Chapter Text
Everything was going fine, or as fine as Class 1-A could be, Kouji determines.
Yuwai was in his lap with her vest and little Santa hat on. Kouji’s heart warms and he smiles.
What he doesn’t smile at is Bakugou exploding at Midoriya, both literally and figuratively. Instead, he flinches. And, much to Kouji’s surprise, Midoriya does too.
There’s a story there.
Kouji can’t ask about it right now, he thinks as he strokes the back of his bunny, because Todoroki looks like he's about to get physical.
He really hopes no one gets hurt, but this is 1-A – Todoroki was already starting to frost over. The hero course has the record of having the most self-destructive rising heroes to uphold. When Aizawa shoots his capture tape and snags both of the offending students, however, Kouji winces.
“Stain wasn’t this much of a child,” Todoroki spits, struggling to get free.
Midoriya and Iida suddenly freeze. The dual-haired boy doesn’t register what he said until he’s free from Aizawa, and only then does he flinch.
Interesting, Kouji notes.
All of a sudden, Midoriya snorts like he’s unaware of the whole class’s gaze. Todoroki lifts the corners of his mouth up in an almost smile while Midoriya covers his beat-red face.
Behind his hands, his words come out muffled.
“I mean, you’re not wrong, Todoroki.”
Bakugou snarls and almost leaps over his desk until Aizawa glares at him. Midoriya cowers.
Iida, surprisingly, adds on, chopping away, “He didn’t have as much of a tendency to blow up,” Midoriya snickers, “and be as, dare I say, infantile as Bakugou is on a normal occurrence.”
Midoriya wheezes while Bakugou goes feral. You could almost see the foam dripping from his mouth, Kouji muses.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Kaminari interrupts Bakugou’s efforts to maim Midoriya, “you guys fought Stain?”
“Yeah, bro, I thought the news said Endeavor?” Kirishima tilts his head as he quickly locks his arms around a writhing Bakugou, yet Kouji starts connecting the dots.
After the whole “event”, they all seemed closer, but Kouji had originally written it up to Todoroki passing the Dekusquad initiation or something. Now that he looks at it from a different angle, though, it all makes sense. For one, they all came back with injuries that matched what the Hero Killer would do, if Kouji is remembering the news’ report right.
He looks over at both Todoroki, who is quietly laughing while holding Midoriya up straight as Midoriya struggles to breathe properly, and Iida as he stands as a buffer between the two squads. They definitely passed something.
His thoughts went back to the mom-mode they’re usually in: He really hoped they were okay after an experience like that – Kouji gets a flashback of the not-so-great times he’s lived through. He accidentally pulls some fur out of Yuwai’s back and is quick to apologize.
After all, trauma was no joke.
Well, maybe to the trio, but obviously not to Aizawa.
“I was not made aware of this,” Aizawa growls as he marches forward, ignoring the struggling Bakugou locked inside Kirishima’s arms much to the blonde’s anger.
“Yeah, well neither was the public,” Todoroki hisses.
“Todoroki! Don’t say it like that! You know it was either this or…” Izuku trails off, glancing at the fuming teacher warily.
Aizawa grounds out between his teeth, “Or what, Problem Child?”
“Oh, um,” Midoriya starts.
“It was either let the Hero Endeavor,” Todoroki’s seethes, “take the credit, or we’d break the law.” His aura turns slightly vindictive. “At least he was pissed about it. It was fun seeing him squirm-”
“It was fun having Stain locked up so he wouldn’t be able to hurt or affect anyone else!” Iida hurries to interrupt, much to the shock of everyone. He throws an awkward smile toward the fuming teacher.
“It- he, doesn’t bother us anymore, Sensei.”
Midoriya, looking like he wished that was the truth, clears his throat. Kouji wants to offer the bunny in his lap, but feels like it would be a bad time to do so.
“A-actually, Aizawa, uh, sir. He, kind of, sends me stuff.”
The classroom freezes, figuratively, of course, because Todoroki only grunts mildly; he must’ve known some of what Midoriya was saying. Everyone else stops what they were doing: Jirou quits pulling on her ear jacks, Kirishima loosens his grip on Bakugou, and Kouji stops stress petting – which he didn’t even realize he was doing – Yuwai.
“Midoriya, kid,” Aizawa crouches beside the fidgeting teen, “this is really important. What kind of stuff did he send you?”
Before Mineta can comment, Todoroki literally freezes his mouth shut. Kouji couldn’t be more relieved.
“Well, um, since he rescued me? From the Nomu, uh, he’s been more than a little infatuated? With me?” He shakes his hands in front of the teachers face.
“Uh- not in like a romantic way! No! That would be disgusting! Um, it’s more like he admires me, I guess? He just- after he was put in prison, he said he would only talk if he could see me. I don’t know why, though, uh, because I’ve never had an interest in him. Well! That would be a lie; I wondered why he did what he did, but nothing greater than that…” Midoriya trails off at the look Aizawa gives him.
“E-either way, I realized that, if he didn’t talk, they – the cops – wouldn’t be able to do anything? Even though he has done all this stuff, he could reason against them by saying most of the people he killed were, well, dead, and the heroes that were maimed were either attacked from behind so they didn’t get a good look or, or weren’t really in the best cognitive state, as with Ingenium’s case.”
He quickly apologizes to Iida, to which Iida nods in understanding.
Midoriya looks like he’s about to cave into himself. This is where Kouji finds himself almost standing up to help the green bean out. Poor Midoriya.
It takes a hand on his shoulder from Todoroki for Midoriya to choke out his next words.
“There’s, uh, more. I-I visited him last Thursday.”
The whole class descends into chaos.
Todoroki flinches away but quickly recovers and goes back to comfort his friend. Everyone else? They scream and Kouji’s eardrums feel like they’re going to burst.
He’s not the only one to, sadly. He can see Jirou cover her ears too; well now, doesn’t that just bring up good memories, Kouji thinks to himself as he shrinks into himself.
At least the people closest look apologetic, Kouji reasons.
Aizawa’s eyebrow twitches. “Alone, Midoriya?”
“Oh no, no!” Midoriya reassures, “My mom came with.”
“You idiot, Deku! Why would you risk Auntie’s health like that, you shit stain?!”
“She- she was behind the glass! I only needed her for moral support and because they wouldn’t let a- a high school kid go alone, Kacchan!”
Kouji, not liking the way Midoriya’s big doe eyes were starting to water, stood up and walked to the middle of the mess. Everyone parted.
Eventually, he made his way to Bakugou and forced Yuwai into his arms; Bakugou, not knowing what to do but not wanting to harm the bunny, held her firmly and backed away when Kouji uncharacteristically glared at him.
Once the threat was taken out, Kouji stood beside Aizawa and, on a piece of paper, asked if Midoriya could understand sign language. Since the greenette wanted to get out of the situation as soon as possible, he nodded frantically.
‘What did Stain send you?’
“Oh! Uh! It was nothing, just a letter telling me how much potential I had to be a hero, pretty much.” Aizawa sighs and Midoriya scratches his head before continuing, “It was...different compared to my other fan letters from Kouta and Eri.” He laughs and the class deflates.
Kouji presses on.
‘When you visited him, did he say anything?’
This time, his laugh is less Midoriya-like. “Well, he, uh, kept going on about his ideology? Huh, he um,” Midoriya swallows, “he said he should’ve killed Iida and Native.”
Todoroki, seeing his cue, rubs Midoriya’s back in a comforting manner.
“I-I asked him if he admired me, and when he said yes, I asked i-if he would listen to me .” Aizawa rests his hand on Midoriya’s knee as Kouji asks him what happened next. “He said yeah—” his voice cracks—“and that, if I killed him, he would thank me, which is a mood when it’s not c-centered around you, you know?
“I then basically told him t-that, if so, he would listen to me without i-interrupting. I told him off, pretty much; I kept hammering in the point that people can be a hero, no matter how useless or- or even if they originally didn’t, uh, if they’re pushed in the right direction – Iida could be a hero, especially, since he recognized his faults after seeing what the consequences could be, sorry Iida.” Iida flushes.
”He wouldn’t believe me. So instead I asked him what he would think if All Might told someone quirkless, someone useless, that they couldn’t be a hero.
“He basically responded with a ‘what All Might says, goes.’ I-I then asked him,” Midoriya pauses and looks between Kouji and Aizawa, then glances at Bakugou, “what if said quirkless person was me.”
Luckily, though, Midoriya isn’t quirkless; it was all hypothetical, Kouji thinks to himself while he steps back to let the other breathe, right?
If he got his quirk late, however, that would explain why his quirk kept destroying his body in the beginning. It would also explain his flinching at his childhood bully.
Midoriya barks out a self-deprecating laugh.
“I sure did shock him! I think I made him have a midlife crisis,” Uraraka snorts but covers her mouth. Kouji honestly forgot the rest of the class was there.
She blushes, “What? Imagine Stain – the Hero Killer – crying over a literal child who, guessing by what Todoroki said, yote him into the trash!”
The trio of troublemakers cringe.
“I think I changed his mindset though! Or at least did something because he was quiet for a long time!” Midoriya interrupts, not wanting to lose his train of thought, “I, um, actually, kind of pulled an ‘uno reverse card on your ass’ with the whole quirkless segregation, and he just couldn’t handle it, I guess.” He took a deep breath to steady his apparent nerves.
Kaminari whistles. Aizawa groans. Midoriya smiles cheekily.
‘Are you okay?’
Midoriya blinks before ‘oh’ing, then contemplates his answer.
“Yeah, surprisingly. I wasn’t as stressed as I thought I would be, yelling at a murderer, but it all worked out in the end? Not that I wasn’t shaking in my boots!” Midoriya pouts. “I hope he took my message seriously.”
“Midoriya, he, uh, did.”
“Iida?”
Iida silently goes over to his desk, pulls out a paper, and hands it over to Aizawa with shaky hands. Kouji doesn’t get to read all of it – Aizawa turns so no one can see – but he got a good enough glimpse to piece some together.
Ingenium, you’ll know who this is.
The brat isn’t forcing me to do this, but I don’t want to disappoint him. He made me see the error in my ways.
I guess you really did change if he’s willing to be your friend.
Don’t get corrupted again.
And that’s all Kouji gets before Midoriya gasps and Aizawa crumples up the paper. The teacher then turns expectantly toward Todoroki. Understanding what needed to be done, the bi-haired teen nods and robotically makes his way to his bag.
With some reluctance, he hands the letter to Aizawa.
“I wanted to show you first, Midoriya, so I apologize.”
“Uh, it’s okay Todoroki!”
Kouji startles when he sees how little there is on the note, and he’s especially surprised with how “inviting” Aizawa was with it.
Endeavor’s kid,
You’re alright, according to your little hero. You also came to his rescue, so gotta give you points there.
Don’t let your father destroy you or your legacy, I guess.
Also, get better at tying knots.
This time, the letter is signed.
Kouji internally reels, yet realizing that Midoriya is unintentionally depending on his reactions – and, of course, Aizawa doesn’t exactly know he read both pages – stays stoic.
Kouji thanks the other teen for opening up to them, even though it was in front of the whole class, to which Midoriya just smiles awkwardly at. Aizawa emits an aura that Kouji doesn’t want to deal with, so he gently takes the now-damp Yuwai from Bakugou’s arms and speeds back to his seat.
How embarrassing it would’ve been if he lost his cool in front of all his classmates, Kouji sighs, and while Satou gives him some napkins to try and pat some of the sweat off before Yuwai combusted, Aizawa guides Midoriya, Todoroki, and Iida out into the hallway.
Kouji almost snorts when Aizawa remarks that he needs another coffee.
He could find out what fully happened later from his friends lingering in the hallway – Kouji’s surprised the idea of talking to insects ever grew on him.
Right now, with his classmates roughhousing around, his bunny being taken care of, and newly found inspiration, he had a letter to write.