Chapter Text
Izuku didn’t need to check his watch to know it had gotten late, the darkened halls of UA did a good enough job of telling him. He didn’t mean for his hero training to last so long, he just got into the groove and lost track of time. Besides, he managed to reserve the training gym for six hours, and he was gonna make the most of those six hours!
Though he could also recognize when he’d taken it too far; there was feeling tired after a long day of training, and then there was this. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to flop on his bed and pass out, but his hero suit got a little roughed up during training, and he had to take it to the support lab to get it fixed up.
It was usually a simple procedure: he shoved the case that held his suit into the slot next to the entrance, and they’d fix it up and send it right back to him by the next day. Only, when Izuku approached the slot, he couldn’t help but notice the main doors to the lab were still partially open.
Normally, this was nothing to write home about, especially when Mei’s explosions left the doors detached to their hinges more often than not. But the lab was usually closed by now - the doors should’ve been locked tight. Izuku heard something about Power Loader being out for the day due to hero work, so whoever was in charge of locking the place up while he was gone had either forgotten or was still inside.
His curiosity taking hold, Izuku tiptoed inside to take a look for himself. He didn’t see much at first on account of all the lights being off. But in the distance, he spotted what looked to be the dull flicker of a desk lamp that had been left on for way too long. Had he been just a bit more awake, he might have recognized this as a horror movie-esque setup and turned around. But he was running on pure fumes and instincts right now, which told him to go toward the light.
Thankfully, there wasn’t a monster waiting for him on the other side, but instead a familiar face sleeping peacefully at their workbench. “Hatsume? Power Loader gave her the keys to the support lab? That doesn’t sound right.” As ingenious as his support engineer could be, he knew she wouldn’t stop herself from working unless someone physically dragged her away from her desk. Case in point, here she was, having fallen asleep with a screwdriver in one hand and an electro-pipe bomb in the other.
“That can’t be comfortable for her,” he concluded, and he wasn’t just about the pipe bomb. He, himself, had fallen asleep at his desk more than once, refusing to stop working on his hero analysis for even a second. But unlike Mei, he curbed this behavior pretty quickly after what it did to his back. Even now, the soreness never truly went away.
Not wanting the same to happen to Mei (assuming it hadn’t already), he figured the best he could do was get her to an actual bed. She might scold him later for interrupting her work, but he knew her health was more important. Because if she did mess up her back, she’d probably build a spine-repositioning machine to try and fix it, which was its own can of worms.
After removing the tools from Mei’s hands and slinging her over his back, Izuku found out just how heavy a sleeper she was. He assumed moving her around would at least cause her to stir, but he supposed having a poor sleep schedule made her that much harder to wake up the few times she did fall asleep.
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While Mei was indeed a heavy sleeper, she was far from a quiet one. The whole trek back to the support dorms, Izuku had her head resting on his shoulder, where he could hear her mumble some… interesting things relating to her dreams.
“Imma invent the moon’s moon. The moon needs a moon, too.”
“I don’t need to eat, I run on pure worm compost.”
“Don’t worry, Power Loader, it’ll only kill two-thirds of the population.”
‘This is weird,’ Izuku decided right then and there. Thankfully, Mei’s ramblings helped to distract him from the potential awkwardness of the situation. This was probably the closest he’d ever been to a girl before, and he took almost all of his brainpower not to think about the oversized mammary glands pressing up against his back.
“Don’t worry, Ten Million. Imma make you into a hundred million…”
Izuku nearly tripped over his own feet at the mention of his nickname, now unable to fight the blush on his face. ‘She dreams about me? That can’t mean anything, can it?’
He forced himself to push that thought away for later, as he had just made it to the front door of the first-year support course dorm. He rang the doorbell and was soon greeted by a girl with brown hair and a pair of antennas sticking out of her headband, whom he recognized as Mei’s classmate, Maina Furasu. “Uh, heeeeyyy… I got someone for you.” He gestured to the sleeping girl on his back.
Maina dumbly palmed herself on the head. “Oh, I knew I was forgetting something. Sorry about that. I don’t know why Maijima gave me of all people the keys to the support lab.”
A light chuckle escaped Izuku’s mouth. “I was worried he gave it to Hatsume for a second there.”
“Oh, no, of course not. He’s not suicidal or anything.”
He was glad Mei wasn’t awake to hear that. “Mind if I take her up to her room?”
“Sure. It’s on the second floor, first door on the left. Thanks again for picking her up.”
“No problem.” Izuku followed Maina’s instructions, and a single glance was all he needed to tell him he ended up in Mei’s room. Everywhere he looked, there were parts, scrap metal, half-finished inventions, and blueprints scattered about, littering just about every surface he could see. The only place that looked remotely clean was the bed, and Izuku guessed that was only because she forgot it existed half the time.
“Well, at least she can get some use out of it now.” After tiptoeing around the messy floor, he grabbed Mei and tried to remove her from his back, only for her to not let go. “What the…?” He pulled a little harder, though still remained gentle to avoid waking her, but her grip on his body remained firm, clinging to him like a koala. And if he knew anything about koalas, then she’d be clinging to him for a long, long time.
“This is crazy,” Izuku grunted after finding that not even five percent of One for All was enough to get her off. “If only I had some kind of Quirk that specialized in grabbing onto things.”
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Meanwhile, Inside One for All…
“Ehhhhhhh…?” Banjo gave a hopeful smile at the boy’s suggestion, which was not reciprocated by the other vestiges.
“No, you’re not giving him Black Whip,” Yoichi swiftly shot him down.
“Awwwwwww….”
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“Okay, there’s only one other way to get her to go to bed.” Izuku hated himself for coming up with this idea, but Mei proved stubborn enough that it was his only option. Carefully, he lowered himself into the bed, which was thankfully large enough to comfortably fit them both, and lay on his side so Mei was in as comfortable a position as he was.
He hoped that the comfort of the bed would make her loosen her grip on him, but to his shock and horror, it only caused her to readjust her position. Now her arms were tightly wrapped around his torso as her cheek nuzzled up against his back, only strengthening the koala comparisons in his mind.
Under any other circumstances, Izuku would be freaking out beyond all belief, his face turning atomically red as his brain initiated its self-destruct sequence. But the moment he felt Mei hugging him from behind, it was like a switch flipped in his brain, letting all the exhaustion from the day catch up to him at once. The last thought that passed through his mind before he conked out was how nice it felt to have someone embrace him like this for the first time in what felt like ages.