Chapter Text
~~~
Aizawa Shouta first learned of Shinsou Hitoshi the day an unknown kid from the general studies course snatched a spot in the sports festival semifinals from half the hero course and the entire UA hero faculty collectively put their heads up and thought what the fuck.
It might be an overstatement to claim that Aizawa sensei of the hero course took an immediate interest in the mysterious boy who nearly walked one of his top students calmly out of the arena without contest, but the underground hero Eraserhead definitely took notice. Of course someone with a powerful but difficult quirk recognised the strategy that had once been in his own backup plans fifteen years ago, when he didn’t know if he would make it into the hero course himself and also applied for general studies. The examinations were more thorough then, and the development of quirks was a generation behind where it is now, so schools could afford to find out far more about their hero course applicants than how many points they scored in a computer-controlled exercise.
The day immediately after the sports festival Shinsou made his debut had Aizawa tied up in his own class’s affairs, but the morning right after that he was waiting for Shinsou at the gates. Perhaps he was a little more interested than he wanted to admit at such an early stage.
“Ah, hello…” Shinsou said with reservation written all over his tired face, recognising Aizawa with a teenager’s wary grace. He knew what Aizawa was here in response to, but not exactly why, so there was reason enough for the nervousness in his gut as Shinsou approached the most meaningful man he’d ever have the privilege to know, or dare, in time, to love.
“That was really something you pulled off,” Aizawa opened with something vaguely complimentary, hoping to set the teenager a little more at ease. To signal that he was not in trouble for dreaming from general studies about a transfer, and a homeroom teacher of the hero course would naturally want to find out more about him after the stunt he pulled, trying to win the whole damn sports festival and holding them hostage to swap him immediately into the hero course.
It was daring, can’t deny that.
“Well, it didn’t go exactly like I planned,” Shinsou replied with a dry hint of teenage angst, still beating himself up for not snatching the top spot. Aizawa didn’t doubt that Shinsou might have pulled it off, that once, and only once probably. At least this way the boy would start out by recovering from a setback, and that was a subject on which Eraserhead had plenty to teach.
“Is anyone training you?” was therefore Aizawa’s next question, intensely aware of the private tutors and working or retired heroes who trained their children to get into schools like UA, entertaining the possibility that Shinsou didn’t get as far as he did entirely on his own effort. But if he did…
“Uh, that’s what I applied to the hero course for,” Shinsou answered like it should be obvious, finishing with a jaded, “not that that plan worked out either, since my quirk doesn’t work on robots, and if I’d used it on anyone in the entrance exam they’d have automatically failed.”
That part made Aizawa’s heart hurt, realising that the reason Shinsou flunked the exam was not wanting to take someone else’s chance. Something he didn’t appear to have reservations about now, based on what he said at the sports festival, recorded footage that Aizawa had watched back a few times already.
Aizawa would wonder what changed, but it was a logic he recognised himself, so he didn’t feel the need to ask. Those on the hero course had already had their chance, so if they didn’t make the most of it then it was fair game for someone to snatch their spot from under them. It was exactly how he would’ve felt in Shinsou’s shoes.
“There’s more you could have done, with or without your quirk,” Aizawa dared to point out, because this was a lesson he’d taught his class within their first week, so Shinsou better catch up. “If you rely on it too much you’ll just be a one-trick pony, and vulnerable to anyone it doesn’t work on. You need more things up your sleeve.” Needing to, for whatever reason he didn’t need to ask about the other thing, he gave the justification, “I would know.”
Acknowledged, in words, for the first time, that he saw any similarity between himself and Shinsou. First, and not last.
“I don’t have the money for training, or fancy support gear or extra tuition,” Shinsou told Aizawa bluntly, his eyes dwelling like a heavy dew on the ring of capture weapon slung around Aizawa’s neck.
It was only a short walk they shared that first time from the school gates to Shinsou’s classroom that fateful morning, pacing quietly side by side along the corridors. Minutes that felt long in the living and short in the remembrance.
“My parents can only just afford to send me here at all," he explained, "even if I didn’t make it into the hero course.” Thankfully that wasn’t part of the deal, but that didn’t mean Shinsou’s parents weren’t also bitterly disappointed, far away in the tiny village he’d been born in to dream one day of being a hero in the big city.
His parents put on a brave face, but Shinsou knew they shared his dream, and felt for his frustration at being knocked back. But Shinsou would prove he was determined to make it onto the hero course any way he could, and one now happened to be right in front of him.
“It’s not out of the question,” Aizawa offered far too freely just before they reached Shinsou’s classroom, later chiding himself for getting the boy’s hopes up so early in the game..
“What isn’t?” Even now, Shinsou was still cautious, each step out on the ice carefully tested before he dared to put any real weight on it.
“A transfer, though not right away,” Aizawa promised Shinsou quietly, stalling for a final few moments before the general studies student went to do general study. “But in the meantime, if you wanted to–”
“Yes,” Shinsou cut him off.
“I didn’t say what,” Aizawa replied, charmed by how eager Shinsou was, drawn to him so quickly. Saw him as someone who could help, in more ways than the boy could have ever known how, not then.
“I don’t care,” Shinsou said too earnestly not to be endearing. “Anything. I’ll do anything.”
A tidal shift happened in the deep sea floor of Aizawa’s mind, unnoticed on the surface, beyond an impulsive worry for the way such words could be misconstrued if overheard.
Rather than tell Shinsou exactly what to expect, Aizawa just let a spark in his eyes and certain tone do the talking. “Alright, after classes end for the day, meet me outside the training arena.”
That did say more than enough, Aizawa supposed, because Shinsou’s response was a more chipper, “Really?”
“Nothing official, not yet,” He tried to warn, without totally killing the thing that just made this kid’s fucking day, year, and even the rest of his life. “Just getting to know you better. What you’re capable of.”
“A lot, I swear,” Shinsou all but gushed, and currents were strong in the river of Aizawa’s soul, the feeling of finding something in Shinsou that he didn’t feel just any day. “You’ll see.”
Shinsou, true to his word, would show Aizawa exactly what he was made of, and more.
~~~
Hitoshi could not tell you exactly what it was about Aizawa sensei that made him so damn nervous from the get-go, like he was about to die or run for the hills screaming at any second, but suffice to say it didn’t really ever go away. The more time he spent around Aizawa, the more that lightness in his gut became something Hitoshi just accepted and lived with, the permanent thrill of having someone like Eraserhead pay him any attention at all.
To save face Hitoshi resisted letting it show on the surface, but he definitely felt it in every fibre of his being. That this was a big fucking deal. The first time Aizawa talked to Hitoshi outside the school gates he could hardly believe it, convincing himself he was just stunned, and the second time he blamed his butterflies on the fact that they were alone so of course he was going to be more nervous.
Anyone would be on edge to spend time alone with an infamously tough teacher of the hero course, Hitoshi rationalised, especially when they couldn’t do more than a few push ups in the gruelling physical exercises he was asked to do that first time they met for training after school. One after the other Aizawa sensei tested Hitoshi’s limits until breaking, watching with that dead steely expression that made it impossible that Hitoshi should ever feel calm, not for a second, like a rabbit in a hawk’s eye. Unlike the rabbit, Hitoshi was ready to be snatched from the ground and carried up to heights he’d never known, at any cost.
Not winning the sports festival and getting into the hero course was still not Hitoshi’s first choice, but catching the eye of the one and only Eraserhead was a decent runner-up prize. He might even have decided he preferred it that way, in time.
After wearing Hitoshi out with physical exercises and not the merest mention of his quirk, Aizawa’s final prognosis was, “You’ve got some catching up to do, but it’s not completely hopeless.”
Hitoshi bit back a frown, less out of respect for what he could hope was his new private tutor, and more to deny Aizawa any opportunity to see just how much power he had to disappoint him already. When just being around the man, in the flesh, was enough to leave Hitoshi in a permanent state of excitement, he fought the urge to react too strongly to anything, not if he could help it. Especially not to fanboy over Eraserhead singling him out like this and saying he had potential, a jackpot he hadn’t even known was an option.
In the absence of sincerity, Hitoshi opted for sarcasm.
“Gee, thanks a lot.” Hitoshi did mean it, but didn’t want to sound so much like he meant it. Then he sought confirmation from Aizawa’s own mouth, needed to hear the words out loud to be able to believe them, “So you’ll do it? You’ll train me?”
Hitoshi could try, but he didn’t always manage to keep the fanboy at bay. He certainly couldn’t help the grin lighting up his face when Aizawa told him simply, “Yeah, alright.”
Hitoshi would take anything Aizawa was willing to give.
~~~
It was never Shouta's intention to take on a personal student. But after he met Shinsou, only intending to do an initial assessment on that first day, something to take back to the other hero course teachers and discuss, he couldn't imagine anyone else training the boy. And that was before Shinsou outright asked him if he’d do it with stars twinkling in his deep violet eyes. How could Shouta deny him then?
The thought of anyone else teaching Shinsou even being a possibility faded from Shouta's mind as quickly as Shinsou became a part of it, entwined in Shouta’s waking thoughts even when his focus was meant to be elsewhere. Circling around how powerful a quirk like Shinsou’s could be, but how much more difficult and dangerous it made his path without any physical benefits of said quirk. It made Shouta remember the hard work he had needed to put himself through in his years at UA that were about to be Shinsou’s, just to be able to keep up against his classmates.
If Shouta could have gone back in time and given himself all the advice he’d wished he’d had, it was everything he offered to Shinsou. Advice that Shinsou took and absorbed immediately into his very being. They didn't just click, they felt like pieces of the same machine.
It was strangely hard for Shouta to put his finger on the reasons why it had to be Shinsou, this one specific student this one specific time, in years of hundreds of students that Shouta had passed by without ever feeling like this. Felt so strongly that this one was special to him, both to Aizawa Shouta, and to the hero Eraserhead.
He couldn't say whether it was seeing a reflection of his younger self, or comparisons with lost figures from Shouta’s past. His friends and colleagues didn’t shy away from speculation, so there were plenty of theories as to why. Whatever the truth was, it became a slow inevitability that he had taken Shinsou Hitoshi under his wing.
The meetings Shouta had with his boss about this development were inevitable, brief as the initial one was. A thirty-second chat in which Nezu clarified that Shouta could make use of school facilities as any faculty member was entitled to, but that any training that he provided to one Shinsou Hitoshi was obviously in his capacity as an independent hero and not a teacher, making him alone responsible for whatever happened in that time as far as the school was concerned.
Shouta agreed without hesitation, already aware that the way he was around Shinsou, even at this early stage, did not match his behaviour as a teacher with his students on the hero course. Maybe it was some form of protest to the fact that Shinsou wasn’t admitted to the hero course by recommendation and therefore wasn’t officially Shouta’s student. Or that no one had been there for him to make a recommendation, or to insist on an appropriate assessment for a quirk of his nature, like Shouta would have done if he'd known Shinsou at that time.
By that first talk with Nezu, Shouta had only trained Shinsou a handful of times, most of it basic physical fitness exercises, alongside some initial discussion of strategies for using his quirk, but it was all conducted in a far more casual manner than Shouta spoke to any child in 1-A. They were one on one, for starters, which shifted things, and not being held to a lesson plan or curriculum meant Shouta was far more natural, more himself around Shinsou, as a result.
He became informal very quickly, even swearing, not at the boy, but sly curse words would hop from his mouth too freely, as if he were with someone he knew very well, and not a fifteen year old boy he’d only just met. Not that Shinsou minded, relishing as any teenager might the thrill of swearing around an adult who would otherwise chastise him for it, as a teacher was supposed to do.
Of the many things a teacher was supposed to do, Shouta likely did more that he was not when it came to Shinsou Hitoshi. He played favourites, big time, easily getting to the stage of giving Shinsou money to buy better training gear, or new trainers to replace his old beat up ones, or funding the development and materials for a costume he could wear as their training progressed and Shinsou started accompanying him out on patrols. Then Shinsou got his hands on Eraserhead’s capture weapon, not exactly cheap technology, and Shouta footed the cost for his student’s first spool of it without a thought.
He had warned Shinsou about the capture weapon, made it totally clear that he didn’t have to try and learn it, not least because of how difficult it was to use, with a brutally harsh early learning curve and not much better middle and late learning curve. But of course, Shinsou insisted he wanted to, quickly and magnetically compelled to copy Eraserhead in as many ways as he could.
That was something a teacher at school was not supposed to do either, put his personal imprint on a student so strongly. Before, Shouta had never considered having a protégé, but after Shinsou it was almost all he ever thought about, in the little time he had to think for himself instead of juggling a rotation of ever-greater disasters that was the rest of his students and the chaos that unfolded that year.
This was something they both wanted, so Shouta would tell anyone, including himself, repeatedly. Perhaps that didn’t make it better, but it did make it consensual. Yes, he was moulding Shinsou into a hero bearing far more similarity to Eraserhead than he’d ever encouraged anyone else, but Shinsou wanted to be moulded. Yearned for it, even, pushed himself so eagerly into the space Shouta made in his desperation to prove he was worthy to fill it, which of course he was.
Shouta told himself that made it okay.
~~~
Hitoshi’s crush on his teacher didn’t begin so much as manifest from what was already there, in as much as he had already accepted his complete lack of control over his emotions concerning Aizawa pretty much all of the time. In all Hitoshi’s fifteen years, he’d never had that kind of gushing hero worship over anyone, never a personal idol, before then. But he just couldn’t help it. The more he got to see of the world and work of the underground hero Eraserhead, the world that happened away from his day-job as a teacher at UA, the more Hitoshi fell in love with it.
He was still a little bit starstruck around Eraserhead most of the time, that always-there feeling of anticipation, and effervescence over being centre of his attention, ever, much less for hours on end. Being personally taken on by a legendary underground hero was the stuff that dreams were made of, and Aizawa even seemed to want Hitoshi to become his true disciple. Hitoshi wanted that more than he’d wanted anything. Aizawa was training Hitoshi not just how to be any kind of hero, but exactly the kind that Eraserhead was. Maybe even worthy of being his successor, one day.
Among that fertile ground it wasn’t hard for a crush to take seed, borne from thirst for the favour of any kind of out-of-hours teacher. It felt out of school hours too, the late evenings, the casual swearing, even staying up past Hitoshi’s curfew, sometimes, when Aizawa sensei got sidetracked in whatever training he was giving that night, and always seemed a little disappointed that as a teacher he was obliged to uphold the rules and send Hitoshi back to the dorms. Even the beer that Aizawa would drink sometimes in Hitoshi’s company, when they were getting something to eat off-campus late in the evening. If Hitoshi wasn’t wearing his uniform no one could've known he was a student just by looking, and he liked those secret moments, treasured them because no one else on the hero course got to have them with Aizawa, and he did.
Back at the dorms when they were apart, Hitoshi practiced whatever he’d been taught that day, tried to master it as fast as he could to keep proving to Aizawa he was worth it. He became obsessed with learning the capture weapon, humiliated himself time and again getting tangled up in it and needing rescuing under Aizawa’s watchful eye. But he wouldn’t learn fast without taking big swings, and Aizawa always complemented Hitoshi on the scale of his swing, whether he succeeded or failed. Hitoshi would tingle all over with any merest hint of praise, so he did whatever he could to keep on getting it.
In all the parts of his teacher that Hitoshi slowly got to know, romance was an unknown, forbidden side of Aizawa. For a man that it wouldn’t be untrue to say Hitoshi hero worshipped, this mystery attracted an inevitable, hungry curiosity over time. It began with innocent, impressionable thoughts about the kind of girls Aizawa liked, followed by overly specific imaginings in which to consider Aizawa behaving romantically.
Hitoshi spent too, too much time having horny teenager thoughts about his sensei having sex before he noticed that he was focused entirely on how Aizawa would be instead of the fictional other in the equation. Around the same time, some noticeably genderless remark of Aizawa’s in one of their casual back and forths made Hitoshi think that it was technically possible Aizawa didn’t even like girls. Or not just girls, or women really, since Hitoshi knew his teacher was an adult, if not exactly how old.
Aizawa didn’t seem very old around Hitoshi a lot of the time, not as old as he should be, or something like that. He was too friendly, behaving more like an older friend having fun with him than an adult supposed to be breaking it up. That part often went to the other teachers, who Hitoshi got used to coming to find Aizawa whenever they had found some time to snatch together before he was needed elsewhere.
Hitoshi never stopped being bitter about the structured course of learning that everyone on the hero course got while he just fell further and further behind, but feeling like he had Aizawa sensei giving him a back alley shortcut to being a hero just like Eraserhead did take the sting out of it a little.
Simply put, Hitoshi adored Aizawa, and was delighted to believe that his mentor liked him too, felt any fraction of the affection Hitoshi had for him. To say then that Aizawa played a big role in Hitoshi realising that he too might also like something other than girls would probably be an understatement. The thoughts and impulses might not have all been joined up at the time, but once the constellation had formed, it seemed to be a self evident truth that Hitoshi’s passionate crush on his male teacher was a good indicator he might be gay.
Hitoshi wasn’t naive, and knew that Aizawa would never feel anything like that for him in return, or couldn’t, because he was a teacher, and so much older than Hitoshi. He could even be straight, but more than all of that, he was a moral man, who would never do anything that was illegal due to Hitoshi’s age or their relationship as a teacher and student. Not that it stopped Hitoshi from starting to imagine what it would be like if he did.
It made his heart race to think of Aizawa leaning over and kissing him unprompted, but far from unwanted. Like anything exciting, Hitoshi was drawn to it, a moth bashing into the only light in a room. Believing it could never happen made the fantasy safer somehow, easier to imagine wildly and know that it was all impossible anyway.
The fantasies weren't when they were actually together, since being trained by Aizawa took every last inch of Hitoshi’s focus and devotion to hanging on his sensei’s every word, completely absorbed in the moment. But afterwards, at night, usually, Hitoshi would make up alternate scenarios. If instead of missing a jump and falling flat on his face, it wasn't Aizawa’s capture weapon that came to his rescue, which he used as an always-on safety net for Hitoshi, and his sensei had decided to catch Hitoshi in his arms instead. Had looked him in the eyes, the way he already did, but this time, leaned in and pressed his mouth to Hitoshi’s, in the parallel world where things he wanted all happened without consequence just like magic.
Aizawa had lifted Hitoshi’s weight so many times by then, such that Hitoshi knew exactly how insignificant he was physically in contrast to Aizawa’s strength, but it was never to hold him with the kind of affection reserved only for romance. It made Hitoshi yearn for it, for everything he couldn’t have.
In this way, it became inescapable that if Hitoshi was fantasising about Aizawa acting in any kind of romantic way, it wasn’t going to be with anyone else. There wasn’t any way in which Hitoshi didn’t want to be first and foremost in Aizawa’s affections, and this was no exception.
In nearly no time at all, he would be.
~~~