Work Text:
The teachers’ lounge was, for once, peaceful. Midterms had ended and there were no frantic students asking for help, or frantic teachers writing last-minute exam questions. Grades had been finalized, and the room was filled with the soft scratching of a few remaining teachers filling out overdue paperwork.
Shouta, of course, didn’t have any overdue paperwork. He turned all his paperwork in on time, and was now working on lesson plans for the coming weeks, adjusting the work to accommodate all the improvements he saw as necessary to the students. All Might, who was still filling out sheet after sheet of feedback after watching all the first years’ practical exams, was a different matter entirely. Those feedback sheets were due over a week ago. What had he been doing? Talking to Midoriya, probably. Maybe Bakugou as well, seeing as he had somehow joined their little trysts shortly after the kids had moved into the dorms.
Present Mic, who contrary to popular belief was capable of working quietly, sat in his corner of the lounge poring over Power Loader’s suggestions for improvements on both Jirou and Koda’s hero costumes. The Voice hero had been thrilled when the support expert had asked for his input on the new designs.
Shouta had gone over Shinsou’s voice modulator himself. It needed to be compatible with the capture weapon, and he was an expert on that, at least.
In the long beam of sunshine coming through the window lay Eri, surrounded by half-colored pieces of paper and a veritable mound of crayons. She muttered to herself under her breath. A quick stretch revealed to Shouta a picture of Eri next to Midoriya and Mirio. She seemed to be attempting to add All Might behind Midoriya, but was having trouble deciding between his hero and skeletal forms.
He watched her mumble over the drawing for a bit, a habit she’d apparently picked up from the resident problem child, before she stood up abruptly, taking several drawings with her.
He put down his pen as she approached, seeing in her expression that she had something more important than All Might’s design to talk about.
“Aizawa-san,” she started, then stopped and stared down at the drawings. One of them, he saw with some concern, seemed to be of Chisaki, the large plague mask over his face looking almost comical in the childish drawing.
“Did you need something?” he asked, a little softer than he usually allowed himself to be with the students. Eri was not a hero in training, and she wasn’t ignorant of the darker parts of the world. No need to play his usual mind games.
“Overhaul said he was my dad when I met Deku” she settled on saying.
“He did say that,” Shouta agreed hesitantly, unsure where she was going with this.
“But he’s not my dad,” she seemed to conclude.
“No, he isn’t.”
Eri stared intensely down at the picture with All Might half-drawn behind Midoriya.
“Yagi-san isn’t Deku’s dad, either,” she stated confidently.
Yamada, the traitor, let out a single muffled snort and mumbled something under his breath. Shouta sent him a glare.
“That’s right,” he said.
“But Deku says that he thinks about Yagi-san like his dad sometimes because he doesn’t really know his actual dad.”
Yagi definitely coughed up some blood at that, right onto his nearly finalized feedback papers, unfortunately. Shouta sent him a blank look that could either be consoling him for the lost work or judging him for having the work remaining in the first place. He preferred to keep things ambiguous that way.
“I don’t know my dad,” Eri continues, “so does that mean Overhaul has to be my dad?”
Ah, so that was what this was about. Shouta had worried quite a bit about the effect of Eri’s years as Chisaki’s lab rat, but he hadn’t quite considered that she might feel connected in such a way to the man who had been her personal tormentor. The child therapist she’d been seeing had done wonders for her opinions about her quirk, but they hadn’t quite tackled the topic of Chisaki yet. Had she felt this way the whole time?
He rested a hand on her head, the way he had seen first Midoriya and then Mirio do when they wanted to make her feel safe.
“Overhaul does not have to be your dad,” he assured her. “A dad is someone who protects you and takes care of you. Deku thinks of Yagi-san as his dad because Yagi-san cares for him, and because Deku chose to think of him that way.”
He should bring this up with her therapist. It was the first time she’d brought Chisaki up independently.
Eri broke out into an enormous smile, and his heart jerked uncomfortably. Midoriya probably would have started crying. Mirio certainly did when she smiled at the culture festival.
“So I get to choose my own dad?” she asked with wonder.
That didn’t seem quite right, but Shouta nodded at her anyway. A small misconception couldn’t hurt. That seemed the natural end to the conversation, so he turned away with a final ruffle of her hair and picked up his pen again. Should he have Kaminari work on his quirk stamina in the coming months, or on his precision?
Eri threw herself at him, pulling herself partway onto his lap and grinning up at him with unrestrained joy. “I’m gonna choose you to be my dad, then!”
All background noise of scratching pens and quiet mumbling ceased instantly, and Shouta felt many pairs of eyes focus on him. His own heart skipped a beat, and for a moment he was at an absolute loss for words. He stared down at the girl who was now perched on his knees, small enough to curl up between his arms without obstructing his view of the desk in front of him. Her smile faded slightly as his silence continued, and he had a moment of straight-faced panic.
“That’s alright, then,” he finally managed to say, which was entirely inadequate and really didn’t communicate what he was feeling at all and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out how he hadn’t considered that this may have been the outcome she had been hoping for.
Eri’s smile returned full force, though, seemingly satisfied with his answer. She turned her head to the side, noticing someone in the corner of her eye.
“Hi Bakugou!” she shouted, shuffling off Shouta’s lap and running to the explosive teen. Despite his antics and her general distrust of strangers, she had never been afraid of him. Perhaps her time with the Yakuza had trained her to recognize an empty threat.
“Hey,” he said simply. “Some of the idiots made apple pie. Figured you’d want some.”
Eri squealed in excitement, running off ahead of him down the hall.
Shouta, who had been staring at the doorway having seemingly lost the ability to form thoughts, raised his eyes to make eye contact with Bakugou.
The teen was grinning at him, expression absolutely vicious with how smug it was.
“Hey Eri,” he called down the hall without breaking eye contact with his teacher. “When we get to the dorms, let’s tell everyone about your new dad.”
And with that, he shut to the door to the lounge, leaving absolute silence in his wake.
The silence lasted approximately five seconds, before Yamada let out an ear-splitting cackle. The rest of the staff soon joined him, even All Might smothering a chuckle under a skeletal hand.
“Do you want me to get you some adoption papers?” Nemuri asked through tears, gasping for breath as she fought the laughter.
Shouta glared at her with as much venom as he could dredge up, which wasn’t much. He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk with a bit more force than necessary and pulled out a thin folder, slapping it on the desk with a bit of petulance.
“I already have them,” he said briefly, sending the room into another round of hysterics.
He left them to their laughter, hiding a smile in his capture weapon. He had some paperwork that was overdue.