Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Despite holding the number one spot for more years than most heroes were even in the game, All Might had always been something of a mystery.

He was loud and in-your-face, always willing to sign an autograph or snap a selfie with a fan. He never turned down an interview, though he expertly dodged too-intimate questions with the skill of a public relations professional.

All Might never spoke about his hobbies, his friends or family, his actual self. There was a very clear and mostly respected separation of his personal life and his hero work.

Which really wasn’t that unusual, all things said and done. Heroes were public figures, but they were also mostly normal people at the end of the day.

What set All Might apart from everyone else in this regard was that no one had ever seen his daemon.

Well, probably someone had. He’d been a child at some point and anyone who’d attended UA after All Might had heard rumors of his daemon. One that continued to shift far longer than others, not settling until he was almost an adult.

But whatever form it’d settled on was by and large unknown.

The internet was a hotbed of theories and rumors, with guesses ranging from a powerful, sleek lioness which remained hidden in the shadows of his glory to a shrewd, intelligent hawk watching from up above.

The avian theory seemed most likely, in Aizawa’s opinion. Generally, birds could maintain the greatest distance from their human counterpart. It made sense that All Might managed to fight in both up-close brawls and long-range battles without ever revealing his daemon if it were a bird.

Not that Aizawa spent much time speculating.

It was a curious fact of All Might’s existence, but like everything else about the world’s symbol of peace, it didn’t hold much import in Aizawa’s daily life.

Until, of course, All Might became a teacher at UA.

The revelation of his identity, his injury, his true form – all of it seemed to pale in comparison to the figure of the sand colored jackrabbit at his heels.

All Might’s real name was Toshinori Yagi and his daemon’s name was Hinata.

Thin and reedy, she seemed to disappear into the shadows within the blink of an eye. Aizawa never saw her when All Might was around, but as Yagi, he occasionally carried her over his shoulder, her strong, powerful hind legs dangling across his chest.

She was as quiet as All Might was boisterous, and if they ever spoke Aizawa never heard it. No one else tried to talk to her, she never gave anyone the opportunity.

Ume, Aizawa’s raccoon daemon, reported back that Hinata was skittish and shy with the other daemons, giving curt nonverbal responses only if pressed.

“I don’t think she’s used to having so much attention on her,” Ume told him once as they both watched her zigzag through a crowded hallway, darting between student’s feet with practiced ease before jumping up to be caught in Yagi’s large hand.

Sometimes Aizawa caught the tips of her ears sticking out of Yagi’s loose suit jacket, body carefully hidden inside the inner pocket.

One thing that stood out to him though was how close they seemed to be.

Physical separation from one’s daemon was somewhat different for each person, but most commonly ranged anywhere from thirty to forty feet. Some people, heroes most often, trained themselves and their daemons for larger distances of separation. This had long been the theory of All Might’s daemon.

Months of working with him had disproven that. Yagi and Hinata were rarely more than ten feet apart, and if they were, both appeared vigilant and wary of their surroundings and each other.

Aizawa wasn’t necessarily quick to part ways with his own daemon, but he often utilized Ume’s small stature and dexterous paws to investigate spaces he couldn’t get into. The burn of unease when she entered a room without him wasn’t so strong that they couldn’t power through it for the sake of a mission.

More than once, he almost asked Yagi. Sitting next to him in the teacher’s lounge, Ume at his feet while Hinata sat on top of the desk, ears upright and alert as always, Aizawa could feel the question on the tip of his tongue.

Some small shred of propriety always held him back though.

“You know, I could always ask her,” Ume offered one day, after Yagi and Hinata had left the room. “It’s clearly bothering you.”

She stepped out from under the desk, holding her paws up expectantly. Aizawa looked at her with faux exasperation before reaching out to grasp her under the arms and lift her onto the desk. She was more than capable of climbing up herself, but they both enjoyed the spread of warmth inside when they touched each other.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, that’s how much it’s not bothering me.”

Ume scoffed, and the subject was dropped.

Eventually the question of All Might’s disappearing daemon was answered, unsurprisingly, around the time that his career as a hero ended and his true form was discovered publicly.

Though most people seemed willing to respect his very obvious desire for privacy, it was hard for the average person not to approach him when given the chance. Walking down the street when they visited the children’s parents, Aizawa had seen it on their faces. There. Right there was All Might.

It didn’t matter what he looked like now or what he could no longer do, he was still the greatest hero to ever have lived.

So of course, excited children and less-than-scrupulous reporters converged on him anytime he left UA grounds.

It was one such pushy adult who spilled the story.

Out on a jog, Yagi had paused in the park when approached by a nervous, young fan for an autograph. A blogger passing by happened to catch sight and, with the confidence only someone desperate to be YouTube famous could manage, pulled him into an impromptu interview.

The video circulated on the internet enough to make the news, which was where Aizawa caught it. Sitting on a couch in the teacher’s dorm common room, he looked up from his grading at the sound of Yagi’s stoic voice.

“I appreciate the kind words, again, thank you.”

Hinata sat in his hand, held close to his chest. Her sharp hazel eyes were looking directly at the camera. They held every bit of shrewdness of their human counterpart’s.

Next to him, Ume gasped.

“Oh my god, Sho!” Her paws pressed at his side, pulling on his capture weapon.

“I’m seeing it.”

“Seeing what?” Yamada appeared out of nowhere, like he often did, claiming a seat on the arm of the couch. His hair was down, in direct opposition of his cockatoo daemon, which sat firmly on his shoulder. Wakana’s crest feathers stood at attention, her head turned slightly to watch Hinata on tv.

“Some video of All Might that’s been going around.”

He tried to sound uninterested, but Yamada had known him for too long.

“There are a lot of videos of All Might going around, man, at any given time. You gotta be more specific.”

Aizawa gestured to the tv, to where Ume had crawled closer to the screen and was watching with rapt attention. Wakana flew over to sit on her head and together they listened.

“Can you tell us a little more about Hinata, All Might, we’re just—the world is so excited to finally learn—”

He must have missed the part where Yagi introduced her. Aizawa highly doubted she had introduced herself, he’d still never even heard her voice.

Indeed, she was no longer looking at the camera, her eyes turned off toward the distance, nose twitching.

“Well, uh—she’s a white-tailed jackrabbit and she’s, hah—not the biggest talker.” He smiled apologetically, reaching up to touch the back of his neck.

“How did you keep her secret all these years? Why did you keep her secret?”

Hinata looked up at Yagi as he looked down and it was obvious something unsaid passed between them. Finally, Yagi shrugged, his smile slightly forced.

“Pocket in my costume!” Right then he sounded like All Might, but it was gone when he spoke again, his voice serious once more. “Daemon’s can be targeted on the battlefield. While you and I would never cross such a line, villains don’t always have such compunction.”

Aizawa’s heart sped up at what Yagi was implying. Just the idea of anyone else touching his daemon turned his stomach. Ume turned to look at him, their eyes catching briefly before she turned back to the screen.

“You’re the only hero that’s kept it so quiet though! Why is that?”

He grinned and Aizawa could tell that it was genuine, wry and slightly self-deprecating – all Toshinori Yagi.

“If it was easier, I’m sure other heroes would do the same. Unfortunately for heroes like Endeavor, it’s kind of hard to put a tiger in your pocket.”

He very pointedly didn’t say what Aizawa knew he meant.

Most hero daemons weren’t prey animals.

“Turn it off,” Aizawa called and without question, Ume reached out to press the power button.

“I wonder if he was telling the truth,” Yamada asked, “about the pocket in his costume.”

“I was,” the man in question said, his deep voice startling them all. Wakana squawked sharply, her feathers rustling as she flew back to a blushing Yamada.

Ume was looking down at her paws, inspecting the sharp claws as if she hadn’t just been pressed to the tv in blatant curiosity.

Yagi hovered in the doorway of the hall that led to the staff apartments. By his feet sat Hinata, her ears held high and attentive. Giant ears, ones that could hear everything.

Aizawa winced, thinking of all the times he and Ume had speculated about Yagi, and the chances they’d been overheard.

“Sorry man, that story is all over the news lately. Gotta be annoying.”

Yagi nodded at Yamada’s words, stepping into the kitchen area of the staff living space. He pulled a mug from the cabinet, paying no mind to Hinata who bounced from a chair to the counter silently.

Aizawa watched as he started the kettle, the way his head bent closer to Hinata while he rooted through the drawer of tea, presumably to listen to whatever she might be saying. He was startled by the touch of Ume’s paw at his thigh as she clambered into his lap.

“You’re staring,” she said low enough for his ears only. He hoped.

Ignoring the way his daemon had called him out, Aizawa turned back to his stack of essays.

“It’s fine,” Yagi finally replied, taking a seat on the overstuffed chair near them. “People are curious, sometimes it’s just easier to answer their questions.”

“So like…where’d you keep the pocket?”

Aizawa tuned them out, falling into his grading with single minded determination to see it finished. Ume sat quietly in his lap, occasionally commenting on something particularly stupid within the student’s assignments, her paws combing through her fluffy tail for tangles.

“So…” Ume led, later the night as Aizawa was brushing his teeth for bed.

“So?” He returned around a mouthful of toothpaste, face bemused.

“Now you know everything.”

Aizawa spit into the sink, ignoring the way Ume hissed when some splashed up onto her fur.

“What do I know?”

Ume turned the tap back on, wetting her paws before swiping at the white toothpaste speckled in her grey fur.

“Now you know why no one ever saw All Might’s daemon! She was in a pocket under his cape the whole time.”

Aizawa rolled his eyes, rinsing his mouth and splashing more water at Ume. She gasped, hissing again, before hopping down to the floor and trotting into the bedroom.

“Look, you can pretend you’re too cool to care with Hizashi and Wakana, but don’t try to pull that crap with me.”

He stepped out of his slippers and got into bed, turning off the lamp on his nightstand as he pulled the duvet up around his head.

Ume moved into her customary spot at the top of his pillow, soft body pressed to his head. Agile paws pulled at his hair, untangling knots with care.

“Fine, now I know. So what?”

“Mystery solved,” she tugged at a particularly stubborn knot. “Unless of course, there was a reason beyond curiosity that you wanted to know so bad.”

“Ume…”

The pulling stopped, and Aizawa felt the way she tucked her paws under her chin, settling against the top of his head.

“Like I said Sho—you can lie to everyone else, but not me.”

Didn’t mean he was going to stop trying.

+

The thing was, Aizawa didn’t understand why he even cared. He didn’t need to know everything about Yagi and his jackrabbit daemon. They weren’t villains. They weren’t even really friends.

He probably could have set it aside. Ume was right, his curiosity had been satisfied – mostly. Even though there were still questions that nagged at him, he stuffed them down far enough that even she didn’t bring it up again. And while he probably wouldn’t have ignored any intel that floated his way through the school gossip grapevine, but he certainly wasn’t going to go looking for it.

Whatever his weird little desire to know more about Yagi was, Aizawa planned to ignore it and ignore it hard.

He might even have been successful too, if it hadn’t been for a meeting with the police involved in the League of Villains case.

The precinct room was crowded with police officers, and their respective daemons. As was common among civil servants, most of the daemons in the room were dogs of some kind, ranging in size and shape.

Detective Tsukauchi stood out in absolutely no way except for the fact that upon seeing Yagi enter the room, his Jack Russel terrier darted forward, stubby tail shaking in enthusiasm. Aizawa watched in astonishment as Hinata hopped from Yagi’s shoulder and met her in the middle.

Neither man seemed to notice, too caught up in greetings, but Aizawa couldn’t look away from the way Hinata and the Jack Russel were whispering to each other, the dog licking at her ears now and then excitedly.

“Well…” Ume was tucked into his capture weapon, tangled up against his chest like an infant in a baby bjorn. He was fairly certain she could feel the way his heartbeat had picked up at the sight before them. “What do you think that means?”

“That All Might actually has friends. What else could it mean?”

Ume snickered, reaching out to pull at a strand of his hair that had fallen into her face.

“I don’t mean that,” she gestured towards the two pairs of obviously old, obviously close friends. “I meant your reaction. Your heart’s racing like a bunny! Thumping like a—” Her voice broke on more giggles. “Like a jackrab—”

The rest of her sentence was buried in the folds of Aizawa’s weapon as he pulled it tight around them both. A police officer to their left looked over with vague concern but Aizawa waved her off, smiling in a way he knew many people found unsettling.

“Keep talking and I’ll mount your stuffed body over the fireplace.”

He loosened the straps and Ume huffed, still stifling laughter as they walked out of the room and away from Yagi and Tsukauchi. “Aww Sho, it’s been so long since you’ve had a crush on someone. I was beginning to think we were destined to die alone.”

“Dear god Ume, could you please lower your voice—and I don’t have a crush—"

“No one is listening to me,” she pointed out, “and even if they were no one would know it was on Ya—”

He covered her entire face with his hands this time, ignoring the way her wet nose smeared against his skin. They walked like that, Aizawa anxious and bristly, Ume amused and perceptive, until they found a cab to take them back to the school.

“I don’t know why you’re freaking out about this,” she started up again once they were in the backseat. “So you like him, big deal!”

“Stop. I absolutely do not want to discuss this.”

He noted the way the cab driver’s eyes drifted to the rearview mirror. His orange cat daemon was splayed across the dashboard in a way that made Aizawa want to point out safety regulations.

He braced himself for more from Ume, she was never one to give up without a fight, but instead the car was silent. He looked down to the seat next to him to see her looking at the floor, her expression unusually forlorn.

“What?”

She looked up in surprise, grabbing her tail in what he knew was a nervous gesture.

“Nothing! I just… I don’t know. Seeing Hinata get so excited to see that dog daemon… I think it made me jealous. I want Hinata to be that excited to see me.”

Aizawa sighed. Ume’s personality could be so different from his own, sometimes it was easy to forget that she was his other half. The physical manifestation of his soul.

Reaching out, he scooped her up, holding up the coils of his weapon while she situated herself into a more comfortable position, finally settling with her back to his chest.

Her chin rested on his arm wrapped around her.

“Maybe I have a crush too.”

Aizawa hummed, pointedly not looking at the eyes of the cab driver in the rearview.

+

“I heard you left before the meeting even got started,” Principal Nezu said the next day in the breakroom.

Nezu was unnerving for a lot of reasons, not least of which were his shrewd, all knowing eyes and cryptic origin story. The most unsettling thing about him though was his nonexistent daemon. Aizawa knew he was quite likely the first, probably only animal to manifest a quirk, but he didn’t know if his lack of a daemon was natural or the result of the experimentation he’d undergone.

As far as he knew, no one at the school was ballsy enough to ask.

“I got a text from one of the students,” he lied. “Slight disaster in the dorms, nothing major.”

“Shoving twenty hormonal teenagers into one building is just begging for disasters,” Kayama interrupted. She dipped between them to grab a mug, unsettling Oyasumi, whose claws dug into her shoulder in a way that had to be painful.

As with most teachers and scholarly professionals, Kayama’s daemon was a bird, a raven whose wings perfectly matched the curtain of pitch black hair she’d sported since they were kids.

“Can you imagine the things we would have gotten up to if we’d had dorms?” She threw a saucy look at Aizawa over the rim of her red glasses.

Oyasumi croaked a laugh. “It would have been fun—too bad we can’t go back.”

“Uh, hard pass on repeating high school,” Ume chimed in from where she sat perched on the counter.

The raven chuckled again, his voice deep and dark, and Aizawa couldn’t help the shiver that ran down his back.

“It was trivial. Nothing to write home about.” This he said to Nezu, in an effort to take the principal’s attention off of him.

Reprieve came in the form of the door opening, Yamada and Yagi’s shared laughter drifting in before them.

Aizawa stepped neatly away from the principle, trying to ignore how the rare sound of Yagi’s genuine laughter made his stomach flip. Ume scrambled off the counter and over to him, holding her arms out to be picked up as he took a seat on the couch.

The room was loud then, the sounds of boisterous conversation mixed with screeching daemons – Wakana trying to draw the soft spoken Oyasumi into conversation – the rattling of dishes as everyone tried to make coffee at once. Other teachers trickled in, Power Loader and his massive secretary bird, Vlad and his tiny vampire finch.

Aizawa settled Ume more firmly into his capture weapon, attempting to ignore the noise of everyone, him especially. His efforts were in vain though, as a tiny weight landed next to them on the cushion, a rapid thumping noise drawing his attention.

Hinata was actually rather tall, for a rabbit, when she stood up on her hind legs. Her foot beat against the cushion again in a steady rhythm.

He and Ume watched in fascination as through the cacophony of the teacher’s morning routines, Yagi poked his head through the crowd and spotted his daemon. His face lit up, a brief flash of blue in dark shadowed eyes.

“There you are.”

Aizawa knew his pulse was racing even before Ume put her paw on his arm comfortingly. He held his breath when Yagi scooped the jackrabbit up, holding her against his chest as he took a seat next to them.

“Mind if I sit?”

Aizawa did mind. He minded quite a bit.

“Nope.”

Ignoring Yagi’s shuffling, Aizawa lifted his cup to his mouth in an effort to keep his hands busy. His coffee was no longer warm, but he still took a deep drink. He was just managing to find an effective zoned out headspace when Ume spoke.

“What are you reading?”

It wasn’t common for daemons to directly address other humans, but it did occur between close friends. Aizawa knew too well how effectively Ume and Yamada could gang up on him to give him shit when given the chance.

Ume tended to be pretty chatty, all things considered. Even so, he and Yagi were not exactly friends, and this was certainly not normal behavior between two co-workers.

Yagi startled slightly at the question and Aizawa felt a burst of heat across his face as he fought the desire to mummify Ume in the weapon around his neck.

Only the uptick of Yagi’s mouth stopped him from apologizing. He looked surprised at Ume’s question, but pleasantly so. He held up the book in his hand.

“Nothing interesting, I’m afraid. Just another one of many teaching guide books.”

“How many books do you need to read before you figure it out?” Aizawa asked genuinely. A tsking noise from Ume clued him in to how dispassionate it had sounded. Years of maintaining his composure in the face of villains and students alike had left him somewhat cold and aloof – if not in true character, at least in presentation.

Yagi shot him a sardonic grin anyway. “Well I think I need all the help I can get, if my performance this past year has shown us anything.”

Aizawa was just about to chastise his self-deprecating tone when another voice, softly alluring, beat him to it.

“Toshi,” Hinata warned.

Aizawa wouldn’t have known the name had come from her if he hadn’t seen the way she turned her twitching nose up at Yagi, ears laid flat against her back in admonishment.

Yagi hummed a sound that was neither agreement nor dissent, instead lifting one long fingered hand to run over her ears and back. He opened the book once more, their conversation apparently over in his mind. A tiny pinch from Ume’s sharp claws kicked Aizawa back into action.

“Reading multiple books won’t help. You’re better off just finding one you like most and sticking with the method. Otherwise you’re getting all kinds of conflicting ideas.”

Blue and hazel eyes stared back at him in astonishment. Even Hinata’s normally impassive face seemed surprised.

“What?” Aizawa could help but ask.

Yagi shook his head, blonde strands of hair flying with the motion. “Nothing, I’m sorry. You just—sometimes I forget you’re actually a teacher.”

He grinned, a rare sight these days, and Hinata tucked her nose against his chest, hazel eyes never leaving Aizawa.

“Just because I’m not a bird doesn’t mean he’s not a teacher.” Aizawa looked down to see Ume grin back at Yagi.

A human gesture on an animal face was sometimes off-putting to others, especially when it bared sharp fangs like hers. Aizawa was no stranger to people finding Ume scary or weird – especially with the way her hand-like paws were sometimes more capable than a human.

He should have known better though, because Yagi was smiling back, softer now.

“You’re right, of course.” He stood up, holding Hinata against his chest tightly, and touched Aizawa’s shoulder in a quick brush. “I’ll consider your advice.”

He watched them both go, and Aizawa looked around to realize that they had been the last two people left in the teacher’s lounge.

“Sho, her voice! Did you hear it? Oh my god, it was so beautiful!”

Aizawa sighed, melting back into the couch.

“Yeah Ume, I heard it.”

+

The thing about daemons was that they were usually an effective gauge of what kind of person a kid would grow into. Flitting from animal to animal on a whim, trying out different forms until they found the one that felt right. This usually occurred after puberty, approximately.

While a lot of people didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grew up until much later, if ever, their daemon was often a good meter.

Birds were common in academics, dogs among those with a strong sense of authority. Artists often had insect daemons and felines were usually a signifier of a capricious nature and frequent career changes.

Sometimes daemons settled in a form that would be most helpful for the job, without the child ever even knowing. Aizawa knew a woman in construction with a chimpanzee that worked right alongside her. He was pretty sure he’d even seen him drawing up blueprints once.

When it came to heroes, their daemons ran the gamut, usually settling on a form that was most helpful with their quirk and fighting style.

One of the best things about teaching high school was that despite the way their hormones indicated they were still well into puberty, their daemons had pretty much all settled. Those that hadn’t almost always did within the first few weeks of the course.

Izuku Midoriya was once again the exception to everything Aizawa had learned as a teacher.

He’d heard about this kind of thing, of course. Not all kids were on the same developmental timeline, and it wasn’t that crazy to see older teenagers with unsettled daemons. It just didn’t happen very often in the hero course.

These kids had direction, they were driven. Anyone who made it into the UA hero course knew what they wanted to do with their lives and they knew how to reach those goals.

All Might had also been an exception.

Aizawa didn’t know what that meant in terms of their oddly close relationship, but he’d never thought to ask.

Right now, it was beginning to look like he might have to.

“Bakugo, if you do not rein your daemon in I am giving this fight to Midorya.”

His explosion died down immediately, his face enraged as he turned to Aizawa. Any other student would have taken his brief distraction as a weakness and gone in for a finishing move, but Midoriya bounced away, taking a moment to catch his breath.

Behind them, Bakugo’s honey badger was going wild trying to tear at the metal debris Midoriya’s daemon was hiding in. Aizawa had never seen a honey badger daemon before and had been surprised to see Bakugo sporting an animal so small and soft looking until he saw them both in action. What she lacked in size, she more than made up for in sheer rage and destructive capability.

Her victim had been a rat when she had scrambled into the wreckage but had shifted into a moth form and taken advantage of her small size to flit out and land in Midoriya’s hair.

“Why’s it my fault his daemon’s always a pathetic fluffy target? If this was a real fight with a villain, Hatsu would be able to go after their daemon!”

This was true. Any daemon worth their hero would press every advantage in an effort to stop a villain. Ume had taken down daemons they’d fought against more times than he could count. Aizawa wouldn’t have called off the match either, if he’d thought for one second that Midoriya’s daemon would defend herself.

Every bit of hesitation and uncertainty that Midoriya possessed was very clearly displayed in his other half. For the life of him, Aizawa couldn’t understand why she tended to take the form of prey animals.

Hero daemons were predators.

Or at least capable of serious self-defense. Yamada’s cockatoo may not have been the most aggressive, but her sharp claws weren’t just for show.

“Midoriya, come over here.”

Even the way he hopped over looked like All Might. Aizawa wondered at the possibility of his daemon settling as a rabbit as well.

“Aizawa-sensei, if this were a real fight I’d press every advantage. Right now, my advantage is that Yusha isn’t settled. She led Hatsuchan in there on purpose!”

“Yeah, I recognize that, but part of this assignment was to keep the property damage to a minimum. While I’m not going to put that badger’s destructive tendencies on you, I have to wonder what’s stopping Yusha from learning to fight back.”

The daemon in question crawled up from Midoriya’s mossy curls to flit onto his shoulder. In a tiny voice she spoke. “Why do I have to fight physically? Isn’t part of being a hero outsmarting your opponent?”

Aizawa reached up to rub at his temple, fighting back what was sure to be a monumental headache.

“Yes, but this is a training routine, and as Midoriya says, you’re unsettled. Take the opportunity to train for multiple types of combat.”

Midoriya nodded, determination written on his face. Aizawa thought he might have heard a tiny scoff but ignored it. He watched them take up their positions once more, Yusha shifting into a massive timber wolf midair, landing on her paws with a growl.

Bakugo’s daemon looked positively thrilled at the sight, scraping her claws into the ground as she waited for the signal.

“Don’t think a bigger daemon is going to win this fight, Deku,” Bakugo began.

Aizawa quickly tuned them out. It was really the only option with those two.

It bothered him though, as he sat in the teacher’s common room later that night. Midoriya’s daemon didn’t seem at all inclined to be a hero. He knew from Recovery Girl that the last time they’d been in the hospital Yusha had spent hours lecturing Midorya on his tendency to throw himself into danger.

She was definitely the voice of reason in their duo.

It reminded him of that time before, in the teacher’s lounge. The only time he’d heard Yagi’s daemon speak. It had only been one word, but it was obvious she’d been scolding him for his disparaging comments at his own expense.

Aizawa wondered if she scolded him like that all the time. Maybe she was the voice of reason in their relationship too.

He looked down to the raccoon on the other side of the room. Ume was sitting on the floor wrapped up in the small fuzzy blanket he usually kept draped over the foot of his bed, a small pile of walnuts and a larger pile of walnut shells on either side of her.

As he watched, she placed a nut between sharp canine teeth and applied just enough pressure to crack the hard shell, pulling it apart carefully to claim her prize.

Her fuzzy stomach was covered in walnut detritus, and if sensing his critical gaze, she looked up.

“What?”

Ume was definitely not the voice of reason between the two of them. If anything, she was more likely to urge him into something reckless and stupid.

Which was fine, really. Sometimes he needed someone to push him into a recklessly stupid situation.

“Do you want one? Why are you looking at me so weird?”

All Might had often been reckless and stupid. It was one of the things that drove Aizawa crazy. Watching the man throw himself into danger, relying on his quirk to keep him safe, setting an example for the children that was how a hero behaved when really it was just how All Might behaved.

Midoriya was exactly the same, just less successfully.

Someone sat down in the overstuffed chair next to him, pulling Aizawa from his musing. His vision refocused to find Ume returned to her mission of making the biggest mess possible.

“Something troubling you?”

Yagi was holding a cup of tea, another book in his hand, not a teaching guide for once.

“What are you reading now?”

Blue eyes flashed in surprise, but Yagi held up the book. It had a polar bear on the cover.

“Fantasy novel, part of a series. Treating myself to an old favorite after making it through all of those manuals.”

“Did you pick one you liked?”

Yagi’s smile was wan, but it was there. “I think so.”

Aizawa nodded, looking over at Ume who was politely pretending not to eavesdrop. A quick glance at Yagi didn’t reveal Hinata to him, but he was sure where ever she was tucked that she was listening too.

“Everything okay?” Yagi asked again, that spark of tenacity that had made him such a successful hero rearing its head.

He should have brushed it off – waved away Yagi’s concern and continued to let the tense detachment that encompassed their every exchange linger. He should have told Yagi he was fine, dusted off his raccoon and headed to his own apartment. But if Aizawa was being honest with himself, which was rare, it was beginning to wear on him. Constantly holding himself apart from Yagi on the off chance that he would recognize Aizawa’s coldness for the self-preservation technique that it was had gotten old.

He was tired.

And a tired Shota Aizawa was a chatty one, unfortunately.

“What’s up with you and Midoriya?”

That was definitely not the question Yagi was expecting, and his eyes got so wide that for a second Aizawa could see the whites around his irises.

“Wha—why, he’s my student, same as yours, I’m not sure—”

Aizawa held up a hand to cut him off. “Right, Midoriya’s your student like Shinso is mine, I get it. I meant beyond that.”

His candidness seemed to surprise Yagi, who paused in spouting what was sure to be more deflection. He tsked, leaning back in the chair, and Hinata poked her head out of his jacket pocket, nose twitching.

Out of the corner of his eye, Aizawa could see Ume perk up, her attention turning towards Yagi. She quickly brushed the crumbs from her coat before holding out a cracked nut.

Aizawa watched in awe as Hinata pulled herself out of Yagi’s coat, tumbling into his lap before bouncing over to Ume, who had pulled the nut out of the shell and placed it carefully on the floor.

Hinata didn’t say anything but she did take the offering, and Aizawa turned back to Yagi, expecting to find him just as shocked only to see him watching their two daemons with a small smile and not much surprise.

“I’m an orphan,” Yagi said, seemingly out of nowhere.

“O-oh?”

Yagi looked at him with a soft smile. “Most people don’t know, I tend to keep things pretty close to the vest.”

Most people don’t know. Yet here he was telling Aizawa. He fought the urge to pull his capture weapon tighter around himself like a shroud.

“I guess I tend to collect people… Once I let someone in I have a hard time letting them go.”

“Like that detective?” Aizawa burted, and immediately regretted. Ume looked at him and he could almost hear her ’smooth Sho.’

Yagi on the other hand was nonplussed. “Yeah, like Naomasa. Did you two meet?”

Aizawa shook his head and tried to look less interested. “No, I’ve just noticed he comes around a lot, is all.”

Blonde hair tipped into a thoughtful face. “I’ve been consulting for him on the League case. He tends to overwork himself. Drives his wife crazy with worry.”

Relieved warmth spread like spilled water through his chest. The detective was married. They were just friends.

He felt himself relax before sitting up just a little bit straighter. When he looked at Yagi, he was looking right back, a hint of a smile around his mouth.

“Midoriya is like that, I guess. That little crybaby kicked and shoved his way into my heart and now he’s stuck there.”

“You two have a lot in common.”

“You mean our quirks?”

“I mean your daemons.”

Wide eyed again, Yagi looked instinctively to Hinata. They were far away enough that if they were talking, Aizawa couldn’t hear them. It didn’t seem like it with the careful way Ume was cracking open walnut shells and offering Hinata the soft nutty insides. Ume tended to talk with her hands – lots of gesturing and puffed up fur.

“You mean that Yusha hasn’t settled on a form yet, I assume?”

“Not just that,” Aizawa sighed. This was not a conversation he’d expected to have anytime soon. Or ever. “Your daemon…Hinata. She not like other hero daemons.”

“Ahh,” Yagi looked at him again. “I think I understand.”

“Midoriya—his daemon is in the habit of taking…smaller forms—”

“Prey forms?”

“Yeah…”

Yagi nodded. “And you’re worried she’ll be an easy target?”

“Something like that.”

“You know…Hinata didn’t want me to be a hero.”

Aizawa felt his eyes go so wide he was surprised his quirk didn’t activate.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that we don’t separate much.”

He nodded, gesturing for Yagi to continue.

“It’s a lot to do with the orphan thing. Of course, I didn’t know that when I was training to be a hero. I read about it once I was older. Orphans and…other people with abandonment type issues tend to stick unusually close to their daemons.”

Yagi’s hands were gripping the fabric on his pants rhythmically, and Aizawa released a shuddering breath. This conversation was getting a lot deeper than he’d ever expected. He was torn between telling Yagi he didn’t have to explain himself and asking to hear more.

“As much as Hinata didn’t like it, she still understood of course. She’s my other half after all. But she’s always been the objective, logical one. They say the one thing top heroes have in common is their bodies moving before they have a chance to think. For me…that was a little too close to home. Without Hinata’s guidance, I probably would have gotten myself killed. She’s a large part of what made me who I was—made me the symbol of peace.”

He paused, taking a sip of tea that Aizawa was sure was cold by now.

“I met Midoriya about a year before he started here at UA, and at the time I recognized something in him—something that reminded me of myself. And Hinata saw something of herself in Yusha. I don’t think she’ll ever be a typical hero daemon, but I also think that’s one of the reasons Midoriya is going to be so great one day.”

“You love him?” Aizawa asked.

Yagi’s cheeks bloomed a soft pink as he reached up to touch the back of his neck embarrassedly. “I do. Guess he’s the closest thing I ever got to having a kid. You, uh—feel that way about Shinso?”

Aizawa snorted. “Despite my best efforts, yes.”

This time Yagi grinned and Aizawa prayed his own face was still as pale as ever when his heart rate kicked up a notch.

“Midoriya giving you trouble?”

“No more than usual,” he rolled his eyes.

“Well I have some teaching manuals lying around…” He gestured towards the dorms innocently.

“Yagi, did you just make a joke?” He felt the corners of his mouth pulling up.

“Yeah I do that sometimes. I know you’ve been hell bent on avoiding me, but I’m actually rather delightful—”

“And so modest,” Aizawa returned.

They smirked at each other for a second, the air charged with something Aizawa wasn’t sure he wanted to name.

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” he finally replied. “It definitely gives some insight into the Midoriya situation. And I haven’t actively been trying to avoid you, I just haven’t really had much to say to you. Like you said, you play it close to the vest.”

Yagi hummed, nodding a bit. “Well, I find I don’t really mind you asking me for insight. Kind of nice to know you’re not perfect.”

Aizawa’s mouth dropped open. ”Perfect? Me? You’re still joking right?”

“You’re arguably one of the best teachers at UA. ‘Goals’ as the kids say.”

Tossing his hair back, Aizawa sat up straighter. “I am not goals. Do you hear yourself? Goals! From All Might himself.”

“Not quite All Might,” he cut in. “Just Toshinori.”

That had him sinking back down, relaxing against the sofa back.

“Just nothing. I sincerely hope that Toshinori didn’t toss out his teaching books because I am definitely not what to aim for.”

Yagi set his elbow on the arm of his chair and dropped the side of his head into his palm. He hummed. “I think I like that.”

The way his eye flashed blue had Aizawa’s pulse racing again. If this kept up he was going to have to look into medication.

“What?”

“You, using my given name.”

Holy shit. Yagi was flirting with him. There was no other reasonable explanation for the sudden heat in his eyes and the casual tilt of his head.

Any chance of knowing for sure was shattered by the sound of Vlad King and Hound Dog stumbling back into the teacher’s dorms. He hadn’t kept track of the time but judging by the volume of their laughter and the distinct scent of whiskey it was late.

Even so, Aizawa didn’t usually go to bed for another few hours, especially not on a Friday – but this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get out of the previous conversation without embarrassing himself.

“Well, guess it’s time for bed,” Aizawa stood up and tried not to pay much attention to Yagi’s face. Was that disappointment or relief?

“Right, of course. Sleep well Aizawa-kun.”

Aizawa fought a blush at the soft tone. “Ume, let’s go—“

“What!”

“Inui, try not to piss in any corners.”

Hound Dog growled. “That was one time!”

His chihuahua daemon barked.

“Ume!”

“Alright, jeez! I’m trying to clean this up, a little help here?”

Ignoring what was still a pretty big mess of walnut crumbs, Aizawa picked Ume up and tossed her over his shoulder, leaving his blanket behind.

She squawked with indignation, but didn’t fight him, going limp enough to hold out a paw behind him.

“Night, Hinata!”

“Goodnight, Ume.”

Aizawa felt the way she squirmed in his hold at Hinata voice.

They were both so fucked.

The second they’d crossed the threshold to his apartment, Ume twisted in his arms, scratching at his neck in a way she knew was painful. He let go and she dropped to the floor with a thud, sitting back on her hind legs to look up at him.

“Why are you so goddamn crazy!”

“Me? You’re acting rabid!”

“You just hauled me off like a teddy bear in front of Hinata after I finally got her to talk to me!”

Aizawa felt a little bad about that. Ume was a raccoon, but she wasn’t an animal. She had dignity indistinguishable from his own.

“Sorry, Meichan.”

Her fur, which had gotten puffed up in anger, seemed to wilt at the childhood nickname. She rubbed her paws over her eyes, sliding them down over the black marks on her face.

“You gotta stop being so weird around Yagi-san.”

Aizawa felt himself wilt in turn.

“I don’t know why I’m like this.”

“Do you want me to make a list?”

Aizawa shot her a dark look and kicked out playfully. She sidestepped him easily, falling onto all fours to walk towards the bedroom.

“Look, I get you’re not great letting people in, but I’d argue that it might be a little too late on this one, so why fight it?”

He followed her, falling onto the bed gracelessly, fully dressed and still wrapped in his capture weapon. She was right – she usually was when it came to him.

“So…” He waited for Ume to sprawl out next to him. “What’s she like?”

“Oh Shota, she’s so lovely.”

Aizawa huffed a laugh at the sudden breathy quality of her voice.

“She said she wished she could crack nuts open like me. Sho, I woulda cracked a thousand nuts for that bunny.”

“So she’s just shy? Not stuck up or anything?”

“Just shy. I think she’d like to talk to people more, but she’s so used to hiding.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “I think Yagi is the same.”

“Oh? Don’t you mean Toshinori?”

He swatted at her without heat. “I knew you were eavesdropping.”

“Hinata was too! I could see her ears twitch every time Yagi spoke. I think she’s really concerned with keeping an eye on him.”

Aizawa thought about what Yagi had said. About being an orphan, and how it affected his relationship with his daemon.

The entire time All Might had spent as the pillar of strength for the rest of the world, had anyone been looking out for him besides Hinata?

“Someone’s got to.”

“Someone like you?”

“Go to sleep.”

“It’s still early!”

+

Chapter Text

“You were flirting with him.”

“I was not.”

Yagi folded the blanket he had grabbed from the floor of the dorm’s common room. A thorough shake cleansed it of any shells, though raccoon fur lingered. It looked like it was woven into the fabric.

In the privacy of his own apartment, Yagi permitted himself the liberty of lifting the blanket to his face and taking a deep breath.

It smelled like Aizawa. Like shampoo and deodorant and coffee.

A quick glance up revealed Hinata’s judging expression.

“Right…” Hinata said, hopping onto the table.

She watched as Yagi placed the folded blanket on the couch – somewhere he would see it in the morning and remember to return it.

“You told him about our childhood.” Her voice was soft and even, though deeper than one expected from such a small being.

Yagi scoffed. “Hardly. I merely…offered some background. He was asking about Midoriya—what was I supposed to do? Tell him about All for One?”

She gave the closest approximation of a jackrabbit’s shrug. “You didn’t have to be so honest. And that thing about your name? It’s like you want him to like you.”

He sighed, pressing the heels of his hand into his eyes until stars burst under his eyelids.

“That was a mistake,” he said, finally looking at her. “And what about you? Bouncing over like you and Ume are old friends. I thought we had a deal.”

“Don’t know what gave you that idea.” Hinata turned around with a flourish, flashing her white tail. “I never agreed to that.”

“Hina… If this was before, you know I wouldn’t hold you back—”

“Toshinori, that is such a lie.” She spun back to face him. “You’ve never let us open up to anyone because you were worried about them getting hurt, or risking privacy, or any other number of reasons you invented to keep us alone when in reality you’re just scared.”

Yagi reared back as if slapped. He was going to deny it, but he knew she was right, so he changed tactics.

Straightening up, he looked at his daemon calmly. “Maybe so. But that doesn’t change the fact that here and now is not any better. I can’t pursue someone in good conscious, knowing we may not have much longer…alive. Is that fair to Aizawa? To Ume?”

Sandy ears drooped. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that Toshi. You don’t know it’s true. Sir Nighteye was wrong about Midoriya, he’s wrong about this.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“Are you willing to stake everything on it? He likes you—”

“It’s just a crush—hero worship. It’ll go away.”

She scoffed loudly. “You are losing it if you honestly believe that man has ever experienced anything close to ‘hero worship.’”

Yagi smiled wryly. “Maybe. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m too old for him, too sick. He deserves better.”

“He deserves to make his own choice,” she told him with finality.

Yagi started to unbutton his dress shirt, heading towards the bathroom. Soft, rhythmic footsteps followed behind. He felt bad – it wasn’t often Hinata opened up to another daemon, wasn’t often she wanted to – and he’d brushed it off like it was no big deal.

“You talked to Ume?”

Hinata was quiet for a minute, her nose twitching as she sat in the doorway of the bathroom.

“She’s really sweet. She kept giving me walnuts. I have to say, I wouldn’t want to go up against those teeth in a fight.”

Yagi huffed a laugh.

“She doesn’t strike me as the fighting type.”

Turning on the shower to let it get warm, Yagi threw the rest of his clothes into the laundry basket and once the room was filled with steam, stepped inside. Hinata hopped to the corner tiles, close enough to keep an eye on him but not get wet.

“You said Aizawa-kun didn’t strike you as the hero type, too.”

Yagi made a noise of agreement as he stuck his head under the water, grabbing the shampoo bottle. “I was certainly wrong about that.”

“So why couldn’t you be wrong about everything el—”

“No.” He was so quick to cut her off, Yagi almost felt her surprise. “No, Hinata, please. I don’t—I can’t talk about this again.”

Her silence was deafening.

Pointedly not looking at her, he finished his shower as quickly as possible and stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist. He avoided his reflection in the mirror – well aware of what he looked like these days and more than happy to ignore it. He brushed his teeth and turned out the light.

Dressed in a loose tee-shirt and sweatpants, Yagi pulled back the covers and slid into bed, laying on his stomach with both arms underneath his pillow. Hinata bounced onto the bed after him, burrowing under the pillow next to his, turning until only her little twitching nose was poking out at him.

The air was tense. Yagi squeezed his eyes closed and willed sleep to come before his oft-wiser half could say more on the subject. He was not so lucky.

“You act like you’re the only one affected by this.”

Yagi felt a clenching in his stomach.

“I like Ume…I want to spend time with her.”

“You could always be friends.”

She sighed. “Not good enough.”

+

Yagi woke up early the next morning to jog.

Getting back into the habit was not as difficult as he’d thought it might be. His lung capacity would never be the same, but he’d relearned his rhythm quickly. He fell into a nice headspace almost immediately, the breeze picking up his bangs and catching at his loose hoodie.

Hinata kept pace next to him, never ahead nor behind, always right by his side.

What had he been thinking last night? Telling Aizawa he liked it when he said his name, just to see the hot blush spread across what little of his cheeks were visible behind dark hair and capture weapon.

How old was he? Making coy remarks, revealing his past – practically confessing his feelings. Yagi rolled his eyes – and he had tried to chastise Hinata.

Not that he had feelings.

It was just a crush, same as what he saw mirrored in Aizawa. Just a passing flight of fancy, probably borne of proximity and lack of other options.

There was just no way someone as young and attractive as Aizawa would find themselves interested in Yagi if there were other viable candidates readily available.

Were it anyone else, Yagi would have chalked it up to hero worship like he’d told Hinata. Even in his current state, there was still enough lingering interest in what he used to be for people to overlook who he was now.

But Aizawa had never bought into the All Might craze.

Maybe he’d heard through the gossip mill that Yagi was gay. Sometimes knowing someone was a potential partner was enough to spark short-lived interest.

Either way, it would pass. Aizawa would stop looking at him and Yagi could stop pretending not to notice and eventually that spark of heat he sometimes caught in dark eyes would extinguish.

Yagi would hide any hurt feelings that might cause and they would both move on.

Once he returned home, he showered and put on the most comfortable sweatpants he owned.

Saturdays were easily his least favorite day of the week. An entire day of nothing, with a second day of more nothing to follow.

Lately he had been trying to fill his weekends with case work, meeting up with Tsukauchi and Gran Torino as much as possible, but there was a lull in the case due to lack of movement on the League’s part.

While Yagi was happy to know they weren’t out actively causing problems, he selfishly wished there was more to work on.

Hinata had been unusually quiet all morning.

Despite what everyone thought, his daemon was not a particularly quiet being. Shy, he could agree with, but she often filled up the silence of their rooms with chatter over lessons plans, the kids, the case.

Today though, it was obvious she was still upset over their conversation the night before.

Guilt coursed through him, hot and sharp. He wanted her to be happy – when she has happy, he was happy. That was how the bond worked.

But he just couldn’t take her advice, not this time.

He could, however, try to cheer her up.

“Hey, do you want to see if Aizawa and Ume are home? We can take their blanket back.”

Hinata looked at him appraisingly, like she knew that he was just trying to placate her.

“If you want to.”

He nodded, grabbing the blanket from the couch. “I do.”

Sneaking one last selfish sniff, Yagi left his room, heading for the stairwell and up to the third floor. It was a testament to his new jogging regimen that he wasn’t winded by the time he arrived at Aizawa’s door.

Softly, in direct opposition to how he would have done it were he still All Might, Yagi knocked.

Aizawa opened the door and Yagi released all of the air in his lung in one breath.

He was wearing a tank top – black contrasting beautifully with pale skin that probably never saw the light of day. He was also not weighted down by the massive folds of his capture weapon, meaning broad shoulders and sharp collar bones were on full display.

Yagi was coughing immediately, bending over slightly as he covered his mouth. He stepped backwards and tried to wave off whatever concern Aizawa was showing. Pushing down the coppery tang of blood, he got himself under control and straightened up quickly.

Aizawa’s eyes were only a little wide – almost an entire year of knowing Yagi having inured him to such antics.

He tilted his head just a bit as he looked at Yagi.

Cute.

“Have the students burned something down or do you need medical attention?”

His raccoon appeared at his ankles then. Yagi tried not to feel warm at the sight of Hinata bouncing forward to meet her, the way her white cottontail twitched in excitement.

Yagi cleared his throat. “Oh uh, no—no fires. And no doctors, please.”

Aizawa smirked.

“I brought you this!” He held up the blanket, which Aizawa looked at in mild surprise. “You left it, uh—last night. So I just—picked it up. And now I’m giving it to you.”

Now the look Aizawa levied was calculating, a sharp gleam in dark eyes.

“Thanks,” he reached out to take the blanket, his hand brushing over Yagi’s in a way that felt purposeful. “You doing anything today?”

Yagi shrugged, smiling. “Oh, thought I might get some reading done—”

“You want to watch a movie?”

He froze, shocked at the offer. They didn’t hang out. They weren’t friends.

“Oh, I don’t want to impose—”

“I wouldn’t ask if it was an imposition.”

Yagi thought that was probably true. It didn’t make him feel like less of a nuisance though.

“I really shouldn’t—”

“We’d love to.”

This was spoken by Hinata, her voice louder than usual to be heard from the ground, but calm and brooking no argument.

Yagi shot her a betrayed look, which Hinata easily ignored in favor of Ume’s cheering.

“Guess you’ve been outvoted.” Aizawa stepped back to give them room to cross the threshold.

Aizawa’s apartment was not what Yagi would have expected.

Not that he spent a lot of time thinking about it, but he had, on occasion, wondered what kind of personality was hidden behind miles of weaponized fabric and thick bangs. People’s homes often revealed a lot about a person and Yagi would have guessed at a level of minimalism and detachment in a man who regularly slept overnight in the sleeping bag under his desk.

It wasn’t like that though.

One corner held a desk, cleared of almost everything except a closed laptop and a few notebooks. Aizawa’s messenger bag that was more than likely stuffed with students’ essays and tests sat underneath.

There were multiple bookshelves, packed full of texts, except one shelf around the middle that held a set of damaged, yellow goggles and two picture frames Yagi couldn’t make out.

There was a big black L shaped sofa, covered with throw pillows and a bright blue blanket. Art hung on the wall behind it, a large painting of a raccoon that looked quite a bit like Ume. Directly across sat a tv only a little smaller than the one in the common room, a muted car chase on the screen.

It felt lived in and loved, and Yagi wasn’t sure what it said about him that he found that so surprising – and nice.

“There’s a James Bond marathon on,” Aizawa said, gesturing Yagi towards the couch, which he threw the second blanket onto. “You want tea?”

Yagi slipped his shoes off, mindful of the daemons at his feet as he arranged them neatly by the door.

Hinata pointedly avoided eye contact.

“You like James Bond?”

He took a seat on the couch, grunting in surprise at the way he sunk into the cushions. He pushed the blanket and pillows aside, trying to find a position that wasn’t simply sprawling across the furniture.

“Obviously,” Aizawa calls from the kitchen. “You think I became an underground hero from not liking spy movies?”

Yagi snorted. “I would have thought you’d find Bond…hedonistic. Too flashy.”

Aizawa returned holding two cups, Yagi’s unasked for but very much welcomed tea and coffee for himself.

It was made exactly how he took it, with milk and the tiniest bit of honey. Yagi felt warm even before the first sip made its way down his throat.

“Hedonistic, maybe, but I have no problem with that.” He looked at Yagi then, a quick sweep of his eyes that Yagi couldn’t discern but made him squirm anyway.

“And he might be flashy, but it’s only when he needs to be to blend in and get intel. Otherwise, he does everything behind the scenes.”

Aizawa sat down then, sinking into the couch expertly, pushing aside a pillow to wrap the slate grey blanket that Yagi had returned over his shoulders. He picked up the remote from the floor but didn’t turn the volume back up.

“I didn’t know you were into movies.”

Dark eyes rolled upward. “Everyone is into movies.”

Yagi grinned. “Not everyone has such a serious opinion on James Bond.”

“Not everyone likes to stay home alone as much as I do.”

Though his tone held no exasperation, Yagi couldn’t help feeling like he was intruding on Aizawa’s personal time. He felt himself tense and it must have been obvious on his face because once again, Aizawa was rolling his eyes.

“Drink your tea,” he told him before pressing the mute button.

The car chase was over, and now Bond was sneaking through a dark service corridor, his gun at the ready.

Hinata and Ume were sitting far enough away to be able to speak without them hearing – Yagi knew this was on purpose, his daemon taking advantage of her capacity to hear far beyond his own ability.

He wasn’t sure if Ume was aware of just how conniving her new friend could be, but Yagi suspected that if she was, it didn’t bother her, based on how close they were sitting.

Yagi looked at Aizawa, to see if he was also watching the way their daemons – their literal souls – were cuddled up in front of the tv, but if he noticed, it wasn’t obvious on his face.

They made it through a movie and a half before either moved, Yagi finally giving in to his need to pee. Aizawa paused the tv and Yagi tried to ignore the flash of hurt when Hinata didn’t follow him to the bathroom, which was really only about twenty feet away but farther than either of them liked to be apart.

He wasn’t ignorant of how much she enjoyed spending time with Ume. The raccoon grabbed her more than a few times during high thrill scenes and Hinata hadn’t tensed or pulled away once, going so far as to join along with her excited bouncing.

When Yagi returned, Aizawa was in the kitchen, the sound and smell of popcorn trickling through the doorway. He settled back on the ridiculously luxurious couch and tried to find the same comfortable position he’d been in before, wrapped in the blue blanket.

Aizawa dropped a bowl of popcorn on the floor next to Hinata and Ume, who quickly pulled out a piece and set it on the floor in front of her less agile friend. He dropped carelessly back onto the couch, bouncing Yagi from the slouch he’d managed, and passed over another bowl. It was perfectly cooked, not a burnt kernel in the bunch, and sprinkled with furikake.

Yagi pressed a couple pieces into his mouth and tried again to find a comfortable spot. Aizawa pulled his feet up onto the couch just as Yagi pushed aside yet another superfluous pillow.

“Dear god, your feet are freezing.”

Aizawa turned rueful eyes his way. “I have terrible circulation.”

“Clearly,” Yagi said, and before he could think, his body had moved, reaching out to grab Aizawa’s feet and pull them into his lap, underneath the blanket.

They froze at once, but only for a second, before Aizawa relaxed minutely against the cushions and Yagi wrapped his large hands around the arches of his feet.

“You should probably wear socks,” Yagi finally said, a few minutes back into the movie.

Aizawa snorted, reaching for the popcorn.

“Your giant hands are all the socks I need.”

“My hands aren’t giant.” He pulled one out of the blanket, leaving the other securely wrapped around Aizawa’s foot which was beginning to warm up. He held his hand high, fingers spread.

“Your hands are huge.” Aizawa held up his own hand and pressed it firmly against Yagi’s, palm to palm. The tip of his fingers barely reached his first knuckle. Yagi bent his fingers just a little, he could almost wrap them over Aizawa’s.

It was weirdly intimate. Yagi felt a blush stain his cheeks and when he looked at Aizawa’s face, he found the same bloom of heat.

Yagi pulled his hand away. “Okay, maybe I have big hands. Or maybe you just have really dainty ones.”

Aizawa scoffed, shoving said hand back into the popcorn bowl. Yagi reached in as well and tried to ignore the way his heartbeat picked up when their hands touched.

“I have perfectly proportionate hands and feet, thank you very much. You’re just freakishly tall.”

“I’m not that tall,” Yagi lifted up his socked foot to look at it thoughtfully.

Aizawa made a noise that if it had been anyone else, Yagi would have described as a giggle, before saying, “You know what they say about big feet?”

Yagi couldn’t help his laugh. “Big shoes?”

Aizawa's eyes held that molten heat that Yagi was starting to notice more and more. He was grinning, opening his mouth slowly to eat a single piece of popcorn.

“Yeah…”

A loud explosion on tv had them both jumping, only a little – they were pro heroes after all, but it was enough to break the heavy tension that had begun to build.

Yagi didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he woke up, it was to find Aizawa out as well. At some point Yagi had pulled his own feet up onto the couch, and Aizawa had scooched his way downward, his thighs across Yagi’s lap.

Their daemons were pressed close together on the floor. Yagi saw Hinata’s ear twitch, having woken up the moment he did, but she made no move.

Aizawa was breathing softly, his hair fanned out across the pillows, one hand folded against his cheek. He looked a lot less stern asleep, a little younger.

The room was dark, the sun probably somewhere around the horizon, the tv turned off. He’d spent all day on Aizawa’s couch, arguing over James Bond’s choices and which villains were the most diabolical.

It was the best Saturday Yagi could remember in a long time.

Unfortunately, it had to end.

“Aizawa?” He spoke tentatively. “Wake up…”

There was no movement from the man sprawled across his lap, so Yagi reached down to squeeze his knee lightly.

“Aizawa?” He tried a little louder.

“Shota,” Aizawa huffed, rubbing at his eyes with his hand before blinking them open. “I prefer my friends to use my first name.”

Heat rose to Yagi cheeks, a feeling that was becoming quite familiar to him the more time he spent in Aizawa’s presence.

“Shota, then.”

Aizawa huffed and moved to sit up, dragging his legs across Yagi’s lap in a way that shouldn’t have felt so exhilarating. He grabbed his phone from the floor and pulled up the time, swearing under his breath.

“Everything okay?”

Aizawa nodded. “Yeah, just a little later than I thought. I need to be on patrol in less than an hour.”

“Oh,” Yagi felt terrible. There was no way they’d slept for more than a couple hours and they hadn’t eaten anything more substantial than popcorn. “You’re going to be so tired tonight, I’m sorry—”

Dainty hands waved him off. “It’s fine. I don’t sleep at night much anyway. Raccoons are nocturnal, you know.”

“Jackrabbits too,” Yagi felt the need to tell him.

Aizawa looked surprised. “Yeah? Maybe explains why they get along so well.”

They turned to see where Hinata and Ume were whispering excitedly together.

“Maybe,” Yagi replied, though he suspected there were far deeper reasons.

“You’re a better movie partner than I expected,” Aizawa told him.

“Yeah? You thought I’d be a bad movie partner?” He chuckled a little at the thought of Aizawa wondering about his movie habits.

“I thought you’d be more of a talker.”

“I did talk, a little.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t annoy me.”

That made Yagi laugh so loud their daemons jumped. Aizawa watched him with amusement written across his face.

“Maybe you just care about what I have to say.”

Aizawa snorted. “That can’t be it.”

“I told you I’m delightful.”

“Get out of my apartment, old man.”

Yagi grinned, warmed despite the words. “Be safe tonight, Shota.”

There was a gleam in Aizawa's eyes at the name, and Yagi stood up from the couch before he did something really stupid.

“Come on Hina, let Ume get ready for patrol.”

He politely ignored their goodbyes but took note of the way Ume wrapped Hinata up in a tight hug.

Back in their rooms, Yagi started on dinner, a light miso soup to compensate for the popcorn he’d eaten earlier.

Hinata sat on the counter next to the stove, watching him cut tofu and green onions.

“Today was lovely,” she said eventually.

He’d been worried about this conversation since they’d gotten back.

“It was nice.”

“You and Aizawa-kun had a nice time?”

He nodded, focusing on the tofu, making the cubes nice and even.

“It was fun watching movies with Ume, she makes a lot of funny jokes.”

“She seems like a good friend to have.”

“She could be more than a friend.”

“Hinata—we talked about this.”

Hinata stood up on her back legs, ears held high.

“No Toshi, we never talked about anything. You said we weren’t going to pursue them then you took us upstairs and cuddled on the couch all day. How come I get no say in this?”

“You agreed to watch movies!” He chopped even harder, the cubes now less square and more mangled. “You practically invited us in!”

Her back foot thumped against the counter rapidly in anger.

“I didn’t have to invite us in because Shota did it—because he likes you!”

Yagi saw the blood before he realized he’d sliced into his palm. Hinata gasped, jumping closer in concern. He spun towards the sink, turning on the water and shoving his hand underneath.

“Oh, Toshi, I’m sorry!”

It wasn’t that deep, all things considered. Once it was rinsed he grabbed a clean dish towel to wrap around his palm to stem the bleeding.

A closer look told him it wouldn’t need stitches, just a tight bandage and maybe some acetaminophen.

Dinner was ruined, though.

“I just want you to be happy, Toshi. You deserve it so much.”

“So do you,” he reached out to grab his daemon and slung her over his shoulder, wanting her close in that moment.

“I don’t want to live the rest of our life like we might die any minute. That’s not a life worth living.”

He turned his face into her soft fur, breathing in her familiar scent.

“I don’t know how to be normal,” Yagi confessed. “I spent too long living for everyone else, I don’t know how to want things for myself.”

“I know. But you don’t have to know how to do everything, Toshi. That’s what I’m here for. That’s why you have me.”

Yagi nodded. “So, what do I do?”

+

Yagi didn’t see Aizawa or Ume the next day. He spent more time in the common room and less in his own room, at the insistence of his daemon.

“You have to stop separating yourself from everyone, Toshi. That’s the first step. Your coworkers want to be friends with you. Let them.”

So he did.

Which was how he found himself in an intense game of poker with Hound Dog, Vlad King, and Cementoss.

It lasted far too late into the night and Monday morning found Yagi exhausted but happy.

Though he generally didn’t have classes until the afternoon, he often tried to make it into the teacher’s lounge in the morning before class. The hustle and bustle of the teachers sharing coffee and stories about their weekends or the kids was a nice start to his day.

And today, if he might have been specifically looking for someone, that was between him and his daemon and no one else.

Unfortunately, the man in question didn’t seem to be around.

“Sho’s probably sleeping under his desk right now,” a bright voice said right behind him.

Yagi jumped, just a little, as Yamada fell into the seat next to him on the couch. The coffee in his mug sloshed over the side and his cockatoo rustled her feathers at the rough motion.

“Wha—why, are you sure—”

Yamada grinned. “Looked like you were looking for someone, figured it might be our boy Eraser, since he’s the only one missing and all.”

“Oh,” Yagi tried to will his blush away. Maybe he hadn’t been that obvious. “Oh well, that’s good to know—why would he be under his desk exactly?”

“Sleeping off Saturday night, he got his ass whipped hard.”

Yagi was immediately alert. “Is he okay? Does he need medical attention?”

“Oh for sure,” Yamada laughed. “But Shota doesn’t really go in for that kind of stuff unless he’s like, bleeding out on the floor, à la the USJ.”

Guilt spiked through Yagi at those words, the reminder of the time he had nearly let everyone down – incidentally the moment when he’d first realized his feelings for Aizawa were more than just concern for a colleague.

“Relax, man, he’s fine. I’ve seen him walk off worse.” Yamada touched his arm, the gentle pressure at complete odds with his animated personality. “He got the villain and he made it back, all’s well that ends well.”

“Should he be teaching today? Does Nezu know?”

Yamada raised an eyebrow over his reflective glasses. “I dare you to go tell him he shouldn’t be teaching today.”

Yagi slumped back against the couch. Alright, that was probably fair. They’d had to practically restrain him the last time he’d been injured, and he’d still ended up teaching in full body bandages.

Aizawa was hurt though…and a part of Yagi wondered if it was his fault. If Aizawa had gotten the chance to properly rest before a night of patrolling, then maybe he wouldn’t have found himself in a situation like that.

Eraser Head was an incredibly capable hero, it took a lot to get one over on him. Yagi hadn’t seen anything on the news or the Hero Network about it either, meaning whoever the villain was, they couldn’t have been that big of a deal.

“I’m gonna go check on him,” Yagi decided, standing up quite suddenly.

Yamada grinned, sharp and bright. “Good idea.”

“You think?” Yagi couldn’t help but ask. He himself was wondering if it was in fact, a good idea.

“Sure. Sho listens to you.”

“He does?” Now Yagi was definitely confused.

“Oh yeah,” Yamada slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose revealing dizzying green eyes. “He’s a sucker when he’s into someone. Total pushover.”

Yagi felt his eyes get wide, and he couldn’t help a nervous laugh. “What—I’m not. He doesn’t—”

Hinata poked her head out of his jacket breast pocket, nose twitching as she looked at Yamada and his daemon.

“Good to know,” she said conspiratorially. “Thanks.”

Yamada threw his head back and laughed, the sound just this side of too sharp, and his cockatoo joined in, jumping up and down on his shoulder.

Rubbing his hand over his face in an effort to disperse the heat there, Yagi nodded in embarrassment. He stepped away from the overly loud duo to make his way over to the coffee pot, filling the mug he knew Aizawa preferred with black coffee before heading towards classroom 1-A.

The door wasn’t locked so Yagi slid right in to find the room seemingly empty. Creeping slowly towards the desk, he peeked over the edge to find a yellow sleeping bag and just a little bit of Aizawa’s face poking out, messy black hair everywhere.

Though he appeared asleep, as soon as Yagi looked at him he spoke.

“Shhhh.”

Yagi grinned despite his worry, holding out the black kitty cat mug.

“Coffee?”

There was a bit of rustling and then Aizawa held his hand out. He took the mug and pulled the sleeping bag down, revealing two swollen black eyes and a split lip.

Yagi hissed. “You should go see Recovery Girl.”

Aizawa grunted, taking a sip of the coffee, which pulled his lip enough for it to start bleeding.

With a concerned tsk, Yagi reached into his jacket pocket for his handkerchief, shaking off the rabbit fur before passing it over.

It was accepted more easily than he would have expected, which gave Yagi even more cause for concern.

“It’s fine,” Aizawa finally replied. “Nothing was broken.”

“Your eyes—”

“They’re okay. Black eyes are par for the course if you wear goggles. I’ll live.”

“Would you like me to cover your class today?”

Aizawa barked a laugh, before looking up at Yagi. “Oh, you’re serious. Uh, no, I won’t have any problems teaching.”

Yagi sighed, not that he’d expected anything else. “Can I get you anything? Painkillers? Breakfast?”

The man underneath the desk waved him off, finally pulling down the zipper on his sleeping bag enough to climb out, Ume spilling out onto the floor.

“Hey Yagi-san,” she said casually. There was a gash across the bridge of her nose.

“Oh no, were you hurt too?”

Hinata perked up from his coat at that, her front paws on the hem of the pocket and ears as alert as he’d ever seen them.

“Meichan!” She pulled herself from his pocket hard enough to kick him in the chest uncomfortably but paid him no attention as she scrambled to get to Aizawa’s daemon.

The man himself was watching with a vague look of surprise.

Yagi rubbed at his chest, half embarrassed at his daemon’s use of a pet name for Ume and half pleased at her obvious care for a friend.

Looking away from the blatant cuddling going on in between them, Yagi held a hand out to Aizawa, easing him out from under the desk.

Once on his feet, Aizawa kicked the sleeping bag back under his desk, pressing the handkerchief to his bleeding lip as he did so. Yagi could see blood staining the monogramed ‘YT’ already.

Without thought, he reached out, grabbing Aizawa’s face gently.

He froze, wide-eyed as Yagi turned his head gently, looking closely at the damage.

It didn’t appear severe enough to warrant fear for his eyes – and his quirk – but it did look tender and raw.

Yagi made a fretful noise, touching lightly at the bruising with his fingers as he held Aizawa’s chin, keeping him still.

“You should take something for the pain.”

Aizawa swallowed slowly and Yagi suddenly remembered himself, releasing the other man’s face.

“I have something…in my desk. I’ll take it before class.”

“Good,” Yagi replied. “That’s good.”

Aizawa caught his hand then, turning the palm up to reveal the bandage he’d set last night. There was a dark stain of blood through the gauze, even on the second setting.

“You need some too?”

Thin fingers traced over his palm and Yagi pulled his hand away before they could skate across his pulse and potentially give away his racing heart.

“Oh, this isn’t painful anymore. Just a little scratch while cooking.” He smiled reassuringly – he hoped. “I’ll just—go. Lesson planning, you know.”

“Right,” Aizawa nodded, his bangs falling into his face in a way that made Yagi want to reach out and tuck them back. “I’ll see you later.”

“Don’t overwork yourself, Aizawa.”

“Shota.”

His heart thudded painfully.

“Shota, sorry.”

Aizawa smiled, slow and sure, ignoring the fresh bloom of blood.

“Thanks for the coffee, Toshinori.”

The raucous sound of teenage laughter spilled through the door, and Yagi took the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat.

+

Chapter Text

The bruising on his face had faded, though the feeling of Yagi’s fingers on him had not.

As he sipped coffee from his cat mug during class Monday morning, he’d mentally created a plan to stop liking Yagi. It involved ignoring what had happened the other day – they’d literally napped together on his couch, for fuck's sake – and forcing down the spark of excitement he felt every time they crossed paths.

This plan included lying to himself, lying to his daemon, and most importantly – lying to Yagi.

He was not confident in his abilities.

“We should ask them out,” Ume told him Thursday afternoon as they sat on a bench under a tree in one of the many training areas. In the distance, Shinso was dangling from a light pole, wrapped up in his own capture weapon in a way that almost looked purposeful but Aizawa knew wasn’t. “Like on a date.”

“Absolutely not.”

Ume snorted, until a sharp shout had them both tensing as Shinso fell a couple feet. Thankfully, his quick reflexes kept him from being a stain on the cement and they both relaxed when he untangled himself, feet safely on the ground.

“So you’re saying you don’t want to spend time with Yagi-san? One afternoon of cuddling was enough, you’re over it now?”

Shinso threw the end of the weapon over the pole again, lifting himself easily. Once he managed to find his balance on top, the mongoose that usually sat inside a pocket at his waist hopped out, grabbing one end of the capture weapon in her teeth to run and hop to the next pole over.

“He’s getting good.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

Aizawa sighed. “I don’t know why we’re even talking about this.”

“Because, Shota, if it had been anyone else you would have slept with them by now and been done with it. But you haven’t done that, and you’ve been extra nervous whenever he comes around—”

“Nervous?”

“—which I can only interpret as not a crush, but actual feelings—"

“Stop.”

“I don’t know why you’re still trying to pretend with me—”

Whatever she was going to say was cut off with a gasp, as Shinso’s daemon Shizuka leapt off the pole into a free fall, at a height far too great to survive. Aizawa gripped the edge of the bench as the end of Shinso’s weapon shot out to wrap around her tiny body, pulling her back to him expertly.

He and Ume released a sigh of relief at the same time. Shinso turned and pulled down the mask over his face, shooting them a wide grin.

“Yes, yes, you’re very impressive,” Aizawa shouted. “Get back to it!”

Choosing to ignore Shinso’s eye roll, he turned back to Ume.

“What do you want me to do? You want me to ask him out and then what? We date? We get married? We raise Midoriya and Shinso as our own? What—what are you suggesting here, Ume?”

She leaned back, her front paws pressed to her chest as if alarmed.

“Uhh—I don’t know Shota, is that what you want? Cause it sounds like you have it pretty well planned out.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Oh, clearly.”

He fumed for a moment, perfectly content to ignore his other half for the rest of the day. He ignored the soft paw at his knee, and again at his shoulder. He had a hard time ignoring the way she stood up on her back legs and pulled his hair until he was forced to turn his head.

“Wouldn’t all of that be…kind of nice?”

Aizawa snorted.

“No.”

“Well, now you’re being difficult on purpose.”

He hummed in lieu of responding.

They watched together as Shinso and Shizuka made progress in mastering the capture weapon. More than once Aizawa wanted to intervene, offer advice, but his young protégé was at the point of self-sufficiency. He didn’t baby his other students, so he wouldn’t baby Shinso – much as he may want to – just because he saw so much of himself in him.

“Impressive how they’re working together,” Yagi’s low voice drifted over. Hinata hopped ahead of him, springing up to the bench to land next to Ume.

Yagi sat down next to her with a sigh.

“Most heroes utilize their daemons,” Aizawa returned, avoiding looking at him. That was step one in his plan.

“All heroes,” Yagi corrected, turning his attention back to Shinso. “As far as I know.”

“Except you?”

Yagi looked at him in surprise. “Have you gotten that impression?”

“The world has gotten that impression.”

He tsked, looking back at the training area. “I would have thought you, at least, know better by now.”

Aizawa felt oddly flushed at those words. They implied a level of intimacy between them he was actively trying to deny. It made him wonder though. He thought about what little he knew of Hinata and her relationship with the worlds symbol of peace.

“She listens…right? Her sense of hearing?”

Yagi tipped his head in allowance. “She’s a magnificent lookout.”

“And spy?”

At this, he grinned, blue eyes flashing but still not looking back at Aizawa. “Something like that.”

Looking down at her revealed nothing, Hinata was as unreadable to him as ever, despite the way she had opened up to Ume.

His daemon was very pointedly not looking at him, pressed up against Hinata.

“A small daemon like young Shinso’s can be very helpful.”

Aizawa made a low noise of agreement, letting their previous subject drop. “Never knew how aggressive a mongoose could be ‘til I saw her.”

“They kill snakes, you know,” Yagi told him. “In the wild. I saw it in a documentary once.”

He could picture it. Yagi curled up on the couch in a thick blanket, his jackrabbit in his lap as they watched a nature documentary. Without even trying, he could see himself and Ume squeezed on that couch too.

He shook the thought away.

“Daemons and animals are hardly the same,” Aizawa finally replied. “Mongoose may be aggressive but Shinso isn’t. It surprised me, is all.”

“Shinso’s mongoose is him, though.” Yagi finally turned to him. “If she’s aggressive it means he is too.”

“I suppose.”

“You know, I haven’t spent this much time talking about daemon’s since pretty much everyone’s settled in middle school. You’re awfully fixated on them.”

“I’m not fixated,” he scoffed, feeling called out. “It’s just been on my mind lately. Because…”

“Midoriya?”

“Yes,” he lied. It was easier than the truth – that he was desperately curious about Yagi and Hinata and her budding relationship with his own daemon and what that meant.

“Yusha will settle when she’s ready. Hinata did eventually.”

Aizawa could no longer fight the urge to look at Yagi, he’d been avoiding him all week but having him right there was simply too much to ignore.

Blue eyes were already watching him.

“What made Hinata settle?”

To his surprise, Yagi blushed.

The blush in itself was not surprising. He was growing familiar with the dark splash of color across high cheekbones the more time they spent together.

He’d never have guessed All Might to be a blusher, but it was oddly charming on Yagi’s face.

He hadn’t thought the question warranted it though.

Yagi reached up to press a hand against his face. He cleared his throat.

“Oh, uh...I lost my virginity.”

Aizawa felt his own cheeks heat.

“Oh.”

“It happens,” Yagi told him, turning back towards the training grounds. “I know most heroes daemon’s have settled by middle school, but for others, it’s not that uncommon. Anyway, that was almost the end of my third year here, so Midoriya has plenty of time before I’d start being concerned.”

There was a sick, curiously jealous part of Aizawa that wanted to ask who it was. He knew most of the UA alum, he could probably look at the roster of Yagi’s graduating year if he couldn’t remember—

He cut that thought off so sharply he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a record scratching.

Even if he could figure it out – which was highly unlikely – it was absolutely not in line with his Stop Crushing on Yagi IMMEDIATELY plan.

“Huh,” he finally replied, trying to return to the point of this conversation – Midoriya. “So what you’re saying is once Bakugo pulls his head out of his ass and makes a move on Midoriya, things will work themselves out.”

Yagi threw his head back with a bark of laughter. “If young Todoroki or Uraraka don’t get to him first.”

Aizawa snorted in amusement. “I’ll add your bet to the teacher’s pool.”

He ignored the shock in Yagi’s blue eyes. “You aren’t really placing bets on the children, are you?”

“This is your first year of teaching, so you probably feel like that’s an invasion of their privacy,” Yagi nodded at his words. “You’ll get over it.”

He grinned at Yagi, not looking away even when the other man smiled back.

God, he was pretty.

Aizawa pushed down the urge to scoot closer to him, thankful for the suspiciously quiet daemons between them that took up half the bench.

They both looked up at the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching.

“All Might! I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

Shinso was sweaty and panting, weighed down by his capture weapon, his face mask pushed up into his hair.

Shizuka was hot on his heels, bouncing around excitedly.

“Did you see that! I was flying through the air like whoa, and then Hitoshi caught me, bam! And we both jumped, like ahh!”

Shinso shoved his daemon aside with his foot, shushing her. “Shizu, shut up.”

Aizawa rolled his eyes, quite familiar with Shizuka’s brand of excitement and Shinso’s desire to look cool – especially in front of someone like Yagi.

“You were so awesome!” Ume jumped from the bench, picking Shizuka up and spinning her through the air. Even Hinata looked excited, stood on her hind legs with her tail twitching.

“Quite impressive, young Shinso! I hear you’re mastering that weapon even faster than Aizawa-sensei.”

Shinso smiled, only a hint of embarrassment in the small curve of his mouth.

“Once we get you into the hero course officially, you’ll be unstoppable.”

This was enough to have Shinso blushing, rubbing at his cheeks.

Aizawa felt a bloom of pride.

“Thanks, All Might.”

Yagi waved away the acknowledgement. “You did it all on your own, kid.”

“Don’t forget the essay I told you about. Have it to me by Sunday.”

Shinso nodded, picking up his mongoose and hurrying back towards the general education dorms.

“You have him doing essays?”

“He can’t afford to fall behind the other students.”

Yagi nodded. “I imagine it’s hard. Making the leap from gen ed to the hero course.”

“I did it,” Aizawa surprised himself by saying.

Ume looked up at him in disbelief and he considered for a minute strangling her in his own capture weapon before she had the chance to open her mouth.

“You failed the entrance exam?”

He turned at the sound of astonishment in Yagi’s voice. “Does that honestly surprise you so much? Kind of hard to take down robots that don’t have quirks. At most I could keep my competition from scoring points, but that felt petty.”

“I didn’t realize they’d started that exam by the time you took your test.”

Aizawa hummed. “It started my freshman year. I was part of the first class.”

“What rotten luck.”

“I scored rescue points,” Aizawa felt the need to point out. “Not enough to get in though.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t had the test changed.”

He huffed, blowing his bangs up. “That’s been on my agenda since I was hired here. Unfortunately, the board isn’t ready to see their ‘investment’ wasted. So until then, I keep an eye out for students like Shinso.”

“Have there been others?”

“A few. Shinso is the first I’ve personally tutored however.”

“I hate to think there are kids who deserve to be in the program missing out.”

Aizawa shrugged. “I’ll get it changed one day. Until then, for those that fail, it’s just another way to become better. Prove themselves.”

“I guess…”

He looked like he had more he wanted to say on the subject but thankfully let it drop. Aizawa had already revealed more about himself than he ever intended to.

He was seriously dropping the ball on his plan.

“Your face is looking better,” Yagi started then blanched. “I mean—the bruising, your face looks good. Normal—it looks—”

Aizawa took pity. “It’s pretty much healed.”

The bruises around his eyes were all but faded – he’d endured relentless jokes from Ume about their identical raccoon masks – and the gash in his lip was no longer painful when he spoke.

He’d only taken one hit to the face, but it had been a powerful one, digging his goggles into his eyes and splitting his lip in one go.

“I liked it better when we matched!” Ume called to them. She was still sitting in the grass.

Hinata snorted with laughter, leaping from the bench to join her. They fell into a playful chase, darting into the tall grass to try and hide from each other. Aizawa thought that it might have been the farthest he’d ever seen Hinata stray away from Yagi.

He looked at the man next to him, noting the now empty space between them.

Yagi was much taller than him, even hunched over as he often was. He was looking out at their daemons, a soft smile flirting around his lips. Every so often he’d tilt his face up towards the sun, eyes closed, like a flower soaking up the warmth.

Aizawa couldn’t tear his eyes away, didn’t want to. He wanted to stay on this bench for hours, watching the wind blow strands of blonde hair back far enough to reveal sharp cheekbones and delicate features.

Ume was right, Aizawa realized, as he continued to watch the man at his side with no pretense of looking at anything else.

He had it bad for Yagi. Actual, real feelings.

There went his plan.

“Shit,” Aizawa blurted out.

Yagi turned to him in surprise. “You okay?”

“Do you like scary movies?”

Yagi tilted his head curiously. “Yes?”

“There’s another marathon, this weekend. Supposed to be the top ten scariest movies ever made.”

“A bold claim,” Yagi smirked, just a little. Just enough to have Aizawa’s stomach flipping nervously.

“You wanna watch with me?”

It was a simple question but Aizawa was holding his breath waiting for the answer.

“Okay.”

He let go of the breath slowly, trying not to make it obvious.

“It starts at nine, but you don’t have to come over that early if you have stuff to do.”

“I’ll be there at nine.”

Aizawa nodded, finally tearing his gaze away from Yagi’s stupidly pleased expression.

“Ume! Time to head in!”

Two fuzzy faces popped out of the grass and looked his way. Ume’s disappointment was obvious.

Once they were far enough away, Aizawa picked Ume up, settling her into his capture weapon.

“I invited them over to watch movies again,” he confessed.

“Shota!” Ume scrambled around in the folds of fabric to look at his face. “That’s wonderful!”

“We’ll see.”

“No, I already know. We’re gonna have so much fun. Did you see us playing, Sho? Oh my god, Hinata is so strong! She could totally kick my ass if she wanted to.”

“Try not to sound so excited by that prospect,” Aizawa rolled his eyes.

“Nothing hotter than a daemon who can take me in a fight.”

“You are deranged.”

She snorted. “Oh, and I’m sure you just hate how Yagi-san towers over you. The way his hands make yours look tiny. Don’t act like I didn’t see you the other day.”

Aizawa flushed at the memory.

Okay, so there was something hot about that. Yagi was so much bigger than him, strong too, even with the loss of his quirk. His hands were large enough that they could probably wrap around most of his waist.

He’d been told by some of the other teachers that Yagi had carried him away from the fighting during the USJ incident – scooped him up in a bridal carry like he weighed nothing.

He’d been embarrassed at the time – in front of the students, really – but he couldn’t help a tiny slice of disappointment that he’d been unconscious and unable to really experience it.

Aizawa pulled on the coils of his weapon, suddenly warm in a way that had nothing to do with the sun or the heavy fabric.

+

Friday night saw Aizawa cleaning his apartment well past his own fairly lax standards.

“You have got it bad, man.”

“Shut up.”

She was even worse when he decided it was necessary to run by the grocery store and get food.

“This is like, next level.” She was sitting in the seat of the cart, sucking on a lollipop he had yet to even pay for.

“I can’t starve the guy. And he has, you know—dietary restrictions.” And Aizawa would absolutely not be mentioning the fact that he’d researched what those might be. “I just want to make sure there’s stuff in the apartment he can eat.”

“Hey, I’m not judging. It’s super cute.”

“I hate you.”

They made their way quickly through the store, Ume urging him to pick up a bag of dried fruit and granola for Hinata. Daemons didn’t really need to eat, and Aizawa knew a few who absolutely never did, but Ume was a snacker in a way he never had been.

He wasn’t sure if Hinata enjoyed eating as well, or if she just liked the way Ume insisted on sharing, but he grabbed the granola anyway.

That night during patrol, he was calm and collected.

He’d worried he would be distracted, the day of movie watching with intent looming over him.

But his worry was for naught, as he fell into the right headspace almost immediately, he and Ume working together to stop two petty criminals and a villain he’d seen crop up on the Hero Network more than once.

They got home around six am and after a shower, quickly passed out on the couch, wrapped in the blanket Yagi had used the last time he’d been over.

It seemed like no time at all before knocking on his front door snapped him awake.

He glanced quickly in the mirror above his bathroom sink, splashing cold water on his face – which was useless really, the dark circles under his eyes were a permanent fixture by this point.

He was dressed in stretchy black leggings that he knew for a fact made his butt look fantastic, and a slightly too large white tee shirt that sometimes slid sideways to reveal a shoulder.

Casual, but still cute.

“Put your hair up!”

Using the hairband he always kept around his wrist, he took Ume’s advice, pulling his long hair into a high messy bun, brushing his bangs back out of his eyes.

“I’m being ridiculous.”

“You’re being practical. How are you going to get your man if you insist on looking like you just rolled out of bed all the time?”

“I did just roll out of bed!”

Ume waved him off. “You look hot. Now go out there and shoot your shot!”

“I’m not letting you hang around the student’s daemons anymore.”

Yagi didn’t seem bothered by the amount of time Aizawa had made him wait outside the door. He was dressed in charcoal slacks and a soft looking blue sweater.

Casual, but still cute.

Aizawa’s palms were sweating almost immediately. This was obviously different from the last time they’d done this, when he’d been overcome with the sight of Yagi in sweatpants holding his favorite blanket, and lost his mind enough to invite him in.

This time there was preplanning. They’d both tried.

“Hey.” It was all he could come up with.

Yagi smiled, and his rabbit hopped past him to greet Ume.

“Good morning.” He stepped inside and toed his shoes off. “I hope you’re planning to get some rest before patrol tonight.”

“I switched it to last night, actually. So I won’t have to worry about it.”

“Oh! Did you get any sleep?”

God, he was so fucking thoughtful it made Aizawa sick.

“I slept some. You ready to do this? The Exorcist starts in like five.”

“Wow, really jumping in with a hard hitter.”

Aizawa smirked. “Scared?”

“Of the Exorcist? I could probably quote the entire script.”

“Please, please do.”

They shared a grin and the nerves that had been plaguing Aizawa for the past two days slowly began to dissipate. He liked Yagi. There was a reason he’d invited him over.

“I’ll make tea.”

Aizawa very firmly ignored Yagi’s coo of happiness upon tasting the peppermint tea he’d picked up. Tea he personally hated but knew Yagi drank by the gallon.

They settled in to watch, with a reasonable amount of space between them that slowly grew smaller and smaller until they were pressed together, shoulder to shoulder. Yagi’s long legs were propped up on the ottoman, Aizawa’s knees tucked up to his chest.

He’d seen this movie more times than he could count but he still tensed when Father Damien began the ceremony on poor, possessed Regan. The shouting on the tv grew louder and in front of them Ume buried her face in Hinata’s fur as Regan screamed and cursed.

“Deliver us from the evil one,” Yagi murmured along with Damien, a whisper loud enough to make Aizawa jump and curse. He swatted at the older man who laughed, apologizing even though Aizawa knew he didn’t mean it.

“Asshole,” Aizawa griped, not meaning that either.

Yagi used the moment to slide his arm up over Aizawa’s shoulders, down around his waist, pulling him in even closer.

Aizawa tried to breath normally. He’d been right about Yagi’s hand taking up most of his waist.

Yagi knew the next movie by heart too, and the one after that.

“Slasher films too, huh?”

“Nightmare on Elm Street is a classic! I’ve always liked movies,” he shrugged.

“How have you seen everything though?”

“I’m a lot older than you,” Yagi huffed a self-deprecating laugh.

Aizawa looked up at him, brushing stray hair out of his own face to see Yagi better. “You’re not that old.”

Suddenly the fact that they had been cuddling for the better part of six hours hit him. Pressed against each other, Aizawa’s body rocked every time Yagi took a particularly deep breath, he could feel the vibration of his words when he spoke, could smell the peppermint tea on his breath.

It was incredibly easy to slide his knee over Yagi’s lap, straddling his waist as his hands moved into thick blonde hair, holding him still long enough to press their mouths together.

The sound of teenagers screaming and razor-sharp knives scraping across a chain link fence barely drowned out the racing of his pulse, Aizawa's heart beating so fast he was positive Yagi could hear it.

Yagi’s hands slid up his thighs, grabbing his waist to pull him closer.

Aizawa bit at Yagi’s lip, sucking it into his mouth before pressing his tongue inside. He put his weight on his knees and rolled his hips, a pleased noise bubbling up in his throat at the feeling of a hardening cock against his ass.

He pulled back, lifting an eyebrow coyly. “Not that old.”

“Shota, I…”

“Do you want me to stop?” He rolled his hips once more for emphasis, biting his own lip at the way Yagi thrust up against him almost without thought.

He was quiet for so long that Aizawa thought he might actually say yes, before a look of determination on par with his All Might persona crossed his face.

“No,” he dragged Aizawa’s face closer, slotting their mouths together again. “Don’t stop.”

With the sounds of murder and mayhem in the background, Aizawa learned his way around Toshinori Yagi’s mouth.

His hair fell out of its rubber band with the pulling of Yagi’s fingers. It felt like no time at all before he was panting, pulling away to gather breath. He’d never been so thankful for the tight leggings he was wearing, he could feel every inch of Yagi nestled between his cheeks.

“Can I suck you off?”

As Aizawa watched, Yagi’s pupils dilated until only a thin ring of blue was visible. He barely managed a nod before Aizawa was sliding backward, dropping to his knees in front on the couch, grabbing Yagi’s hips to drag him closer.

He looked around for his hair tie, not seeing it on the couch or floor, until Yagi gathered his hair up helpfully, holding it up out of his face.

Fuck, he really wanted this man. To make him feel good. To suck his cock and still spend time with him.

He reached for Yagi’s pants, undoing the buttons and reaching inside to pull him out. He whistled lowly and Yagi huffed a laugh, tugging on his hair gently.

Aizawa’s hands weren’t dainty but they sort of looked it right then, wrapped around Yagi’s dick.

“I’ve thought about this,” he confessed, licking his bottom lip.

“Yeah?” Yagi sounded sort of breathless, and when Aizawa stroked him his eyes closed in a slow blink.

“Yeah,” he shuffled closer, taking the tip into his mouth, sucking wetly.

Yagi’s hand tightened in his hair and Aizawa moaned, moving lower, taking more of him into his mouth. He was only halfway down when the head pressed against his throat. It took quite a bit of concentration to fight his gag reflex and take it any deeper.

Yagi groaned above him and Aizawa’s mouth watered at the sound, making it easier to take him all the way.

“Fuck,” Yagi bit off, releasing his hold for one second before burying both of his hands into Aizawa’s hair, cradling his head as he guided his movements.

He was too big to take so deep for long, so he pulled back, focusing on the head as he stroked the rest rhythmically. He reached between his own legs, squeezing himself through the thin fabric.

“You, mmph—” Tightening fingers. “You’re really good at this.”

Aizawa hummed a laugh, which had Yagi cursing even more, and pulled off for a second, never pausing in his stroking.

He pointed to himself. “Former slut.” His voice sounded rough.

Yagi laughed, running his hand through his own hair. “Yeah? Me too.”

“Why do I not find that surprising,” Aizawa grinned before diving back in.

“Being the uh,” he moaned. “The top hero gets you a lot of ass—shit.”

Aizawa sucked hard at that, tonguing at his slit.

“It has been a minute though so—”

He pulled away again long enough to say, “Come in my mouth.”

“Jesus, Shota,” Yagi said, and then he was coming, spilling into Aizawa’s mouth almost faster than he could swallow.

Aizawa reached into his pants, thankful he’d forgone underwear and stroked himself roughly.

“No you don’t,” Yagi grabbed him by the arm, hauling him back onto the couch like he weighed nothing – a move that had Aizawa’s stomach fluttering.

“You’re so gorgeous, Shota,” Yagi pulled him into a kiss with a hand around his neck, the other pulling down the waistband of his pants far enough to wrap around his aching cock. “So fucking beautiful.”

Aizawa shuddered, eating up the praise between hot kisses until he was coming between them, all over their clothes with zero care for propriety.

Yagi didn’t stop kissing him, even after he’d gently pulled his pants back up. Aizawa melted against him slowly, sinking his hands back into that wild mane of hair which just begged to be pulled.

He wasn’t sure how long they sat there – kissing and kissing and kissing. When he finally pulled away, the movie had changed, and his lips were swollen and tingly.

Yagi tucked a strand of inky hair behind Aizawa’s ear. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I think this sweater might have lived its last day.”

Aizawa looked down at the garment in question. It was not a material made for cum, that was for sure. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m not,” Yagi said, matter-of-fact.

They glanced over as one to check on their daemons. Hinata was stretched out across the floor, her ears relaxed for once. Ume was snuggled up against her, chin resting across her neck as they both watched the movie.

“I probably have something you can wear,” Aizawa offered, feeling oddly nervous. “If you want to keep watching movies.”

Yagi pulled him into another kiss. “I’d like that.”

Which is how Aizawa found himself spread out on the couch in ratty pajama pants and no shirt, spooned by Yagi who was wearing his largest sweater – that still didn’t reach his wrists – and underwear – boxer briefs, which should not have been surprising to Aizawa considering the tightness of his hero costume. Yagi had one leg shoved between his own and was mindlessly twisting a strand of Aizawa’s hair around his finger as he commentated the movie.

“There’s a serious difference between a jump scare and an actual scare though. Everyone gets startled. It takes a lot for a movie to instill real fear.”

Aizawa bit into a piece of melon, licking at the juice before it could drip down his fingers.

“And 28 Days Later does it for you.”

“It changed the zombie movie genre! And it legitimately creeps me out.”

Aizawa rolled onto his back, looking up at him. “You’re very passionate about this.”

“I’m a very passionate person.”

“I’m realizing that.”

Yagi hummed, brushing hair out of Aizawa’s face. “You’re too pretty for me.”

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “From literally the most wanted man in the world.”

Blue eyes darted away nervously. “All Might was the most wanted.”

Aizawa reached up, pulling Yagi’s face towards him. He tucked a strand of hair behind his ears and wondered nonsensically what he’d look like with a headband.

“You are All Might. But even so, it isn’t All Might that I want to hold me down and fuck me raw until I can’t remember my own name.” He picked up a piece of melon from the tray on the floor and ate it.

Yagi’s hand gripped his hip hard, pulling him tight against his groin which was clearly interested once more.

“Shota,” he growled and Aizawa’s smirked.

“Toshi.” The nickname felt nice on his tongue, and Yagi must have thought the same because he smiled softly.

“You’re gonna be the death of me.”

“But what a good way to go,” he held up another piece of melon, pushing it into Yagi’s slack mouth, grazing his fingers against straight bottom teeth.

He rolled back over, resettling himself against Yagi, maybe grinding his ass back a little more than was necessary but not enough to be really obvious.

Ume and Hinata were chattering away, his daemon throwing her arms up periodically to emphasize whatever point she was making. Aizawa knew well that Ume could talk herself to death but Hinata seemed genuinely entertained.

“There aren’t a lot of daemon’s Hinata has been interested in getting to know before.”

Yagi’s soul yearned to know his. Butterflies took up in Aizawa’s stomach at the thought.

“Hey what I said before, about being a slut,” a joke, mostly. “The emphasis was on ‘former.’”

The arm around his waist tightened, even as Yagi laughed.

“Good,” he spoke into Aizawa’s neck. “I’ve never been great at sharing.”

+

Ume was very smug the next day.

“Remember this, the next time you doubt my advice!”

Aizawa rolled his eyes, pushing her off of the papers he was trying to grade. The teacher’s lounge was empty, thankfully, so he didn’t have to worry about eavesdroppers.

“So is Yagi-san your boyfriend yet?”

“Don’t start.”

“What! I’m really curious! I wasn’t exactly listening to you two hump each other—I was busy with my own thing.”

“You didn’t drive Hinata up the wall with your motor mouth?”

“She happens to like my motor mouth, thank you very much.”

Aizawa looked at her and she stared right back. They were silent for only a minute before they were both laughing, embarrassing giggles that Aizawa tried to hide behind his hand. Ume shoved his capture weapon into her mouth in a somewhat effective gag.

“Oh my god,” Aizawa breathed, still giggling. “Oh my god, I had sex with Yagi.”

“I think you’re dating him!”

“I think I’m dating him.” He shook his head hard, scoffing. “No, I don’t know. It was one time—“

“Sho, come on, you obviously like him.”

“Liking someone doesn’t mean you’re dating them.”

The door to the lounge slid open and Yamada strolled through, whistling a cheerful tune, Wakana bobbing along in time to the beat.

“Sup, Sho! Meichan!”

He waved to Aizawa as he moved closer but froze just before he sat down in the seat next to him.

He gasped dramatically. “You had sex!”

Aizawa looked towards the door in a panic, reaching out to grab his best friend and drag him closer, shushing him the whole way.

“Will you shut up!”

Yamada was grinning. “Oh my god, you had sex with All Might!” He expertly dodged Aizawa’s hands which were slapping at his face, trying to cover his mouth. This was never effective with Yamada, he was just as likely to yell louder or lick Aizawa’s palm, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

“Jesus Christ, tell the whole school why don't you?”

“Shit man, you’re not even denying it,” Yamada said. “You in love?”

“Yes!” His traitorous daemon shouted.

Aizawa groaned, covering his face. “I’m not in love, okay. We’re not even dating.”

“They totally are.”

“Ume—” He pushed her off the desk.

“Spill it man, tell me everything.”

“There’s nothing to tell. We watched movies, we made out, I sucked his dick. The end.”

Wakana looked at Ume, who still looked disgruntled from her fall to the floor. “Did he clean the apartment first?”

“And bought groceries!”

Yamada and Wakana whistled as one. “You got it bad.”

“Why? Why am I friends with you?”

“Because I give the best advice! Hit me with the details, baby.”

Aizawa pushed his hair back, looking around the room once more, though he knew no one else had come in. Yamada was his closest friend and he did give great advice. Aizawa and Kayama and countless radio listeners who called in to his show in the middle of the night knew that intimately.

“I…kind of implied that I’m not seeing anyone else and he said that was good, cause he doesn’t like to share. But that was literally it, there was no other discussion of relationship…type…crap.”

Yamada hummed. “Yagi doesn’t strike me as the type to screw around with a coworker if he wasn’t serious…”

“Well it’s not like I gave him much choice, I kind of mounted him in my living room.”

“Yeah, but he put himself in your living room, in mountable territory.”

“So you think he likes me?”

“Do you like him?” Yamada’s voice was unusually serious, giving Aizawa pause.

“What?”

“Do you like Yagi-san? Cause if you don’t, it doesn’t really matter whether I think he likes you or not. And if you don’t, you should probably stop whatever is happening between you two, cause that’s kinda messed up, man.”

“I, uh—” He looked at Ume, whose expression said that if he tried to deny it, she’d rat him out in a heartbeat.

He sighed. “Yes. I like him. I want to go on dates with him and talk about our boring ass days. I want to grade papers together and go grocery shopping together and sleep in the same bed and oh my god, how did this happen?”

Yamada put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re in deep, my friend. Can’t say I blame you, Yagi is kind of a babe and totally fun to talk to. I’m surprised no one else snapped him up first.”

Aizawa looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Did you hear something?”

Screeching laughter pierced his ears, and Yamada pulled his phone out of his pocket, fingers dancing over the screen.

“I’m telling Nemuri about this immediately. As for you, talk to Yagi. That dude has got it bad for you.”

+

Chapter Text

Yagi reread the email he’d written one last time.

He’d sent it to Nezu first, who had responded with some suggestions, and then he’d forwarded that to the president of his agency, for extra editing. These days she spent most of her time overseeing the various charity organizations he’d set up over the years, so she seemed more than a little excited to hear from him with something new.

Her advice, mixed with Nezu’s and his own not-inconsiderable knowledge of business, had led to the final draft before him.

A letter to the school board, encouraging them to restructure the UA entrance exam.

Not that he thought a letter would be enough to see it through, but it was a good start. He’d been asked to counsel the board before, not that he’d ever felt well informed enough to weigh in on the school’s matters, but now he was a teacher. Now he had insight.

Now he was half in love with a member of the faculty.

That’s not why he was doing this.

He didn’t think.

It’s just that Aizawa had been right, the test was inaccurate and students were missing out on opportunities they deserved.

“Are you going to tell him?” Hinata was sitting next to his computer grooming herself, licking one paw and then sliding it down her long, sleek ears.

“No,” he replied. “If anything comes of it, he’ll find out, but…I’d rather he didn’t know I was involved.”

“You don’t think he’d want to know?”

Yagi blew at the hair hanging in his face uselessly. “I’m a little worried he’ll see it as me using the All Might name to pull strings instead of going about it the proper way.”

She scoffed, wiping at her face. “It’s not like you’re smashing down the board member’s doors. You’re sending an email, Toshi. How much more proper can you get?”

“I just don’t want to fuck this up before it even gets started.”

Hinata beat her back foot on the desk twice in irritation before leaping off into his lap. She stood on her hind legs, front paws pressed against his chest, forcing her way into his line of sight.

“Listen up Toshinori, because I’m only going to say this once. We’re pursuing Shota and Ume, and we’re going to date them. And you’re going to stop making disparaging comments about yourself and trying to self-sabotage because so help me if you ruin this on purpose I will spend the rest of our life making yours a living hell.”

Wide-eyed, Yagi opened his mouth to reply but was cut off.

“You’re going to ask him on a date and he’s going to say yes because he’s clearly into you and then you’re both going to talk about your feelings—like adults.”

“Er—yes. That’s…yes.”

“Now send the email.”

Yagi nodded, reaching past her to slide his finger over the tracking pad of the laptop, dragging the cursor over the send button. There was an audible click when he pressed it.

Hinata sat back on her feet. “Good. Now, you don’t have to tell him about the email if you don’t want to, but I think you need to seriously consider how you plan to move forward with this relationship. Begin as you mean to go on, Toshi. With honesty and respect.”

She leaned up again, rubbing her face against his, and he wrapped his hand around her thin body, dragging her closer as he buried his face in her long ears.

“You’re right of course.”

“I usually am.”

+

Later that week found Yagi sitting on a bench watching Midoryia and Eri run around with three rabbit daemons.

Yusha took the form of a rabbit anytime she was around Hinata, and Eri’s tiny daemon was quick to join his peers.

Hinata pretended not to be flattered, but he could tell otherwise.

He didn’t often watch over UA’s young ward, but Midoriya went out of his way to spend time with her as much as possible, and Yagi found the two of them together rather delightful.

Yagi suspected one of the reason’s Eri was so attached to Midoriya was his fluctuating daemon. Her daemon tended to shift into whatever form Yusha had taken, a tiny copy at her side.

Currently, Midoriya was leaping into the trees, pulling down flowers to give to Eri, which were gathering in a pile at her feet. The three rabbits were pouncing on them, scattering blossoms through the grass, blanketing the courtyard in a sweet, floral scent.

Hinata was farther away from him than she normally strayed, but the burning pull that usually accompanied this distance was absent.

It has been less painful, lately. The more time Hinata spent with other daemons, the farther she seemed willing to go and the less inclined he was to stop her.

He wondered what it would have been like had his parents raised him. If Hinata had reliable daemons to grow up with and model after.

Eri’s giggling drifted over on the wind and he couldn’t help speculating whether she was doomed to experience the same overly codependent relationship with her daemon.

Maybe she’d find someone she trusted early enough. Yagi knew that if he had met Nana and her fox daemon earlier in life, it probably would have made a huge difference. A small, childish part of him always wished Nana had found him as a kid. Plucked him out of the foster system and raised him as her own. Been his mother in name and not just spirit.

But Eri still had a chance. She had Midoriya, and Mirio Togata. Aizawa spent time with her, and he was pretty sure Yamada and Vlad King kept her company as well.

And him. She had Yagi and Hinata too.

He stood up, walking over to them, picking up a flower that had avoided being crushed by rabbit paws.

Eri looked up when he came near, and Yagi bent over, tucking the flower in her hair.

“I wish I could jump like Midoriya,” she confessed, wide-eyed and beguiling. “I want to reach the flowers.”

Yagi hummed. “Well, there are other ways to get that high,” he looked down at her daemon. “Have you ever seen a giraffe?”

When Nezu and Aizawa showed up, they were greeted with barely contained madness.

Eri’s giraffe inspired Yusha to shift into a zebra, which had prompted a rhino and a lion.

They were in the midst of recreating the Lion King, Yagi holding Hinata up like baby Simba while a zebra, antelope, Eri, and Midoriya bowed low to the ground before him over and over.

Yagi was pretty proud of his rendition of ‘The Circle of Life’ though he had to admit Midoriya’s loud humming added a certain flair.

Aizawa spoke over them. “While I hate to break up the show before you even make it through the first song, it’s nearing curfew Midoriya. Don’t make me give you detention.”

Midoriya was up like a shot, hoisting Eri into a tight hug before throwing a quick hug around Yagi as well.

Yagi tried not to feel sad at the realization that Midoriya’s arms reached around his chest now instead of his stomach. He was growing like a weed.

“Goodnight, All Might-san,” Eri said politely, holding Nezu’s hand.

Unable to resist, Yagi picked up her, giving her a quick squeeze. Midoriya was no longer around, but Eri’s daemon had shifted back to a rabbit anyway, sitting between Hinata and Ume.

“Goodnight, young Erichan.”

They left and then it was four.

Ume was already chattering with Hinata, both of them meandering away a bit. He wondered which one of them was trying to give he and Aizawa space – or if they were both scheming.

“The Lion King, huh?” Aizawa crept near, not quite close enough to touch, but close enough that Yagi was fighting the urge to reach out and pull him in.

“Next weekend we’ll do a Disney marathon?”

Aizawa snorted. “Pass.”

The breeze picked up and a few loose flowers blew by. Yagi picked one up and looked closely.

It was an ume blossom.

“This is a plum tree,” he said, somewhat unnecessarily.

Aizawa stepped just a little bit closer.

“Yeah… This tree has been here since I was in school, but I’ve never seen if bear fruit. The blossoms all get knocked down from students acting like idiots.”

Yagi thought of Midoriya ruefully. Maybe he should have stopped him in his blatant destruction of property.

That thought was quickly abandoned when he remembered Eri’s laughter.

He turned to Aizawa, who had wandered so closely into his personal space that he was practically pressed up against him.

Yagi tucked the flower into his hair, pushing it behind his ear.

“Well at least we get the flowers.”

The sun dipped lower in the sky, not quite dark yet, and they were standing in an open courtyard where any number of people could see them.

Still, Yagi used his long fingers to tilt Aizawa’s face up to his, kissing him gently.

Aizawa put both hands on Yagi’s chest, but instead of pushing him away, they curled into the fabric of his jacket, pulling him closer.

The kiss was warm and wet, and Yagi could have stood there forever, drowning in it, except the sun had finally faded enough to prompt the campus lights to switch on.

Suddenly their semi-private courtyard was flooded with light.

Still, Aizawa did not release his tight hold on Yagi’s jacket.

“I’m on patrol tonight but I’m having a hard time not dragging you back to my room instead.”

Aizawa was so forthright sometimes. Yagi absolutely loved it – though it did make him just a little bit nervous. He wasn’t sure he could ever be so honest with his feelings.

“The villains out tonight would probably appreciate that.”

A sharp whistle cut through the air, and their faces snapped towards the sound.

“Yo! There are teenagers all over the place, you two tryna catch your make-out sesh on snapchat?”

Yamada and Kayama stood under the awning. Neither looked surprised by what they were seeing.

Aizawa huffed and rolled his eyes, holding up his middle finger at his friends. He ignored their snorting laughter.

“Never mind, the mood is officially dead.”

Yagi smiled, pressing down the flutter of nerves from being sort-of-caught. Aizawa was still watching him with something like curiosity in his eyes, like he was waiting for Yagi to say something before going on his way.

There was a lot he wanted to voice.

I’m going to worry about you all night.

Why are you even kissing me, don’t you know you deserve so much better?

You’re so relaxed when you’re happy. I can’t believe it’s me that’s making you happy.

Instead, he said: “Do you want to go out tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

It was spoken so quickly, no hesitation or reluctance.

Which was a shame, since Yagi had literally not one plan in mind, having once again spoken before his brain could catch up to his mouth.

“Oh, uh—great…” Yagi was cursing his entire lifetime of social avoidance. Why did it look so easy in movies? He was terrible at this.

“We should go to the movie theater.” Hinata appeared out of nowhere, and Yagi had never been so thankful.

“Yes!” Ume exclaimed. “We can get popcorn and judge previews—that’s my favorite part.”

Yagi looked at Aizawa questioningly who shrugged. “You pick the movie.”

“I can do that.”

They kissed once more, quickly, to loud wolf whistles from their audience who had yet to leave.

“Ignore them, they’re the worst.”

“Text me tonight when you get home—so I know you’re safe.”

Aizawa seemed surprised by the request but didn’t argue, turning to meet his friends and presumably get ready for his patrol.

“Thanks for the save,” he told Hinata, bending down to scoop her up.

“You would have figured it out eventually, but I’m happy to help.

+

“That was terrible.”

“Oh my god, awful,” Yagi agreed.

“How do you have a quirk to see in the dark and still trip and fall while you’re being chased. Made zero sense.”

Hinata interjected. “Well, most people don’t get training for their quirks like heroes do. She didn’t know how to remain calm with an axe murder after her.”

“Still,” Aizawa shook his head. “Being scared doesn’t mean you suddenly can’t use your quirk.”

They continued on, critiquing the movie, Hinata arguing with Aizawa just like she would have argued with Yagi. Ume chimed in with support for both of them at different points.

Yagi took it in. Watching his daemon casually chat was something like an out of body experience. Hinata didn’t talk to other people – she said he did enough talking for the both of them.

It had been surprising when she’d expressed interest in becoming friends with Ume, but humans were different.

Years ago, before Nana and All for One, when he’d still been small and vulnerable, they’d endured any number of indignities. Foster parents and group homes with adults who thought it was acceptable to touch Hinata without his permission, just because he was a kid.

Yagi knew parents sometimes touched their children’s daemons, but those people hadn’t been his parents. It had been a violation of his autonomy and Hinata had never truly recovered.

To this day she had never let another person touch her.

But now, watching as she bounced along, more animated than he’d ever seen her with another person, he couldn’t help wondering if she would let Aizawa touch her.

It was supposed to be the most intimate thing two people could do, and Yagi got chills just thinking about how it would feel – his hands in her fur, the warmth that would spread through Hinata and Yagi both.

He hoped she would.

“Yagi-san, you’re going to walk into traffic if you don’t pay more attention to where you’re going.”

Ume had a voice that carried, but it helped that Yagi was so attuned to his own daemon who was often just as low to the ground.

“Oh!” Yagi paused in his daydreaming. Aizawa was watching him, mirth in his eyes. “Sorry! Just…thinking. You can call me Toshi, by the way.”

This received a little, pleased purr from Ume and a soft blush from her human.

Yagi realized then that he was desperate for this date… Date? It was definitely a date, right?

Whatever it was, he didn’t want it to end, but he no longer existed in a world where he could walk around without being recognized. The movie had been dark and safe, but now, standing outside of the theater, more than a few people were beginning to stare.

“Can I cook?”

Aizawa raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, can you?”

Yagi huffed and shook the hair out of his face uselessly, ignoring the snickering from his rabbit.

“I meant, can I cook for you. Tonight. Dinner?”

“If you want.”

“I just,” he sighed, looking around. The staring was turning into whispering, and he thought he saw someone pulling out a phone. “I don’t really want this to end but I don’t really enjoy being out anymore, and it’s not that I dislike people, but—“

“Toshi,” Aizawa grabbed his hand, pulling him toward the road. “You never have to explain the desire to go home to me. I hate being out.”

He held up a hand, waving down a taxi, pulling Yagi into the backseat of the first one to stop.

“You really don’t mind?”

“This is the first time I’ve left the school grounds beside hero work or educational purposes in… How long has it been since the dorms opened? Six months?”

“Six months!”

Ume spoke from his lap. “That is not an exaggeration.”

Yagi smiled wryly. “I thought I was bad.”

“I get enough of people in my career. I like my apartment, it’s dark and quiet and I’ve filled it with things that I enjoy.”

“You didn’t have to say yes to the theater, we could have continued our movie marathon tradition.”

Aizawa shrugged, looking out the window, and Yagi remembered Yamada saying he was a push-over for people he liked. While part of that made him feel a little special, that wasn’t the way he wanted to do things.

“I mean it,” he pressed. “I’m kind of a homebody. Even before…” He gestured to himself vaguely.

“I don’t mind the theater,” Aizawa finally looked at him. “Especially now that the kids are on lock-down and I don’t run the risk of sitting behind them making out the whole time.”

“That happened?”

“Mirio Togata and Tamaki Amajiki. And yes—it was the worst. I left halfway through. I still don’t know how that movie ended.”

Ume and Hinata were giggling and Yagi found himself joining in.

“Well I’m glad we were able to enjoy a terrible movie in peace.”

Aizawa was smiling at him, the small, close-mouthed grin he usually hid in the folds of his capture weapon. Yagi’s stomach clenched in a way that, for once, wasn’t painful.

“So you cook, huh?”

An hour later, Yagi found himself wishing he’d suggested something like take-out, since the dinner he’d started was in dangerous territory of never being finished.

Aizawa was sitting on Yagi’s kitchen counter, legs wrapped around his waist while his hands pulled aggressively at Yagi’s hair.

Kissing Aizawa was not at all what he’d expected. Not that he could really describe what he’d expected – less passion maybe, more goal-oriented.

In reality, Aizawa was dominant and submissive in turns. He spread his legs easily, offering himself up, while also purposefully directing the kiss, biting at Yagi’s mouth and throat insistently.

He didn’t seem particularly inclined to take it any further, happy to kiss without an obvious objective, despite the press of his erection into Yagi’s stomach.

It was wonderful – especially after years of rushed one-night stands and friends-with-benefits situations.

A muffled crashing noise in the other room pulled them from their exploits, the seam of their mouths breaking with a soft pop and a string of saliva that snapped at the sudden movement.

Hinata stuck her head around the corner of the doorway.

“Nothing’s broken! Just knocked a lamp over, our bad!”

She darted away just as quickly, and Yagi shook his head.

“I honestly don’t want to know.”

“Ume’s responsible, I’m sure of it.” He rolled his eyes, but the affection for his daemon was obvious. He grabbed the front of Yagi’s shirt, reeling him back in.

“Did you not want to eat tonight?” Yagi asked, allowing himself to be drawn into a kiss anyway.

“You’re asking the wrong man that question.” He nipped at Yagi’s exposed throat. “I regularly subsist on protein bars and energy packs.”

Large hands eased Aizawa's fingers from his shirt. “And that’s exactly why we’re at my apartment.”

Yagi went back to work, ignoring Aizawa’s admittedly adorable pouting as he cut up vegetables. Soon the room was filled with the sound of rhythmic chopping, from the same knife he’d cut himself with two weeks ago, and the occasional burst of giggling from the other room.

“Where’d you learn to cook?”

“Here and there,” he replied, slicing bamboo carefully. “A lot of trial and error after getting tired of ordering in every night.”

“You really don’t like going out?”

“I’ve always enjoyed a certain level of…privacy, I suppose.”

“How does someone who dislikes attention become the world’s Symbol of Peace?”

He’d wondered if something like this was coming. It was no secret that Aizawa didn’t see the appeal of All Might. Newly wary of sharp objects combined with emotional talks, Yagi set the knife down and turned to him.

Begin as you mean to go on, Hinata had said. Suddenly, Yagi wanted nothing more than to be completely candid.

“I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, if I’m being honest. I was only a kid when I made the decision to become All Might. I knew there was something missing in the world and I wanted to fix that, but I… I didn’t quite realize what I was giving up.”

Aizawa appeared taken aback by his honesty and Yagi scrambled to cover his babbling.

“Not that I wouldn’t do it again!” He threw his hands up, trying to wave away the tension. “It was worth it, I loved being the Symbol of Peace, I—”

Aizawa dropped off the counter, grabbing one Yagi's flailing hands. “That was probably the most real you’ve ever been with me. Don’t ruin it by trying to walk it back.”

Yagi deflated.

“Sorry…force of habit, I suppose. Anyway, retiring changed things. I don’t think I’ll ever be the type to enjoy large crowds of strangers, but I’m glad I have the school to relax in—getting to know the other teachers and staff.”

“Don’t play poker with Cementoss, he cheats.”

“I knew I wasn’t that bad!” Yagi exclaimed.

“Yeah, it’s that serious face. You’d never suspect.”

Yagi shook his head, huffing a laugh and Aizawa went on.

“My two best friends are insufferable extroverts who have dragged me to every bar and club in this city at some point or the other. I would be happy to never do that again.”

“I promise to never take you to a bar or club.” He pulled his hand out of Aizawa’s to hold it against his chest in an oath.

Aizawa snorted, grinning. “I knew I liked you.”

Yagi’s heart rate picked up and a blush spread across Aizawa’s face, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. That splash of pink gave Yagi the confidence to pull him closer once more, until they were chest to chest.

“I like you, too.” He kissed Aizawa firmly on the mouth. “Now I’m going to make this stir fry if it’s the last thing I do.”

Aizawa nodded slowly and stepped back, bumping into the counter before he pulled himself back onto it.

There was something viscerally satisfying about making dinner for someone he cared about. It soothed a nervous part of him that often lingered under the surface of his calm façade. He often saw it mirrored in his daemon, the nervous energy of a prey animal surrounded by predators, but he liked to think he hid it well in himself.

Being around Aizawa brought it out, though. The more time he spent with the other man, the more he realized he had never quite felt this way about someone, which served to make him even more nervous.

Now though, as they sat at the small kotatsu in his apartment, Yagi felt calm and content watching Aizawa eat.

“If this is how you cook everything, we really don’t have to leave the campus again.”

Yagi grinned, watching Ume steal baby corn off of Aizawa’s plate.

“I can cook for you anytime.”

And he did.

Over the next few days, Aizawa showed up at his door like a stray cat in a fish market. Yagi went grocery shopping for two and was cooking so much he often had meals ready before Aizawa arrived.

Most of these meals were interspersed with kissing and groping and mundane talk about their respective workdays.

It was very close to what Yagi suspected having a boyfriend was like, but his lack of experience in this arena meant he couldn't be completely sure.

He was still thinking about it later that week as he walked Midoriya to his mother’s house from the train station.

The advent of the dorm system meant that students leaving campus beyond a certain distance required a chaperone, and it was no hardship for Yagi to accompany his young protégé. Ever since their first meeting, he and Midoriya’s mother had kept up a sporadic chat through text messages.

Hinata and Yusha hopped ahead of them, Yusha tripping over herself in an effort to keep pace with Hinata’s calm loping movements.

Midoriya was chattering away at his side, going on about an argument between Todoroki and Bakugo, which sounded mostly like a lot of raging from Bakugo and indifference from Todoroki.

“—and then Hatsu tried to go after Tokestu, which was crazy because yeah, Hastu is really scary but Toketsu is huge! What is a badger gonna do to a liger, you know? So Toketsu just laughed in her face and that made Hatsu even more mad and then—”

Yagi shook his head, more at Midoriya’s steady stream of consciousness than the actual content. He’d been a student at UA himself, he knew how hero daemons could be with each other.

“Young Midoriya.” At the sound of his voice, Midoriya halted mid-sentence, like he’d been waiting for Yagi to cut in at any time. “Do you have any guesses on what form Yusha will settle in?”

Midoriya seemed surprised by the seemingly random subject change.

“Oh! Um…not really. She’s been spending a lot of time as a rat lately…but I think that’s just because she likes to hang out in the hood of my costume.”

Yagi nodded, familiar with the sight.

“The other day she was a fox and she actually took down Ida’s daemon! Knocked him right out of the air like it was nothing!”

That gave Yagi pause. Nana’s daemon had been a fox. Bright orange in the summer, he faded into a snowy white during the colder winter months. A predator that was also capable of camouflage on par with prey animals.

“A fox, huh?”

“I think she liked it. It felt like she was comfortable for once, you know?”

“I do know that feeling.”

Midorya was uncharacteristically quiet for a minute. “You don’t think it’s weird, right? That Yusha hasn’t settled?”

“Not at all,” Yagi told him. “I was older than you when Hinata settled. And the rabbit form was a complete surprise. She spent most of her time before that as a dog.”

And always a fox whenever Nana was around, but Yagi didn’t feel the need to share that with him. Midoriya had enough expectations to live up to as it was.

“Really? I didn’t know that! Do you think it’s because, ya know… We were both quirkless?”

Yagi shook his head. “I think it just means that things don’t come easy for either of us. But that can be a good thing, sometimes.”

Midoriya was thoughtfully looking off into the distance as they approached the front door of his apartment.

“What kind of dog?”

Yagi’s laughter was enough to summon Inko to the door.

She pulled them inside, pressing kissing to both of their faces, making Yagi blush with embarrassed happiness. Midoriya’s mother was a force to be reckoned with, and he was powerless in her presence, in more ways than one.

“I was beginning to think you two weren’t going to make it. Come in, come in!”

She casually picked up Midoriya’s daemon, who had shifted into the form of a squirrel that almost exactly matched Inko’s, pressing a kiss to her head.

Hinata stood at Yagi’s heels and he could sense her trepidation that Inko might pick her up as well. They both quite liked Midoriya’s mother, but that was still a line Hinata did not want crossed.

Inko hadn’t raised the most observant child Yagi had ever met by accident though, and she made no moves to touch Hinata, merely bending low to greet her with a smile.

“Hello dear!”

Dinner was an explosion of warmth and happiness. Though Yagi could see the tiniest trace of tension around Inko’s eyes when Midoriya talked about his training, he could tell that she was genuinely happy for her son, proud of his efforts.

Their relationship was touching – everything Yagi had always craved as a child. As much as he liked the fact that he and Midoriya had so much in common, he was happy that this was not one of them.

Midoriya would never have to go through life as he had, alone except for his daemon, and that filled Yagi with a sense of relief he didn’t want to try explaining.

Sensing his maudlin thoughts, Hinata hopped from the floor into his lap. He smiled at the interruption, petting down her back.

He wasn’t so alone anymore, and the more time he spent with Midoriya and his mother, the more he wished Aizawa was there.

They arrived home late, enough that the teacher’s dorm was empty and the lights in the common room were low. His apartment was on the bottom floor but without thought he passed it, heading to the stairwell and up to Aizawa’s place.

He just needed to see him.

Yagi had barely knocked on the door when it was swinging open, Aizawa standing there, still dressed in his black on black costume, goggles pushed into his hair and capture weapon around his shoulders.

He held up a piece of paper, slightly crumpled in his hand.

“Did you do this?”

Yagi had never quite felt scared in Aizawa’s presence, but in that moment his heart rate picked up in a way that was wholly unpleasant.

“Um, I’m not sure what that is—”

Aizawa grabbed the front of his loose button-down shirt, pulling him into the room in the same motion that he slammed the door closed, crowding Yagi up against the door.

Hinata barely made it inside.

He still held the paper, pressed against Yagi’s chest, giving him no chance to actually read it.

“It’s a memo to the school staff,” he said, voice unreadable. “From the board.”

Oh no.

“They’re going to be reexamining the entrance exam and making changes to account for nonphysical quirks.”

“Oh! But that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Did you do this?” Aizawa was watching him very carefully, still clutching at his shirt, pressing Yagi’s back against the unforgiving door.

For a second, he considered lying. His eyes slid down to the floor, where he could see Hinata and Ume watching him. Hinata’s ears were alert, her entire body tense but Ume looked worried, her expressive eyes wide as she tugged at her own tail.

Yagi looked back to Aizawa and finally nodded.

“I wrote an email…” He trailed off, feeling out of depth. He thought he was learning how to read Aizawa better, but in that moment he had no idea what was on the other man’s mind.

He was scared that he had blown it before they’d even had a chance.

Yagi opened his mouth to apologize but was cut off by Aizawa’s lips against his own, his tongue licking into his mouth. The hands on his shirt moved to his hair, dragging him lower until he was practically bent over, but Aizawa was no longer on his tiptoes.

Still confused, Yagi drew away. “What—you aren’t mad?”

“Furious. I’ve spent years trying to get the board to consider this and you do it in one week, it’s disgusting. Take your pants off.”

“What—” Aizawa’s fingers were at his belt, unhooking it and sliding it out in one quick motion.

“It just goes to show that popularity means everything, and tomorrow I’m going to march up to Nezu’s office and let him know how messed up this entire system is but tonight you’re going to fuck me because this is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me—now stop screwing around and get undressed!”

“Shota,” Yagi tried to speak through the tangle of his shirt as Aizawa was hauling it over his head without undoing any of the buttons. “I didn’t do it for you—I mean, I kind of did, but you were right, the test is bad and—”

The shirt finally came free and Yagi didn’t even have time to feel self-conscious of the scarring across his torso as Aizawa threw his capture weapon to the floor, unhooking his utility belt along the way.

“I know,” he said, once more drawing Yagi into a sloppy, wet kiss. “That’s what makes it so goddamn nice. Now please—please–take your fucking clothes off.”

That was all Yagi needed to hear.

His pants were around his knees before he remembered his shoes and he barely managed to maintain his balance as he stepped out of them.

A glance around the room didn’t reveal their daemons to him, but Yagi wasn’t worried. He couldn’t sense any anxiety from Hinata, the distance between them barely a thought in his mind as Aizawa pulled his own shirt over his head.

He led Yagi into his bedroom, which he had only seen once when he’d passed the open door on his way to the bathroom.

It was similar to his living room, with books piled on the nightstand and art hung on the walls. A closer glance revealed quite a few framed photographs, and Yagi thought he caught a glimpse of a younger Aizawa and Yamada. He couldn’t get a good look before the man in question was pushing him onto the plush bed.

Like his couch, it was piled with pillows and soft blankets, and Yagi sank into them with a low grunt.

Aizawa stripped out of his pants and climbed over him, straddling his waist, and for the first time, Yagi felt nervous.

He wasn’t sure what he did to translate that – tensed up or maybe broke out in a cold sweat – but Aizawa picked up on it immediately.

“You okay?” He tucked a piece of hair behind Yagi’s ear, fingers skimmed across his cheeks and down his throat. Yagi leaned into the motion like a cat.

“Yes, I—I’m just a little,” he sighed. “I’ve never done this.”

Aizawa froze, for a second, before he sat back on his heels.

“Like…sex, or? Cause I know you said—”

Yagi waved him off, sitting up a bit.

“No, no, I’ve done that.” He huffed a laugh. Jesus, he was bad at this. “I mean…I care about you. I more than care about you, and I’ve never really been with anyone that I cared about—actually I’ve never really cared about anyone like this and—”

Aizawa’s hand covered his mouth, and Yagi looked at him thankfully.

“Toshinori.” Aizawa’s voice was firm but his eyes were soft, bangs falling into his face in a way that made him look sort of shy. “I care about you too. And I’ve never really dated anyone seriously, so I think we’re on the same page here, but from what I’ve heard it’s supposed to make sex better so I’m not too worried.”

And then Yagi was laughing so hard Aizawa was bouncing, precariously perched across Yagi's lap as he was. Aizawa tried to look annoyed but a smile was creeping around the corners of his mouth and Yagi knew in that moment he was in love.

“You’re too far away,” he murmured, dragging Aizawa down into a kiss, rolling them both until their positions were reversed.

Their underthings were swiftly dealt with before Aizawa was pressing a half-empty bottle of lube into his hand.

It had been years since he’d done this, but he was practiced and confident in his abilities. No one had ever walked away from All Might’s bed unsatisfied and he didn’t intend to let that happen now.

Aizawa wasn’t incredibly vocal but his gasps and bitten off moans were exactly what Yagi craved as he slid his long fingers deep inside of him. Unable to resist, he took Aizawa into his mouth as he eased him open, licking at the base of his cock before lavishing attention on the head.

Rough hands pulled at his hair. “If you don’t want this to be over now, you have to stop that.” He pushed at Yagi’s shoulders. “I’m good, I’m ready, please—"

Yagi bit at his inner thigh, sucking hard enough to draw blood to the surface.

Aizawa moaned, honest and open. “Toshi, fuck.”

There were a handful of people in his life that called him that, and Yagi loved the sound of it in Aizawa's voice.

Aizawa had been right when he said that feelings made it better.

As Yagi settled between his spread thighs and sank into tight heat, he couldn’t look anywhere but Aizawa’s dark eyes. Bracing one hand on the mattress, he clutched at Aizawa’s hip, holding him tight to his own body. He reveled in the feeling of being completely wrapped up in this man he would do anything for.

“Shota,” Yagi let his head drop low, wild hair spilling forward, moaning unashamedly.

“Toshi, I need you to fuck me, I need it, I need it.”

Yagi nodded. “I will—I am.”

They found a rhythm that worked for them both, Aizawa’s cock trapped underneath Yagi’s stomach as he snapped his hips forward. Aizawa’s nails dug into Yagi’s lower back, scratching at his skin as he urged him on, mouth pressed to Yagi’s forearm next to his head.

It built up quickly, and when Aizawa came he reached up and pulled hard at Yagi’s hair, pushing him over the edge as well.

He stilled, panting, as he emptied himself into Aizawa, whose head was tilted back against the sheets, eyes closed. There was saliva at the corner of his mouth and smeared all over Yagi’s arm. He could see teeth marks he didn’t quite remember feeling being pressing into his skin.

Yagi dropped down to his elbows, unmindful of the mess between them.

Aizawa grunted at the motion, before pulling his legs up to wrap around Yagi’s waist. He dug his teeth into Yagi’s throat.

“I should have guessed you’d be a biter, with all the hair pulling,” Yagi spoke into messy black hair.

“Your hair begs to be pulled. Plus you bit me first,” Aizawa returned, nipping once more. “It probably left a mark.”

“Not where anyone will see it.”

“I’ll know it’s there.”

Yagi hummed, a pleased sound, and thrust his hips again, his waning erection still buried deep.

Aizawa shivered.

“Stay the night.” Aizawa’s voice was soft, like he thought Yagi might say no, which was so ridiculous Yagi almost laughed.

Instead he nodded and pulled Aizawa closer, wrapping him in his arms as he rolled over onto his back.

Yagi thought that he could probably kiss Aizawa for the rest of his life. Never leave his bed again, just stay wrapped up in this moment forever, trading lazy kisses and touches.

That was unrealistic though. He hadn’t seen his daemon for a while and although he knew she was safe and probably just as content as he was, years of heightened awareness of her whereabouts had him subtly looking around.

Subtlety had never been his forte though.

“They’re in the living room I think.”

“Ahh,” Yagi relaxed only a little bit. He still wanted her near.

“You’ve been separating farther and farther,” Aizawa commented.

Yagi shrugged as much as he could, buried in pillows and crushed under Aizawa’s weight.

“Lately it…hasn’t been so bad.”

Aizawa moved off of him, sliding from the bed. He stretched his arms above his head and Yagi took the opportunity to stare. From his throat to his trim waist, the dark trail of hair that started at his belly button and led even lower.

There was a mark on his inner thigh, just barely visible when his legs were together.

A pillow hit him in the face.

“Let’s take a shower.”

Yagi tossed the pillow aside, moving to sit up as well.

“You have an insane number of pillows,” he said, following Aizawa into the bathroom.

“I’m not depressed,” Aizawa countered, turning on the shower.

“What?”

Aizawa rolled his eyes, shrugging. “Hizashi read once that people who use a lot of pillows are depressed. I’m not. I just wanted to tell you that in case you had also read that.”

Yagi grinned, imagining the conversation. “I didn’t think you were depressed.”

They stepped into the shower, and the spray of water poured over Aizawa’s head, flattening his hair against his face like rivers of ink.

“I just like plush bedding. I think I’m just trying to recreate my sleeping bag in my apartment. I sleep better there than anywhere else.”

He poured body wash onto a rag, smearing it down his front to wash away the evidence of their earlier activities. Without question or comment, he did the same to Yagi, running the rag and his free hand over the spiderweb of scars on his skin.

Yagi fought the urge to giggle in ticklishness or cover his ribs in self-consciousness.

“Why don’t you just move the sleeping bag to your bed and sleep in it there?”

Aizawa paused in his task, looking up between wet clumps of hair.

“What?”

“If you moved the sleeping bag to your bed then you’d get the best of both worlds. Plus, fewer people interrupting you while you try to sleep. You could even buy a second one!”

A look of realization came over Aizawa, and he stared at Yagi as if he’d never seen him before.

“Where have you been all my life?”

Yagi grinned. “Around.”

The shower turned out to be less cleaning and more making out in soapy, warm water but Yagi wasn’t going to start arguing semantics. Especially when it turned into Aizawa stroking him until he spilled into his hand, followed by Yagi sinking to his knees to swallow him down.

When they were dry and somewhat dressed, Yagi in sleep pants that barely reached his ankles, they wandered into the living room to find their other halves.

Hinata was talking.

Yagi only had to listen for a moment to realize Hinata was talking about America and the time they’d spent training there.

Ume was quiet, which in itself was unusual, but her paws were still busy – Hinata had her head in Ume’s lap, the raccoon running her paws along one long ear at a time.

“Let’s go to bed,” Aizawa told them, and they both looked up in surprise, unaware of their audience.

“Hinata is staying the night?” Ume asked, voice excited.

Aizawa nodded, turning back to the bedroom and together they all fell into bed. Pillows and blankets were pushed aside, some falling to the floor, and Hinata burrowed into the blankets at his back.

Ume stayed near her and when she turned to settle against Hinata, her tail brushed lightly at the small of Yagi’s back.

He trembled at the feeling. So small and subtle, but Aizawa’s eyes snapped up to his in a way that told Yagi he knew he’d felt it.

Yagi pulled him closer, sliding Aizawa’s thigh between his own as he wrapped an arm around his back.

Aizawa sighed relaxing against him and then they were all still. Aizawa’s feet were like ice blocks against his ankles and Hinata’s claws were digging painfully into his back but Yagi had never been so comfortable.

One day, Yagi would be completely honest with Aizawa. He’d tell him about All for One and Nana, about Midoriya and One for All. He’d tell him exactly why he kept everyone at a distance, so that he might understand how monumental it was that Yagi wanted him so close.

One day, Hinata would let Aizawa touch her without a second thought. Yagi knew this without a doubt.

One day he’d be able to voice exactly how he felt, without any hint of trepidation or indecision.

Not tonight, and probably not tomorrow. It was too soon. Too new to voice.

But it was there. The beginning of a new life.

“Goodnight, Shota.”

Aizawa hummed into his throat, tightening his arms just a bit.

“Goodnight, Toshinori.”

“Night guys!” Ume staged whispered.

Hinata giggled and Yagi hid a grin in Aizawa’s hair.

+