#rikkamaru

“So!”

“So,” Aizawa repeated tiredly,keeping his eyes on the sidewalk in front of him, as he walked. Asthey walked, he corrected himself, like he needed to. It was agrand effort to ignore his very peculiar companion, whom he wasleading around backstreets of the neighborhood to avoid being spottedby a passerby and unleashing pandemonium.

No one could see what had happened.That was Nedzu’s strict order and Aizawa never betrayed the Principalfor a variety of reasons, the predominant one being that their rodentoverlord was right 99.9% of the time. The homeroom teacher comfortedhimself that the media would be busy enough with the scene they leftbehind downtown, and so plunged deeper into the old-fashioned maze ofalleyways that made up the residential area around UA.

The two men walked mostly in silence,their booted feet crunching through the flakey, brittle layer of snowalready coating the street as the white tidbits tumbled down fasterand faster from the flat grey sky. Maybe it was his imagination, butAizawa swore he could feel shockwaves from every step of the manbehind him. It was as if the very snow moved differently as it fellaround him, giving him a wide berth or just melting in thesupernatural heat radiating from his herculean body.

It wasn’t usual, to get to see thepowerful, illustrious All Might moving at anything less than lightspeed. It was even odder to see him outshining the very snow in hisphysical prime, a fresh-faced and relentlessly grinning late-twentiesmountain of muscle pacing behind a haggard-looking man dressed inblack and trying very, very hard to politely get his attention.

“So, we don’t know each other,” AllMight ventured at length, timid but maybe the third iteration of thequestion since they started their trek. Aizawa told himself to beunderstanding – Yagi’s mind was likely in disarray after the attackand the man already behaved like a needy canine on the best days, sothis nagging made an unpleasant kind of sense – and closed hisburning eyes, too tired to roll them.

“Not really,” he murmured, too lowto hear. Behind him, All Might made a perplexed noise, and Aizawacould almost see him put a hand to his clean-shaven, perfectlychiseled chin. But he wasn’t going to look, no. Under nocircumstances.

“I could swear I do. Know you, thatis, although I don’t know from where. It’s odd, this whole … thing.Peculiar. I swear just yesterday I was in the country…” Thehorrendously young hero trailed off, then cleared his throat. “IsYakushima still, um, there?”

“Yakushima still stands. This isn’tsome apocalyptic future.”

“Oh, good,”All Might said with a gusty sigh, then prodded a little further asthey scaled a narrow staircase, his deep voice pleasant and oh-socharming. “Have you ever been to see the Yakushima cedars? They’requite beautiful in the winter, covered in snow. Just like now.”

“You were hit with a de-aging Quirkwith a memory component,” Aizawa continued in low, grinding tones,like he hadn’t heard. “That’s as much as we know until we cancontain the attacker. The experts Nedzu spoke to said it wouldprobably be a day a year until you’re back to normal.”

“Oh! That’s hardly anything!” theyoung hero exclaimed with relish, then his voice dropped. “I think.H-how old am I? Now? If I could ask?”

“No idea,” Aizawa said honestly,huddling down deeper into the coils of his capture weapon as theyturned the corner, pausing to scan for civilians. “My guess is thevillain intended to revert you to a child-like form in order tooverpower you, but their attack didn’t fully land.”

“Thanks to you, I’m told!”

“Mm,” he said, disinterested. Hefelt the energy of the man behind him finally, finally flag. He senta small, bitter prayer up to a god he didn’t really believe in.

And that was all, for a while, becauseit had to be. Aizawa walked a little faster, less concerned withreaching their destination than putting a little more distancebetween himself and the stupidly beautiful, perfect specimen of a manfollowing him with unflinching trust and far too many personalquestions.

This was not a good situation forAizawa. At all.

This was actually much more thanleading a (technically injured) ally away from the scene of a battleand into safe custody, because Aizawa really, really didn’t need theholy grail of protective masculinity and his violent gay awakeningincarnate standing there and making curious, flirtatious eyes at himevery time they stopped for a cross-walk signal. Especially when heand the actual Yagi, the troublesome scarecrow of a man he had toldnot to go running off to a random PIN notification from downtown whenthere were a whole squad of responders available to deal with it,were barely on speaking terms.

Yagi had not listened and Aizawa hadbeen forced to follow and deal with the aftermath. All Might, now atwenty-something demi-god, was also the only one of the bunch fromthe melee who had escaped the particular villain’s Quirk with theirlanguage skills intact, so Aizawa mollified himself that he wasn’tcarrying an eerily grinning toddler back to UA. Although, with asbaffled and helpless as young, amnesiac All Might currently was, itwasn’t hard to imagine.

“You look cold,” the idiotcommented as they passed another open restaurant door and Aizawainstinctively paused a minute by the heat streaming out. Pricked, thehomeroom teacher kept moving.

“I’m not,” Aizawa lied, even as hisstiff fingers were shoved in his armpits. He had run out without ajacket to respond to the situation at Nedzu’s request and the fastestway to travel was via his capture weapon, which left him wind-raw andchilled to his bones in this weather. He was fucking miserable andhad been for half an hour.

“You should walk closer to me. Idon’t mind,” All Might added earnestly, giving a short, sunny laughand, god forbid, walking a little faster. Drawing a little closer, tomake his point. “People tell me I’m like a portable heater! It’s areal help in mountain rescues. Do you go to the mountains at all?”

Rather than simply refusing him like anadult male, or telling him off like he would one of his kids, Aizawahissed at All Might.

He did. He hissed, like a corneredanimal. It started as a snort but then his teeth just locked in thecold and he hissed and just kept walking, and that’s when the pricklestarted in his cheeks. Spreading. Reddening. Engulfing.

“Did you just …” All Mightuttered faintly, stunned.

Aizawa was almost running now, like anidiot, although the hero’s long, liquid strides hardly registered thedifference in pace.

“Hurry up,” he grit out, nearlyrunning blind for all the snow clotting his eyelashes. “We’realmost to the meeting point.”

“If you’re willing to be carried for a second, I could, ah, jump us there –”

“I said, move. With yourfeet.”

God, what was he even fucking saying?

When they arrived in the designatedcourtyard, All Might’s famous persistence made one last appearance,apparently just for reputation’s sake. As Aizawa took shelterunderneath an awning, trying not to shiver too obviously as theywaited for their UA contact to meet them, All Might came to a haltbeside him. It was a respectable distance, he would grant the manthat, but Aizawa made the mistake of reflexively glancing up: meetinghis eyes, All Might grinned down at him as if from out of a magazinespread fifteen years ago, golden and handsome and utterly,breathtakingly shy.

For that moment, he was fourteen again,trying to parse the hot, squirming sensation rising in his belly ashe looked at a luxurious full-page magazine spread of a recliningshirtless hero who, logically, should have just inspired his heroicvalues. Aizawa gulped, one breath away from panicking.

“I really appreciate you helping mein that fight, even if I can’t remember it. It’s been quite a day,but I wanted to say … thank you.”

“Yeah,” he said, just to stop him,but it didn’t work.

“And just because we don’t know eachother doesn’t mean we … ah, can’t,” All Might said quietly, oneenormous hand to his neck. His breath plumed out of his chappedmouth, somehow majestic, and Aizawa’s poor frozen body shook just imagining howdeliciously warm his lips would be. “I don’t really know where Iam, or what’s going on, but … I know that I’d like to see youagain. Is that … okay?”

His brain, Aizawa’s entire fuckingbrain, had to reboot. If he wasn’t bright, scalding red before, hewas now, and he was also not doing this.

“If you’re at UA for now, I’ll bearound,” Aizawa muttered once he unstuck his throat, staying firmlybehind the curtain of his snow-crusted hair so this young paragon ofsex appeal couldn’t see his miserable flush. Suffering, dying withravenous resurrected teenaged lust, he added mentally, everytime you turn the corner.

He would most certainly be taking hisfive years of stored-up vacation days this week, and every week afteruntil Yagi, scarecrow Yagi, was back and no longer quite the assaulton his libido. He wasn’t bad, but mostly he wasn’t this. Thiswas awful.

The two heroes stood silently togetherunder the awning and, to all extents, that was it. Aizawa had madeit: he’d managed it and pulled it off, not giving his surrealchildhood crush the barest of hints that such a violent attractioneven existed, boiling underneath his skin. He could even blame anyredness on the snow.

“Hey, hey, hey! What’s the news,dudes? Nedzu said we’ve got a situation on our paws, here!”

Enter: Yamada “Present Fuckhead Mic”Hizashi, perpetual fretter, professional life-ruiner,somehow-still-best-friend.

“Ahhh! Shouta what the hell, did youforget your hat again? It’s snowing!”

It was half situational anxiety andhalf muscle memory that Aizawa stiffened on the spot as Hizashi ranup to them, already scolding him about his winter wear or lackthereof. After a bit of digging in his saddle bag, his best friendunearthed a hat and immediately shoved it on his head. In winter,Hizashi always carried a hat for the very rare circumstance that itwas cold enough to merit messing up his hair, and possibly becauseShouta never carried one. It was like together, they made onefunctional, fully-dressed adult.

That would have been fine, well withinthe kinds of abuse Aizawa was accustomed to, if his friend hadn’ttugged the hat down over his eyes like a jackass and smashed hisburning cheeks in his hands and just kept going.

“Look at you, you’re all red!Christmas red! Yannoe, I keep telling you but with your blood type,you really shouldn’t –“

He growled, tried to shove him off, butthen his best friend’s eyes focused like lime-green scanners,dangerously sharp behind his glasses and for just a second Aizawaremembered that he wasn’t actually a dumbass.

“Wait just a minute.”

“Hizashi,” he hissed,growl-screamed, little more than a desperate gurgle in his throat.

“Are you blushing? Holy smokes,you’re blushing!” he crowed, letting him to only to punch him onthe arm and grin in his face. “You never blush! You see someonecute on the way back, or what? You cruisin’ on the job, yascalliwag?”

“Fucking – Hi-za-shi!”

It was only then, with Aizawaphysically paralyzed by the sheer amount of blood in his face andstaring knives through the so-called hero, that Hizashi actuallyglimpsed beyond the man he’d dedicated his life to humiliating andsaw.

“Oh my god,” Hizashi said, agape.“We do have a situation.”

“It seems we do,” came the chucklefrom behind him.

Steeling himself, blood sitting heavyin his neck and cheeks, Aizawa turned to see the Symbol of Peacestanding tall behind them … looking not at the loud, awfulnewcomer, but square at Aizawa with a knowing glint in his eye and aroguish grin. That kind of look that said someone knew they were hot.Very hot, and it made a kind of sense to Aizawa’s broken,blood-deprived brain: the heat coming off his sculpted, latex-slickedbody was so intense, it felt like spring just standing next to him.

As he watched, All Might reached up andbrushed a fuzzy layer of snow from his stupid hair, making sure togratuitously flex his bicep on the way up and cock his hip like aporn star.