasn't until you heard the far-off rumbling of a cart that you realized that you and Shouta had been alone now for a remarkable amount of time, nearly ten minutes now, without and patrolling law-keepers appearing. In fact, you hadn't seen any for a little over an hour, which was an unprecedented gap in time for the town square to be left unsupervised. As you watched Shouta's hands work you eyed the deep gash on his knuckle and what you could see of the bruises forming on his face and it suddenly occurred to you where he'd gotten his injuries from.

The cart grew nearer and nearer, the point that you were waiting for it to come around the corner at any moment. You'd alerted Shouta of the cart a minute ago and he seemed bothered by it, yet his confidence did little to calm your growing anxiety. The sound of the wheels on the dirt road ground on, getting louder and louder until it all of a sudden stopped short of the square. There was a muffled pair of voices and panicked horses then nothing. The town grew eerily quiet and you once again could hear the stream on the other side of the market.

You peered across the square towards where the cart sounded as if it were coming from and through the dark street you saw a figure walking with reins in hand of two horses on either side of them. As the figure grew nearer you stirred in your cage and tried to get Shouta's attention without being too loud, he could still flee without being seen at this point. Shouta paused and looked over his shoulder, sniffed, and turned back to the lock unphased. You looked on with horror as the figure approached until the moonlight crested over the tall buildings and you saw familiar long flaxen hair, slightly mussed and swaying in the breeze.

There was a click, and a gentle metallic groan, and Shouta's hand flew out to hold the cage door, which you were leaning on, from swinging open. You could cry in that moment, even without the cage door open you felt free. You looked down at the padlocks, rusted and covered in the dusty road. You had beat them, in a manner of speaking. Shouta had. Shouta Had just freed you.

You looked up at him, tears in your eyes. His face was really bruised now, his stray hair danced in the torchlight wildly and his clothes were covered in the dry dusty dirt from the road but still, he looked divine to you. He was, in a more literal sense than God had ever been, your savior. He looked at you blankly for a moment, then as if remembering himself, blinked and threw on a more pleasant expression. He reached for the torch and you handed it to him through the bars.

"How are we getting along?" Hizashi strolled right up to the pair of you. He too looked rougher than when you first met, though his face bore no bruising nor did his gloved hands.

"Hold." Shouta instructed, handing the torch back to Hizashi.

"It's gone well, I take it." Hizashi took the torch and eyed the locks on the ground. "And you, how are you?"

Hizashi looked up at you, his eyes soft and the small smile on his lips comforting. Hizashi, as you were learning, was the more genuinely expressive of the two. Not that Shouta had ever been cold to you, his gestures just didn't reach his eyes the same way.

You reached for the bars next to you and pulled yourself to them so that when Shouta opened the cage door you wouldn't spill out. He slowly opened the cage door until he was sure you were going to stay put then he let it swing fully open. He held out his hands and you took them gingerly unsure of how much you were going to be able to do yourself in terms of getting out. Shouta shook his head and let go of your hands and reached into the cage, one arm pulling your legs out gently and supporting them under the knee before hooding his other arm around your back and lifting you out with ease. Despite how gentle he was trying to be the contact directly on your blistered peeling skin was so painful you let out a shaking breath, trying to dull the pain with breathing techniques you often told your patients to use when you were stitching something or removing debris from a wound. It didn't help and now you understood why they gave you such crossed expressions when you said it.

There was a part of you that was happy to be out of the cage and grateful beyond description to these men for saving you but there was another part of you, growing by the second, that was staunchly aware that you didn't really know them.

"I can stand." No, you couldn't. "I just need a mo-"

"It's alright." Shouta hummed, adjusting you in his arms so you were leaning more heavily into him. "I've got you, now."

You looked up at him, at his bruised face, and saw a kindness that reached his eyes. The tears that were welled up in your eyes finally spilled and you turned into his chest and let them fall, water staining his tunic.

CHAPTER 4

You were gripping onto Shouta's waist for your life as he rode full force northward, the horse's thundering footsteps filling your ears. You had been riding for a long while, the poor horse beneath you was close to being spent and you could tell as its speed faltered. Shouta kept riding until the horse quite indignantly refused to go any faster than a walk. You'd wound up in a thin strip of marshland with the occasional deeply hunched whomping willow and cluster of waterlogged bushes. The sky was darkening, the blue of the afternoon had long since given way to the golds and oranges of sunsets and was now fading into a deep purple. Your legs were numb, ghost vibrations of horse hoof beats still rolling through your hips and lower back.

Shouta stopped under an especially distorted tree with roots so large and gnarled that you could curl up into the curve of one and disappear if you so pleased. He jumped down, starting a pace back and forth through the murky ground before realizing you were having trouble dismounting on your own. Without a word he grabbed you by the waist none too gently and lifted you down, placing you on your feet in the mud with a squelch. You wrinkled your nose at the sound and the feeling of the bud sinking into the boots Hizashi had gone back into town to get you a day or so ago.

Shouta, wordlessly unloaded the travel bags and the bedroll from the horse and tossed them into a pile against the thick roots of the tree. Everything about the way Shouta was moving put you on edge, sure you'd seen him somewhat annoyed or frustrated over the last five days but you'd only ever seen a glimmer of emotion compared to this. This scale of energy was comparable to Hizashi's jittering nature, his movements were sporadic and uncoordinated. Eventually, having spent way too long on a buckle, Shouta growled in frustration and kicked a long dead stump, shattering the fragile wood. He paused and took a deep breath before turning to you.

"Sorry." He muttered. It was the first thing he had said since "we have to go".

"S'okay." you muttered back, settling down on one of the tree roots. You patted a space beside you and looked back at him. "Sit?"

Shouta huffed and looked at where your hand was patting for a moment but shook his head. He paced again, muttering the occasion word to himself. "You know how to start a fire?"

"Y-yeah." You stammered.

"Good. I'll be back." Shota started walking away, back towards the south from whence you came. You thought about calling after him but thought better of it. Perhaps if it were Hizashi you would have but there was something in the way that Shouta had been furiously trying to stay calm that worried you, that scared you. You watched him fade into the distance until all of a sudden he was gone, disappearing with the blink of an eye into the tree line.

It took you a while to find dry enough wood to make a reasonably sized fire for warmth but you got one going on a small patch of dry land where you and the exhausted horse settled down. The horse tucked its legs under itself and went straight to sleep while you decided to take a look around once the feeling had fully returned to your legs. The marshland was vast to the north but to the south, east and west you could see trees. All sorts of plants poked out of the water nearby, many of which were familiar to you. There were small clusters of pink and white flowers on tall thin stems for pain, thick green gel-filled leaves for burns, and dark green aromatic leaves for disinfecting and cleaning wounds. You collected bunches of each and wandered back to the fire, settling in and spending the rest of your waking hours cleaning bugs from your finds.

You awoke to the smell of cooking meat and the sizzle of moisture hitting the fire. Your eyes flew open and just as panic gave way to alertness your eyes met Shouta's across the now sizable flames and you relaxed.

"Sorry." he gruffed. He was calmer now. "I would have woken you when I got back but you looked like you needed the rest."

"When did you get back?" You yawned looking up at the pale pink sky: the sun was just beginning to rise.

"An hour or so ago." he shrugged. Shouta's eyes were encircled by deep hollows and his shoulders hung lower than usual. It was as easy to see that the man hadn't slept at all through the night as it was to read the words 'I'm exhausted' scrawled across a page.

"You can sleep if you want, I can stay up and keep an eye out." You offered, unfurling from your bedroll as the day's heat already began to swell. If you had the courage you would have asked about Hizashi but there was something unsettling about the calm that Shouta was experiencing right now, as if it were the type of calm that warranted a storm.

"It's alright," Shouta grumbled "we'll eat then head out. I know where to find Hizashi."

"R-really? Is he alright?" you straighten right up at that news. As much as the events of yesterday had provided you with an inescapable and harsh reminder of reality, you had grown fond of the men whose charge you found yourself in.

"I-" Shouta sighed and clenched his fist. "I believe so, he didn't indicate if he was injured."

"He didn't indicate- wait, how did you hear from him?"

"We have a system when we travel, if we get separated we go to the nearest crossroads with a signpost and leave instructions on how to find wherever we're held up." Shouta explained, holding a folded piece of paper to you.

You reached for it stopping to look at his hand, poorly wrapped in torn fabric no doubt from a cloak or tunic.

"Your hand-"

"S'fine." Shouta waved you off.

"Let me tend to it." You looked up, into his eyes. "I'm the one who-"

"I started you, it's fine. It's good that you were prepared." Shouta looked away, awkwardly

"Shouta," you huffed "I'm cleaning it and bandaging it properly before you die from flesh eating disease!"

Shouta smirked, it was a painfully small twitch of the lips, but you saw it. "That's dramatic."

"I've been a healer since I was fourteen," You scold him "I know wounds."

"Fine." He sniffed, still holding out the letter. You took it, at the same time gently grabbing hold of his hand.

It was somewhat cryptic, but you could tell Hizashi had written it in a hurry because it didn't take you very long to pick up on the pattern. The last line of instructions ordered you only to approach the barn he was hiding away in at night so as to not alert the farmer. You looked up at Shouta and shook your head.

"What?" He asked, wrinkling his nose as he looked at his hand as you unwrapped his haphazard bandage job.

"He said to wait until nightfall." You raised your eyebrow at him.

"how-" he looked away "and?"

"And you were just going to ignore that order, weren't you?"

Shouta gritted his teeth, he was fighting some kind of expression off. He didn't want to betray how he was truly feeling but you could gather it all on your own.

"He's precious to you." you smiled, you hoped it was a genuine, kind smile. One that made him feel warm and understood. You really hoped it didn't look cruel or taunting, that would be the opposite of what you were going for. You reached for the bag of supplies he'd left next to your bedroll. There you grabbed a water skin and bandages and began blotting away at his hand with clean water.

Shouta looked up at you, surprise clear as day across his face. Bright red roses bloomed in his cheeks and like a child being teased he stammered and looked down at his inturned feet.

"W-well, I- I guess." he grumbled, trying to fold his arms but failing to do so as you held his hand in place. Taking a deep breath he looked up at you and sighed. "Yes, yes he is. I-I love him."

There was a moment where the two of you looked at each other and a silent exchange happened. One in which you suddenly understood the extent of Hizashi and Shouta's relationship, and that their love runs deeper than that of friends or even brothers in arms. You see a yearning in Shouta that is not only for love but to be with the one he loves, a yearning so strong and absolute that he must already have found that person. You keep smiling at Shouta, this time you're sure it's kind and warm because he can't help but smile back. It's a small sheepish smile and it's plagued with uncertainty and embarrassment, but nonetheless, it's there. In this moment of silent exchange, you feel as though Shouta understands where you stand, just as you were beginning to understand yourself. You, whether you liked it or not, were with them now.

"Right." Shouta broke the silence and plucked a skewer of meat from around the fire. "H-here."

"Still raw." You smirked. "I'm almost done."

You and Shouta sat in silence, him fidgeting with a small folded up map from one of the pouches on his belt.

"We're not going until nightfall, Shouta." You chided him as you watched him stubbornly trying to trace out a path with his free hand.

He stopped and groaned childishly. "What if he's hurt?"

"If he were really hurt he'd have told you knowing full well that there would be hell to pay once you found him if he hadn't." You reasoned, trying to crush some of that dark green leaf between your fingers to make a topical liquid.

This time Shouta's groan was less of an annoyed groan and more of an accepting grunt. He knew you were right and he also knew that Hizashi was capable of taking care of himself, he just needed to keep reminding himself of that. Shouta flipped the map over a leaned back fully against the tree.

"I'm going to go mad sitting here all day." He grumbled to himself.

You smiled to yourself as you rubbed the crushed edge of the leaf against his wound, so he wasn't so stubborn after all. You suddenly remembered your herbs you'd been sorting through before sleeping and found most of them in a cluster next to your bedroll.

"Here," you grinned to yourself, humored "you can pick the bugs out of these. It'll keep your hands busy."

Shouta almost grinned, you saw that tug at the corner of his mouth, as brief as it was. He breathed out heavily through his nose as if he was trying to keep his grumpy exterior together. He didn't make a move towards the pile. "Oh no, Shouta. I'm serious, make yourself useful."

He gave you an incredulous look. "I broke you out of jail."

"That was three days ago, so far today you've been doing an awful lot of moaning and groaning." You nodded towards the herbs. "Get cleaning."

Shouta didn't move and for a moment and you were sure that you had prodded the bear too much, but sure enough, he reached forward and examined the pile. "I need fresh water."

"Hmm," you thought back to last night "I spotted a fresh pool not too far north. The water looked clearer than the marshes."

Shouta nodded and stared into space for a moment before coming back to himself. "I need to bathe."

You glanced down at yourself and found more dirt under your fingernails than you'd have preferred and felt a wholly encompassing feeling of filth. You also needed to bathe, desperately. "That was the happiest idea you've had yet."

Shouta grinned despite himself, instead of embracing the moment of reprieve Shouta embraced the oldest tradition of manhood, and quite literally ran away from his feelings. As soon as you tied off the bandages he stood and started gathering the herbs, and rolling up the bedroll. The whole time he refused to give you the satisfaction of eye contact.

***

The pool of fresh water was nestled in between a wall of trees to the east and a dense, tall line of bushes. It couldn't have been more than twenty feet across but clear enough to see to the bottom. At first you were worried that it wasn't quite deep enough to be able to properly bathe oneself but Shouta seemed unconcerned as he started pulling off layers of clothes. You hadn't realized how many layers he worre until he was taking them off, he wore thick cotton tunic, a thick leather padded vest and under that a fraying undershirt. He'd originally appeared more stocky to you, especially next to Hizashi, but without the heavy leather vest he was much leaner than you thought. He wasn't quite as lithe as hizashi but what muscle he did have and toned and compact.

You were staring at him, not really registering that fact that you were currently watching someone get underess. He paused after he had shed his top layer and boots, and stared back at you. He didn't look particularly bashful nor as if he was suffering some great intrusion but instead, somewhat smug. It took you a few seconds of eye contact to realize what you were doing and a hot blush rose in your cheeks and ears and you looked away guiltily.

"Sorry!" you squeaked. "I- I uh- shit, sorry! You, just do your thing. I'm going to...go pick some plants."

"You already did that." He chuckled, that the bastard was laughing under his breath. You could hear it. "You don't need to bathe?"

"No." you tried to look anywhere but towards him as you heard the rustling of river stone under his feet and the sound of heavy leather trousers hitting the ground. You tried not to squeak at the image that barged so rudely across your mind. "I mean yes, but we can...take turns."

"You need to change those bandages and clean your burns." Shouta sighed. "You won't be able to do it on your own."

You blushed deeply and looked everywhere but at him. The sky, as it turns out, a lovely shade of blue.

"How about this," he started, as if he were proposing a simple solution to a situation where neither of you were naked nor stripping. "I get in, turn my back and you get in. Turn your back, I help you with the places you can't reach. I'll even close my eyes, on Hizashi's honor. Then you leave first and get dressed and I'll keep my back turned until you say otherwise."

"Hizashi's honor? What about your own?" you asked, fighting a grin.

"He's much more trustworthy." Shouta countered.

" Is your back turned now?" You asked, hugging yourself close even though you were fully clothed.

"I- n-no, you're still dressed." he sighed.

"Well," you huffed "go get in and stay facing away!"

"Of course, ma'am." Was he mocking you? He was mocking you. His mood had sweetened but at what cost? You groaned to yourself and listened for the subtle sounds of the water splashing around his legs and the sharp intake of breath at the cool water washed up against his bare skin. "I'm in."

"Right." you snuck a glance backwards at him, sure enough, he was waist deep in the water, bareback, covered in scars, facing you. You found yourself staring again as he dunked his head under water and wet his long waves. In the early morning sun you were able to see the shadows, the definition of the muscles cast across his back, and the dimples that sat towards the bottom of his spine. You would have blushed if he had wandered to your cottage for healing before all of this began, maybe even made him a meal and asked him to stay overnight for "observation" if he was courteous enough. This time, without turning to look at you, he cleared his throat loudly. You couldn't be sure that he wasn't just clearing his throat in an uncharacteristically loud manner or if he had somehow caught you staring.

The ferocity of the blush in your cheeks heightened. You had been so diligent to make sure he couldn't sneak a peek at your body and you were just as bad as you were acting like he was. You turned away again and took a deep breath before starting to unfasten your tunic from the front. It fell away onto the rounded stones beneath your feet and you felt the fresh air hit what parts of your skin hadn't been bandaged. You'd forgotten about the bandages. They were tied in the back and you're clumsy fingers couldn't quite feel their way around the knot enough to loosen them.

"Shit." you muttered to yourself, your fingers pulling at any side of the knotted fabric you could grasp. You were grumbling to yourself. "Oh come on."

"Something wrong?" Shouta called back to you over his shoulder.

"Hizashi is too good at tying knots is what's wrong!" you huffed. "I can't get the bandaged undone."

"You're still covered up, right?" Shouta asked.

"Um, yeah."

You heard the water around him swirling and splashing as he trudged back toward you through the water. You instinctively looked back and he stopped suddenly crouching so his bottom half was submerged in the water, his hands flying below his waist to assist in the guardian of his genitals. You let out another embarrassing squeak and turned away, at this point your whole body must have been pink with blush.

"What are you doing?" you yelped, dropping your face into your hands.

"I'm going to help with the bandages, stay- just look away." He huffed and stood, water pouring off of him.

It was quite the anticipatory period, waiting for him to rise from the water and rough his hands to graze your shoulder and they reached for your bandages. You tried to tense your body and avoid the shiver that ran through you with every brush and prod of his fingers. Not only was this an inappropriate situation to find yourself feeling this sort of attraction but he was a taken man! A man, who was with another man, and was very likely not even remotely likely to reciprocate your attraction. Oh, stop it you child. You scolded yourself.

After a few seconds of fumbling with the knots Shouta's wet hands freed you and he stepped back to let you unravel the bandages. You had assumed he'd stalked back into the water as per your agreement and were frightful surprised when you turned around to find him only partially submerged and staring at you. At meeting eyes with you he looked away abruptly, the somewhat serene look on his face was replaced by something akin to guilt and he dove under the water.

He sure was feeling dramatic today.

You waited, arms pulled close to your chest until he emerged from the water ten feet back and facing away from you. He didn't make a move to turn around or peak for the thirty or seconds that you watched him so you carefully slid down your trousers, and the small clothes underneath and scurried to the water's edge. He'd been acting like it was no big deal but you could feel how cold the water rarely was and you inched in. It felt good on you aching feet and even your strained shins but when it got to your thighs the raw flasking skin registered the coldness of the water as pain. You breathed through it until your body got used to the temperature inch by inch until you were waist deep and able to crouch down into the water to wash your torso.

The whole time Shouta remained strictly facing away from you running his finger through his knotted hair. You crouched down, the cool water washing over your skin, a mixture of therapeutic coolness and sharp pain hit you. You sucked in a sharp breath, which you guessed must have sounded worse than it was because Shouta glanced back at you with a worried look. He quickly righted himself, looking up at the sky uncomfortably.

"You okay?" He asked, swallowing hard.

"Mm hm." you hummed. You tried to prod at some of the dead sin on your back and hissed. You had been hoping to clean your skin and shed off the dried out layer. "Just... sensitive."

"Do- do you need my help, yet?' he asked, eyes still trained on the cloudless sky.

"Uh yeah." you bent your knees a bit, making sure the bottom half of your body was fully submerged and crossed your arms over your chest, keeping you back facing him.

"Okay." you heard him turning around and gliding towards you in a full swim. He even kept the sounds he made splashing around in the water to a minimum. His hands were gentle when they found your skin, cool water gently being cupped and poured over your shoulders and back. He spent a while rubbing soothing circles into your skin, gently loosening the flaking skin that wasn't going to heal back. Your skin felt sensitive and raw but it was also in a strange sense immensely soothing.

You closed your eyes and let the early morning sun warm your face. You were so focused on the chittering of birds in the trees and very welcomed warmth of the sun in contrast to the cool water, that you didn't notice when Shouta's hands snaked farther forward. It started at your hips, then up your side and down the tops of your arms. You only notice the moment his hands brushed the side of your chest, dangerously close to your breasts. That blush that you'd felt slowly fading away lit up again, and despite the water you suddenly felt warm.

"T-thank you, Shouta." You cleared your throat. "I think I can finish up."

"R-right." Shouta's hands hesitantly pulled away and you felt him hover for a moment, you were sure he was staring. You hadn't taken a moment until just now to wonder what you back really looked like, was it pink and raw, covered in white flaking skin or had it faded a little by now and started to return to a more normal skin tone. He glided away and you heard him resurface a few feet away.

"Eyes to the sky." He announced.

You dropped your arms and began to try and rub the dry skiing from your arms and chest, and break down the thick layer of grease in your hair. It felt wonderful to be cleaning yourself. You hadn't realized how horrendous being filthy had made you feel until you were clean once again. You had been sitting in your own filth for three days in a cage, and then stewing away in bandages and the same clothes for three more. You ran your fingers across your sensitive skin and although there was a bit of tenderness you decided that the bandages were no longer necessary. You headed back to shore, part of you wanting to get dressed and unexposed as soon as possible and the other half wanting to splash around in the water forever. There's something freeing about bathing, always has been. It was relaxing and soothing to not only your body but your mind.

But you thought of Shouta who must have been pruning away in the water and dragged yourself from the pool. You stumbled across one of the larger rocks that your clothes had been strewn across, your wet feet sliding easily down the rounded surfaces. You didn't quite lose your balance but you landed hard and uneven on your foot, a sharp, tering sort of pain running up your ankle and side of your shin. You pulled away from the rock to see a sharp corner from a recent break now painted in trace amounts of your blood.

You groaned loudly, not necessarily because of the pain but because of the frustration. Nothing, literally nothing, could be easy for you? Even getting dressed had to cause you injury.

"You okay?" Shouta was still in the middle of the pool, looking up at the sky.

"Y-yeah." You grumbled, shoving your newly scraped up leg into your trousers. You waited until you had your tunic over your shoulders and ready to lace up before calling out to Shouta and telling him that it was alright to get out of the water. He nearly leaped from the water, enthusiastically trudging towards the shoreline. He was on land and barbarically shaking himself dry like a dog in no time, his long wavy hair whipping to and fro. Freezing droplets splattered across your back and neck, seeping into your tunic and reminding you just how cold the water had been.

Within seconds of getting to shore, Shouta hopped around the river rock for a bit then came striding past you, trousers on but undone, boots on but untied, and the top half of his clothing in hand. You hurriedly pulled your tunic closed and tried lacing it up without revealing your bust. You couldn't help but let your eyes trail after him as he walked, his trousers were dangerously low, lower back dimples showing along with his very defined v-shaped musculature when he eventually turned around to face you.

"Let me see your leg." he jutted his chin towards your scrapped up shin.

"Shouta, it's just a scratch." you waved him off.

"Flesh eating disease." He stated, quoting you.

"I'll keep it clean." You grinned. "Unlike you, Mr. Uses- dirty-cloth-as-bandages."

Chapter 1

         It was bitterly cold out, the kind of cold that clung to your skin and left raw red noses and cheeks behind. It was a short walk from your apartment to the grocery store, it was all up hill and tonight, it was against the wind. The cold weather had come in fast; you’d lost your winter jacket last spring in a fire that took out half of your building. Annoyingly, it seemed that villains usually acted up in poorer neighborhoods, it was always the low-income apartment complexes that fell casualty to attacks. There was less of a hero presence, and while you had your provisional hero license you still weren’t allowed to patrol your neighborhood alone at night.

         You hugged yourself against the biting wind, jewels of frozen rain whipping against your face. The dull golden glow of the grocery store doors was a blur through the tears forming in your eyes but none the less grew closer. The smell of sample soups and baking bread pierced through the onslaught of cold, a small pocket of warmth melting the air surrounding the doors. Two orange glowing heating lamps hummed on either side of the door, the awning keeping the rain from snuffing the lamps out.

         The store was near deserted, not a surprise considering it was ten o’clock at night. In your general experience there were three types of people who shopped this late at night, shift workers, insomniacs and hungry stoners.  You scurried off towards the baskets and faced the wall pulling the wad of bills out of your pocket, counting carefully. A lot of the first years at U.A.  were in need of a tutor and you were in need of some cash, they passed their classes and their  parents paid pretty well and as long as the session were between school hours and your serving job you could afford some actual produce every once and a while. You shoved the bills back in your pocket, there should be enough for the basics and something green.

         You grabbed a basket and began your wander through the aisles, you knew what you were going to grab but it still felt nice to pretend you had options. You were rounding the corner to an aisle when a can pyramid of wet cat food collapsed into your legs, you stumbled back grabbing onto to a shelf of pickled herring to keep from toppling over.

         “Fuck, sorry!” a familiar voice shouted. The ground tremored and a jar of herring shattered sloshing liquid down your arm. You looked up to see your English teacher, Mr.Yamada, one hand slapped over his mouth the other gripping a can of cat food.

         “Fuck!” he cursed into his hand.

         “I-it’s okay!” you laughed shaking the herring juice off your hand. Seeing your teacher in the wild felt weird on its own let alone seeing them demolish a cat food pyramid in a messy bun and exploding jars of herring. You couldn’t help but laugh, like really laugh. You dropped your basket and held your knees as you laughed. He joined in, the embarrassed blush draining from his face. The two of you laughed until a rather flustered older lady in a branded apron scurried down the aisle with a mop.

         Mr. Yamada apologised profusely and promised to pay for the broken merchandise. The woman, however, lit up when she saw him and assured him that it wasn’t necessary. She must have been a listener of his radio show because eventually Mr. Yamada was signing the back of some crumpled receipt paper and she was smiling to herself as she walked back to the cash registers at the front of the store.

         “Sh-should we clean up the mess for her then?” you asked looking at the abandoned mop.

         “No, I should be cleaning up. You should be getting back to your parents, they’re probably wondering where you’ve been.” Mr. Yamada said scratching the back of his head and staring down at the felled cat food pyramid.

         “Oh, uh-” you stuttered, it had been a while since someone in your life hadn’t known. It felt weird explaining your situation, you had gotten used to being on your own by now and the looks you got when you did were hard to bear. The looks that you used to read as sympathy had begun to wear on you as pity and with every new person that knew, there was one more person afraid to retraumatize you by bringing up anything family related.

“No, I’m all on my own, have been for a couple of years.” You sighed and sucked it up. He was a teacher, what was he going to go do? Teach you nicer? You knelt down next to the pile of cans and began a poor excuse of pyramid construction. “I-I can help!”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Mr. Yamada said, a dark look crossing his face ever so briefly. He quickly replaced his grimace with a somewhat theatrical smile. “Thank-you!”

He joined you on the floor stacking cans, but clearly missing the point of pyramid stacking. “You were late for class this morning, everything okay?”

You blinked and kept your eyes trained on the cans. You had been honest so far, might as well keep going. “Yeah, sorry. I got off work late last night and was just so tired I slept through my alarms. It won’t happen again.”

“Nah, that’s okay. It happens to the best of us.” He waved a hand over his head and smiled warmly. Eventually he gave up on helping the forming of the pyramid and decided instead to just hand you the cans that had fallen out of arms reach. You thought about telling him you could reach them with your quirk but couldn’t bring yourself to endure having him go back to stacking.

 “You know, if the whole hero thing doesn’t work out you could be a professional cat food pyramid stacker.”  he laughed as he admired your somewhat lopsided spire of cat food cans.

“Glad to know my homeroom teacher believes in me.” You grumbled melodramatically.

“It could be a fun double gimmick!”  he exclaimed waving his hands about. “Like how I’m a radio host and hero, you could, ya know-”

“Stack cat food cans and be a hero?” you entertained the ridiculous thought.

“Yeah, I see big things coming from it. Lifetime supplies of cat food, billboards of you swarmed in cats…” Mr. Yamada continued listing possibilities varying in absurdity.

You looked down at the puddle of pickling solution and glass and sighed, toeing a large piece of glass with your shoe. You grabbed a box of cereal you had been planning to buy and ripped open the top taking out the bag of cereal and putting in back in your basket. Then you placed your hand on the bottom of the box and turned it upside-down so the opening was facing the floor and focused on pulling the glass up into the palm of your hand. Like a vacuum the shards of glass were sucked up into the box and you flipped it over before releasing your gravitational pull.

“Smart.” Mr. Yamada grinned and grabbed the mop to finish the job. “We better get the glass and mop back to her.”

You grabbed your things and walked to the front of the store with Mr. Yamada, he with the dripping mop and you with your jingling box of glass. When the cashier from earlier caught sight of you two she turned bright red and apologized for leaving you to clean up the mess. Mr. Yamada assured her that it was his fault in the first place and he should have anyways. You nodded along when she spared you a glance between lovestruck gazes at your teacher.

A young man in the same branded green apron, noticing his coworkers lack of productivity, opened the next till and waved you through. By the time you were done with you whole grocery order for the week Mr. Yamada was also stepping away from his till with his two cans of cat food and a receipt inked with a red heart. Mr. Yamada paused at the door to zip up his coat and put on his gloves.

You did the same and zipped up your layers of hoodies and tugged your beanie over your ears, bracing for the frigid walk home.  “Where’s your coat?”

“Oh, I don’t- I need a new one. I’m a ten-minute walk away, I’ll be oaky.” You said stuffing your hands into your pockets. It had been a while since anyone had chastised you about dressing appropriately, you felt a little bit of warmth fill your chest.

“It’s freezing raining out, fine my ass!” Mr. Yamada exclaimed, exasperated. The tower of pop cases next to him swayed.  He winced and continued quieter. “I’ll give you a ride.”

“Thanks, but I should be okay wa-”

“It’s fifteen below and raining ice, you’re not walking.” He said. Something told you that it was settled, there was no arguing. It’s not that you didn’t appreciate the generosity, it would be nice not to have to thaw yourself out when you got home, but he’d have to see where you lived and that left a pit of embarrassment forming in your stomach.

“Thank-you.” You said quietly. He nodded and clicked a button on his car keys, a black car down the block humming to life under the heavy hail. The two of you stood under the heat lamps in a silence you were sure felt more awkward for you than from him.

“So,” you tried. “what’s your cats name?”

He smiled and looked at the food. “She’s Mr.Aizawa’s cat really, her name is Sushi and she’s a dramatic little snob who only eats fancy wet food.”

“But is she cute?”

“Adorable.” He beamed. “Okay, let’s make a dash for it.”

The two of you took off through the hail and practically jumped into his car, which felt like an oven on your chilled limbs. The car itself was nearly immaculate aside from a neatly folded up leather jacket laying across the back seat and the light dusting of white cat fur clinging to the cloth seats.

“Okay, which way am I taking off?” Mr. Yamada asked throwing the cans of cat food int eh back seat.

“Just straight down the hill until you hit tenth street, then take a right.” He nodded a pulled out into the slick road. The low murmur of the radio and hum of the engine kept the silence at bay, it had been a while since you’d been in a car you realized. You’d spent most of your commute time walking or on a bus, neither of which were particularly warm nor comfortable.

“So, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but who do you live with?” Mr. Yamada asked after a long moment of quiet.

“No one, just me and my sad wilted ivy named Sho.” You looked at him through the corner of your eye, he kept his eyes on the road a sad smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “I was already fifteen when my parents died, and I had no interest in being part of someone else’s family. So, I’m all on my own. Provided that I can prove I can take care of myself and show up once a month to a meeting with my case worker until I turn eighteen.”

The smile slipped and he slowed to a stop at a red-light, the light painting his weary features crimson. “Why don’t you have a jacket?”

You chuckled to yourself, most people weren’t so brazen with their questions. “Last spring the apartment complex I lived in caught fire during a villain hero show down and half of my apartment got torched, my coat along with it.”

“Fuck.” He cursed under his breath, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be swearing so much around you. I-I’m just…fuck.”

The light turned green and he turned the corner. “Turn into the third complex down the road.”

         “You’re case worker, are they the one signing all your permission slips?” Mr. Yamada’s eyes were still trained on the road.

         “Yeah, Mr. Nezu arranged it. Is that a problem?” You felt your stomach drop, you couldn’t afford to miss any training.

         “No, no. I just-” he sighed and pulled off to the side of the road. The two of you sat there in the storm, the radio rumbling about power outages and low temperatures, and the hail beating down on the roof of the car.  “I’ve been your homeroom teacher for two years and I didn’t know about any of this.”

         “I asked Nezu to keep it to himself, I didn’t really want people to know. Everything was so new and upside down in my life that I didn’t want everyone watching me go through it, you know?” You tried to explain, fiddling with the handle of one of your bags in your hands.

         Mr. Yamada stared out at the road for a moment, drumming on his steering wheel before blinking back into himself. He turned to look at you for the first time since you’d gotten in the car. “Yeah, I get that. Y/n, I am your homeroom teacher and you know you can come to me if you need help with anything, right?”

         For the second time that night he made your chest bloom with warmth. It had been so long since anyone had fussed over you that didn’t know what to do with yourself. You kept picking at the bag handle in your hands. You nodded shyly, looking down at your hands willing the warm tears forming in your eyes away. The car was thick with a heavy quiet, it felt like a blanket curling around you. The car began to move again, and Mr.Yamada pulled up in front of the door to your building.

“Okay, well have a good weekend?” he asked as he unlocked the doors.

“You too!” I nodded and gathered my bags. “Thanks, for the ride Mr.Yamada.”

You open the door and got out of the car; the ice hailed down around you as you ran towards the door.

* * *

         The storm had left the world covered in frost and had kept most people from venturing out the next day. For a Saturday in a busy city like Musutafu everything was quiet, so quiet that your manager told you to leave early for the night. It wasn’t as cold as the previous night, thankfully the wind had died down in the morning and the sky remained clear all day. With the streets so empty it felt eerie like something had been lost with the coming of the storm. You hugged your layers of hoodies closer to your body and trudged on through the snow filled streets.

         You had tutoring sessions tomorrow afternoon which usually meant a free lunch or snack courtesy of your “student’s” parents.  That thought got you through the night as you curled up under your bed sheets still wearing a hoodie to bed, having gone to bed with a nothing but a cup of noodles and cheap coffee in you.

* * *

         You had made it through the weekend, mercifully all three tutoring sessions had supplied some kind of snack or drink, one even a full lunch. It was a good day indeed, exam season meant longer sessions which turned out to mean more food and more money.

The world still felt muted under that layer of snow that persisted through the weekend. Shops were slower to open, and chimney smoke greyed out the already pale sky. On Sunday night it snowed again, this time light fluffy flakes that made the city look pretty under the setting sun as you walked to work.

When Monday rolled around it was felt like everyone was rolling out of bed from a long nap, fresh faced with sleep still in their eyes. The streets and sidewalks were slicked with ice and made your walk to school a hazard. You fell a few times, bruises forming on your knees and hip as you made it through the gates of U.A.

You shoved your hoodies and beanie into your locker with raw red fingers and tried to warm up your pink nose in your palm before entering the classroom.

“Good morning, Y/n.” Mr. Yamada greeted as he passed behind you. “How was your weekend?”

“Good, thanks!” you let go of your nose and started to fumble with your books. “I worked pretty much all weekend, but it kept me busy and out of the cold.”

“Glad to hear it.” He looked at you for a moment, something unsaid behind his eyes. But then it fell away and he was back to himself.

“You’ll still be on time if you beat me to the door.” He started to walk in dramatic slow-motion, miming fake panic as you shut your locker and walked past him and crossed the threshold.

“Man, can’t believe I lost that race.” He grumbled as he followed you in, a goofy grin on his face. “GOOD MORNING!”

The room shook with his voice and the day started as it normally does, with Mr. Yamada rattling off announcements periodically using his quirk to make sure the students were all awake. The day continued, your next period a practical class co-taught with Mr. Aizawa and All Might. It was a routine rescue drill using the snow to their advantage and making a blizzard obstacle course. You’re team completed your run, faster than usual. You were glowing with pride, high fiving your classmates when Mr. Aizawa waved you over to him. Your celebration was cut short, he was a tough teacher and rarely offered any sort of instruction if it wasn’t constructive criticism.

“Mr. Aizawa?” you asked.

“Y/n,” he looked forward, hands in his pockets. “I’d like to see you in my room at lunch today. I have something I want to discuss with you.”

“Something you can’t talk about here?” You were in shit, you knew it.

He looked at you and you must have looked scared because his eyes softened. “Don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing.”

“Oh, okay.” You still felt uneasy about whatever it was he need to talk to you about but at least he wasn’t going to ring your neck for something you didn’t even know you did. “I’ll see you then.”

He nodded and looked forward again.

 “Good job on the course.” He murmured quietly as you walked back to your team.

***

         Lunch hour came and as promised you made your way to Mr. Aizawa’s classroom, 1-A, while your friends all left for the cafeteria.

         Inside, Mr. Aizawa slouched deeply in his chair snoring and Mr. Yamada was perched on the edge of his desk reading a paper with one hand and drinking a coffee with another. Mr. Yamada looked up and nearly jumped off the desk clamouring to his feet, waking Mr. Aizawa. Despite the fact that everyone knew they were together you had never really been able to picture them as a couple until now. They both stammered out greetings and swayed awkwardly, steeling themselves for something.

         “You wanted to see me?” you asked, their apparent nervousness somewhat calming yours.

         “Oh, yeah!” Mr. Yamada shouted in excitement. “I have- a thing!”

         He turned to Mr. Aizawa who was already picking up a shopping bag from beside his desk. Mr. Yamada waved you closer and took the bag from Mr. Aizawa, thrusting it out towards you. “I-I didn’t want to singe you out in class, so I asked Sho- Mr. Aizawa to ask you here. Um, anyways I don’t know if it’ll fit, if it’s doesn’t I can get a bigger one. Or if you don’t like it we can maybe go looking for one you like better…”

         You took the bag from his hands a lump forming in your throat as you peered inside. You saw a furry hood and black quilted nylon all bundled up and you felt tears fill your eyes. You only vaguely registered Mr. Yamada’s rambling as you reached in and pulled the jacket out to look at it. It was a simple black parka with a grey faux fur hood. The tears openly spilled down your face and you looked up at the pair who were silently watching you with grins plastered on their faces.

You didn’t know what to say, so you just looked at them with tears running down your face for what felt like minutes. When you final managed to get words out all you could muster was a “Th-thank you.”

“Mr. Aizawa picked it out, if you don’t like it.” Mr. Yamada replied awardly.

“I-I like it. I love it. Thank-you, guys.” You sniffed.

“Oh, well in that case I picked it out.” He amended, earning an elbow to the ribs from Mr. Aizawa.