Chapter Text
“Eraser!” The loud, cheerful call rings out across the staff room.
Shōta feels the dried-out spiritual edamame pod that passes for his soul shrivel up at the corners just a bit more.
“Joke,” Shōta slumps further down in his chair. “Why are you here?”
“Had to see a rat about a broccoli,” Joke answers, nonsensical as always, as she sprawls her upper body across the top of Shōta’s desk and props her chin on her folded hands. “But you know what you can do for me?”
“Die?” Shōta asks hopefully, attention deliberately on his computer instead of the jester-core irritant currently invading his personal space.
“Ha!” Joke crows, moving to slap one hand on the desktop. “You’ve got the best jokes, Eraser and I need them in my family line.”
Shōta doesn’t bother to bite back his groan because he knows exactly where this is headed.
“You should totally marry my baby boy!” Joke proclaims.
Wait.
“What?” Shōta is acutely aware that he’s not the only one who is confused. The rest of the staff room is staring at them now too.
“You should marry my Izu-chan,” Joke continues, obviously warming to the subject as she straightens up with a face-splitting grin. “Just think, you can be my son-in-law!”
“Absolutely not,” Shōta resists the urge to gag at the very idea.
“Don’t be like that,” Joke reaches out to bat at the air in front of Shōta’s face. “My sweet Izu-chan is the best! You two would make the perfect couple.”
He resists the urge to snap his teeth at her fingers only by the fact that he’s spent years refusing to have any part of Joke in his mouth and he’s not about to ruin that streak now.
“One, your bloodline is cursed,” Shōta replies. “Two, I neither want nor need a child bride.”
“Don’t be afraid of the age gap, Eraser,” Joke shoots back. “That just means he’ll keep you on your toes.”
Shōta goes to snip back at her but Joke pauses, attention obviously diverted as one hand goes to her hip pouch to pull out her phone. She swipes at the screen for a moment and then grins.
“I’ve got to run but I’ll be back,” Joke says as she repockets her phone and abruptly spins on her heel to head toward the door. “Stay funny, Eraser! And think about what I said. I’ve decided you and my Izu-chan are destined to be!”
Joke hits the staff room doorway at a jog and then, with one last wild wave to the room at large, is gone as abruptly as she’d arrived.
“What just happened?” Hizashi asks the obvious question.
“No idea,” Shōta reaches up to rub at his aching eyes, “but I need it to never happen again.”
~~~
Which means, of course, that it absolutely happens again.
~~~
“Eraser!” Joke’s less than dulcet tones ring out through the staff room.
“Kill me,” Shōta, mug in hand and busy staring at the entirely too slow coffee maker, turns toward the person closest to him.
“Would love to,” Vlad answers, oversized fangs glinting in the too-bright light like the attention-seeking and poorly bred pug he so obviously is.
“You couldn’t kill me even if I let you,” Shōta says automatically.
Which doesn’t make it any less true.
“Fuck you,” Vlad snips back.
“Not even with one of Nemuri’s dicks,” Shōta reaches out, grabs the finally full coffee pot off of the burner, and turns to head back to his desk.
Shōta is sure that Vlad, left standing behind him with a matching empty skull and cup, does something suitably dramatic and asinine but he can’t be bothered to turn around to check.
Joke is, of course, once more perched on the edge of his desk, this time out of costume and instead wearing an eye-searing tie-dyed dress with a massive canvas tote bag resting on the floor by her feet.
“You given any more thought to marrying my Izu-chan?” Joke doesn’t even give Shōta the courtesy of allowing him to sit down before she starts.
“I trauma block everything you say to me as soon as you leave my line of sight,” Shōta slumps down into his desk chair, sitting the coffee pot on the hand-sized Nedzu-themed coaster that keeps reappearing on his desk no matter how many times he throws it away.
Joke barks out another loud laugh.
“You kill me Eraser,” Joke grins, sandaled feet thumping against the side of his desk.
“Not fast enough apparently,” Shōta mutters as he rummages through his desk drawer for the bottle of coffee concentrate he keeps there.
He hears Hizashi’s familiar noise of disgust when he upends half of the bottle into the coffee pot and then picks the pot up to swirl it around before finally pouring himself a cup.
He can bitch at Shōta about his caffeine intake when he stops chugging those shitty energy drinks he likes so much.
“Come on,” Joke whines just a bit. “Just give in already! My Izu-chan brings a lot to the table, you know? He’s all smart and sweet! You’ll love him.”
“Doubtful,” Shōta mutters against the rim of his already half-empty mug.
“Hell, he’s even a good artist,” Joke keeps going. “He drew a picture of me the other day that was so good it practically knocked my socks off.”
Shōta has a sudden mental image of a stick figure with a clown nose and little jagged noise lines surrounding it.
“I’m sure the likeness was stunning,” Shōta says.
“It was!” Joke agrees happily. “I hung it right on the fridge!”
“Alright Em,” Nemuri abruptly chimes in as she slides her way into the conversation and onto the edge of Hizashi’s desk. “I’m going to ask the question we all want the answer to.”
“I don’t actually care,” Shōta feels the need to clarify.
“Hit me, Nem!” Joke agrees happily.
“Car or van?” Shōta asks, leaning to the side to dodge the paper ball Nemuri scoops up from Hizashi’s pile and lobs at him.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Nemuri plows on, “I’m all for finding Shōta someone to cure him of his blossoming cat-lady ways, but since when do you have a kid?”
“Hm,” Joke brings a hand up to cup her chin in a thinking pose. “Let’s see, it must have been around six or seven months ago that I found my Izu-chan?”
“Found him?” Nemuri asks.
“Yup!” Joke shoots Nemuri a thumbs up. “I was out and about when I came across him being bullied by some assholes so I stepped in. Took one look at Izu-chan and just knew we were meant to stick together ya know? He even knew who I was before I said anything and I wasn’t even in costume. He asked for an autograph and everything.”
Which, Shōta begrudgingly admits, is actually kind of impressive.
Joke, much like Nemuri, is a twilight hero with an established and decently popular gimmick and brand, but for a kid to recognize her on sight while out of costume?
It’s a lot rarer than most people realize.
Shōta can’t count the number of times he’s been dragged around by the compound error he calls his social circle only to pass by people wearing merch with one of the idiot’s faces on it who don’t even blink in their direction.
“He sounds smart,” Nemuri says.
“I told you he’s a little genius,” Joke’s grin is shockingly sweet and proud. “He turns all red and squirmy when you tell him that but it’s true.”
“Aw,” Nemuri coos just a bit. “You really love him huh?”
“He’s one of the best things to ever happen to me,” Joke replies instantly and with surprising seriousness. “Always thought I was happy before, but meeting him just changed things. Made stuff fall together just right.”
Shōta might be allergic to roughly ninety percent of everything that makes Joke up as a person but even he has to admit that the warm contentedness in her expression is nice to see.
This Izu-chan kid must be something really special.
“Which is why I think Eraser should marry him!” Joke abruptly shifts lanes back onto her original angle of attack. “He’ll bring light into your life!”
“Darker the better,” Shōta tops up his coffee. “Don’t you have a job to get back to?”
“Eh,” Joke shrugs. “My third years are all on their work studies and since they’re practically grown now Principal Toramaru lets me run loose a bit.”
It’s settled then, Shōta is going to send Ketsubutsu’s principal spiders in the mail.
Joke’s phone buzzes then and after a quick glance at the screen, she finally hops off the edge of Shōta’s desk and bends down to grab the handles of her massive bag.
“Welp,” Joke says once she’s shouldered the thing, “I’ve got lunch to deliver so I’ve got to run!”
Joke breezes out of the staff room like the localized disaster she is.
Shōta is fully willing to kiss whoever keeps texting Joke and causing her to cut her little visits short fully on the mouth.
“I don’t know Shōta,” Hizashi chimes in from his desk, feet propped up on the side, arms folded behind his head, and a too-wide grin on his face. “Emi’s selling her kid to you awful hard and it’s not like you’ve got anyone else waiting in the wings. Didn’t take you for such a cradle robber though you dirty old man.”
Shōta’s capture scarf lashes out, grabs Hizashi by the ankle, and heaves.
The resulting screech as Hizashi tips over backward in his chair is painfully loud but worth it.
~~~
Unfortunately for Shōta, Joke keeps coming around, is in and out of UA’s staff room far more often than anyone who doesn’t actually work there should ever be.
But what’s worse is that every single time she drops by she has something new to say about her sweet Izu-chan and how well he and Shōta would suit.
~~~
“You should see the thing Izu-chan built last night,” Joke brags, a massive metal suitcase in one hand and a to-go cup of something in the other. “He’s very good with his hands!”
Shōta groans and slides down in his chair.
He’s sure whatever house or jumble of shapes Joke’s kid managed to slap together with legos or play-dough, or the tattered remnants of the various victims of Joke’s shitty stand-up, is absolutely captivating.
Shōta would rather actually be held captive than listen to Joke wax poetic about it though.
~~~
Which means, of course, that the assholes he works with decide the joke is too good to pass up.
~~~
“So have you set a date yet?” Nemuri asks from where she’s sprawled across Shōta’s lap.
“For your execution?” Shōta asks, reaching around her for the carton of dim sum.
“For your wedding of course,” Nemuri shoots back. “I’ve always thought you’d make an excellent Autumn bride but by the time Izu-chan’s an adult you’ll probably be grey so maybe we should go with a wint-”
Shōta pushes her off of his lap and onto the floor as Hizashi and Tensei cackle together in the background.
~~~
The first time Thirteen asks him if he’s heard anything new about his fiancé recently, Shōta contemplates the merits of attempting to resign from his position and finally escaping to fulfill his lifelong dream of crawling into a hole and never emerging again.
It wouldn’t work of course, Shōta’s well aware that the only way Nedzu will ever let him resign from UA is if Nedzu would somehow find it useful and/or funny.
Suffering, it seems, truly is Shōta’s lot in life.
~~~
“It’s not the first time he’s been in a fight like that,” Joke laments to an amused Inui. “He can obviously handle himself and I’m totally on his side about it, I honestly would have thrown hands too, but I still worry about him getting in trouble.”
Shōta has a sudden and blinding mental image of a mini male Joke beating other kids up on the playground with a toy megaphone.
He gets up and walks out of the staff room before Joke can turn to him and start spouting off about how “you’d keep Izu-chan in line, Eraser” or whatever other nonsense she’d inevitably come up with.
~~~
All teasing aside, Shōta’s still not expecting to ever actually meet the infamous “Izu-chan”.
Joke’s far too frequent visits to UA’s staff room are normally during the middle of the school day so he fully expects the kid to be at whatever school is unlucky enough to be responsible for Joke’s spawn’s education.
Which is why he’s more than a bit taken aback when Joke pauses in the middle of showing off yet another tie-dyed abomination that Izu-chan had apparently made with her, to check her phone and then abruptly squeal happily.
“Good news?” Hizashi asks.
“Izu-chan’s on his way!” Joke announces.
A beat.
“No fucking way!” Nemuri lunges up out of her desk chair, glee practically vibrating from her.
“We’re finally getting to meet the bean?” Hizashi asks, equally as excited.
“Quick,” Vlad cuts in from across the room, “someone hose Eraser off before he scares the kid away.”
Shōta lifts an arm and shoots a rude gesture in Vlad’s direction.
“I’ve been trying to get him down here for ages to meet everyone,” Joke rambles, hopping up onto the edge of Hizashi’s desk. “He’s just so shy sometimes. But Nedzu is letting him go early today so things have finally lined up!”
Wait.
“What does Nedzu have to do with this?” Shōta asks the real important question, an absent sort of dread twisting in his gut.
“He’s been keeping Izu-chan busy,” Joke announces happily, as if leaving a small child, especially one as smart as Izu-chan is supposed to be, alone with Nedzu is no big deal at all.
Shōta trusts Nedzu not to physically hurt an innocent child, but mentally? Emotionally? Morally?
Those are all always up in the air whenever Nedzu is involved.
The last time Nedzu was left alone with one of the grade school classes who had won the raffle to tour UA?
The class had been in the news the next week for staging a coup on the administration in order to gain more funding for their library.
Watching a bunch of first graders read out a manifesto written in crayon and containing the phrase “restriction of knowledge is a tool of the bourgeoisie” to an obviously appalled reporter and one very bemused hostage negotiator was an experience Shōta isn’t looking forward to repeating any time soon.
There’s a knock on the staff room door.
“Izu-chan!” Joke calls out. “Get in here already!”
The door slides open.
The staff room goes dead silent.
Instead of a kid, there’s a man in the doorway.
Shorter than Shōta by a handful of inches, wide-shouldered and narrow-waisted, his green curls tousled over a crisp undercut, and wearing a sleeveless faux turtleneck that shows off impressively muscled and thickly scarred arms, the man is unmistakable.
“I-Is this Izu-chan’s dad?” Nemuri asks, eyes wide.
“Yeah, yeah,” Hizashi adds. “It’s nice to meet you man, we’re all big fans, but we wanna see the sprout.”
Joke barks out a delighted laugh.
“Get in here and introduce yourself,” Joke waves the man into the room.
“Emi, you’re so rude,” Dekiru says as he slides the door closed behind him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all, I’m Midoriya Izuku.”
Shōta feels a horrible sort of understanding begin to dawn over him.
“Everyone meet my Izu-chan,” Joke announces. “Izu-chan meet UA’s mostly illustrious staff. But most importantly, come meet Eraser, your future husband.”
A beat.
And then …
Pandemonium.