Chapter Text
Tousha Chiyoji was not made for complex emotional decisions.
She was a coward. A no good, weak-willed, coward. Why else would she have literally ran away from Aizawa? And for what? Sleeping peacefully on his couch with him after a long night of grading papers? And now look at her.
Now she was hiding. Cowering in her apartment like a little fool, her phone shoved beneath a stack of paper reams so that she couldn’t hear the message tone. Which, if she had thought about it for longer than a knee-jerk reaction, would have required Aizawa to have had working fingers with which to text or start a call.
The same non-working fingers that were no longer working solely because Aizawa had protected her nephew and his peers from some kind of crazed villain.
She was going to have to go back.
It was late the next afternoon when Chiyoji managed to summon up the courage to return to his apartment complex. She had his spare key in one hand and a fancy paper shopping bag filled to the brim in her other. Chiyoji was quite capable of recognizing when she had made a mistake, contrary to popular belief. Surprise of all surprises, she was even capable of making an actual apology.
And she did need to. Apologize, that was.
Here she had gone through all the effort of promising to be his hands and his fake girlfriend, then she’d fled into the night at the first hiccup. Truly, she was a coward at her core. But now? Chiyoji needed to suck it up and make amends.
She let herself in with the key, toed off her shoes at the entrance, and called out to the quiet apartment. “Aizawa? Are you awake? I brought lunch.” A peace offering in the form of pre-made bento boxes from the local convenience store.
His apartment was silent.
“Maybe he’s still sleeping?” Sure, it was a Tuesday afternoon, but he had just gotten out of Recovery Girl’s care not even twenty four hours before. It was entirely possible that he had gone to bed in order to recover from his injuries. It would even, dare she think it, make sense. His injuries were severe enough that he should be spending his time resting.
Unless he’s managed to fall down and couldn’t get back up again, splitting his stitches and bleeding to death in his bed. Oh, Buddha and saints preserve, what if her abandoning him accidentally killed him? Chiyoji could only imagine terrible scenarios that all ended in giant piles of paperwork that needed even more paperwork to get through the loss to the overall efficient paperwork skills of Japan.
She burst her way into Aizawa’s bedroom with her pocket knife in hand and her nails extended in the other, having left the keys and bag on Aizawa’s kitchen counter. Then she froze, transfixed at the unexpected sight before her. “Oh. You’re fine,” she squeaked and stammered. “I mean. You’re all right. Fine physically. Not that you’re not attractive. Because you are. But you’re okay? No— oh god, please kill me now.” She finished off in a sad whisper as she flipped her knife shut so she could bury her face in her palms in shame, turning her back on Aizawa to give him privacy. “I’ll just—leave you to it.”
He stood there, absolutely frozen except for his growing Cheshire smile, completely shirtless and in the process of changing into his hero uniform. “You might as well come help with the zipper, Tousha. I expected you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, honestly.” He was so matter of fact, so indifferent about everything, that Chiyoji couldn’t take it any more.
“Nope, I’m not equipped for this,” she said faintly, her voice tinny in her ears as he nose began to bleed.
Down she went.
“Damn. Too far? Guess I gotta go much slower.”
Chiyoji woke to the familiar sight of Aizawa’s living room ceiling. Funny how it was beginning to look familiar after so few times she’d seen it. But, oh, she had a whole new memory that she would never be able to print and add to her desk shrine. “He’s got a six pack,” she muttered.
Eraserhead did perfect paperwork and was absolutely shredded.
She could picture it perfectly in her mind’s eye and it was enough to make her head spin. The warm trickle in her nose was stoppered up by something, so she didn’t have to worry on that front. But the thought still persisted.
Eraserhead, no— Aizawa Shouta, was attractive. For ages, she’d been ogling this man based solely on his ability to file correctly in triplicate, to the point that she had a desk drawer dedicated to his existence. And never, absolutely ever, had she thought of him as more than a platonic ideal of paperwork efficiency and accuracy. Now that the sight of a shirtless, physically fit, and still wounded from saving Katsuki was in her mind? She’d never be able to stop thinking of him as a man who just also happened to be her personal minor paperwork deity.
Chiyoji pulled the couch pillow from beneath her head to over her face and almost began to press down to muffle her screams.
“None of that, Squeaky,” came the swift reprimand from somewhere beside her. “I still need you to drive me back to UA. You did bring your moped, right?”
Reasonable, efficient, and unwilling to compromise on the facts. Chiyoji was experiencing all new facets of Aizawa and she couldn’t even say she wasn’t enjoying it. She gulped, forced to breathe through her mouth by the wads of tissue paper shoved up her nostrils, and nodded. No, she didn’t trust herself to speak past the new sense of awe that filled her.
“Good. Come have lunch with me and then you can be my hands properly.”
The less said about how Chiyoji had gotten Aizawa to UA, the better. She didn’t even know he could use his capture weapon like that or so efficiently.
Class 1-A wasn’t expecting their teacher to show up with the woman who terrified Endeavor and Bakugo with the threat of paperwork. To be honest, they weren’t expecting to see their teacher at all. And yet, here he was, standing in front of them with Bakugo’s aunt standing beside him. She held a stack of papers that couldn’t possibly have been graded by someone without functioning arms that quickly without some kind of assistance.
Their teacher had somehow managed to tame Bakugo’s aunt and now he had her as his personal assistant.
“Listen up, brats. This is my girlfriend, Tousha Chiyoji, and she’s agreed to help out. Don’t bother her and make this any more awkward than it needs to be.”
As one, the class turned to look between a grinning and mummified Aizawa to a mortified Bakuo to a checked out Tousha and then back again. “Eh?” They exploded as one with all the energy one could expect from a group of young teenagers faced with questions they didn’t know the answers to. How was she his girlfriend? What was she helping with? Why was their teacher back like nothing had happened?
They’d get the answers to precisely none of their questions.
“Now, let’s talk about the UA sports festival.”