bitter coffee

by raspberrytarts

Summary:

People expect all stories of abuse to be loud and angry, broken plates and nosey neighbors, but they're not. Sometimes they're endearing and subtle and so lovely that they're swept under the rug.

 

𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐭,

"𝘐𝘻𝘶𝘬𝘶, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘮𝘦. 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥. 𝘐𝘧 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶. 𝘐𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘣𝘢𝘥. 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦," 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘺𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘐𝘻𝘶𝘬𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘴 '𝘋𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘮?' 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘳 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘪𝘵; 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯. 𝘐𝘵 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦.

Notes:

This is the second part of a two part series!!

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆: 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧/𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐬. 𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐛𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐞𝐥, 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐨𝐫 𝐮𝐧𝐮𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝. 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.

STEP 6

be a bad girlfriend

———————————————

An excited Izuku is tapping against Aizawa's driver's side window, waking him up. He doesn't jump—he opens his eyes without much trouble and is quickly, contentedly greeted with what he knows to be an image of perfection.

She leans down to peer through the window, grinning. 

She looks delightfully happy, dreamlike, with green hair, fluffy and active in the soft fall breeze; she raps her knuckles against the glass twice more before rounding the vehicle. Aizawa watches her and unlocks the car. The mechanical click resounds as she meets the passenger door.

"Shoooota," she exhales.

The youthful joy of round, pink cheeks and glittering eyes—cherubic. It's innocent, she's innocent—beautiful as she swings the door open and stumbles a little, shouldering her heavy bookbag off her back and shoving it under her seat, to forget hardcover textbooks and D-ring binders, to forget the hours spent in school.

Aizawa says, "Hey, sweetheart,"—something he's started calling her that she loves hearing too much to correct him—just as Izuku throws herself over the center console and hugs him. 

He barely catches her, one hand half-caught folded against her stomach, the other off the edge of her sleeve—the girl squeezes herself in, balancing against the center console and a hand against the empty area of backrest nearest to Aizawa's shoulder.

He smelled so good. Felt so good. Like comfort, security, and need, all in one. There was a name to it, but she didn't know what. Izuku squeezes him once, twice, five times for good measure, and only then does she relax back, letting herself sink and kneel into the passenger's seat.

"What was that all about?" Aizawa questions, tone light, not bothered in the slightest.

"M'just happy to see you"

Right now, her relationship with Bakugo is... rocky, and she has no father to threaten to kill him and coddle her. So Izuku, maybe unknowingly but still, has to cling to the only other prominent male figure in her life. Opposed to All Might, who she's pretty sure is sleeping with her mother. (Izuku has spent enough time with him to recognize his smell on Inko's clothes.) It's been days, and she hasn't been able to look at him without thinking about it.

Izuku shakes her head of the thought and moves on, grinning, "Were you sleeping, old man?"

"No," he says, a huff, "just resting my eyes." In demonstration, he leans back against the headrest, eyes slipping shut.

Her heart gave a silly jolt then. She tried to stop it. But while Aizawa was many things, there was no denying that he was also painfully handsome. It was the hair. In certain lights, it looked like woven silk, matching his eyes—vast, glazed, ecliptic. So maybe it was the eyes as well. And perhaps she could blame a little on his lips... Hell, his jaw too.

"Have a good day?"

Izuku shrugs, even though she knows he can't see. "Alright, I guess."

That has Aizawa peaking over at her. "Just alright?" He questions, "Did something happen today?"

Izuku shrugs again. "Mmm, nah"

"No?" He asks, both a question and a correction—he's a teacher after all.

A moment passes without words. The girl blinks at him.

"Well," Izuku eventually starts, perhaps a bit mischievous. For the first time in years, she felt free to be herself. To ramble if she wanted, to joke, to be embarrassing. It was nice. "Y'know my teacher? In 1-A?"

Aizawa peeks at her, and she laughs under her breath.

"I've heard of him."

"Well, he was being a dick—ow." She gets a well-deserved smack against the thigh.

"Watch your language," Shota responds, both playfully and genuinely affronted, "as far as I know, he's a nice guy. Strict. but fair."

The girl continues, "Well. He can be cool. I guess" She says flippantly, put on, "But he was so mean today—called me out in front of the whole class for getting a low score on an assessment. I was so embarrassed." Izuku now, looking at him—a silly, slapped-on pout. "Isn't that unfair? He's never usually mean to me, so I dunno...I felt bad."

Aizawa hums, feigns deep contemplation, "Don't feel bad," He soothes, then, both playing along and making his case, "but I don't think he was trying to be mean. Maybe he was just surprised that you failed it. That's all."

She blinks—then pouts more, "If he gave me the answer key, I would've passed."

"But that wouldn't be fair to the other students, now, would it? They're learning the information just like you are, and he wouldn't give it to them either."

"Well, I'm special," She defends, gaze going a little more pointed, "And my score wasn't crazy bad. You were just... being mean."

"Right. You are special, Izuku," he says in a way that has her heart beating in her ears. "And you can do so much better. I know that; You know that, but you didn't show it. I wasn't being mean."

"I studied for hours." Her pout becomes more genuine—they're losing the joke, slightly bothered. It becomes a bit of a frown. She blinks over to him, and now her gaze is very, very soft, almost sad. Her eyes are searching through those apparent feelings in his expression—for validation, for something. 

They share silent eye contact for just a moment longer before Aizawa speaks, "Come here." 

Izuku looks at him, expression between bothered and not. She is genuinely impacted by it, and it is small and lovely. "Why?"

"Izuku, I know you tried," He soothes, "Come here, I'm just trying to say sorry."

She slips closer then, wordlessly, knocks her head against his shoulder until Aizawa throws that arm around her and pulls her against his chest.

Her frown lessens back to a pout. He smells almost sweet, he is sweet, and she eases into the semi-embrace—as if just the physical touch has washed away the turmoil of seconds ago.

"Do you think I'll pass the next one?" craning her neck, looking up at Aizawa. Her eyes are big, her gaze is soft and adoring. "Were you mad at me, like... for real? Like when I talked to Nora?"

"Of course you'll pass," He says, "And, no, sweetheart. I'm not mad and I never was. You can see her again if it makes you feel better." She felt the change in his body, the relaxing of tension, his shoulders curving around her as if he could draw her into himself. Murmuring her name before adding, "Just remember our secret and what could happen if anyone found out."

"I will," Relief washes over her, a look of validation and sureness. She digs her face into his shoulder before looking up at him once more. "I will," And for another moment, it's just that.

Izuku looks at him still, her lovely eyes—they go a little hooded, focused, she is so innocent and simple, easy to read. That's what he's doing now—reading her. She knows it, and also knows what he might find, so she covers his eyes with her hands.

He lets her. Even if it makes him vulnerable, covering the one thing that'll make his quirk useless. But letting her do it nonetheless. He doesn't even fight it or jerk back or shake her off—he just stays, almost calmer than before.

"You were staring at me" is her defense.

One heartbeat. Two.

Aizawa's voice was rough as he said, "I like seeing you turn red. You were staring too," and he snuck his hands under hers, holding her wrists and bringing them down to his chest. "Ah, look at you. You still are"

"I swear you—" Izuku huffs at his teasing and shrinks back into the passenger seat, where she can stoop in her blush privately. "You make me want to scream sometimes."

She hears a sound get caught in his throat as he stares, like her words had an entirely different meaning—like he might like to hear her scream. Her breathing became shallow. As the radio hums in the background, Izuku realizes it's been a long time since she spent time with someone like this. And somehow it feels good. Even if it wasn't 'appropriate'.

Izuku wonders if, maybe, this is how it felt to have a boyfriend. A real boyfriend. The kind of boyfriend she has only seen in films. These sweet moments, not talking, sitting in his car. Izuku can admit that Bakugo isn't her fairytale prince. She loves him, but he can never give her this... and she wonders, silently, if this is how dating is supposed to feel, if it was the little moments like this that they shared that made a relationship special.

Then Shota's eyes seem to draw away. They flicker down, stay for about five seconds, then, very slowly, rack back up to Izuku's eyes.

"Fun night?"

Her head tilts, smiling just out of the sudden, unprompted question. She looks down. Her skirt has ridden up at some point, and the hickies from the night before splay like fucking constellations across the milky galaxy of her inner thighs.

"Oh, um..." Izuku pulls the fabric over them. Doesn't matter. The damage is already done.

Damnit Kacchan. Way to make it seem like something happened when nothing happened. Suddenly, Izuku has the urge to explain that definitely nothing had happened. It's weird. Aizawa is her Sensei, her friend. She shouldn't feel guilty for being intimate with Bakugo, her boyfriend. But she does—feel guilty—fuck, she does. Why, why, why is she like this?

"A million years of evolution," Aizawa shakes his head, "and what are we? Animals. Still marking what we think is ours."

His mouth is a slash of contempt as his eyes dip to her covered thighs. He clenches his jaw so tight that Izuku knows there's a hairline fracture there with her name on it. An X-ray technician will be astounded to see the word 'Midoriya' etched into his bones one day.

"...not your fault..." he says, so quiet that Izuku doesn't catch the words that come before and after. But he keeps speaking, rambling more like. "I'm your teacher, you're my student. I should want to protect you—" a pause "from the sort of boys who want to do to you exactly what I want to"

Those rough words filled the air between them, settling to the floorboards with a stillness that rocked Izuku to her core. Her blood cooled as silence came out to touch her with cold fingers. She stared, eyes wide. Aizawa watched her expression, bitter amusement passing through his gaze.

"...sorry." She's not. She's not sure why she even said it. A reflex, maybe. A default. Whatever it is, Shota is having none of it.

"No. You shouldn't be. He chuckled soundlessly without any humor. Another pause. "Do you think I'm a bad man for thinking this way?"

She shakes her head a little too fast.

He isn't a bad man. Bad men, oh, they harbour evil in them. They commit sins with sin in mind; they are blatant blasphemers and are wicked at heart. Bad men are villains,  worshippers of unholy deeds and harmed minds—bad men kill, rape, burn, and steal. They do it proudly, alright—they are bad, and they so love to be bad. 

But Aizawa Sensei? 

No, he is not a bad man. Not by any metric. Any and everything he has ever done—his career. It has been for the greater good, for the benefit and prosperity.  

"You're not a bad man. Not even close."

Izuku must have made a face because Aizawa chuckles again.

"Maybe... but something about you makes it so damn easy to be one"

One could argue, perhaps, that that alone, in fact, makes him one. She is fifteen and he is thirty-one.

Yes, it is a curious, if not strange gap—that he had his hero license by the time she was born. That he teaches her class; and he signs her trip forms and report cards and grades her work, assesses her knowledge in such an academically driven society as theirs—Yes, to the public eye, it may seem so very, very bad.

Be that as it may, however, it isn't up to the public to decide. Izuku refuses to dirty his name with whatever society would call him—whatever the label for feeling this way is.

"You're not bad, Shota," She says softly.

"I took you out on a date."

It's said to be short. Sweet. With perhaps a touch of guilt simmering right below the surface if one really looked. And if that single sentence didn't fire a cannonball through Izuku's proverbial sail... Her green eyes seemed to hold a thousand thoughts and emotions and nothing at all in the span of the same breath.

"That was a... date," Saying it, the words on her tongue, that makes it real. Puts a name to what they did.

"Yes, it was."

Izuku had moments of desire. Ones she's not particularly proud of—she was a girl and had eyes, after all—but they were so easily swept under the rug they hardly bore remembering. Which was what made this whole situation such a colossal headache, because, if she were honest, this was so much more than walking in on him shirtless or sharing a cup of coffee, and there wasn't a rug in the whole world big enough to sweep this under, which was horrifying.

"But... Kacchan, I... my boyfriend," she speaks like a jumbled puzzle.

"Yeah, I know."

This... this couldn't be happening; maybe she'd hit her head and this was some kind of incredibly vivid, concussion-induced hallucination.

"Then why—"

"It's normal for women your age to date while having boyfriends. You’d be surprised how many do."

Women, He says. When they'd first met, he called her a kid, and now she's a woman. On their 'date,' she was an adult. Izuku doesn't feel like an adult; she feels like a dumb kid who doesn't know shit about shit.

And she must be making a face again because Aizawa adds, "Did that do it? Am I a bad man in your eyes now? I wanted to kiss you, you know. That night. Fuuck when you were bobbing your head to the radio, I just wanted to lean over and hold you by the neck and—"

"You're not bad."

"You don't know," He growled. It's like he was trying to get her to hate him—and failing miserably. "I can't keep my eyes off of you for more than a fucking hour, and you can run off with that future serial killer without a second thought." He shook his head, "You. Don't. Get. It"

She couldn't stop staring at his mouth when he spoke. She bet he knew how to kiss. Perfect kisses, too, ones that weren't wet and gross, but the kind that curled toes.

She needed to stop looking at him in general.

"Then make me get it."

What the hell is she thinking...

Bakugo would hate her, huh? He'd be disappointed? Even more distressing, he wouldn't be disappointed because he always expected her to fail him. How could he ever love her after that?

Well, that was easily answered. He couldn't. That was a universal fact, no matter the circumstances. They were doomed. Never in a million years could they work; they were fundamentally contradictory pieces on a chessboard impossible to overturn.

Izuku would never admit it to anyone, but the deepest, darkest parts of her liked the possibility. The same l'appel du vide that engendered contemplations of jumping from a great height, of thrusting one's hand into a flame, the primal urge towards self-destruction. It was dangerous and senseless, and she was above it... She had to be. Never mind that this man would've been the sweetest mistake to make, if only for an instant...

"Sho—"

"Shh," And there's a pulse, then—something in the air between them, invisible but palpable, utterly fleeting but heavy and raw and crazed, and Izuku barely has time to register it—before it bursts, and Aizawa leans in.

He kisses her.

Their lips stayed, frozen and time. Aizawa's are warm and taste faintly of his coffee, but all they do is rake a cold shiver down Izuku's bones. She freezes, her breath—oh God, she wasn't breathing. In through the nose. In, hold, out—no! Don't choke on your saliva. That's probably not good...

Aizawa cradled her head tenderly, as though she were made of porcelain. His mouth eased, softened, and surrendered to properly discovering the wonders of hers. It was inconceivable that his lips would be so soft, and yet so demanding, and yes, he had begun to demand. It was too fast, too soon, and Izuku pulled back, overwhelmed.

She drew in a shuddering breath. "S'much, I-I can't... You're a lot stronger than K-Kacchan. I can b-barely breathe"

"Fuck, woman," Aizawa pulled her in to kiss her deeply—just to shut her up, she thinks. Still, Izuku sighed into his mouth, heat washing to her toes. He went in for more, but she pulled back again. "Sorry," he huffs.

Instead of all of things she could say, all the ways she could stop this, the winning phrase that leaves her lips is: "S-someone could see"

"Everyone has left for the day."

Izuku looks out of the passenger window. They're the only car in the parking lot.

"Oh..."

It doesn't seem right that they can speak to each other like normal people, even though they've tasted each other.

"Izuku... Oh, baby"

She has to look at him; she has no choice. Not when he speaks like that.

"Look at you..." His thumb skims across her lips. "I've never been so lucky in my whole fucking life. Holy—look at you, sweetheart."

Green curls cover her face as Izuku tilts her head down. She should be ashamed... Ashamed that she craves another kiss. And isn't that really the basis of human nature? To crave the things you can't have? Knowing you shouldn't just makes your desires that much more enticing.

Only Izuku can have it. Shit, she can have it right now if she wants.

"Don't do that," Aizawa says. She is only briefly aware of him slipping his own hair tie off his wrist and pulling her curls back with it. "I like it this way. Shows your face"

Bakugo thinks she looks like a boy with her hair back; Aizawa thinks she looks better. It felt so good to be complimented, to be spoken to like she is worth it. Capable and wise... to hear her life gain weight.

"I want to kiss you again," She inhaled and exhaled an almost long-suffering sigh.

"Yeah?" Spoken in a voice fashioned from dark velvet, a voice that stroked over her senses until they were lulled, to lecture directly to her as if she were back in the schoolroom. "You know, a proper kiss, Izuku, should turn you inside out. It should... touch places in you that you didn't know existed until your entire being is hungry and wild. It should... hold a moment, I want to explain this as clearly as possible..." He tipped his head back and paused to consider, as though he were envisioning it and wanted to relate every detail correctly. "It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it's very nearly painful"

He waited, watching her face. Izuku's mouth was parted. Her breathing short. She couldn't look away. His eyes and voice held her as securely as if he'd cradled her face with his hands. And as he said them, an echo of sensation sounded in her, like a remembered dream, an instinct awakened.

"And...?" she whispered.

"And it should make you battle for control of your senses and your will. It should make you want to do things you'd never dreamed you'd want to do, and in that moment, all of those things will make perfect sense."

She sat wordlessly when he was done. As though waiting for the last notes of a stormy, discordant symphony to echo into silence. Their faces were inches apart now, and he traced her lips with one finger, lightly, lightly, then placed his lips there as if he'd drawn them into being. When his lips touched hers, it was just a brush, once, twice, over the full softness of her mouth. With devastating instinct, she echoed him, dragging her lips softly across his, with his, until the desire in her was coiled so tightly her limbs trembled from it.

"Izuku," A ragged whisper. She sighed a warm breath out against his lips and brought her other hand up to hold his face. And Izuku meant to linger over this kiss, to take it deeper with delicacy and finesse, and then to end it, but she found she could not. Her desire was suddenly untenable; she was convinced only the taste of him could ease it. Aizawa touched an impatient tongue to her lips and coaxed them open. When she parted her mouth, he sought her tongue and discovered, with a low sound in the back of his throat, the hot, silken sweetness inside her mouth. Her tongue tentatively moved, tangled with his. Oh, fuck.

"Like this?" she whispered.

"God, yes," he breathed.

Aizawa rose up over the center console to take her deeper, to taste the contours of her mouth, teeth clashing against hers, and still it never seemed enough. The sensation was like soaring in place.

"Sweet," he murmured, moving his lips from hers to kiss, to nip beneath her chin, to draw his tongue down the cord of her throat. Her breathing was rushed, and with the rise and fall of her chest. Izuku was on the edge of doing something unspeakable in this man's car. "Sweet," he sighed again, and his fingers, five feathers, began to stroke her bare legs.

Izuku felt like a baton getting passed along in a relay race, completely devoid of any control over her destiny.

First Kacchan now Shota.

She is a whore; she can admit this now. Not just a whore. She is a shitty girlfriend. She is a terrible student. She is an awful successor. She is a little thing of little experience and shaking thighs, and—she is leaning in for more...

⁂

Fall morphed to Winter; Winter quietly ceded to spring. Warmth crept into the ground, the water, into resilient buds straining against the dying cold to bloom like a miracle—a miracle designed exclusively to mock Izuku with its fucking existence.

She stares out of the window at a pair of blossoming flowers. It feels unusually stuffy in this room. She should be used to it by now, this being the ninth time she's seen Nora. But every session is full of unease and trepidation. She can never calm her nerves the days before, and the session itself always leaves her feeling fidgety—rehearsing the conversation in her head to make sure she didn't say the wrong thing. It was exhausting.

But seeing Nora makes All Might happy, so Izuku caves. Every. Single. Time.

"You're even quieter than usual. Something you'd like to talk about?"

Izuku shakes her head. She knows herself. When she starts tossing junk into the void—words, words, and more words—something can rise to the surface.

There's an audible slap as a thin packet falls on her thighs. 'Speaking up against your abuser,' it reads.

Mouth open to poise her disapproval, "I'm not being abused, Nora…"

"I know you say your relationship is much better, Izuku, and I believe you. I really do," and yet that packet stays on her lap, heavy like a brick—or her future. "I still want you to keep that. Look it over when you have a minute."

Izuku eyed Nora up and down like some positive change would present in her demeanor if she simply sought it hard enough.

"I don't blame you for keeping things from me. It's not easy to trust just anyone with your story. Trust me, I know how hard this is," Nora lowers her voice. "I'm a survivor, too."

That word, with its cloying empathy; that patronizing, flattening word that makes Izuku's whole body cringe no matter the context—it pushes too far. That sweet girl's lips curl up over her teeth as she spits out, "What are you trying to say?"

"I've seen you for nine sessions, and all nine, you've demonstrated qualities of mistreatment. Abuse, Izuku, and I'm inclined to think this issue is bigger than your boyfriend."

Abuse, how ironic. Izuku is starting to think she has a thing for abusive men, anyhow.

"I'm not being abused," Izuku says, and she means it.

Then Nora says something that gives her pause, "You know, people expect all stories of abuse to be loud and angry, but they're not. Sometimes they can be endearing and subtle and so lovely that they're just... swept under the rug."

Endearing... lovely... Izuku's thoughts were transparent and slippery, and every time she tried to face one, it fled. Ugh, point is... She didn't come here to open a vein and heal it. She came because All might told her to. That's it.

Izuku looks away, unable to transfer the voice in her head to her lips. Nora wouldn't understand. She just wouldn't, so Izuku doesn't even try.

The pamphlet on her lap feels even heavier somehow. It's sinking into her thighs. It's an anchor, and now Izuku can't move. She's trapped. Nora must notice the psychological warfare because she reaches over and removes the seventy-pound weight, holding the pamphlet delicately between her thumb and forefinger.

"You don't drown by falling in water, hun; you drown by staying there."

Izuku... she...stares for a moment. Her lip begins to tremble.

She didn't know why she was going to cry, but she knew that if Nora spoke to her anymore or looked at her too closely, the tears would fly out of her eyes and the sobs would fly out of her throat and she'd cry for a week.

It's stupid. Why was she feeling this way? She is in U.A. with a quirk passed down from All Might himself. She was supposed to be having the time of her life.

⁂

"Of course, you already know she's one of your brightest students, but I've noticed her interest in schoolwork is, ah... waning considerably. Her A's have dropped to C's in a few months' time. She used to love hero studies, and now it's as though she's never had ever had any desire to pursue them." All Might says, running a hand down his face. He looks utterly exhausted, troubled. Something has been keeping him up at night. "I had considered that maybe she's just not being challenged enough... Or that it lies in the teaching methods"

Across from him, Aizawa is leaning against the wall. He looks out of the window, his attention drawn to the new dorm building. "No, I'm sure that's not it; I've never deviated from my curriculum."

"I figured... But she’s had trouble concentrating, and she's far more aggressive and difficult to manage than she used to be."

"Some children develop sooner than others. Midoriya is far more advanced than her peers. Could be she's maturing at a rate that—"

"I don't know if you understand what I'm getting at." All Might is quick to adapt to the shift in the conversation, displaying it with a tamer sound of voice. It's not often that one gets to be the recipient of his serious side, though whenever it comes to the surface, it's never without good reason. "I've talked to her therapist and we both agree that because of her shift in behavior... there's a strong possibility that she has experienced abuse or is currently experiencing abuse"

It takes thirty whole, long and agonizing seconds before the silence is broken.

"This is... news to me," Aizawa says, "I can assure you she seems perfectly fine during our sessions."

"Hmph. Is there anyone you know of who has access to her? Any sketchy figures? I'm just concerned for her safety. The authorities are not something I'd like to involve, but I will."

There was something chillingly unnerving about seeing All Might so... unfortified. He'd always seemed... impenetrable. Stalwart. But right now, more than anything, he seemed frighteningly human. Though verging on animalistic. His aura was primal, a manic, feral illustration of protective intent. All wrapped up in the pretty promise that whoever hurts his girl is getting their fucking throat ripped out.

"She could be acting this way because..." Aizawa trails off in a mumble. He shakes his head. "No, no, that's nonsense"

"What is it?"

"Forget I even mentioned it," He said shortly.

"I don't want to expose her to the idea of what something like this entails without knowing for certain if she's suffered or not. I could do more harm than good. So if there's another reason for her behavior than I implore you to continue." All Might's eyes narrowed to slits, and the subtle petulance to his tone wasn't lost on Aizawa.

Aizawa afforded him the pitying mien one might reserve for a singularly dim-witted child. "I told her I'd keep it a secret, but if it's come to this, I suppose I have no choice," He sighs. "The girl is infatuated with me." The revelation slips from his mouth in such a nonchalant way. "Unequivocally head over heels. It's my own fault really... I didn't see the signs until it was too late."

All Might's lips twisted in an uncomfortable frown. "I see..."

"This is why I didn't want to mention it, look at that face you're making," Aizawa sighs. "Obviously, I rejected her. I'm sure you can understand why I didn't come to you with this... how embarrassing that might be for a girl her age."

"When exactly did she tell you this... confession?"

"A few months ago"

"And you've continued your training sessions even after? Has it not been uncomfortable for both of you?" All Might's hand gestured vaguely outward, words coming a touch slower, and certainly more muddled, than he'd intended. The seconds tick like years.

"Midoriya is a kind, loving, empathetic child, and born leader to boot. It's not fair to let her suffer just because of a little crush. I only want what's best for her."

And Aizawa can't be far off the mark. A girl of her prowess inspires admiration. She has both mental and physical strength, only needing guidance to flourish and become something amazing. A symbol of hope.

"I suspected you'd had some part in her behavior," Says All Might.

A sense of wariness rises, visible in the slight shift of Shota's body. His expression becomes more guarded

He had always carried an aura of otherness about him, eyes too old and entirely too knowledgeable for his face. He retained a certain quiet, if beleaguered, dignity about him at all times.

Presently... the only word appropriate for his expression was... haunted. Like his greatest regret had dragged itself from the grave to torment him.

"What does that mean?"

The blonde, on the other hand, remains open. "I'm just saying the amount of time you spend together could warrant some... feelings"

Aizawa clicks his tongue. "If you're insinuating that this infatuation is two-sided, then—"

"I'm not. I'm just commenting that this crush of hers makes a bit of sense... to a degree. Does it not?"

"Don’t justify it."

All Might cleared his throat, turning his head to the window, chewing his lip contemplatively before: "Regardless, I apologize for her actions... I'm sure it must have been very uncomfortable."

"You don't know the first of it."

"But I ask from this point forward that anything regarding Young Midoriya be brought to my attention. She has too many secrets already, thanks to me; another one won't do her any good."

Aizawa hums. "I agree," he glances over to the clock, "I believe our half-hour is up. I need to get back to class. You can email me if you have any other concerns."

All of the blonde's most delicate questions, interwoven with the most crucial of meaning, are lost to the air, and instead, an "Alright" leaves his lips as he watches Aizawa go.

⁂

Bakugo had a weird presence that seemed to freak people out. Whenever he would enter a room, people would blink or shiver or stare or shift. It wasn't because they knew Bakugo was actually mental. They could just feel it. (Izuku wondered if she would be able to feel it too if she didn't idolize him)

She is hugging her knees on his living room couch. It's nicer than hers—more expensive. So are the rest of his things. Sometimes she can waste hours going through all of the knick-knacks and decor, looking at his baby photos while simultaneously trying to keep him from blowing them up, letting Mrs. Bakugo try to tame her hair with all of her fancy creams and styles, but currently, there was no time for any of that.

"I just wanna know why," Izuku mumbled. Her eyes focused on the shifting, dappled beams of light that filtered through the TV in front of them. Some mediation channel Mr. Bakugo normally has playing on a loop. "Just tell me why I can't go."

"I don't need to tell you why. I said no, and that's the only reason you need"

"But why?" Izuku said between her teeth, feeling frustrated enough that she could cry. "You can't forbid me from seeing him. He's our teacher. I see him every day."

"Is that all it takes to get you going? Quality time? Damn, no wonder you're in love with the guy."

Her heart drops. Izuku felt bare. She didn't realize she wore her secrets as armor until they were gone, and now Bakugo could see her as she really was.

She felt the corners of her eyes sting. "Wh-what are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about?" He grabs a handful of her hair and twists until she whimpers, then holds it there—achingly steady. He only ever held her like this when she was on her knees. "I told you, Deku. I fucking told you he was a pervert, and what do you go out and do? You cling to him like a dirty fucking parasite. It's what you've always done. You're a fucking leech, and when you find a new hero to obsess over, you'll forget about him too," he leans closer to whisper in her ear. "You are seriously fucked in the head, don't you see that?"

The sound of something cracking... breaking, rings in Izuku's ears. Bakugo doesn't notice. It must be her heart.

"Kacchan, I-I don't even know where you heard something like that. Sensei just... he just helps me with m-my quirk every once in a while," as she defends herself, her voice sounds like an empty husk of her once self. Izuku feels... So utterly sad in this moment. Like she's lost something she never quite had, and there's no point in arguing over it.

"Every day," Bakugo corrects, "Every fucking school day. I have eyes, Deku."

Caught in her own lie so blatantly, her throat bobs. "That doesn’t matter! I don't have a crush on him. I love you. Just you"

"You keep fucking saying that, and then you do shit like this. How am I supposed to believe a single thing that comes out of your mouth?" There was an uncomfortable thwack as Bakugo slapped his free hand on the couch arm he had pinned her against.

Was he going to yell at her, laugh at her, beat her? Or worse...Was Bakugo disappointed in her? Was he bored with the stupidity of it all? Did he even think she was worth it? Izuku was spiraling, black creeping in around the corners of her vision as she struggled to suck in air.

"I-I don't know," is the best she can come up with under the heavy scrutiny of his gaze.

"Do I look retarded to you?"

She shakes her head as much as the fingers tangled in her curls will let her.

"Maybe that's why you decided to whore yourself out... thinking I'm so slow I wouldn't catch it. Too bad. Everyone's talking about it. I mean, fuck, I always knew you were desperate for my cock, but his? That guy is old as shit. As if I needed more reasons to be embarrassed by you."

Izuku wants to slide her hand over his mouth like a mouse placing a paw on the tomcat's snout to stop it eating her—before he says something she'll never be able to forgive him for.

"Don't cry, Deku. I bet he feels the same. I've seen the way he looks at you. He wants to take you from me. Steal you away and take your clothes off. He wants to taste you."

Bakugo's breath is hot and harsh against her neck. His teeth scrape against the skin like he plans to lunge and rip. He's turning Izuku's head at a neck-breaking angle, and when he meets well-deserved resistance, a low, hungry noise leaves his lips.

Nothing hurt more than this, Izuku thinks. Kacchan saw no problem framing her as a troubled girl with a crush, knowing what it would do to her. And she hates him for it.

"At least someone does," Izuku says, and it's almost comedic how she regrets it fucking immediately.

"What did you just say to me?"

Izuku twisted her fingers in the fabric of his shirt, right over his chest. Her stomach was heavy with a sort of dread. "M'sorry"

"Speak up"

"I'm sorry, Kacchan, please don't make me—" Izuku lets out a dry sob. She knows where this is going and today she really doesn't want to... to... "—don't make me do anything"

Izuku didn't mean to start crying. She didn't want to upset Bakugo, didn't want to annoy him or make him feel uncomfortable, and she definitely didn't want him to leave.

"Stop being a baby. You haven't gotten me off in weeks."

Feeling a little like she was going to throw up, Izuku huffs, voice wobbly, "Th—but that's n-not my job, K-Kacchan"

Bakugo lets go of her hair, and for a moment, he just stares at her. The silence was painful, twisting Izuku's stomach into anxious, sick knots.

And then she gets five knuckles to the face—Bakugo just backhanded her. It hurt, but only in a very faraway sort of way. It was the shock that struck her harder, even though this had happened before. It made her fall back, choking out a sob as she slid off the couch and to the floor.

"It is your fucking job. Let me make this clear. Sucking my dick is more important than anything you have ever done or will ever do. Now get up. I didn't hit you that hard; get up, get on your knees."

Bakugo grabbed the front of her shirt, pulling her forward. Izuku's heart thudded against the constraints of her ribcage, and she really, really did feel like she was going to throw up now. It seemed louder than the clink of the buckle on his belt. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to ruin Bakugo's clothes just like he was going to ruin hers.

He twisted his fingers in her hair, pulling her head back as he worked at the button and zipper on his own pants. Izuku felt a familiar dismay, an ache in her jaw, and the taste was somehow already on her tongue.

"Kacchan, please don't, I-I don't want it r-right now" Izuku whispered, clutching at his thighs, "Please, I can't, I'm s-sorry, I'm so sorry—"

"liar," Bakugo slipped the tip of his thumb inside her trembling mouth and tugged on her bottom lip, pulling it between his fingers. "You asked for this with your snappy fucking attitude," he released her, now, reddened lip. "Look at me, Deku."

Tears fought to overflow as she forced herself to stare up at him. Bakugo's grip softened in her hair, brushing it back in a mock-up of tenderness as he pulled his cock out of the front of his briefs.

"Put your mouth on me."

He gave her hair another jerk, and Izuku whined before she finally gave in, tentative fingers curling around the base of his cock as she took the head in her mouth. She licked the underside and up over the slit, only knowing what Bakugo liked and not really how else this was supposed to be done. He sighed, his hand moving to the back of Izuku's head to urge her down a little further.

“Be a—ah.. g-good sport, nerd”

Izuku is tired  being a good sport. She resents being a good sport. If she wasn’t such a good sport to begin with, she wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place. She wouldn’t be on this shitty floor listening to these shitty words from a boy with that shitty snarl. Maybe her life would be entirely different right now. Izuku fantasizes about it being different.

Because she knew it was wrong for Bakugo to punish her this way, but she didn't know how to stop it—or what kind of life she'd be able to live without it.

Izuku swallowed around his cock, trying to keep her mouth from getting sloppy.

"There you go. Remember how I—fuck—taste, Deku?" Bakugo groaned in mingled pleasure and exasperation, pulling her down even further.

Sure, being used this way hurt, but the alternative was to be completely alone. Izuku would rather be hurt than be alone. She's not sure if she can handle the weight of herself—she's too heavy.

But there are parts of her that still don't belong to Bakugo, the traitorous parts in her head that know what this looks like, how evil it is to be treated like a thing by someone she'd consider the love of her life.

Tears rolled down her cheeks as her lips stretched. Every time Bakugo pushed his hips against her mouth, the head of his cock would shove itself down Izuku's throat, making her gag. This part almost seemed to last forever, where Bakugo would use her like she wasn't a living, breathing being, moving quickly and harshly and far too unkind.

"Swallow so you don't ruin my carpet," he gasped out. With a fistful of Izuku's hair, he tried to fuck her mouth as deep as he could go, and her trained throat opened up for him. "Drink it up, nerd."

Izuku didn't have any choice but to swallow anyway. Cum pumped down her throat. Warm and salty and deep—she gags, but Bakugo's cock is a plug and nothing can come up past it.

She wants to curl into herself and cry, but part of her knows she deserves this.

⁂

Izuku had spent the better part of the morning pacing. If she were a cartoon, she'd likely have paced right through the floor by now. She'd thought and she'd paced and she'd thought some more and she'd taken a long, cold shower and forced herself to eat half a piece of toast and then went straight back to the pacing and thinking. Struggling to find her place between two realities because she can't have both, not anymore.

Izuku wasn't stupid enough to think it could go any other way.

Bags of sand might have been weighted to her ankles for all the time it took to force herself out of bed and to school, half-hoping, half-dreading seeing the object of her preoccupation. Rounding the corner, she sees him standing by the chalkboard. Waiting for who else but her at 3:55 in my morning.

She passed the threshold, trying for a smile, managing a grimace. "Sorry if yesterday I left in a rush. Kacchan was—" her first clue something was wrong was how Aizawa stiffened when she spoke, but didn't immediately turn. He leaned heavily on the counter, grip tightening when she emerged.  "Shota?" She choked, "What's going on?"

Exhaling laboriously, he turned, a veil of ice descending over his features. "I think I should be asking that question."

"..huh?" Her brows creased. "Sensei, are you okay?" She moved closer.

His hand shot up, rigid and unyielding. "I'm fine," he snapped, glaring hard enough to burn a hole right through her; Izuku lurched back as if slapped. "Little late to be asking that."

A stab of hurt lanced her heart, but she managed the words. "...did I do something?" Though the look on her face was admission enough. A girl who's been taking the blame all of her life isn't simply going to stop now.

Aizawa's lips pressed in a line so tight they were nearly invisible, a million words raring to spill past. "All Might was suspicious. You could have had me fired and gotten yourself expelled," He finally rasped around clenched teeth. "What on earth provoked you into thinking announcing you have a crush on me was a good idea!?" Now he was yelling, twin black flames igniting in his eyes and shining on her in all their cold fury.

No, no, no, Izuku feels her heartbeat in her throat. She wants to seriously harm whoever made up this rumor in the first place. "Shota, I'm—"

"Don't," he glowered dangerously. "Don't pretend to care"

"I do—!"

"If that were true, you never would have done this."

"I-I didn't tell anyone! Especially not All Might!" She said, frustrated and desperate to make him see. "You have to believe me, I don't know what's going on!"

"So you say," An aggravated snarl worked its way out of him, "I can't talk to you about this anymore. You need to leave."

Izuku's lip trembles. Maybe she was destined to forever fall for people she couldn't have. Maybe there's a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for her to find them. Waiting to make her feel the same impossibility over and over again. Maybe it was all some sick joke the Gods are playing on her for their amusement.

No. Fuck the waiting. Fuck the apologizing. She's already losing Kacchan; she couldn't lose Aizawa, too. She couldn't.

Izuku crossed her arms and planted herself. "No"

"This isn't up for discussion," Shota said with an air of finality, which she, true to form, blatantly ignored.

"Says you"

"Because I'm your teacher," his hand slammed on the desk. "And I say you're leaving." His expression would have frozen a tiger mid-leap. Unfortunately for him, Izuku wasn't possessing of the average tiger's self-preservational instincts.

"I'm staying"

"You're going"

"Make me"

"Don't think I won"t."

She guffawed. "How? We fight hand-to-hand three times a week. I know all of your moves."

"Big talk. But I don't need to pin you to control you." He was correct: there was little she wouldn't do at his behest. But she wouldn't do this.

"Even if you knocked me out and shipped me all the way to America, I-I'd come back! I won't stay away. I want..." The words lodged in her throat.

Aizawa's arms crossed. "Yes, Izuku? What is it you want?"

You. I want you. "I want... to stay. Here..."

"Well, maybe I don't want you here. Did you ever think of that?" Aizawa snapped, face scrunched as if in pain.

Izuku felt something that looked and tasted like rejection, but was deeper, more acidic, and she wondered if this was the feeling that parents got when their children slipped from their grasp, their gaze and went somewhere they could not, a place where their voices become static and their hands lay stupidly at their sides—what do you do when you know you can do nothing?

Aizawa continues, "Maybe I hate the idea of being in your presence another minute. Maybe you forfeited your chance to make demands when you ran your mouth."

A hollowness opened in Izuku's chest, her worst fears manifesting, threatening to choke the life from her. This... this is a tactic to get me to leave... she told herself. If only she could be more assured of that...  "You don't mean that. You're just trying to hurt me," she sniffled, chin lifting imperiously. "Everyone wants to hurt me..."

Aizawa appeared on the verge of something. Izuku didn't know what. His eyes, huge and angry and so so sad, locked on her. She licked her lips; his gaze dipped to the action for an instant before he forced it back up. It was as if he could see her every unspoken word, clear as day.

"Izuku, listen—"

"No! You listen! I c-can't take this. Not from you. I thought I could... but you've proved how stupid I was to ever think that..." rage was scorching her lungs, the one thing keeping the pain at bay. She wanted to scream, to throw a punch, and yet she only exhaled, shaky, exhausted. "Why'd you have to come into m-my life... Everything was simple before you, Shota. Now—now it's torture!"

He staggered back,  "Oh, I torture you, huh?"

"Yes!" Izuku barked, damn, it felt good to actually say what was on her mind for once. "Yes, you do! You have no idea what I go through every day. Being around you! You—you just"—she raised clenched fists as if they'd help her illustrate her point, but she only managed a rough growl—"you're so difficult!"

"Really?" Aizawa loomed above her, gaze burning. "Tell me, Izuku. Tell me how difficult I am."

"You're maddening!" she yelled, lips drawn back, chest heaving, feral, exquisite.

She swept past him and back to the door. Aizawa spun, a jettisoned man watching a retreating ship, standing, petrified and mute. He stalked to her before she could reach the hall. His hand clamped around her wrist, wrestling her back into the classroom.

"Hey!" she started to protest. His eyes were dark and fierce. Good. Be angry. She liked how anger rattled his features—made him look older, sexier even. If she couldn't have him, she could at least have that.

"Sensei, what the he—" Izuku froze. There was no way she could miss it now, how his gaze locked on her mouth. One glance at his eyes told her everything she needed: she'd seen it, the hunger. She knew. Her lips parted in a little gasp; the sound drew his eyes back down—

It was like being doused with ice water.

Aizawa moved. With a dark, wretched snarl, he tugged her in by the wrist while his other hand hooked around her waist, anchoring her to him as he swooped down to crush his lips to hers. Her body tensed against him; she made a startled sound, muffled by his lips. Heady waves of pleasure coursed through her, dizzying.

He took, like he'd always taken, greedy, vicious, starving, like he would cease to have oxygen the second their mouths were parted. His tongue darted out to run along the seam of her closed lips, and Izuku made another shocked sound in the back of her throat, louder this time. Her knees went weak; he held her impossibly tighter, gripping onto her like she might turn to smoke in his arms.

Izuku's free hand slithered betwixt their bodies to nudge his shoulder, exerting enough strength to rip them apart. Aizawa let her, retreating two feet. Intuitively, though, he drew back even closer. Slowly, very torturously slow, his thumbs stroked her cheekbones. If he thought that would calm her, he was wrong. Izuku melted, lashes fluttering shut, knees practically buckling.

"This is what I mean when I say 'Difficult,'" She said. Brows furrowed, eyes still glistening faintly.  Her palms framed either side of his face, and she pulled him down to press their lips together.

Her lips began moving carefully; Aizawa's fingers dug into her waist, then slid unconsciously to her hips, dragging her closer. He sighed, a breathy, almost keening sound. Tentatively, he nipped at her bottom lip, then he bit again, harder this time, and languidly ran his tongue over the spot to soothe the sting. Izuku uttered a positively devastating sound and opened her mouth, granting him entrance, raking her nails across his scalp as his tongue slipped between her parted lips.

Aizawa growled as he licked into her mouth, exploring, seeking, humming with pleasure as he coaxed that molten little tongue of hers to meet his. Izuku's brows furrowed as she tasted him, felt herself go slack in his arms, impossibly warm and supple and not close enough, not nearly close enough.

The girl made a surprised sound as Aizawa lifted her, guiding her legs to wrap around his waist, her body flush to his. She clung to him, fingers twined in his hair, her heat electrifying against him. He spun them around and carried her to the desk, setting her down as mildly as he could. "Sweetheart..." He kissed her swollen bottom lip before moving to the top. Clasping her face, he turned her head ever so slightly, placing a featherlight kiss to one corner of her mouth and then the other.

Her name was a prayer he murmured again and again, a penitent at her altar. Aizawa's thumb dipped under her chin, slowly tilting her head back to expose her throat. Her heart leapt; she watched him watch her as he leaned in with aching, deliberate leisure and pressed his mouth to her neck.

"Ah~!" Izuku gasped.

He ghosted a kiss over the straining muscles of her throat, then gently nipped that silky skin. She groaned, trying and failing to muffle the sound by biting her lip. Aizawa trailed his way up her neck, alternating without warning between kisses and bites. His tongue found her pulse point; Izuku's face is buried in the crook of his neck and shoulder.

"Don't be shy now, not when you had so much to say," he rasped, husky and breathless, focus turning higher.

From her spot—control slipping like water down a drain—Izuku tried determinately not to shiver as his breath washed past her ear, tried to pour every vestige of decorum into a vexed "I really hate you sometimes." The way Aizawa chuckled, hot and knowing, and resumed his ministrations on the sensitive skin behind her ear told her everything she needed.

"I've been told I'm... What was it? 'Difficult'?"

"You are," she hissed, gliding her nails through the hair at the base of his head, enjoying the way his whole body trembled.

"You're dist—mm"—a playful slap right where her lower back and ass connect—"distracting"

His laugh was breathy and delirious on her skin. "Oh, I'm distracting?" A pale fingertip teasingly skimmed the length of her collarbone, pushing aside her shirt as far as the buttons allowed. "Do you have any fucking idea what you've put me through these last few months? And you call me maddening..."

"Because it's the truth!" She gripped his upper arm, steadying herself as his head bowed to the junction where her neck met her shoulder. "You enjoy provoking me!"

"I like the way your eyes light up."

Her fingers laced more fully through his hair and yanked just hard enough to make her annoyance known. He only chuckled again. "What can I say? You're too fun to tease, baby." He bit her collarbone, snarling lowly when the fabric of her shirt refused to yield to his attempts to tug it aside before his warm lips were back on hers.

Kissing Bakugo didn't feel like this. Kissing him was like taking a dare to run over knives, like an adrenaline strike of lightning, like the moment when you've swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head. Kissing him was complicated.

Kissing Aizawa... well, it was so damn simple. Izuku preferred kissing her teacher over her boyfriend. And it's fine. She's already accepted that she's an awful person. Izuku pulls away, now distracted with thoughts far too heavy for a teenage girl to carry. Her lips, red and plump, quiver.

"Please don't be mad at me..." She felt the calloused brush of a palm against his cheek. Izuku wasn't entirely clear on what expression she was making, but she was pretty sure some horrible, embarrassing sob rattled its way up her throat, unbidden. "I don't know what I'd do if—"

"C'mere." A pair of large, strong hands slide around her back. She's being pushed forward, and all of a sudden, Shota hugs her.

It catches her off guard at first, eyes widening and muscles tensing a bit, but it's so familiar, so soothing, that it only takes a second or two for the floodgates to open; only a second to know it's now safe to be vulnerable, to let go and cry it out like she should. Like she fucking deserves. And what was merely quiet, restrained weeping, is now uncontrollable sobbing as Izuku falls to pieces in Aizawa's arms.

"Ju—just don't... M's-sorry for not being ca-careful enough. J-jus—please don't lea—vuh—leave m-me"

Truth is, she doesn't remember telling anyone about a so-called 'crush', but here in this man's arms, it seems like it's the only explanation. Izuku just has a knack for ruining everything, doesn't she?

"Shh, hush now, baby." Aizawa rests his head on hers. There, his lips tilt into a smirk. She has no idea. "I forgive you. Just don't do it again."

STEP 7

realize you’re changing

———————————————

Entering her mother's house with a bag full of groceries, Izuku was disconcerted to hear the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen. She stopped short of the entrance, unsure of what she was hearing. If she didn't know better, she'd say Inko was laughing.

"I'm sorry, she thought she was a what?"

"A robot," Inko chuckled. "She'd seen static from brushing her hair one night and thought it meant she was made of metal. I had no idea until she came to me a few days later and told me her hinges needed oiling."

"Her what now?"

"Her knee hurt from kicking a ball; she figured oiling it would make the pain go away."

"Obviously"

"Took five whole minutes to convince her it wasn't so. You should've seen her face. Her eyes were like saucers."

Izuku's face went rosy. They were talking about her. Albeit a four-year-old her. But still. She rounded the corner before she could think better of it, eager to put a stop to such embarrassing childhood stories.

"Mom, please tell me you haven't been—" She stopped dead, utterly nonplussed. Aizawa stood on one side of the kitchen island, dicing a carrot on a cutting board; Inko stood across from him, gathering up the carrot pieces and throwing them into a pot on the stove. Putting the finishing touches on... dinner? The bags in Izuku's hands feel even heavier now that she knows they're useless.

Aizawa looked positively captivated by the expression she was making. "Did they look anything like that?"

Inko smiled, "The likeness is startling."

Izuku schooled her features to something more impassive. "I thought I was cooking dinner tonight," she said with a good deal more sangfroid than she felt.

"Your teacher offered. So, what's this I hear about pushing yourself far too hard recently? How many times do I have to tell you that your body needs to recover from that villain attack?"

If Aizawa weren't here, she would be getting her ear pulled right about now.

Izuku shoots him a glance. "Tattletale"

Aizawa steps over to take her bags and sets them on the counter. Izuku lets him in favor of crossing her arms over her chest. "Be careful how you address the man who's seen the photographs of that unscheduled haircut you gave yourself when you were five. Very bold by the way. Not many can pull off blunt cut bangs," he tsked, lips tilting up refulgently at her.

And Izuku thought her face couldn't get any redder... how shortsighted of her. She glared at her mother, who didn't appear half as penitent as she'd like. "You showed him pictures? Since when do you even have pictures?"

In that motherly way of hers, Inko brings the metal spoon full of soup from the pot and holds it to Izuku's lips until the girl eventually opens. The bit the dribbles from the corner of her mouth gets wiped away with her mother's apron. "Mom!" Izuku whines, just knowing Aizawa is in perfect view of this.

"Since always, honey. I didn't figure you'd appreciate them, but I always did, and now someone else does to" She smiled nostalgically.

Shota takes a sip of his beverage, chuckling. "Cheers to that."

Izuku buried her burning face in her hands. "Can everyone please stop talking now?"

Inko laughs and nudges the man beside her. The height difference has her shoulder meeting his ribs. "Sometimes I just want to put her in my pocket and take her everywhere I go."

"I actually know a woman with a shrinking quirk."

"Oh my, does she take requests?"

"This"—Izuku gestured between Aizawa and her mother—"the two of you, I don't like it."

Shota moves around Izuku to wash off the cutting board. A surprisingly warm palm pressed on the small of her back so much more gently than she'd expected. As if he needed help squeezing through the six feet of open space between her and the wall. Her eyes dart to him like he'd just spontaneously combusted.

Say something to him, she thought. Say anything at all. But she was horrible at this. At the normality. Aizawa stands there washing dishes in her mother's kitchen as if just yesterday his tongue wasn't down her throat. He doesn't seem affronted but the strangeness of this, but it's all Izuku can think about. Those same hands that hold a soapy sponge also held her like such a delicate little thing... Uh, oh, now she's thinking about it.

She's truly fucked up.

No, not even that is good enough anymore.

Izuku's not fucked up. That's letting herself off the hook. People who are fucked up don't choose to be like her. She's doing this on purpose, and she knows it, but at the same time, she just doesn't get it. There is no enemy in this story. Not really. She's doing this to herself. And there's no one to blame for the positions she's found herself in but her.

Well, what else is there to do but set the table?

⁂

Izuku was wildly uncomfortable. She wasn't quite sure who her mother and teacher were having dinner with, but it didn't seem to be her. She'd contributed nothing to the conversation; as far as she could tell, she could have been replaced with an inflatable doll and everyone would have had an equally good time.

She held a spoon in her right hand like a child or an American, stirring her soup and picking up spoonfuls just to let it dribble back into the bowl, never once reaching her mouth.

From across the table, Inko gives her a look that says Eat. But there's a hand on Izuku's knee—it's heavy with the weight of what being caught could do—and it's all she can think about. Inko and Shota chat ideally about some class project which, under any other circumstance, Izuku would jump to join in, but here she sits stiff as a board. It was unsettling how completely normal Aizawa seemed. It makes Izuku think she's the weird one, like she has no reason to act this way because the man across from her is completely unfazed.

"—mm, and is there a special someone in your life?" Inko asks. It's thrown in between their conversation of how expensive groceries had gotten, as if it's just the most normal thing to ask.

The silence was sharp. Vaguely, Izuku was aware that her mouth was hanging open. She shut it quickly. Then opened it again to say, "Mom! Y-you can't just ask tha—!"

"There is someone," Aizawa replies, and Izuku starts to choke on air.

"That's lovely," Inko smiles warmly. "From between teaching and hero work, you still find time for someone. How endearing. Please, do tell, what's she like?"

Izuku... she doesn't think she wants to be here. Separately, she loves her mom. Separately, she enjoys Aizawa's company. But when they're together, she's nothing but a ball of tightly wound tension. As terrible as it sounds, Izuku wants to leave. Or curl up into herself until she disappears.

"You flatter me, Ms. Midoriya. But I have to respect her privacy." Aizawa rasped out, and blooms of equal glee and perturbation grew in Izuku's chest at how utterly seen she felt under his gaze. She doesn't think anyone has ever looked at her like this before.

"And you're a gentleman," Inko swoons. Izuku wonders if Inko would have the same reaction if she knew Aizawa was drawing shapes and writing words on her daughter’s thigh under the table. "Where were you when I was young?"

"Mom"

"Oh, come on, I haven't even spoken to him since he stopped by to let me know about the dorms." She eats a spoonful of soup before continuing, "You don't have to come by for dinner if it's too much of a commute, Izuku."

She's talking about the three times a week Izuku doesn't go straight to the dorms after school, but instead goes home. If she were a boy, she'd be able to distance herself more easily, if she weren't in such problematic relationships, but she is. And on top of that, she's also a forever little girl who needs her mommy.

"No, I like coming," Izuku responds calmly despite the fact that her heart has been trying to crack through her ribs all evening. "I miss you."

"She's a good kid," Aizawa says, "Her classmates don't check in with their parents like she does with you." He squeezes her knee under the table; she flushes.

Sometimes, a child will go under while their parent is watching, and the parent doesn't even know anything is wrong. Just like now. Drowning is a quiet, desperate thing. And sure... Izuku doesn't exactly feel like she's drowning, but she certainly doesn't know how to swim in such waters.

"She is, she really is," Inko smiles, all proud and gushy, full of nothing but the purest love.

Inko saw her daughter as the little girl who dropped coins from her piggy bank into the outstretched hands of the homeless, who fretted over the plight of hurt animals on the roadside, who, just a handful of Christmases ago, organized a coat drive at her school when she saw a little boy shivering on the playground. In her mother's eyes, she wasn't the whore of a girl that cheated on her boyfriend with her teacher—she was just Izuku. A part of her missed being just that. The same part wondered when she stopped.

"She's just my little miracle child," Inko continues, "but sometimes she can get in over her head. I'm just glad fine heroes like yourself are watching out for her. Thank you for protecting my little girl, Mr. Aizawa."

Izuku had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you're swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water is deeper than you think and there's nothing there.

"You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there."

Nora's words had no right to repeat in her head, sick, twisted, and louder each time.

⁂

"I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the way your mother looks at me," Aizawa said, side glancing Izuku in the passenger seat. She found herself there after he flat-out forbade her from walking back to the dorms so late. Inko thought it was a sweet gesture.

Izuku needed to get some sleep before school tomorrow. Still, it didn't really feel like Aizawa was keen on getting back. It was like he was driving in place, treading water. There should be a light that shines between the brake lights that you can turn on to indicate that someone is just driving to drive. Izuku doesn't comment on it. She doesn't mind. And it wouldn't be the first time she fell asleep in his car if it came to that.

"She wants to see you naked. She looks at All Might the same way, even though I'm pretty sure she already has. She cringed at her own words.

"I wish you hadn't told me that, baby."

Izuku leaned back against the seat and stared out at the moon. A glorious moon. Full, fat, reddish moon. "Have you been online once? Everyone wants to see you naked."

"And you?"

It's not that he says it, it's that he knows what he's doing to her when he does.

"...n-never crossed my mind," she held her breath and hoped God wouldn't strike her down dead for lying.

It was raining and the traffic was crazy, like it always is in Japan when it rains. Some drivers slowed down on the slick roads. That made others furious, and guys by the handful leaned on their horns, screamed out their windows, and accelerated out onto the shoulder, fishtailing wildly past the slowpokes while waving their fists. Men may or may not be better drivers than women, but they seem to die more often trying to prove that they are.

"You didn't have to say anything when my mom asked about your relationships..." She's not upset. Because in the universe where he wasn't talking about her... well, Izuku doesn't want to do this if there were going to be other women. She can't. “But it was sweet, thank you.”

Then, said like a secret voice speaking straight to her bones, "Well, who else would I mention?" Shota watched her for two tense seconds. "I've never seen that shirt before."

She glances down at what she changed into while at her mom's. Stupid. She hadn't even thought about it. Just threw it on because it was soft and big and definitely not because she was comforted by the smell of it. She's not that screwed in the head... Not that hypocritical to wear her boyfriend's clothes around Aizawa after just concluding to hate the thought of seeing him with other women.

"It's... Kacchan's" Cars pass them on the streets with a 'vroom' and splash water from puddles against her window.

"Oh, yeah? And how's the little serial killer doing?"

Izuku huffs. She stares out of the window. "Don't use that voice."

"What voice?"

"That fake happy voice" reminds her of her mom when their cat, Fluffy Bottoms, died. The ‘nothing is wrong, how could anything be wrong?’ voice, "I... I'm going to end things with him; I just need a little more time."

"Mmm," Aizawa hums. "Do you sleep in his shirt too?"

"Hey," Izuku leans over the center console, half-defensive and half-empathetic. She wants to get upset because he's right. But that's something Bakugo would do... get angry over the truth. She was so much better than him. Or she was just the fucking same. Not like anything could surprise her anymore. "and I pretend to be in big business meetings with Endeavor and Hawks in your blazer. I.. I do stupid things. But it doesn't change the fact that I like you, o-okay?"

Aizawa pulls over in the median. The car jolts under unfamiliar gravel and dirt until he puts it in park. Izuku's heart is beating painfully fast, and she feels it travel up her throat as if her body is going to cough it out. Cars going over the speed limit pass them on either side. And again, she's trapped. But she's not because why would she ever feel like that with Aizawa of all people... Maybe trapped isn't the right word... But she certainly feels stuck between one place and the other.

Izuku must have felt no different than a sample under a microscope. Aged eyes take her in. Just stupid little Midoriya with those ratty red shoes, unkept curly hair, and awkward disposition that came with her age.

"That's the cutest fucking thing I've ever heard," and yet Shota is looking down at her like she hung the damn stars in the sky. "Will you promise to show me?"

"If y-you think you're ever going to see my impression of you, you're—" At some point as she spoke, in a motion as natural as an exhale or a stretch, he'd begun sliding his hands up her thighs.

She stopped talking.

And thinking.

And breathing.

She resumed breathing on a shuddery exhale.

And as if her thighs were bare, his hands heated all the way through the cotton of her skirt to her skin. Every tiny hair on her body stood erect, craving his attention. She felt spangled with heat, cinders everywhere on her body. 'Molten' rather described how she felt between her legs. Holy shit, it was just a little petting. Control your ovaries. Just how many times would she have to remind herself, and when will she fucking listen?

He strummed his thumbs softly, softly, back and forth, back and forth, against her thighs. Oh God. She opened her mouth to reiterate: 'We can't'

"Guh," surprisingly, was what emerged instead. A sort of hybrid gasp-sigh.

"Indeed," he agreed, softly. She would have laughed. But the sensation was too heated and too total, and desire gathered with a distracting, heavy intensity beneath the weight of his hands, coaxed by those feathery stroking thumbs, and her entire body, brain included, was invested in enjoying that, not in making coherent sounds. She fought to keep her thighs from falling open. Izuku wasn't going to have her first whatever this was be in a damn car. No, even she had more class than that.

"Only kissing," She breathed.

She doesn't want to romanticize it either, doesn't want to make it out to be anything other than what it is. It's not a desire. Desire should possess her, should tear through her like a wildfire. Whatever this is, it feels like an unmet need.

Her heart hammers in her chest. Twenty-four bones made up the ladder of her ribs, not counting the spine and sternum, all protecting that dumb little organ of hers. "Do you feel your heart?" Aizawa had once asked her. And now to think about bone, muscle, veins—it was thinking about him.

Shota pressed his lips to hers, sucking and biting and taking everything she had to offer.

Izuku found herself in his lap a few minutes later. And for a moment, it wasn't even her. Izuku was looking at some stranger girl who grinded her hips against a man twice her age. She didn't know how to handle the guilt of it all. But having willingly sat on his thighs, she figures she deserves the struggle.

Aizawa was broad, had sharp shoulders belying a sturdy frame lined with pulsing, corded muscles. All edges. Tough enough to sustain, sharp enough to cut, but inherently abused. Scarred and neglected from proper medical care and long hours on the job. Did he care? That Izuku could feel the scars lining his torso? Every chronicle of his bloody past scrawled irreversibly across his skin... Every fight she watched on television, clutching her teddy and smiling through the toothless gaps in her smile.

Aizawa pulls away, Izuku kissed the air once, twice, then gave him her biggest eyes possible in what she hoped was alluring, though Bakugo had once told her the wide-eyed thing just made her look like a terrified squirrel getting some bad news. Definitely not the image she was going for when trying to be wanted by an older man.

"Only kissing," He had repeated.

She wanted to hit him.

⁂

Izuku had suffered the eternity of the ring about to be picked up, didn't know the heart rush of hearing that incomparable voice suddenly linked with her own, the sense it gave of being actually inside his ear, and he hers.

"Hey," He answers. She can hear his steps. She must've caught him in the middle of doing something. "Did you forget something in my car?"

"N-no, I just wanted to say thank you.. for fixing my mom and me dinner." She could still smell him on her; she was surrounded by it. It hit her. He smelled the way air felt as it rushed around her, freeing and terrifying, and it was the most beautiful fucking thing she's ever experienced.

"Ah, all I did was cut up a few vegetables."

"Well, she would've been eating a frozen meal if you hadn't." It's one of the reasons Izuku goes over so often. Inko won't eat a proper meal if she doesn't have anyone to eat with.

''It was chance'' Aizawa diminished. There's a squeak followed by the groan of an exhausted man lying down for the first time that day.

"Fine, play it down," Izuku said, "If it wasn’t you. If it were in a movie or something, you'd agree that it was a nice gesture."

"Hardly movie material"

"It'll star me spilling soup all over myself," She cringed, remembering how the dinner went. That shirt she changed into—Bakugo's shirt—smelled like Aizawa now. How ironic.

"I just might watch it for that, Izuku," He chuckles.

She hugs her pillow, needing to feel him. She needs his touch, his body, for so many reasons—she needs him to want her in the same way.

It is a bit bad... Izuku is too young. She's little. Izuku is fifteen, so goddamn little. Baby fat in her cheeks, her thighs, her belly, her ass. Slightly crooked teeth and long, deer eyelashes. Big, no-good doe eyes. Eraserhead deserved a woman, and she's humble enough to admit she's not, no matter how many times he calls her that.

She's just like every other teenage girl; her nipples are sensitive, and she likes kissing, she loves when Aizawa sucks on her tongue, she loves when he presses her against him, when he feels her up through her clothes, loves that Aizawa takes the lead because he's older and he knows better.

"What are you thinking about?" His voice startles her out of her thoughts.

"You uh," Izuku definitely fucking understands what she needs, but she won't admit it out loud yet. In some twisted, silent way, really, it shows she's not ready. "Do you ever just wanna... I don't know, go and get lost?"

A pause.

"You really are fifteen."

"I'm serious."

"So am I. Why does a pretty girl like you want to get lost?"

She flushes. "I don't have a reason... I thought it was normal to... to just... wanna get lost sometimes"

"Where would you go?"

"I don't know, I guess wherever my feet take me"

He hums. "You might like New Zealand. I went there once for work. In the Summer, all of the flowers bloom, dark red flowers from horizon to horizon. There are a hundred kinds of grass out there too, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses."

Izuku paints the picture of his words on her ceiling. "That sounds beautiful."

"I'll take you there if you like. I'll take you wherever you want."

Abuse, her therapist had told her. Izuku repeats the word over and over, tries to understand what it means, but all she can think of is the lovely warm feeling she gets whenever Aizawa talks to her like this.

"Have you ever left Japan?"

"Mm-nmm," she hums into her pillow.

"Have you even left the city?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"That you've never actually lived before?"

"My mom wouldn't let me do any of that. And even if she did, All Might still wouldn't." Izuku giggled, "The only time I can ever live is when they're not around."

"You're so open tonight. You must be getting tired, huh?"

"Mmm...a little"

"Do you do a lot of out-of-character things when they're not around?"

It was like butterflies on meth in her stomach.

"I kissed you, didn't I?" She hadn't intended to say anything, but as soon as she felt the answer, it was out of her mouth.

That answer pleases him; she can hear his approval on the line. A gruff sigh follows shortly after. "And the kid, Bakugo, do you do anything with him?"

Eventually, she doesn't know when, but eventually? Izuku is going to have to stop thinking she can have them both. Because regret will haunt her for the rest of her life. It's like a ghost that refuses to leave a house. Life is regret, life is failure. But like that ghost, you learn to live with it. Because failure makes success matter.

"...nothing more than with you..."

Some people might think what she says next is erratic, possibly a cause for concern. Izuku preferred to think of it as not giving a single, solitary fuck. "Well, okay, that's a lie, but not that. We never went all the way or anything... I'm still a virgin."

Another moment of quiet. Apparently, when she first decided to lust over Bakugo, she couldn't hold back. But ever since she figured out that what she was—whatever she was—was something that other people were too... it had been hard to walk back. Izuku didn't want to. It was like she'd known for years that there was something wrong with her—and now with Aizawa's pointed guidance she knew there wasn't, that this was a valid thing.

"That's good," Shota's voice pipes from the phone. "He'd just disappoint you."

"That's mean."

"That's the truth. How can you expect the sex to be good with a boy like him?"

Saying the word makes it a little too real. Izuku is flushed under her All Might comforter.

"Well, isn't all sex good sex?" Radio silence. A moment, two, and then more footsteps. "Shota?"

"Jesus, baby, I'm grabbing my keys," he groans.

Izuku wanted to say something sassy, but the language-formation part of her brain seemed to be offline. "N-no, stay, I... I like hearing you in my ear."

"You can't say things like that and expect me not to come to you."

"Don't just—" Izuku rubs her thighs together, suddenly all too aware that it’s been a week since she’s... shaved down there. "Just keep talking to me."

Izuku could hear the exact moment when his self-restraint snapped. Alarm jolted through her. The smell of her own sweat-dampened linen and arousal filled her nostrils.

"Yeah? You'd like that? I can tell you all of the things I'd do to you." His whisper seemed to come from the darkest recesses of her own mind. "If I were there, Izuku... then by now I would have shredded your clothes with my hands and teeth"

"O-oh, um—you, r-really?" She's never been talked to like this, to be wanted by a man so wholeheartedly. It sent her whole body on edge. This was a new feeling.

"By now, I would have pushed you down to the bed, put my hands beneath your breasts, and lifted them up to my mouth. I would be kissing them... licking them... until the tips were like hard little berries, and then I would bite them so gently... You'd love it" Izuku felt herself drift into a slow half swoon as Aizawa continued in a ragged murmur. "... I would kiss my way down to your thighs... inch by inch... and when I reached those sweet green curls, I would lick through them, deeper and deeper, until I found the little pearl of your clit... and I would rest my tongue on it until I felt it throb. I would circle it, and stroke it... I'd lick until you started to beg. And then I would suck you. But not hard. I wouldn't be that kind. I would do it so lightly, so tenderly, that you would start screaming with the need to come... I would put my tongue inside you... taste you... and—" Aizawa stopped while Izuku remained frozen, aroused, panting. At length, he spoke in a nearly inaudible voice. "Are you wet right now, Izuku?

Drenched is a better word. Her thighs rub together, and the fabric of her panties bunches and presses against her most sensitive parts, pulsating with the beat of her heart.

"Th-that's so... vulgar, Sensei," but she can't stop thinking about it. Lying under his weight, his strength, helpless but not trapped. What his tongue would feel like on her breasts... What anything would feel like down there. It would be a whole new experience. Her first. And holy shit, she'd give it to him.

"Too much?" His voice chuckles in her ear. Somehow, she can feel the warmth of it. "How's this: I don't think I would be able to live without you." It rolls off his tongue so easily, and he should be embarrassed, but he's not. Aizawa doesn't feel bad about it; he sounds so damn certain. "It's true."

It is a long while before Izuku speaks, and it wavers in insecurity, doused with doubt.

"No way," she says, "You would go on just fine without me. Don't be stupid. You don't need anybody. You're Eraserhead," And she says the last part with heavy emphasis.

"Yes, and you're Izuku Midoriya," Aizawa replies. "I need you," And he says this with too much assurance for it to be a lie.

"I need you, too," comes Izuku's whispered response.

"It's sick how badly I need you; you're my student."

"Maybe I'm the sick one," she states. The last few months have been strange. It's as if, within the long weeks, something had been planted inside her; it's a feeling she can't shake. It's made her behave peculiarly, do things she would never do. "Maybe I'm all messed up."

"We're both a little messed up then."

"Gee," Izuku laughs, "we should start a club."

⁂

It took Izuku about 20 minutes under the shower to start getting some self-respect back. It would have taken a bit less if she had a better showerhead and decent water pressure. It cost her something to be the way she is. But she does not know what. And she does not know if she can get it back. She doesn't even know if she wants it.

"Izuku,"

The girl blinks, eyes burning like she's just had a staring contest with the ground. She doesn't look up.

"You were gone for almost a minute," Nora says softly.

"Oh. Sorry"

"No need to apologize," she replies with a strained smile, "Have you been doing that a lot?"

"Doing what?"

"Spacing out"

"I didn't—I don't—" she stuttered. Izuku looked at Nora, quite literally shaken from the onsetting reverie, but those green eyes of hers held no annoyance. No fight. Just exhaustion. "I wasn't spacing out. I was just thinking"

"What about?"

"S'not important"

"It is," Nora encourages, "It's just you and me," she speaks to Izuku as if she's a particularly fragile victim, as if she's a startled little creature of flight, itching to take off yet encumbered with an injured wing.

"I don't..." The girl begins, sentence indefinitely unfinished, hanging in the air for all of ten seconds before Nora plucks it right off the line.

"You do. I know you do. It's okay. I'm not..." She stops herself, near inaudible exhale releasing as she considers her next words. "I'm not upset with you, you're just a child. This isn't your fault. None of this is your fault."

That makes Izuku want to crumble into herself. Fall to the floor like her bones are made of cheap paper. She can't help but raise her head slowly, peeking out from beneath her hair, beneath her eyelashes. She met Nora’s gaze, so tired, so conflicted.

"I don't mean t-to be a jerk, really. I just—I don't know what's wrong with me." Her voice is soft, broken, lost.

Nora sets her hand on Izuku's knee. "That's what I'm here for. You don't have to ever do this alone. I told you, remember? I'm a survivor too."

You know, on TV when there's one of those awkward, shocking moments, and all you hear are the crickets in the background? Well, chirp fucking chirp... this is one of those moments.

Survivor, Nora had said. She thinks Izuku is being abused. And sure, when she spent every night with Bakugo, that made sense, but he hasn't been over to her house in months. She's distanced herself from him in lieu of Aizawa, so why is Nora still thinking this way?

Even if... even if she uses the word 'abuse' to describe certain things that were done to her, in someone else's mouth the word turns ugly and absolute. It swallows up everything that happened. It swallows her and all the times she wanted it, begged for it. Like the laws that flatten everything she's ever done with Aizawa as statutory rape—a birthday is as arbitrary a marker as any. Doesn't it make sense that some girls are ready sooner?

"Izuku, I have to ask you, and please hear me out... have you ever heard of the term 'grooming'?"

She hasn't. Still, memories ricocheted through her body like an electric shock. Izuku doesn't understand, but some part deep, deep inside of her must be watching them with 20/20 vision, all knowing.

"Grooming is a process predators use to lure their victim into a relationship, to gain their trust, and prepare them for... sexual exploitation"

That doesn't sound familiar. That doesn't sound familiar. That doesn't sound familiar.

She wanted to buckle, lie on her side, and gasp like an eviscerated fish. She held her breath against it, but her mouth parted. She cared naught for living in the moment, but apparently her body was sensible. It wanted to breathe. Needed it. And that just wasn't capable in this room with this woman.

Izuku grabs her bookbag and jumps to her feet. "I have to go now," her voice distant, but collected, something for which she felt congratulations were in order, all things considered.

⁂

There's no reason for Izuku to feel this way. Bakugo doesn't treat her right, and she plans on dumping him soon. In all terms of the phrase, she is over him. A twinge in her chest calls her a big fat liar. It's building and building, digging its way upward. Don't overreact, she begs. There's nothing going on, there's no reason to feel like this; she needs to keep it under control.

Izuku watches from afar. A stalker. A peeping Tom. A concerned girlfriend.

"Fuck you," Kacchan had said, but there was no heat, not really.

"Fuck me yourself, you coward," Kirishima replies readily, returning with a smile, bright and brilliant and charming. A breathtaking sight. His signature laugh echoes in Izuku's ears like a siren.

Shut up, Izuku's pleads with the thoughts that fill her head like a flood. It doesn't mean anything. It's just friendly camaraderie.

Wrong. Don't be stupid; you know what that exchange meant. It's not like that. She knows it's not like that. She's reading too deeply into things; she should find a sense of calm. She should take a few deep breaths, relax, and unclench her jaw.

Do you want to lose to him?

Bakugo is now snorting at something Kirishima said, and Izuku's heart throbs painfully in her chest.

No. Don't do that. Don't make him laugh. You don't deserve him. Don't talk to him like that. Don't look at him like that. Don't touch him. Don't make him smile at you. Don't...

... God, she's the worst.

It makes Izuku feel sick to her stomach. Why can't she be normal? Why can't she just ignore it and let it go? Bakugo is allowed to have friends. Even if said friend is clearly crushing on him? He's not! She's being ridiculous; Kirishima hasn't done anything wrong, and here Izuku's brain is, treating him as if he's some kind of criminal.

He is—his crime is being too close to Kacchan, acting too friendly when he has no right to. He can't have Kacchan. I'm the only one who should have Kacchan. He'll never be as close to Kacchan as I am. He should just go away already.

Izuku wants to cave her head in with a rock. She gets the feeling that today's class is going to be exhausting.

⁂

She wasn't trying to bring it up. It just slipped out. During lunch, too close and too loud for her to play it off as anything else. Bakugo had called her a 'gangly, uncoordinated nerd' when her tired hands fumbled a water bottle and spilled some on herself. It was uncalled for. It hurt. What else was she supposed to say?

"You should go hang with Kirishima instead, Kacchan, since you're so close all of a sudden."

Bakugo is immediately defensive. "The fuck does that mean? I swear. All you wanna do is bitch and complain all the time. You're so whiny."

Izuku just doesn't get why he has to be so damn judgmental when he himself is clearly not perfect. She used to think it was because he cared, ‘Deku's this,’ and ‘Deku's that,’ Fucking hell, Deku is her. Let her be her. When is that going to start?

"You're right," she agrees, relenting. "All I do is complain. I get it! Thank God I have you here to constantly remind me."

It's an incredibly backhanded compliment. Denki winces in the corner of Izuku's vision, and Ochaco covers her mouth and looks away. Bakugo's face contorts through about fifteen different emotions, too fast for Izuku to process a single one, before settling on an expression that she isn't sure she's ever seen before and doesn't know how to categorize. There's fire in his eyes, smoldering, and a mean smile twisting his mouth.

Bakugo leans back, gaze firmly fixed on her, "Thanks, Deku," he begins, and Izuku's stomach instantly swoops with a bad feeling. Even so, she's on the edge of her seat, hot from the argument like always. But it feels different right now, charged with a kind of tension that's both familiar and brand new, the kind that makes her want to get closer and run the other way all at once. Something is seriously wrong with her. "I don't know where I would be without all of your genius little observations."

"Oh, man, here he goes," Denki mutters, dropping his head into his hands.

"No, I mean it," Bakugo insists, looking around the table with a pleading expression. "She actually used her ears for once and listened. Complimenting my ability to read her like a book? Truly genius stuff."

"Okay," Izuku says, ready to argue despite the thick layer of sarcasm he is laying down, thinking it's just another day of him being a fucking asshole. She rolls her eyes and continues, bored. "You don't have to—"

"I'd say that society really needs your intelligence to get through life," he continues, sounding serious, ugh, seriously fuck him. "but we both know that's a lie. Right, Deku? The better question is, what would you do without me?"

"Bakugo—" Ochaco interjects, sounding worried.

Izuku's cheeks are burning under the whole table's attention, and she wants to squirm beneath the weight of Bakugo's mean words, but she knows that she can't give him the satisfaction that he's gotten to her this easily. Instead, she drops her hands beneath the table and twists her fingers, trying to expend some of the energy.

"I mean, without me, you're just a dumb cunt, right?" He tilts his head, surveying her like a curious puppy with faux pity in his eyes. "If you didn't have me to worry about, then you'd be completely useless. Can’t wait to see how you choose to follow me after graduation."

Izuku doesn't say anything for a good few seconds, debating whether she should just try and try to salvage what little relationship they had left, or if she should let it all out and tell Bakugo to go to fucking Hell in three million different ways. She just has to decide, but her brain is too clouded, too messy. It's too much. Izuku rubs her knees together, fingers tracing her thighs that feel like teasing, trying to bring herself back to the situation. Don't be a fucking weirdo. Now is not the time.

"Scew you. Once we graduate I don’t want to ever see you again." Izuku spits, such harsh words feel foreign on her sweet little tongue. Her own body burns from accepting it as truth, and she feels like a meal in front of Bakugo's hungry eyes that seem to want to ruin her, trying to get her on her knees until she gives up.

Their classmates at the table are pretending not to be listening in. It doesn't help much, because as Izuku analyzes their looks even more, they go from worry to confusion to just straight up disgust, while some have a weird mix of two or three. She can't imagine at all how her own must look, but she guesses her pupils must be widened from the adrenaline.

Bakugo hadn't stopped staring at her since they started bickering, and she feels satisfaction at being able to maintain his attention for this long. What she said is clearly true, and everyone knows it, but they never thought Izuku would be the one to admit it—Bakugo included.

Izuku knows that he's trying to think of some comeback to fire at her in retaliation. But, for once, her Kacchan is speechless. She can recognize it now, the way he truly seems to have nothing to say. It's not that he couldn't come up with a world of sentences, insults, and things Izuku hasn't even come close to imagining. However, Bakugo just looks incapable of adapting any of them into an appropriate answer for now, and as time passes, the heat of the conversation seems to die out, leaving a layer of tension no one is sure how to break.

Izuku sighs, disappointed that he has nothing to say. "I think I lost my appetite," She looks down at her own food tray and realizes it's just barely touched. She knows now that it's a biological reaction, that when adrenaline levels start going up, your system prepares you for food to be scarce since you're going into fight mode, using the body's fat as a replacement for the nutrients.

At least she will totally ace that test next week.

⁂

'GROOMING' sat in her search bar with a blinking cursor beside it. Under it, recommendation questions: 'WHAT IS GROOMING', 'AM I BEING GROOMED', 'WHAT TO DO IF GROOMED'. She sure did love living her life, being blissfully unaware of what grooming was. But maybe... Whatever this word meant, it could explain her strange behaviour.

She hits search. The screen loads up immediately. All of the websites are daunting, including forums and news articles. They're all so very intimidating. Izuku starts simple: the definition.

An adult who manipulates a child or young person to exploit and abuse them—how easily the story becomes a cliché when it’s looked at without the soft focus of romance. It looks vulgar and erotic, but... but it can actually be extremely romantic.

Right below the definition was a link to a petition.

One full page that included photos of a young girl at fourteen, skinny and smiling through braces in her field hockey uniform, the text screaming, 'THIS IS HOW OLD SAMANTHA WILDE WAS WHEN EDWARD TAYLOR GROOMED HER.' All of the comments were supporting the girl, sending her prayers, wishing such a thing never happened to anyone again.

Izuku tried to imagine the same lines paired with snapshots from her relationship with Aizawa, peeping in on him shirtless, clutching his chest as he carried her, kissing him in his car—twice, shoving a hand between her thighs while talking on the phone with him. Izuku wondered how much victimhood the world would be willing to grant a girl like her.

The link attached to Samantha Wilde's story is a site explaining the steps groomers usually take when with their victim. And for a stupid moment, Izuku fills her story in the role of the bulletins.

1) Gaining access and isolating the victim: That was an oversimplification. Training sessions were All Might's idea. And sure... That led to the date, which led to car rides home, which led to cooking dinner with her mother... All of which she guessed could be considered isolating if she really stretched the truth. Like, really stretched.

Teeth chattering, Izuku felt cold and hot at the same time. Her mind was... slipping away. Her head felt warm. Suddenly, she had the urge to vomit. And yet she keeps reading.

2) Trust development and keeping secrets: Just because she trusts Aizawa doesn't mean he's grooming her. And she's always had secrets! All Might is responsible for her biggest one and Aizawa... Aizawa is responsible for her second biggest. The nature of their relationship—her 'crush', someone had once called it. She still doesn't know who. Only a select few people knew about her training sessions in the first pla—

And then there's that curl in her gut, and she's dry heaving, spit and struggling to catch her breath as the burning becomes a crawling, like a thousand ants burrowing shallow under her skin, and the nausea builds and builds and builds until there's something else, too.

3) Desensitization to touch and discussion of sexual topics: She's not desensitized... But she does think about sex a lot more. It's weird, really, how her life was less problematic when her only relationship consisted of too-rough blowjobs behind the middle school gymnasium.

She gags again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And when she's done—gagging and spitting on the ground and the room is silent—there's something else there in its place. And in every other place, too. Something wrong.

4) Attempt by abusers to make their behavior seem natural: That was the fucking problem. This all seemed pretty damn normal to her. Shit... Shit...

Izuku can't keep reading. She can't. It's not good for her. She needs a distraction, and she doesn't want to see Aizawa. No, no, no, she doesn't even want to think about him right now.

But her head's a mess. Everywhere she goes, she seems to find a way to trap herself. Most days, she can ignore it, but like anything you leave open and forgotten, it begins to rot. There are just too many thoughts, memories. Izuku can't look at anything and not think of her God damn teacher.

She drags herself out of her dorm room with the weight of an invisible elephant on her chest and knocks on the first door she can think of—the person that, despite everything, she knows can distract her. He always has.

"Are you here to pick another fight?" Bakugo had swung the door open and leaned against the door frame.

"I think I liked it," Izuku says.

"What are you saying now?"

"I liked you raising your voice at me, Kacchan. I like your attention."

He stares down at her and for a second he looks genuinely affronted—disgusted, more like.

"You are seriously fucked in the head, you know that? You weren't even this much of a crazy bitch in middle school."

"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry." It doesn't even sound like an apology leaving her lips. Just a statement of fact. But right now she'll say anything he wants. As long as he can keep those nasty thoughts of hers at bay. Give her pleasure—his pleasure. Distract her. Even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts. Izuku doesn't want to think anymore.

She's broken. And she thinks... she thinks some people are just born broken. Like life is just one big Laundromat, and some people just have one little bag to do—it'll only take them a quick cycle to get through—but others have bags and bags of it, and it's just so much that it's overwhelming to even think about starting. Is there even enough laundry detergent to get everything clean?

"So are you going to let me in or what?"

STEP 8

tell yourself it’s normal

———————————————

The door slamming in her face must not have been enough of a deterrent. Izuku tried to knob—locked—and then knocked again.

"Damnit, Deku," Bakugo had growled from somewhere deeper in his room. Footsteps approach the door until it's nearly ripped off its hinges. "No, you can't fucking come in," he says.

"No?" Izuku uses her foot as a doorjamb. She rarely got mad, and she wouldn't quite say she was now. But she was definitely exasperated. Confused. "What do you mean no?"

Bakugo is staring at her like he's never seen her before. His eyes are the perfect shade of crimson, red like a blossoming bruise, clear and deep and decided.

"Deku, you've been blowing me off for weeks. Last time we did anything, you cried during and for hours after," He groans just remembering. "I'm not some fucking rapist, and I don't know what the hell is going on in your head. You've been a psycho recently." His words feel laced with dynamite. Fitting.

Izuku doesn't know how to fix this—when the problem wasn't a simple disagreement, but her inability to juggle her own life without breaking down... Wait, yes, she does. This is Bakugo.

She leaned up immediately to press their lips together. Bakugo shoved her back and huffed out a breath, pushing Izuku's hands away when she tried to reach out and undo his belt.

"Don't fucking touch me, Deku."

Izuku doesn't understand him. That was fine. That was normal. But today she really doesn't understand. And she really wants to.

"Kacchan, please..."

"No"

None of this had gone how she wanted it to, and she wanted to get to the part where she blows him, and they make up (even if he holds her down until she passes out. At least then she can stop fucking thinking.) Izuku was going to start panicking soon if he didn't kiss her back.

"Kacchan, I'm sorry."

He didn't reply, but this time when she reached up to cup his face, he didn't push her away.

Izuku leaned up to try kissing him again, and Bakugo didn't respond at first, but once again, he didn't push her away. So Izuku continued pressing kisses to his lips, his cheeks, and his chin.

"I love you, Kacchan. I love you so much."

"No, you fucking don't. Don't say that to me right now."

Frustration had welled inside of her, and honestly, Izuku wanted to cry, but somehow, she didn't. She just stood there, watching Bakugo's disgust in her and trying not to let the moment cut her down completely.

"I do! I love you more than I've ever loved anybody else in my life!" It's truly a pity, because all Izuku ever wanted was to be loved by him. Well, to be worshipped. To be desired, madly and painfully, to the exclusion of all else. In hindsight... maybe that was too much to ask of Bakugo.

"You don't fucking act like it. You act like you hate me, and you want us both to be fucking miserable."

Izuku wanted to reach out and touch him, not with her hands but with her heart. But her hands will have to do. "I don't, I promise. I want us to be happy. I want to be happy together, I just...." She trailed off, "I don't know how to be happy anymore."

She laced her fingers in his hair and kissed him again, pulling him as close as she could as their mouths moved against one another. Bakugo wrapped his arms around her waist, and Izuku trailed one of her hands down to his hip, prying it between them and unbuckling his belt.

He pulled her inside and pressed her up against the door to close it. She separated their lips with a few quick kisses and brought her other hand down as well, using both to tug Bakugo's pants down enough to reach inside of his boxers.

"I want to be happy, Kacchan. Show me how to be happy," she begged, wrapping her hand around his cock, because that was familiar. That would fix... whatever this was. This would make her feel better.

She was using him just like he always used her. It was a dirty feeling. And yet still, she keeps stroking.

"I'm tired of fighting," Izuku says and leans up to press their lips together once more, but Bakugo pulls away again.

"It's what we do, ain’t it? You should get used to it." The corners of his mouth tipped up just a bit.

"So ar-are we fine now?" She asked earnestly, expectantly.

"Mmm," Bakugo hummed under his breath, brushing Izuku's hair carefully back into place. He didn't answer the damn question. But he did stroke his thumb underneath one of her eyes, wiping away a tear track. Izuku makes the tiniest whining noise. Bakugo paused for just a moment before he let his thumb sweep over her bitten, worried bottom lip, dipping just a little inside her mouth.

"Kacchan," the girl whispered, pulling his hand away. "No, I want... I want to..."

Forget. She needed to forget.

Izuku hesitated and swayed, clinging to Bakugo's wrist for a moment before she clumsily pressed her lips against his. He got to have her instead of Aizawa tonight. And that meant she was going to do whatever she wanted. Nobody was going to tell her it was inappropriate. She could love Bakugo how she wanted, and no one would care because they were both teenagers and teenagers are bound to experiment, even if it hurts.

She should feel empowered, but she's just a little broken fawn with little broken bones, clutching to his warmth in freezing temperatures—there was nothing empowering about that.

Bakugo lifted his hand again, slipping it around her neck. She parted her lips, kissing him the way Aizawa had taught her, her tongue brushing over Bakugo's mouth. He pulled away with a shivering breath, making Izuku whimper at the loss.

"That mouth'll get you into some trouble, Deku." his voice was a low, soft growl, his eyes hard and dark.

"I wanna get into trouble", Izuku threaded her fingers back through Bakugo's hair. "I-I can do things to you. Anything you want. You..” A pause. A gulp. “You can take my clothes off and fuck me hard enough to—" she lost her voice for a moment and fought to regain it. "—to snap my bones"

"Fuck," Bakugo hissed.

Izuku was self-aware enough to know her actions were in complete juxtaposition to how she felt about him recently, but he was the only one who could help her. She'd do anything to drown away the term 'grooming' because she wasn't—Aizawa wouldn't—it just didn't happen. It wasn't happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, right there pressed against Bakugo's door, something in her little head just... broke, and the world gained a slight tilt.

Izuku broke into laughter—the kind that's your only recourse when you feel like curling up in a fetal position and whimpering like a little girl. Uh-oh, she was losing it.

"You've got serious issues."

"Mhmmm," she hums, "keep telling me"

Bakugo’s gaze trailed along her frame, fixating below her waist. He shuddered and exhaled. "No, you tell me what else you'll let me do to you. Be a good little actress for me"

"I'll suck your dick." She could see the outline of it in his boxers. It looked big. Bigger than usual. Thicker. It would make her choke, and it would hurt. It would give her an ache she’d feel for days. "I'll-I'll let you sit me on it. I'll be so good. I'll be s-so good, and I'll let you make me take it," She said faintly, feeling the strangest urge to start crying again. She swallowed. "I'm upset, Kacchan, and—and I want to feel better. Will you help me?"

There was nothing but mingling, heavy, heady breathing for a moment before Bakugo pulled Izuku back in for another kiss, cursing into her mouth.

"Since you want to be an adult so bad", from between his bared teeth, those words almost sound painful.

Izuku tried to say something, anything, but it was swallowed in another kiss. It was harder and deeper and suffocating. Bakugo undid her top buttons with one hand, the other braced next to her head against the door. Izuku felt fear and dread grow in her stomach, filling her up and making her heavy. Bakugo was going to get her naked. They were going all the way tonight. So this was going to hurt. A lot.

Bakugo began to pull her bottoms down her legs. "This is what adults call 'make-up sex,'" he whispered, kissing the side of her neck.

Izuku could feel Bakugo's cock on her thigh, and she had to keep herself from letting out a sob at the idea that it was going to be inside her. And it was going to hurt. But the pain would distract her from everything else that was pounding against her chest, scratching, trying to get in, trying to hurt her far worse than Bakugo could ever.

He picks her up by the back of her thighs and tosses her on the bed. She grabbed at the soft pyjama shirt he wore. It wasn't going to make it feel any better, but at least Izuku had something to hold onto as he dragged his tongue around her nipple, making her squirm and moan.

On some level, she realised that this was wrong. She'd lifted her head up just high enough to see that, and, desperate to change, she'd clutched at a random straw, offered herself up to the boy who lost feelings for her a long, long time ago, all while imagining some sort of... future.

It was sad. She's a sad girl. And she's also completely naked.

Bakugo spreads her legs. Takes a look, wipes his finger between her lips, and chuckles. "Did you save yourself for a fairytale prince from one of your stupid books?" His voice is strained and raspy now, like he is holding himself back, only hanging on by a thread. "Or were you just too good for anybody else to spread your legs?" he taunts.

Harshly, he grips her hips and drags her down a few inches for her pussy to kiss his clothed erection.

"Don't make that face," he says, "it's a turn off. Especially when I know girls like you like it rough"

Did she like it rough? She thinks so. Izuku thinks she must. Men are rough, aren't they? Has she always had a taste for rough stuff, or did she acquire that? In hallways in eighth grade, on her knees in her bedroom, right now... Was it her idea to have Bakugo hurt her, or did he just let her think it was?

"Don't worry, Deku", Bakugo murmurs and drags a hand up to where Izuku's thigh meets her groin. Uses his thumb to spread her pussy open a little more. "I'll be sure to treat it exactly as it should be." ‘it’. Like her vagina is some miscellaneous object on a shelf, needing dusting. With his other hand, he peels back his foreskin and taps the cockhead against her clit—tap, tap, tap, tap, tap—until a pearly string of precum connects their bodies.

Izuku grunts and her hips twitch. It doesn't matter whether it's away or towards the sensation because Bakugo's patience is running thin. He notches the head of his dick against her entrance and thrusts forward on an exhale.

No preparation. She was barely even wet enough to take a few inches before his cock slowed to a pained halt, causing Bakugo to have to reel back, spit down on her pussy, and push in again—harder this time and fighting the resistance. He was going in whether her body accepted him or not.

"KA-" She wants to scream, but his hand slams over her mouth. It feels like she's being torn in half. One of her legs kicks out weakly. Bakugo catches it and pins it back to the bed.

"That's it, stop talking and just—argh, fuck—just take it, Deku... There you fucking go, opening up already"

When Izuku was about ten or eleven. Her neighbours left their blinds open, and she could see into their living room. There was a man she'd never seen before with his hand down between Ms Akane's legs. It wasn't her husband. And at first, Izuku had thought the man was hurting her, because Ms

Akane started to moan, low in her throat. Then they started to wrestle and hug and kiss and—that's when Inko noticed. She sent Izuku to her room and told her she didn't need to watch anymore.

The point is, Izuku didn't know much about sex. She didn't even watch porn. But she did know she wanted to be the best thing Bakugo ever had. To make him burn as much as he made her. She wanted him to want only her with a raw ache.

Bakugo adjusts her knees a little further apart and deeply presses forward again. An unrelenting force meeting such pliable soft flesh. There was never any other possible outcome but for the flesh to give, to offer up its tender insides and pray for a modicum of mercy.

There's no mercy to be had. Just an unrelenting teenage boy driving forward until the mouth of Izuku's pussy sealed around the base of his cock.

"Fuck, that's hot. You're bleeding all over me, Deku. Not a virgin anymore and I have tha—SHIT...ah—proof all over my cock. I-It's a fucking crime scene down here"

Who said romance was dead?

It was like being in a car with the gas pedal slammed down to the floor and knowing you could do nothing but hold on and pretend to have some semblance of control.

Bakugo establishes a rhythm that consists of sharp thrusts in and slow withdrawals meant to be savoured.

The room fills with the sound of a bloody wet cock clapping into a quivering little vagina. Bakugo only stops once to grab Izuku by the back of each knee and push her legs up. He adjusts on his own knees and tips forward, letting more and more weight rest on the back of Izuku's thighs until she's folded in half and there's nowhere she can possibly go.

If he thinks Izuku is too clouded to notice the splotches of red hair dye on his hands or the way his pillows smell of a different cologne, he'd be wrong. Fuck, fuck, fuck, don't think about it. Stop fucking thinking about it.

"S-say you're... s-sorry,” But she can't help it. Not when it's practically being shoved down her throat.

"Pea in your mattress, Princess?"

Her mouth opens in a keening cry, face crumpling into a rictus of agonising pain "Just fucking say it!"

Normally, he'd argue. And honestly... She's not sure why he doesn't. Maybe he sees something in her eyes because he gives her this look. It's almost pity. "M'sorry"

"Say—" She hisses at a particularly painful thrust. Wasn't sex supposed to get better at some point? "Say, 'I'm sorry, Izuku' say it, m-my name"

"You're into some weird shit" A pause. "...I'm sorry, Izuku"

She closes her eyes and tries to shut everything else out, to focus only on his apology, to curl into the back of her brain the way she's learned. It isn't her rutting back to meet his thrusts. This is just automatic. Something else has taken over her body, and Izuku is watching it, locked away somewhere safe.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay,” She babbles, head in a fog.

The pace Bakugo sets is brutal, selfish, meant for him to get what he wants as quickly and violently as he wants it. And when he cums it's with the force of a bullet. On her stomach, thankfully, which catches her by surprise.

He doesn't move for a few long minutes, wallowing in the gradual descent from a magnificent high. Because, unless Izuku is mistaken, she's just taken his virginity too. However, he is glowing, and she feels like she's been through a couple of heavy-duty wash and rinse cycles. She feels old and used.

It's only when the sweat starts to dry on Bakugo's back that he falls to the bed beside her.

She rolled over, and they both stayed like that for a moment, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything. In Bakugo's eyes, there was no trace of what had just happened, no sudden affliction of love, and Izuku could feel something inside her break.

So that was that. She gave him everything, and it still wasn't enough.

Izuku couldn't even be mad at him; he'd always been him. He'd never lied about that. He gave, and then he took away. Took as he'd always taken. Greedy, vicious, starving, until she was left with only what he'd graciously leave her. And she was stupid enough to think she could change him. Izuku felt it in the pit of her stomach, the familiar ache, that lost, a regretful feeling only he could give her. She never wanted to feel it again. Never, ever.

Maybe this was why she came, not to forget but... So she could say goodbye.

She looked at him and thought, If she were very brave or very honest, she would tell him.

She would say it, so he would know it, and she would know it too. But Izuku didn't feel brave or honest, so all she did was look at him.

Izuku thinks he knew anyway.

"Am I better than him?"

She blinks fast. "Wh-what?"

"Wh-what?" Bakugo mocks. He laughs. It was, Izuku thought, the sound of madness, the kind of laughter from lunatics just before they slice the heads off foxes and throw them into their neighbour's back garden. Knowing and condescending.

"You have a fucking PHD in playing dumb." His body presses closer. "Am I better than him?"

His perfect face. His perfect body. His eyes were as hard and beautiful as frozen gemstones. He... he repulses her in a way. She wants his exterior to match his spiked black interior. She wants to cripple his cockiness with the palm of her hand. She wants to have such power in the first place.

"Kacchan, you—you took my virginity. I... I gave it to you; it's yours. I haven't—I've never,"

"That’s obvious by how you bloddied my dick, nerd. But I know you’ve done other stuff with him. You're not as clever as you think you are. Your little fucking rendouve on the rooftop. Staying after every class. Doors locked. I thought your training was in the morning, Deku, huh? Then what the fuck are you doing with him after class?"

Everything seemed worse in the darkest hours of the night; it was a surprise to hear that the crickets were still chirping. Izuku is suddenly all too aware of how naked she is before him... Unrelated, she also needs to put on some clothes.

She opens her mouth, but it proves to be just another useless hole of hers.

"Don't say you switched times because you're still going to those morning lessons too. Fucking dick appointments are what they are. You're kissing differently, too, think I wouldn't notice?"

He always fucking does this. If he knows something hits her in a deep way, if he knows it hurts, he shoves the knife in deeper and twists it around. How can he want to cause her pain? Izuku knows he’s naturally rough around the edges, she knows he’s mean and mad for attention at points, and she knows he’s hurt by her coldness towards him despite everything that he’s said and done to her, but still. Izuku does not think there are any excuses for his fucking behavior.

"Hey, I still fucked you, didn't I? Raw. Hope that old fuck didn't give me gonorrhea"

Izuku stays still, vision blurring, and in that moment, she heard her heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem. She's tired of speaking and not being listened to, but fuck it. She needs to say this even if it's just to the air.

"Do you think that b-because I have always followed you, because I let you treat me however you wanted and—and discarded—" her voice inches higher with every word, the unrestrained emotions suddenly screaming through her lungs. "Do you think I don't have a heart? I-I don't feel? You think that because it's so easy to hurt me that you should? You've... always been a bully. And just because you never grew up doesn't mean you get to be upset at me because I did"

She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not always being fucking degraded.

"Ah, here we fucking go again. Said you wouldn't pull this shit again, and look at you, pulling it"

"You know what? I'm leaving. I—get your fucking hands off me!" She pushes him away and goes for her clothes. Space would be prudent right about now.

Maybe she was crazy to consider it, but Izuku had always hoped that if she were a good enough girl, if she did everything right, if she said the right things or said nothing at all—she could make him love her.

Are you done? Sit back down, this shit is annoying, nerd” In that moment, Bakugo reaches out. Open-handed in a quick movement. He could be trying to hit her, could not, but Izuku wasn't going to take the chance. She grabs his wrist mid-air and twists until he pulls it back to his side with a hiss.

"Don’t. Next time, I will break that arm." On cue with her warning, One for All flares up, and green veins pulse over her body.

Despite the fire in her voice, Bakugo's face is nothing but wicked amusement.

"Did teach’ show you that move?" He says, poking her with the dagger that was his smirk. Izuku tries to look unbothered, unashamed.

He knows what he's doing, what he's saying, and what it does to her. Fuck him for that.

"Yeah," she says after a pause and then motions to his t-shirt, one that, in the decade of knowing him, she's never seen him wear. "Did Kirishima give you that?"

They both know the other's secret, and strangely, that makes the air calmer.

Izuku knew about Kirishima. For longer than she'll ever admit. She's good at picking up on that sort of thing.

Sometimes she could almost forget that it was there, the way one could forget about the sky or the earth underfoot, but there were other times when it seemed as if there was nothing else in the world. At the time it hurt. In the present, yeah, it still stung.

'How could you do this to me?' she wanted to ask. 'I would have given you anything. Anything. Why wasn't it enough?' But she couldn't form those words without her lip quivering, and she was so goddamn tired of crying over this boy.

"This is real, Kacchan. The world is ugly and nasty and f-fucked up, and so are we. We... we’re terrible people, and we’re even worse together."

A guffaw tumbles out of Bakugo's lips. "That's funny. And a lie. You're a fucking leech, Deku. That's what you do, you latch on to someone and feed off of them. You will never find anyone who'll put up with you like I do."

A slew of curse words inside of Izuku are lodged between her heart and throat. Can't swallow it; can't choke it down. Can't spit that motherfucker out. It's stuck like some sick metaphor for her life... She wanted to throw a punch, to bite him, to shake, to curse, to kick him in the nuts, to tell him how much he hurt her. She was damaged goods now. Because of him, she didn't know how to love someone who actually loved her back.

She had learned a twisted, tormented kind of love filled with pain and exploitation. And stupidly, in that little brain of hers, Izuku blames him for her attraction to a man twice her age.

"That's the point. I don't want anyone like you."

Bakugo used to fit so perfectly in the love story she'd imagined for herself that she mistook him for the love of her life. But she's come to realize that he's... she isn't the bad one, and it's not all her fault. She didn't make Bakugo bad, and she's not bad for wanting nothing to do with him, for feeling sad and angry—no, furious—about what he did to her.

"So," Bakugo huffs, hands in pockets. His eyes searching hers, looking for something more than she was offering, "Do you hate me now? Is that it?"

Izuku should hate him, but she can't. They're too connected. She can't hate him without hating herself.

"If I thought you could change, I'd hate you for not trying," she looked him dead in the eye. "But this is who you are. You're a narcissist, and you're toxic. I don't hate you. I'm disappointed in you, Kacchan. Ha... I guess you don't really fit that name anymore..."

She watches as his face falls, and it takes her a moment to realize what she's said. Because no matter if she regrets it, she knows she can't take it back. The boy who's made to hurt other people now looks hurt himself. How ironic. He's looked hurt by her actions before, when they'd argue and she'd feel so guilty that she would drop to her knees. His sick tactic to reel her back in.

When she was younger, Izuku thought a man being wounded like this was romantic. But now, the whole thing just felt deranged. It was just so typical, you know? The way he'd berate himself to make her feel sorry for him.

“Don't come here to fuck with my head and play games. You don't test someone's love by leaving them." Bakugo curses, pauses, and then continues with a clenched jaw. “I'm not over you. I dream about you every night. Does that make you happy? Is that proof I cared?"

Izuku went kind of pink, just then, and laughed at him, the kind of laugh you do when you know you shouldn't be laughing. The kind of laugh that spoke of a conspiracy. ”uh-uhn. Don’t do that.”

She’s learned with time that, as much as she wants his words to mean something, she can’t let them, because tomorrow he might be screaming insults in her face again. Izuku feels that she always needs to be on guard around him. Catering to him emotionally–on edge, desperate to please, terrified of stepping out of line.

Bakugo rolls his eyes. "Okay, yeah, maybe I’m not perfect, but he's a pedophile, Deku. That fuck likes em’ young, and you fell for it anyway. He's taking advantage of you."

Izuku shrugs. "You took advantage of me."

"... at least I was honest about it."

Izuku can't forget that she asked for this. Just like everything else, just like always. She's doing it to herself. This is just one big game show where the contestants guess how many months it'll take her to ruin her own life.

The worst part is, Bakugo didn't help at all; she's still thinking about every other goddamn thing she slept with him to forget about.

Fucking fuck.

⁂

When Izuku woke up the next morning, she felt like she was dead.

Or at least really, really wanted to be.

She stumbled out of bed, clothes half hanging on, and managed to get to the bathroom before she threw up all over the floor. Her knees felt sweaty and sticky on the freezing tile. Her head, in danger of falling off her shoulders, throbbed. She felt gaping and hollow, the burn from the night before last replaced with an aching, unnatural emptiness that was still a blistering pain.

Physically, she felt empty, maybe, but it was so much worse on the inside. The term coined 'heartbreak' always makes it seem like someone's heart was actually breaking. Like an arm or a leg would. Izuku never understood it until now. Now that, even hours later, she's lying her forehead against her school desk with chest pain.

On her way here, she passed the usual sleepy drivers leaving for their too-early jobs. It was strange to think that for them it was just another Friday morning, how easily their ordinary lives go on, running parallel to her own.

Izuku's throat is torn to pieces, her head hurting so badly it felt like someone was trying to drive nails into her skull. She rests her cheek against the cold wood. The smell of vomit was sticky on her breath, sticky sweet and toxic and sour.

Maybe she did deserve to be punished, she thought. She'd proven Bakugo right yet again. She had made a whore of herself.

"Izuk—oh," Aizawa's voice sounds from the door. She doesn't look up, and he doesn't ask what's wrong, just goes: "Oh... Baby, it's alright"

Izuku doesn't even know how he got to her so quickly and quietly, but she feels his hand on her head. Ever since she was small, she loved feeling somebody combing through her hair. It made her go all sleepy and peaceful. It's like he knew.

"It's alright"

"Stah—," she huffs ", stop telling me that"

"It's alright"

"It's not,” She averted her eyes, but the pain was still recognisable, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it.

"Izuku, look at me, baby"

Her head lifts, her lips tremble, and her chair hits the floor when she throws herself at Aizawa. He catches her with a dad grunt.

There were no words Izuku could have cobbled together to describe how utterly exhausted she felt at that moment. Shakespeare himself couldn't have accurately expressed the sensation. Frustration, pure and visceral, tugged at every aching joint, strained at her sore jaw, burned at her scraped skin.

And Izuku cries. Cries like she fucking trademarked it. And when she settled down, she became witness to the mess she's made. "I-I made your shirt all... gross," She says between sniffles.

"Forget it. What's going on? I couldn't understand a word you mumbled into my chest"

Now she's half laughing and half crying.

"Sweetheart, what happened?"

Eighth-grade Izuku Midoriya would have never imagined herself here... Current Izuku Midoriya still doesn't understand how it happened.

"Kacchan..." Is all she says.

"Kacchan?" His voice is tighter, higher, laced with anger and terror and denial and... "Did he hurt you?"

Nothing. Aizawa looks unhinged in a way Izuku never thought possible. He looks wild, his eyes disbelieving. "Has he touched you?"

Izuku trusted him with her life, yet here, it felt much more frightening to trust him with her shame. So she doesn't exactly... say it. But the way her thighs are still shaking says it for her. Briefly, she wonders if he’ll offer up his jacket if she's still bleeding.

"You don't want me anymore?" It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; she wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that Aizawa would feel exactly what she felt—hot with exposure.

"Impossible"

She continues, almost like she's looking for a reason to make him hate her. Things always felt so much simpler when someone was upset at her. "I... I told him I l-loved him. S-so ma-many times"

She didn't just tell him she meant it. Loved him since she was a child. Even then, at six years old, she wanted to live inside his body. She wanted to melt into his bones. That kind of love.

"Oh, but baby, he doesn't even care about you", Aizawa says. His voice was too tender to be scolding but too tight to be anything else. "He's always been using you. Since the beginning."

"I know.." An inexplicable humiliation is searing her flesh. She didn't know where to look.

A warm finger hooks under her chin and tilts her head back up. "You deserve to be around people who are good to you."

"I know..."

"I understand you, Izuku. You should trust me when I tell you that you've tried to be someone you're not for so long and that no matter what you’ve done, he's never been happy with you. He was never satisfied, was he? That boy never gave a damn, did he?"

He looks at her, and for a moment, he seems almost more than human. A protector. An angel, even. Someone Izuku can cry out the ocean lodged in her throat to without being chided like she was a little kid who needed to be told to say 'please' and 'thank you', like Izuku's feelings didn't matter because she felt them all too much and about all the wrong things.

"It's time you stopped pretending," he says, so softly. It's like he's trying to make her melt.

"Izuku—" He takes her face in his hands, so unexpectedly gentle. He steps forward. "I could love you, Izuku. I—" Something occurs to him then, "You could love me" He's smiling a strange sort of smile. "We would be unstoppable. We could change the world. I could make you happy"

He made it sound easy. Easy was simple. Easy was good. And nothing as morally demeaning as having a romantic relationship with your teacher could be that easy.

Butterflies catch fire in Izuku's stomach. "You already do make me happy... So happy. Not like him..."

It feels right, and she needs the comfort, so of course, she goes in for a kiss. Only to feel like the biggest idiot since the word was given meaning when Aizawa pulls back.

"You're in a very fragile state of mind right now, Izuku"

"Please"

Here she goes again. Little Izuku letting herself become dependent on the dopamine rushes that quick sexual gratification gave her. That's how you got yourself here in the first place, dummy.

It wasn't healthy. Wasn't how she should cope. It was insane, really.

But she's been on the edge of insanity her entire life, hasn't she? So many people called her crazy when she said she was going to U.A. that she actually started to believe it. She wondered if they were right. She wondered if she could fix it. If she could just try a little harder, be a little better, stronger, smarter, nicer—she thought the world would change its mind about her. She blamed herself for everything, and looking at her current situation, was she so wrong to do so?

"You're going to get better," Aizawa promises her. "And when you do, I'm going to show you exactly what choice you've made. I'm going to memorise every inch of your body with my lips" He exhales suddenly, shaky, uneven. Swallows hard. His hands clench, veins pulsing in his forearms, as if he’s holding himself back from jumping her bones. "Doesn't that sound nice?"

She nods, short and uneven like a broken toy.

"We can be together," he says to her, undeterred by her silence. Izuku's brain is on fire, ready to explode from the impossibility of this moment. It feels like she's watching it happen, detached from her own body, incapable of intervening. More than anything else, she's surprised that such a gruff man can have such gentle hands... earnest eyes.

"I want you to choose me," he says. "I want you to choose to be with me. I want you to want this"

Something in those words scared her a bit, the commitment of it all.

They scared Izuku in the same way that clowns, magicians, and people in mascot suits scared little kids. There was something off and unnerving just enough on the surface to make her believe there was something lurking underneath. It was like being afraid of the dark: you weren't scared of the thing itself; you were scared of what was able to hide inside it.

It was scary... But it was also so thrilling, wasn't it?

"I... want..."

"Ah-ah," Aizawa tsks, "when you're feeling better. Tell me then"

And then he presses a warm kiss to her knuckles. There, he traces road maps of veins on her skin, talks about how soft she is, that a man like him could tear her apart. Izuku wordlessly offers him her arm. 'Go ahead', He gives it only a soft-mouthed bite, but she would probably let him tear her apart. She's just now realising she'd let him do anything.

Lay his fingerprints all over her, every piece of muscle and bone. Because she is his, here right now, she's all his.

"I should make something crystal clear, Izuku, before you agree," he says, shifting his hold on her. He releases her arm and drags her fully against him, locks his arms around her, and gazes down patiently, truly like a teacher with an unruly pupil. "If you sleep with someone else, he will regret it", he adds, silkily.

She nods again, all her broken toy parts taped back together.

⁂

Izuku is caged up against her desk, the edge pressing into her lower back as the kiss grew feverish, all tongue and gnashing teeth. She didn't know what had made her so bold a moment before, but her bravery didn't let her down. Aizawa was kissing her with earnest, large hands moving along her lithe body as his knee wedged between her thighs. His fingers traced from her hip to her side, thumb ghosting under her breast. Every sensation was new and exciting, her own smaller hands dipping under the hem of his shirt.

He paused suddenly, strong digits taking hold of her wrist just as his other hand settled under her ribcage. The kiss was broken, and aged dark eyes stared down into her doughy ones. Izuku knew her cheeks were flushed. Hell, her entire body felt lit up and desperate.

Aizawa was studying her intensely, "What the hell was that?"

She swallowed then, round eyes blinking quickly as she pulled from his embrace. He let her go, and his brows knotted when she backed away.

"I... uhm..." Izuku shivered, her thoughts chaotic and wild. She'd been drowning in excitement a moment ago, but now Aizawa looked almost pissed off. The shift in atmosphere left her feeling whiplashed.

"Is that really all you have to say?"

Izuku didn't know what to say. She'd been fantasising about him all day, and she'd thought the moment she went in for it, he would reel back, but instead he had kissed her back. The result had been more than she dared hope for.

"Wh-what do you want me to say?" She grimaced at her own stutter; she hadn't stuttered all day, but her nerves were getting the best of her.

"Explain what that was"

"A kiss?"

The older man growled, eyes narrowed and glaring. He turns to close the classroom door and then stalks towards her, and she nearly tripped over a desk if it weren't for a strong arm snatching her back. Izuku squealed in surprise and tempered desire as they ended up in a dangerously similar position as before.

"Yes, a kiss. The door was open, Izuku. You have to be more careful"

"Y-Y-You kissed me back"

Aizawa's eye twitched just before his face softened, gaze searching over her expression as she avoided those knowing eyes. Her hands trembled against his chest, not even resisting his hold. "Anyone could have seen" His voice became quieter as his head dropped, lips settling against her jugular. Izuku shivered in his arms as they caged around her. He rolled his thumb into her shoulder blade, teeth nipping along her throat.

"I h-hadn't thought that far"

"No, you hadn't, baby", He hissed softly against her skin, trailing open-mouthed kisses to the collar of her uniform top.

"I couldn't help it..." Her eyes were closed when he leaned back, taking hold of her chin between his index and thumb. He pressed a soft kiss to her trembling lips before covering his face with his hands.

"I can't either," he said into his fingers, coming to terms with something internally. He pulled his hands down until his bagged, agonised eyes met hers. "You're so beautiful, Izuku" his gaze was worshipful and so fucking trusting. Those large hands snake around Izuku's back and lift her lips to his mouth as if she were a platter to be savoured.

It felt like they were on fire. Everything got so hot, it was almost too much to stand. Kissing him, having his body close. Izuku thought of how she feels when she's eating a meal and doesn't realise how hungry she is till three bites in. She starts eating faster, savouring every bite. Now she couldn't stop, so Izuku took another kiss, then another. She let his tongue slip into her mouth, and she shivered again. He smiled at her reaction and went in for more. The way his hands started to move over her body gave her the impression he was twenty times more experienced than she was. Izuku could have stopped; she knew she should have stopped, but all the drama and emotional pain she'd experienced over the last few weeks made her recklessly ignore that thought.

"I locked the door." Aizawa had said, just a thought, maybe to ease her nerves.

"Good," She took big gulping breaths. Izuku was drowning and was totally fine with it.

"Good?" A warm hand cups around her inner thigh. "Do you want to go further?"

It felt criminal to back away now. Not when he looked at her like she was made of stars... when all she'd ever felt like was the dark nothingness between them.

"Just... don't go too fast"

"I will need you to be more specific about that"

Izuku's whine cuts sharply through the quietness. "I don't know how to be sp-specific. Just don't go too fast... Please"

"Sure.” A pause. Something occurs to Aizawa just then. “Do you know what cunnilingus is, baby?" He gives a half smile at the confusion on her face. "It's when a man licks a woman's vagina until she has an orgasm. How does that sound? If I get on my knees and start kissing you lower and lower until you're grinding and cuming on my tongue. Sound good?"

Holy shit

"Watch that mouth"

Oh, she said that out loud.

"Have you ever been eaten out before?"

"K-Kacchan... he wouldn't—" It felt wrong to mention him in this moment, so she doesn't continue.

"Ah," Aizawa taps her inner thigh. "There will always be boys who bitch about going down on a woman, but  there's nothing better—nothing more masculine than making a woman quiver and cum on your tongue"

She doesn't feel like a woman, just the same dumb kid she's been for the past fifteen years, but maybe it's prime time she starts being one. It's... Easier to indulge if she sees herself as Aizawa sees her, a beautiful, smart, capable woman.

"R-right now?"

Aizawa's eyes glance down to her messy-feeling panties and back up to her. "Do you really think you can wait?"

Something about that expression of his... "No.."

"Me neither," Aizawa pats the wood behind her. "Hop up"

"On... my desk?"

"So you can think of how hard I made you cum every class"

He must've thought she was an idiot. She probably was. Swimming in the murky waters of a student-teacher relationship. Becoming too bold, too stupid in pushing their boundaries. But if she were drowning, so was he.

And in that moment, every last ounce of 'pro hero in training' decency in her had exited the building. Screw it.

Izuku jumps up on the desk. Like a reward, she gets a kiss for it.

"You taste like coffee," she giggles against his lips, licking the curve of them before trailing off to his cheek. Leaving playful bites along the way, which earns her a deep tickle in the sides. Now she's yelping and squirming into the kiss.

"You're the one who tastes good," Aizawa teases her with a big chomp on the shoulder, "m'going to eat you up, sweetheart"

"Like a piece of cake?" Her hips roll when he gives them a squeeze.

"Better than, and I meant your pussy," he says brazenly, "these skirts kill me, you know"

"Shota—"

He kneels down on the floor.

Holy shit. His face hovers over her pussy like a sun kissing the horizon. If she focuses on his eyes, she'll lose it, so it's easier to loll her head away.

Aizawa ducks his head under her skirt and licks a broad stroke on her panty-covered slit.

"Ahh!"

"Pretty red panties, ‘course", he murmurs, ignoring her startled huffs and lifts his head momentarily, "they look good on you"

"H-hold on!"

Her screech does nothing but make him snicker, the sound muffled by her thighs that compressed against his head when he dove back in. Aizawa's tongue does quick work, brushing up and down on her panties, dampening them lewdly with slick saliva that sticks to her flesh. Izuku trembles, sighs and bucks into his mouth.

"You're, uhh-ahh, you're too good at this.. "

His nose rubs on her clit, the friction of the cloth making her twitch harder for a pressure deeper than his teasing. For something rough, hard and most likely uncut and heavy...but Aizawa only inhales, grazing his teeth on her panty-covered labia as she quivers into his mouth.

"You smell better than I imagined. You have no idea how often I think of doing this"

"How—mmm, how often?" Izuku asks tentatively, a panting wreck, when all he's done is play with her.

"Until my own cock hurt," he admits while thumbing the dips in her thighs, "could hardly sleep 'cause of you. Wearing all these lil' skirts all the time" Aizawa tugs on it, bunching it up in his fists,

"They're uniform," Izuku giggled, "You're teasing again"

"And you smell good", he groans, falling back under her skirt and spreading her wider for his pleasure while flattening his tongue on her clothed pussy. "Mmm, getting messy for me, yeah?" Izuku's sex is hot, pulsating, and soaking the fabric of her panties. Every lick and intentional bump of Shota's nose stirs up more slick. He must be finding some kind of cruel enjoyment in watching her body shake, on the brink of tears. "That's why I'm here, sweetheart, I'm going to clean you up"

She answers in an undignified whimper, one that must earn her some pity because Aizawa peels the edge of her sticky panties to the side and sucks on one of her lips. "Fuck," he swallows a heavy lump, then hurriedly lifts her hips and tugs off her panties all the way.

Something occurs to Izuku then, a light bulb flickers on, and her stomach tenses. "W-wait, Shota.."

"I need to see you" is the only thing he says above her weak protests. He hums appreciatively once the fabric hits the floor. The embarrassment is twisting in Izuku's gut. Thighs spread, slit wet.

Aizawa trails his fingers softly up her thigh, gets a good grip on the hard muscle, and pauses. His eyes flicker up. "You're tense. Did you want to stop?"

She's looking a little like a deer in the headlights. Cute, yeah, but concerning during oral sex. "W-well," Izuku has never been put in a more revealing position. She forgets words entirely. "...m'not um... If it's uh... y-you know, too gross.. or, y-yeah, then..."

"Izuku," Aizawa's voice is soft, but it's commanding. "Look at me"

Her eyes skirt around his face. They focus on his lips, his brows, his chin, that one little scar at the corner of his mouth that he's told her he got from a teenage shaving accident. Then finally, his eyes.

He stands. Cages her in.

"Do you think that you're unattractive down here?" His cock is hard and straining in the air towards his abdomen. Almost on cue, it throbs furiously, as if his entire nervous system is enraged that he isn't eating her out right here, right now, right like this. "Why?"

"I..." Why does she think anything anymore? She's obviously not good at it. Letting Bakugo's own hatred of oral make her feel self-conscious... "I don't want you to l-look at me and realise that... I'm not a woman," she huffs out a frustrated breath, which flutters her bangs. "You're such a handsome man, and you don't deserve a kid" Her hand comes up, knocks lightly and affectionately (a bit mockingly) against the curve of Aizawa's jaw. "Handsome man," she repeats, a bit wistfully.

"It's a you thing more than it's a woman thing," He nudges Izuku's legs further apart, and she doesn't stop him. He presses a kiss to the warm expanse of her inner thigh—Izuku doesn't stop him either. He continues speaking like that, low and rumbling. "It's not age to me, it's not childish or womanly, it's—it's just so uniquely you, God, baby, it's..." He doesn't have the words.

Shota Aizawa doesn't have the words.

He presses another kiss to her thigh, edging closer and closer...

"I want to do unspeakable things to you, Izuku Midoriya. To this sweet little pussy"

She's spread out beneath him. Her legs were thick with muscle he gave her, but they tapered down to such slender ankles, bony and pale. So small that Aizawa can wrap them fully with his hand—he does, he wraps them in his hand and squeezes, wrenching that pale leg up and pressing Izuku's knee to her chest. He does the same to the other one. Izuku's so shocked that she can't do much more than moan, her flexible limbs malleable in such strong hands. He can fold her in half if he wanted, spread her legs like that, push her down until his cock is resting centimetres away from her lips and pussy open, exposed.

Izuku needs to stop thinking... Damnit, what did she just say about thinking?

"Your pussy looks even better like this. Fucking how?" When her stomach contracts in a groan, he chuckles. "She likes it when I talk about her"

She. Her. Humanising her vagina, sweet-talking and petting. Oh my God, Izuku has never been more turned on in her whole life.

Shota licks a broad strip between her pussy lips. An open-mouthed whine catapults into the ceiling from her mouth. "Oh, f-fuck"

This time, her cursing doesn't earn correction, but instead a chuckle. "She's so hungry. I'd even call her desperate. You haven't been getting what you need, have you, baby?" He's either talking to her or her pussy... drowning her name into it. Moaned into her folds.

Aizawa presses in and drags his tongue between her lips, heading for the little bud at the top.

She can't take it with grace. It's just impossible. When her thighs squeeze him, Aizawa groans in bliss, which in turn makes Izuku's heart lurch into her throat. Her mouth falls open, more choked-up sounds spilling through it.

"How do you get this wet? Shit... I don't even... ohh, it's all over your legs, baby. That's it. I'm just going to have to eat you up. There's gonna be—mmm, nothing left when I'm done"

His lips closing around her clitoris has got to be the best fucking feeling in the world. Pleasure jams Izuku in the stomach, urging her pelvis up, but his grip on her thighs keeps her firm against the desk.

"F-feels so mm-messy" She doesn't know sexy talk, but it must be good because Aizawa moans.

He suckles, squeezing every drop of feeling from her throbbing clit, and her body flinches again. The sounds. Sweet mother Mary and Joseph, the sounds this man made against her... You would think he was drinking from a water fountain.

"Messy is good. I want this pretty pussy dirty and ripe when I'm eating her" Aizawa takes a moment to mouth at her inner thigh, repeating, "s'pretty—so, so pretty. Everything about her."

He's too busy with his meal to continue, burying his face back into her. Lapping and slurping on her pussy. His stubble caresses her skin, and she moans for him prettily. Lips parted, breaths uneven. Izuku's voice carries into low whines resembling his name, cute sounds that make him press in harder to pull more out. Stretching the hot muscle to a fatter girth that fills her beautifully, tight walls rippling the deeper he drags his tongue along the spongy spots in her pussy.

"Ple—Goddd—Shota! Ahh—uhh...slow dow-wn!"

He ignores her, too drunk to even think of releasing Izuku from his grasp before he has his fill.

Izuku can tell by the slow jerks of his hips and his throaty grumbles against her flesh that he's trying to ignore his erection. She's never been on the receiving end before and feels a bit guilty. She attempts to reach for him, to shift out of his hold, but Aizawa pins her down harder. Flexing the strength of a licensed pro hero by holding her against the desk.

"Don't run from me," he growls. She churns the deepest grunts and sighs from him, primal in a way that makes her even wetter, which only makes him even hungrier. "Let me stay right here. I like her too much to stop"

His nose digs into her weeping hole, and while it's not much, it's enough to fill her head with cotton as she attempts to rock backwards. With another lick, he pulls up, panting and audibly slurping her juices.

"Fuck," he grits out, looking utterly bewildered. Izuku is quite positive that's the face someone makes when the pearly gates of heaven open for them. "Fuck, sweetheart, you taste so—" his tongue makes its way back out, and he flicks it over her puffy, abused clit, following Izuku when she leans this way and that, pulling from him when it feels too good to fast. He was everywhere, and he was so much. "Stop running from me and take it"

But she can't help it. The pleasure was too intense and, frankly, Izuku was scared she was going to cum so hard that she would cause some kind of medical emergency.

"S'much... S-so much... It's so much, Shota," she babbles.

Aizawa's lips latch onto her clit again, vibrating in approval when she fucks into his mouth before pulling away. "You can and you will", he licks her messy pussy from bottom to top in tight circles.

Then his tongue is inside of her, and his big hands on her hips, fucking her through the spasms that branch off in her tummy. Izuku’s gasps give way to broken whimpers, fingers clawing at the wood and breaking her nails.

Aizawa flattens his tongue and groans as she grinds on it. He puckers his lips and spits into her, then sucks it back up. Oh my, she cries, only to have him suck harder. Izuku's hole flutters around his tongue, spitting more and more slick, before she feels it. The burning need to cum.

"Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me," She's wailing, high-strung. She's never cursed this much in her life. "Shit!" Izuku's voice is ragged, positively ragged and raw as she moans out to her heart's content.

Secretly—she wants someone to walk past the door to the classroom, she wants a faceless student to pause, do a double take and listen a little more carefully and go: 'Is that Midoriya in there, moaning like that?' And it is.

"Sensei!"

"So loud," he remarks, "Do you want the entirety of the school to hear you?"

"Yes!" Izuku probably doesn't know what she's crying out; she's clapping a palm over her mouth, biting down on the meat of it as Aizawa draws the flare of her clit into his mouth to dangle it around with the tip of his tongue. Like a toy. Izuku had always felt like Bakugo's toy, but she never knew it could feel so good.

Her palm isn't enough to contain her cry, the loudest of them yet. She nearly unseats herself—Aizawa is forced to pin down her bucking hips with a forearm barred across her pelvis, and even that is nearly dislodged as Izuku starts to thrust up, tears pooling in her eyes.

"Needy girl," Aizawa rasps as he pulls off, his face an absolute mess. "Needy"

"Again," Izuku pleads, chest heaving. Her pussy is glistening, quivering, red from his attention and slick from his saliva. "Please, that felt so, so—"

"Good?" He suggests, with no small amount of smugness in his tone. "Do you like having your little pussy eaten?"

It's so filthy how it leaves his mouth. Still, Izuku nods, breathless.

Her needy mewls surge as Aizawa dives back in and eats eagerly.

Long strokes of his tongue massage her folds, gliding up and down in wide, flat brushes with his nose lightly rutting against the sensitive nerves of her clit.

"Pretty, pretty, pussy," he chants, keening when Izuku claws at his hair, "wet n' sticky for me...mmm, I love her," His incoherent mumbles dribble slick down his chin. He quickly laps it up, greedy and keening not to miss a single drop of sweetness that seeps from her.

"I th-think this is the best day of my life," Izuku says, breathless and barely even there, speaking to the heavens more than the man between her legs.

"You like it that much? Sweet baby, you needed this all along, haven’t you?" he coos. His lips squish her clit, pursing his mouth and sucking the sensitive nub playfully before releasing it with a sweet pop. Her labia is shining with sticky residue, puckered hole aching to be stuffed full—it's too soon for that, but her body is craving it.

"Uhh-uhhh-ahh, Christ, you're making such a lovely mess on me"

Doesn't help that he just keeps fucking talking.

Izuku's pride can't handle it. Her teacher is too good, too observant. He touches her with skill and no guidance. He's been with other women. Swirling, flicking, swishing his tongue over their own soaked pussy lips over and over. Fucking them. He can have anyone (she's read the forums), and yet he's kneeling in front of her. Calling her pretty, talking with his mouth full of her.

He needs more. More of Izuku, more of her moans, more of her body squishing against his. He's greedy like that. About her body, her smile, her cries—he'd lick her tears if he could break away from her clit fast enough. He needs this, desperately. Needs her.

Izuku is so close, and he fucking knows it. Seriously, screw him for knowing her body better than herself.

"Almost there already? Ha... go on then, baby, let me taste your cum. I'll swallow it all"

Her pussy quivers on his tongue. Clit twitches on his lips. "D-d-don't stoppp!" She whined incessantly. Curling her toes. Tummy fluttering. Thighs trembling. Feet kicking the air.

Her wetness is just so much. To the point where she can feel the presence of it sitting inside her, waiting for Aizawa's tongue to scoop it out of her.

"Im'go—cu-um uhh-ahh, fu-fuuckk, yes ye-es!" praises fall in high whines. Coil snapping, back taut. The pleasure lights Izuku's nerves, touching every cell that bursts in her core as her orgasm erupts.

"That's it, that's it, good girl," Aizawa grunts, panting feverishly through the lewd squirts that splash from her release, using the tip of his thumb to brush soothing circles on her puffy clit. Devouring every drop she has to offer. It throbs a delicious ache, turning Izuku into a pathetic, pliable mess.

"There you go. Doing so good, Izuku, doing so good" He starts to rub gently against her inner thighs, coaxing her through it.

If anyone asked Izuku before today if she ever had an orgasm, she would have said yes, but after this—she's not quite sure what she's been having all these years because it wasn't that. She never knew an orgasm like this. One that made her question if she ever truly came before.

Izuku can take her best 'orgasm' with Bakugo, multiply the feeling by twenty, and she'd still be fucking miles off pace. This was unreal. She didn't know her body could feel this way. All she needed was a wiser, older man to show her. Huh, why didn’t she try this sooner?

Aizawa buries his face back into her sex, cleaning up the gooey mess and sensitising every nerve he touches with the pad of his finger and the tip of his tongue.

Sweat beads down her brow, breath stuttering inaudible mewls as she squirms in his grip, twisting her hips to run from his mouth when it all becomes too much. "Sh-shota, st-stop," she exhales, tugging on his hair for attention when his slurping turns sloppy again.

"Too sensitive?" He stands up and is face-to-face with her by the time she nods.

"Can... can I do you now?"

"No," Aizawa says shortly, which... Confuses her. He doesn't look upset, actually; he looks weirdly content even though she's the one who just came. He's still hard in his trousers, and she can see it. So she tried again.

"S’not fair... that you've seen so much of me and I've barely seen any of you."

His voice drew virtually into her scalp, fluttering her hair and causing goosebumps to sweep up her arms, "Guilt tripping me now? Don't forget, last time you saw any part of me unclothed, you looked like you were about to faint"

And then, he smiles something rich and complicated that started a primal buzz of recognition in her blood and made her peculiarly aware of how very female she happened to be. She just came, and yet her body is still begging for more... that can’t be good.

"Ugh. How many times are you going to bring that up?

Aizawa strokes up under her shirt with the tips of his fingers. "Izuku, I would love to see how you look on your knees for me," he murmurs, pure sex dripping from his lips.

"That sounds good to me," she breaths, "So what's stopping you?" Never in her life had she been this bold and eager, but Aizawa had awakened the sleeping sex giant within her.

"Oh, I would have you do it. But we're still in school, and I don't want to be disturbed when I ruin you"

Ruin her? It sounds so threatening and violent. She loves it.

Aizawa pauses, breath caught, and smirks. "You make it so hard to be a gentleman"

She really needs to stop saying things out loud.

"I just want to pay you back"

"Pay me back," He repeats, the words play on his lips mockingly. "You say that like eating your sweet little pussy was a hassle. If you weren't so damn sensitive, I'd have gone down again. Now hop off. Let me clean this desk off, and we'll go get some breakfast"

She wanted to argue, but she also craved a tall glass of the freshly pressed coffee served with a doughnut with a generous glaze icing.

STEP 9

cry anyway

———————————————

 

When Izuku first stumbles into the room—all lengthy and awkward, she expects Nora to at least finish her phone call, but instead, Nora hangs up and stares, her hands folding across her chest. And Izuku... Izuku doesn’t know what she wants from her. Yes. She’s late. But there's nothing she can do about it now. Unless Nora wants her to somehow turn back time? Does she want Izuku to start flying around the earth backward until she can go back twenty minutes earlier and be on time for the appointment? Is that what this woman expects of her?

"I'm surprised that you're still able to attend school, Izuku,” she says instead, “seeing as this is the third time in a week that you've been too ‘sick’ to attend our sessions."

Izuku shrugged, her excuses piling up on her shoulders and making them way down. "I think it's, um, just... school. Being there... It makes me feel better. Or maybe it's the food. Sorry. I’m not trying to avoid you."

Nora shook her head. "Somehow, I really don't think that's it. Is there a reason why you decided to see me today?" she said, frowning as she searched the girl's face.

"No. I'm fine," Izuku might as well get that phrase tattooed on her forehead for how often she says it. "I'm not in trouble, am I...?"

"Of course not, why would you be in trouble?"

Because lately, Izuku was almost always in trouble. It was impossible to be fifteen, coming out of an abusive relationship and entering an illegal one, and for people to find her conduct appropriate. She was always saying the wrong thing, or being too snappy, or demanding too much. The feeling of being in a huge crowd, but still feeling completely alone, as if she can't trust anyone or talk to anybody.

She's not doing well in terms of being a functional human. Izuku was a mess, has been a mess, and will continue to be a mess until the end of time.

"No reason"

"Have you been thinking about what I said last? About what I believe is happening to you... the grooming?"

Nora stares at her. Into her, more like. She sees everything. A beat passes. Two.

"I've heard about this apparent infatuation you have with your teacher. This is news to me.”

Izuku gulps. "That was just a-a stupid rumor. I don't even know who spread it."

"Huh," The woman hums, "Alright, but I’d like to stay on this topic. Your teacher, Shota Aizawa. I've been told you spend an allotted amount of time with him. Focusing mostly on your special training sessions that you've also conveniently forgotten to mention."

"I wasn't trying to—" Izuku can't even finish that sentence, that lie. She tries again. "...I guess I didn’t want him upset at me for talking about it.”

“He would be upset at you for confiding in your therapist.”

“No—! He’s just... Shota is just a private man.”

“He allows you to call him by his first name?”

Izuku pales, bites her lip, “I dunno’.. sometimes.”

Nora smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “You must like your teacher.”

“He’s taught me so much... And I know I can be a handful, but he’s never given up on me.”

“That is his job, yes.”

Izuku felt interrogated, like she couldn’t say the right thing. She sped up, trying to explain herself.

“W-well, but I mean, he is different from my other teachers.” Shit. Izuku hated how that came out.

“How so?”

“He sacrificed so much for me. He’s never made it out that way, but I see him do it all the time. He’s always staying up late and giving up his own time just to make sure I’m okay.”

“Hmm. And do you think that’s healthy of him, a teacher? Have any of your other teachers acted this way?”

What kind of fresh hell is this? What is this impossible-to-ace quiz? Izuku has no idea how she’s supposed to be answering to make Shota look good.

“...what’s wrong with that?”

Nora stares at her for a long moment. "Izuku, what I'm hearing is that your teacher is a weak man, and even as a young girl, you are stronger than he is. You know he couldn't handle being exposed, and that's why you keep taking the fall. Even now, you're still trying to protect him."

If this were a game, she would hit pause. Izuku would restart, say different things, the right ones this time, smile more, and hold eye contact. She would search her inventory for the item that would make Nora leave this alone.

"...wh-what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that men—these kinds of men—know how to pick just the right ones. They're real predators, Izuku. They know how to scan a herd and select the weak."

Her eyes, blue and knowing, scanned Izuku's. She wondered if the difference in eye color meant Nora saw the world differently.

"Men like that isolate their victims, usually threatening them if they attempt to leave, even sometimes going as far as to manipulate their sense of self."

Threaten?

"If anyone found out what we are doing right now, I'd be put on leave pending an investigation... You'd be suspended."

Manipulate?

"What on earth provoked you into thinking announcing you have a crush on me was a good idea?"

No, Aizawa would never. Sure, he was a little rough around the edges at times, but it was nothing Izuku couldn't handle. She loved his attitude and his anger, because she... was always too warm... and she needed the ice.

"He's not that kind of person, Nora. You don't even know him."

"And you do," Nora states, but it might as well have been a question. Izuku was about to tell her that this was all bullshit, that if Izuku didn't know him, no one knew him, and he might as well not exist. "It's easy to miss the signs when you're so close to it.”

Words hung on the tip of Izuku's tongue, telling herself that Nora was just oversimplifying. That it was easier to judge a man she knew nothing about. That it was more convenient not to consider that there were things even Nora didn't know and things she'd never understand, because she was shallow and ignorant.

"Izuku, honey, you were doing fine," Her voice dripped like warm honey, all convincing, "until that man."

Izuku’s muscles are tensing, knotting, coiling inside her. Gathering themselves for some massive effort. No, she thinks she says. She can't be sure because of the heart sounds and the breath sounds, and the blood sounds that are crashing in her ears. She makes a gesture, but Nora is just sitting there, waiting for something more.

Sometimes, Izuku wished she were good at diplomatic speeches. She wished she'd mastered coquettish looks and innocent smiles. But she hadn't. She was singularly bad at those forms of persuasion. And now she was trapped.

"I wanted it" is what she comes up with. And she did want it. Izuku was old enough to make the decision about the path she wanted to take for the rest of her adult life. She was old enough to die fighting villains. And she was almost old enough to meet the age of consent law. "You don't get it," she repeats, "I asked for it."

"He is a grown man, and you are fifteen years old. What could you have possibly done to ask for it?"

"I want you to listen to me, Izuku, even though it is hard... just, let me say this.” A sadness overcame Nora's face then. A realization. Maybe she hadn't fully believed her theory until now, when Izuku just flat-out confirmed it. “The... manipulative nature of grooming can change the way a person understands their world, the people in it, and where they belong. It could... affect their ability to connect with others and themselves. Your...” she pauses, speaking oh-so slowly “Their personality and behaviour could even change markedly from what they were prior to the abuse."

Izuku felt like an animal afraid to leave its cage, yet being cattle prodded to do so. No words to say what she thought, no thoughts but muddled mad, stupid thoughts. It's not like she could say behavioral changes haven't been plaguing her these past months...

"I'm so tired of this," she whispers.

Nora slides out of her seat and crouches on the floor in front of Izuku, hand on her knee. "What are you tired of?"

"Everyone th-thinking they know what's best for me. It's my life. Mine." It's quiet. Izuku's breathing steadies, and Nora stands, hands dropping away.

Gently, the woman says, "If you think back to the first incident—"

"Incident?" Izuku throws her head against the back of the chair and groans. Petulant, childlike, revealing her age. "I won't. There was no incident."                 

Reducing their romance to case files made her want to vomit.

"You don't have to go back," Nora says. "You can stay in this room with me. Just think of one moment, the first one between the two of you that could have been considered intimate. When you look back on that first memory, who was the initiator, you or him?" She waits, but Izuku can't say it. She won’t.

The first touch she can remember was when they were training. He patted her on the ass all camaraderie-like. Even then, it struck her as odd, but not odd enough to mention it. She just stood there beside him, smiled, and let him do what he wanted. And Izuku didn't understand it, but she didn't ask for it either.

She exhales, hangs her head. "I can't."

"That's fine. Take it slow."

Someday a sentence will come to her, a magic sentence that will undo all that is wrong and make everything right. But until that sentence comes, Izuku says nothing. Thinking.

How cautious Aizawa was, whenever he angled his knee against her thigh, such a small thing that could have been an accident, then his hand on her knee, a little pat, a friendly thing people do to each other. Pat-pat-pat. Izuku had seen teachers give students hugs before; no big deal. It only accelerated after that, once he knew she was okay with it—and isn't that what consent is, always being asked what you want? Did she want him to kiss her from the beginning? Did she want him to touch her? Did she want him to take her on her own desk? Slowly guided into the fire... why is everyone so scared to admit how good that can feel?

Grooming can be a beautiful thing... to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate flower, willing to wilt at the slightest change in normality.

Izuku thinks of his hand stroking her leg. She didn't care that he hadn't asked if it was okay, or that he was her teacher, or that her then-boyfriend was expecting sexual favors when school ended. As soon as it happened, she wanted it to happen again. A normal girl wouldn't have reacted that way. There must have been—there is something dark about her, something that's always been there.

Did she... She didn't bring this on herself, did she? Izuku was just a girl... Was a girl supposed to piece all these things together?

"Izuku, you need to hear me. You're a child. If an adult hurt you, that's on them, not on you. It doesn't make you bad. You've done nothing wrong here," Nora says, but all Izuku can hear is 'Didn't you see the elephant in the room?' The poor girl couldn't help it; the elephant was there when she moved in. It blended in so well that she thought it was part of the furniture.

"He told me he liked me..."

More than that. He called her beautiful. And Izuku, sure, is not plain, but she didn't think anyone was ever going to call her beautiful until he did. She doesn't have that whole 'graceful' thing going on. But he did call her beautiful, and he meant it.

"Abuse can feel like that sometimes." Nora remained so still that it didn't look like she was breathing. She looked at Izuku, unwavering.

Tipping her head down, Izuku sighs, "but what... If I like him to?"

There should be a word for both dying to know something and, at the same time, being sick with terror at the prospect of hearing anything about it whatsoever.

"Abuse can feel like infatuation. I’m sure he has been sweet to you; there's no denying that. But that man has taken advantage of you... It's up to you to be better than him."

For a moment, she is speechless, unable to come up with an answer besides, 'I walked into his classroom and existed for the first time in my life.'

"...maybe I don’t want to be better..”

Izuku could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was Nora's eyes. Despite the makeup, they were still dark-rimmed, haunted, and sad. Most of all, though, they were familiar. Izuku spent her whole life staring at those same eyes—confused and pitiful—she would have known them anywhere, and she's getting pretty fucking tired of seeing them. Nora pities her. Just like everyone else. Izuku wants to vomit.

"...he'd—he buys me breakfast. Everyday. That bakery down the street from here, you know the one? He gets two of everything be-because he knows I don't like to eat alone... He doesn't even like sweets, but he’ll eat them with me anyway." Her voice wavers, small, frail, broken. "It might seem small to you, but it meant everything to me."

"I know Izuku, I know he’s sweet on you. But it’s an act. To men like him, girls like you mean nothing."

"N-nothing? Nothing at all?"

Maybe that's all it was. She was an obvious target. He chose her not because he thought she was beautiful, but because he was hungry and she was easy. No, no, Izuku can't believe that, won't let it be.

"You're wrong. It was never nothing... I know I sound crazy."

"Not crazy," Nora says, "Traumatized."

If Izuku were to admit that, yes, she's been groomed, then... Everything she read on those sites weren't hieroglyphs anymore. They were her life. And it makes her angry. What happened to those girls she read about... It makes her so fucking angry. The entitlement of those men who destroy those girls’ lives, just because they can.

Tell someone. Reach out for help. The attachment is all in your head, those sites said.

But Izuku is also in her head, and it's starting to get crowded in there.

This wasn't the way she was supposed to meet her person. She was supposed to meet someone, and have her wants and wishes coincide with his, so that their dreams overlapped. She didn't want to meet a man, to discover that the breath she drew seemed to come from his lungs, and then realize that he’s been grooming her all the same time.

"I'm so tired," Izuku huffs into her hands. She's shaking. Exhausted. Poor broken doll... "...so tired."

"Of what, Izuku?" Nora asks again.

Izuku sighs and answers honestly for once. "This. You... Everyone, really. I just want everything to... stop. To freeze," She spoke so slowly, cobwebs could have formed between her words. "even if it means that no one grows older and that little kids can't look forward to—to Sunday morning cartoons anymore. I know what it will mean, but I still want everything to stop. Is that wrong of me?"

Now it was all starting to make sense. The mental anguish she puts herself in, the sex she labels as a distraction. Izuku did not believe her body could feel anything but pain, and so she did not desire pleasure in the same way that other people seemed to. She was happiest when her body was feeling nothing. She was happiest when she did not have to think about her body—when she could forget that she had a body at all.

"No, it's very normal."

"It is wrong, though." She's pushing it because she needs to hear it. How she's caused this. How it's all her fault—at least that was a familiarity she could lean on the shoulder of. "I'm terrible for even thinking it... I'm selfish. I’m awful."

She needs to lick her own wounds. Which is a funny little phrase when you think about it. Licking your wounds would only make them worse, no? The mouth was filled with so much bacteria. But Izuku knew how easy it was to get addicted to the taste of her own carnage.

"You're traumatized," Nora corrects. "It might not seem obvious to you, but there is a tremendous difference."

But she didn't feel traumatized. Sure, recently she's been quicker to anger, to cry, to fall apart, but she doesn't feel traumatized. Nothing has ever happened to her that she hasn't asked for.

"You have the power to stop this, Izuku. Just tell me to help you, and I will. But I need to hear it or else, legally, I can't do anything. It goes against patient confidentiality."

It was like a fork in the road had closed, shut off by an avalanche of grief, choked with rocks and a broken heart. It wasn't supposed to open, and honestly, it still hadn't, but somehow, an entirely new path had formed, green and creeping. One without the looming gaze of the two men who'd sat Izuku in this chair themselves.

The girl halfway nods but stays silent, understanding everything. Understanding that no one, not even herself, can really save her. Understanding that this is all life is for her now, one sicko after another, lining up to take advantage of her.

In Izuku's pocket, her phone vibrates. She clings to it like a life raft. A blessed distraction.

'Let me take you home' it read. From Aizawa.

She wants to type, 'Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want to see you' but instead types, 'No thanks'

She couldn't let him take her home. Not ever again now that she knows. But she couldn't report him either... even after everything he did to her, after how stupid he made her feel. Izuku didn't want him to hurt because whatever is happening... It still feels like her own fault. She might not be alone in that fact, but she has still done something wrong, something so huge she can't even see the end of it, something that's drowning her. Izuku is inadequate and stupid, without worth. She might as well be dead.

'Let me take you home' he typed again.

Her life had gone wrong. Very, very wrong. She wasn't supposed to live like this. No one was supposed to live like this. The problem was that she simply didn't know how to make it right.

'Okay' Izuku responds anyway.

"You're going to go back," Nora said. It's like she knew. Izuku looks up from her phone. "Why?" Was spoken without anger or judgment, just genuine curiosity.

"Because," the girl said. Because he is my only friend. Because, once, when I was at my lowest, he saved me. Because I might die without him. Because I made him look at me this way. Because I owe him. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we have fantastic life, "Because," she repeated, and in that moment, she realizes that the heat on her cheeks is anger; she has been angry ever since the conversation started. And sure, Izuku wanted to cry, but deep down, she was angry, and that was now rising to the surface.

To think... If she hadn't been the person she was, terrified and cowardly and petty and insecure and sexually panicked and broken, Aizawa would have never picked her. He chose her because she was easy to him, easy to win over and manipulate and fuck—she all but proved it, didn't she? Being treated like a toy... everything less than a breathing, feeling person. She thought only Bakugo could make her feel that way. How stupid she was to lock out any other possibility.

“Because..” And Izuku thinks she said a reason, she must have. But she doesn’t hear herself do anything but breathe and breathe until she couldn’t even do that. She tried deep breathing, but seemed to lose contact with herself between each breath, so that the next one was always an emergency. She began to feel faint. Nora says something, too, and she looks at Izuku with even more pity now, if that were even possible. Her vision is going spotty. She blinks and blinks.

If she fought herself over it any longer, she might rip in half.

⁂

"Can I pick you up for school on Monday morning?" Aizawa asked, turning onto her street. It was dinner with Inko night; he wouldn't be joining. He wasn’t invited.

Izuku unfastened her seatbelt. "No"

"I just asked to be nice," he said in a stern tone. "I'm picking you up. I won’t have you walking."

The reason Izuku hadn't called someone else to drive her home was because she was embarrassed. She had hoped her appointment wouldn't have been as bad as it had ended up being. She had hoped Nora would have solved everything so that Izuku would be as good as new for her mother and All Might. She didn't want them to see her as weak, even though that was how she felt. Weak, frail, alone, exhausted. She was tired of her body and of the choices it kept making. She was tired of having to move so carefully. She wanted to be able to skip, for God's sake, but right now she didn't trust her shaky legs to get her home on their own.

She had no choice, she told herself, but then she climbed into his car—choosing.

"Please..." Izuku shook her head, ready to plead. "Please don't." They approached her house, and she grabbed her bag. "Stop here," she told him.

Weird, even after her worst arguments with Bakugo, she never asked him to drop her off four houses away. Life's veered sharply away from the script. She's traveling a branch of an alternative future she was never meant to be on. Izuku gets out of the car. The sound of her passenger door closing almost masks the driver's side opening.

"Where are you going? Izuku, get back in the car. Let me at least get to your driveway."

Her eyes darted to his, seeing him tread around the vehicle to her, looking like a god on Earth. It’s a shame she couldn't let herself worship him anymore. Aizawa was close, peering at her with nothing less than concern etched over his features. The world went a little fuzzy.

He looked younger like this, like that picture he keeps on his desk. The one of his small circle of friends during their time studying at U.A. Embarrassment crept up Izuku's spine when she realized he wasn't thinking about her at all in that moment, and any moment before that. She is the same age that he was in that photo, and yet there isn't a single moment when she's not thinking about him.

"I don't want t-to do this anymore, Sensei... Can you—can we stop? It hurts too much."

Aizawa is silent for a moment and then steps forward—Izuku steps back. Like a predator cornering its prey on National Geographic. He keeps going until there's nowhere else to go, until her back hits the car door.

Aizawa is advancing, and Izuku has nowhere to go. She could get back in the car, but that felt like some sort of surrender. So, she stood still and somehow held eye contact.

"Izuku, baby, I would never hurt you. That's the last thing I want to do. You know that."

I would never hurt you, he says. Izuku doesn't say it, but sometimes it feels like that's exactly what he's doing to her—hurting her. Breaking her apart, putting her back together as someone new. It was too late anyway. She'd already been hurt, and just like all the other hurts, she'll swallow it like a pill until it eventually dissolves in her stomach acid and she blames herself.

"Talk to me, pretty girl. What's this all about?"

Pretty girl. All this was just desire, blind and stupid, and it had nothing to do with who she was, so it wasn't even personal, no matter how sentimental he was trying to make it sound.

Izuku takes a steadying breath. "I didn't want to believe it... I c-couldn't put you in that role" a pause, heavy as the metaphorical anchors that keep her planted in front of him "but it's true, isn't it?"

“..you went back to that therapist?”

“Her name is Nora,”

Aizawa seems to get it then; maybe he had an inkling all along. He always did have a knack for knowing what was going on inside her head. He pauses, blinks once, twice, then: "Dense people have a way of seeing one thing and understanding another. Izuku, whatever that therap—Nora told you—"

"Sensei," Izuku slaps the hand away that was reaching for hers. "Don't do that. You used me and—" She chokes on... words? A sob? Izuku just can't wrap her head around it, the deceit that such a cruel act requires on Aizawa's part, the pure cruelty of it all.

She wanted to tell him to go away, to curse, to throw a punch. She wanted to so badly. To bawl and scream at the man for putting an innocent girl like herself through this, but she couldn't. Fuck, she couldn't. And it was killing her, tearing her to pieces. She knew he was bad for her, but she still didn't want him to go anywhere. And she hated that.

"—you groomed me."

And there it was. That word again. Aizawa knew it, and Izuku knew it now, too. There was nothing left for her to do, really, but take in his reaction and try not to explode when he has the fucking audacity to go silent. Do you know how hard it is to say nothing? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? Izuku just tried to be, tried to absorb the man she admired through osmosis, but there was nothing left to give. She was sucking on an empty juice box. A quiet, radio-silent, juice box staring back at her like she said something wrong. Fuck... why wasn't he—

"I fell in love with you."

Her heart and breath felt as if they had deserted her, declaring they were off to join the navy and might come back to visit in a few years if she were lucky.

She scans his face—maybe she was hoping for deceit, maybe that'll make this easier, but there was none. She knows every microscopic detail of his face. She knows the shape of his brows for every emotion. To her, he is the most beautiful man who has ever lived. It was crazy to think that, at one time, she couldn't have said with any certainty what color his eyes were. He was a picture hanging on the wall that she'd long gotten used to. How many times did her gaze pass right over him, not realizing he was looking back at her? Always watching. Listening. Waiting.

That's what they do, people like him. He was so very patient, and Izuku was so very dumb, wasn’t she? All he had to do was wait until she dug the pretty little hole herself.

"Love?" A sound escapes her. A wicked cross between an exasperated laugh and a snort. Izuku throws her head back and catches a glance of a passing plane, wishing she were on it. "Love... how can you say that to me?"

It's strange to know that whenever she remembers herself at fifteen, she’ll think of this.

"You betrayed me. Say it"

“Izuku, honey, please.”

She had slipped a little bit in that moment, when he said her name as if it had value.

"Fucking say it!"

His eyes took in the details of her body with a conflicted gaze that she knew well: even having the facts presented to him on a rusty platter, he still wanted her. He wanted her despite knowing what that meant about him.

"Yes, I did."

When he admitted this to her, Izuku found herself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden this part of himself in order to deceive her. He must have known all along, obviously, the monster that was inside of him. He must have greeted it he same way he greeted her all those months ago. Letting the time pass, pretending to be what he is not. Poisoning her and calling it medicine.

Stupid Izuku, she should have seen it coming. No one is who they appear to be on the surface.

“You did what? Say it.”

Izuku watched him with hooded eyes. Desperate, vulnerable. Bakugo had made Aizawa look like a man who could really love and be loved, like she might be able to hand over her heart and all its secrets without him having to crack her ribs open to get to them.

"I groomed you," He says, and there dies the little seed of doubt Izuku had stored away for emergencies. "And I started the rumor."

How does one describe the sound of the world crashing? If what Izuku is now experiencing holds a candle to it, there is no sound, just a great vast emptiness, an enveloping sorrow, a creeping nothingness that coils itself around her like a stiff wire.

And the girl looks utterly mortified. Her cheeks are stained dark red, and her mouth hangs open in shock. The sun shines in her eyes in such a way that it's easy to see she's on the verge of tears. There's no sugar coating this. Izuku is hurt. He hurt her just like he said he wouldn't.

"O-oh, ha..." she exhales, shaky. A part of her wants to feel betrayed. The other part wants to hit it with a hammer because of course, this happened. She was warned more times than she can count on one hand. And she didn't. Listen.

"I just want what's best for you, Izuku. You know this, don't you?" His words make a thick, glutinous lump build up in her throat. Words like: if you wanted what's best for me, you wouldn't have trapped me in this. If you wanted what's best for me, you wouldn't have forced me to endure the bullying and mockery all this time. If you wanted what's best for me, you'd actually ask me what I want instead of gaslighting me.

"I thought I was crazy... I told you I didn't spread that rumor—"

"Sweetheart—"

"And you made me think I did anyway."

"I was trying to protect us."

"Bullshit! You were trying to protect yourself! Was this all just some sort of trick to keep me quiet?!"

"You're young. Young people talk. It's very easy to slip up and say the wrong thing. I would never mean to hurt you."

"Then mean better!"

Izuku is full-on shouting in her typically quiet residential neighborhood. But then there's this... silence. Aizawa stops responding. And she gulps, and it's the only thing either of them hears in this deafening, short stretch of quiet.

"You lied to me," she says, voice going soft, calm, and sounding far past the point of wounded. And her eyes are starting to well up to their limit, her lower lip beginning to tremble.

Aizawa raises a hand in a defensive gesture. "I—" he stops, mouth ajar, looks like he's at a complete loss for words, and instead just makes some broken, airy sound as his brain short-circuits and comes up empty. It's nothing that'll stop her, though.

"I gave you a chance to come clean, and instead you..." She pauses, feels her voice beginning to crack like ice over a frozen lake, a lump the size of a melon forming in her throat.

He just stares at her, lips tightly pressed together, a solemn look of defeat plastered across his face.

"You manipulated me." She must have a type for these sorts of men. Nothing had changed, leaving Bakugo. She was always left standing here, stupid once again.

Aizawa takes a second to come up with a response, the muscles in his face knotting up as he huffs and rubs his brow while glancing at the ground. He pulls his head up, only to look at her with an expression of pain she's never seen from him.

"You wouldn't understand, Izuku, you can’t see it now, but later you will. I promise you will," he says.

She hated the way he spoke like that. As if there could be no measurement of their past in years. As if she, so young, couldn't possibly understand the way time worked, and what it did to people.

“I was old enough for you to strip me on my desk, sensei.”

And it comes out with such an eerie calmness that it finally hits her, full force, that he really did lie to her. It's not like she needed further confirmation. She already knew. But hearing herself confront him has her hair standing on end. Keep it together, Izuku. You can lose your shit tomorrow. Keep it together.

She swallows hard. Extra hard. And her eyes are turning glossy, gut knotting up to the point it hurts. "I'm so mature for my age, right? Such a woman? I'm fifteen," she murmurs.

Maybe her age makes him nervous and ashamed, cause his eyes keep heading southwards and then back up, guilty. Izuku can tell, even now, that she makes his eyes swirl. “D-does that turn you on or something? My age?”

He goes silent. The color disappears from his face as it turns hard as rock, and he stares deep into that hurt face of hers; he doesn't need to say another word.

Izuku slowly brings both hands to her cheeks, each palm covering half her mouth, tears collecting atop her fingertips.

"Oh my god," she mutters softly, airy. It lacks any body and is light as a feather. And it sounds like she's on the verge of breaking. "What did you do? What did you do to me?" she moans, finishing with a borderline squeal as she's hardly able to keep herself together.

Her body is cracking from the pain she had swallowed too many times, heaving with sobs she can no longer suppress, her dignity dissolving in her tears, the agony of these past few days ripping her skin to absolute shreds.

Before he can even get a word in, she's back at it. "That was—that was fucking everything! That was it! That was the world! You're a pro hero! If anyone finds out, your c-c-career—" she splutters, chokes, can't finish, and feels she's about to crumble into nothing but a hot, sobbing mess.

"So what!?" he yells, and shit, he actually sounds pissed. "I'd sacrifice my life for yours. I'll sure as hell risk a job. Need I remind you, you were with a sociopath when the year first started." he continues, angry gestures and all, while shouting at the top of his lungs.

It's the first time Izuku has seen him like this. Distraught. Uncontrolled. And for some reason, it hurts to see him this way. But she doesn't respond, just stares at him, that sick feeling in her stomach shifting into full-on nausea because she's sure she's about to throw up.

“I want you. Happy? Want you with the scars. With the fucked-up, tragic story. With every fiber of my body. I want to fuck you, and own you, and bruise you, and save you. But I can’t do any of those things. I’ve let you fuck around with Bakugo. I’ve tried to hold myself back. Why? Because you’d hate me afterwards, and that’s a fact, not a speculation. Mark my words. For reasons I can’t tell you right now, truly claiming you will break you and ruin me. And I may be a bastard, but I’m not the fucking villain. If you think I'm awful now, then you’re going to hate me when I stop holding back.”

Aizawa's hands drop, planting themselves on his hips, and he takes a second to calm himself. "And at the cost of you? I just couldn't. Not you. I had to save you from what men like me could really do. I had to save you, baby, can’t you see that?" He looks her in the eyes. Those big. Innocent. Round. Sparkling eyes.

"You shouldn't have"

Those big eyes of hers narrowed some, squeezing a few more tears out of the corners of each. "Did you think maybe... if you didn’t trick me, I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with you? Because right now... I don’t know if I ever want to see you again," she says, tone a bit softer, yet still quite stern.

And holy fuck is that a bomb-drop. Though she's not entirely sure if it's a husk of a threat. Isn't sure she could really do it, but likes to think that if pressed to make a decision, she absolutely would. But holy shit, Izuku. Could you do it? You would literally die. You wouldn't be here. You couldn’t survive without him. And you'd... you'd leave him behind...

Maybe Aizawa can sense that she's just saying whatever she can to invoke a reaction. But it doesn't really matter, because either way, the mere thought nearly breaks him in half and causes him to twitch.

"How can you say that to me?" he says, voice quavering, and wounded like it did really hurt. She did it. She hurt him. Why doesn't she feel righteous?

"This year was supposed to be my turn to prove myself. My whole fucking... and instead you—you made me all weird," she struggles to find the right words to express how much this man has truly changed her. How is it that he has the right to destroy her life, and she can't even explain how?

Regardless, he's at a loss for words. Has no idea what to do, and for the first time since she's known him, it looks like he doesn't have a plan. Doesn't have an escape route. So he just takes another step toward her, looking so fucking desperate to get his arms around her. And his eyes actually look like they're about to water while his voice comes out rickety as ever. "Izuku, sweet girl..."

"Don't!" she shouts, retreating again. Immediately. The sudden movement just feels instinctive and reactionary.

She sniffles, lets out a quick sob, hands pulling up to her cheeks once more to hold her face. It's like she's being torn right down the middle. Getting ripped in half. Her whole heart being split into two because she hates him so fucking much right now and is so angry. But seeing this man who's become her entire support system in so much pain, teetering on the brink of self-destruction, is killing her.

But she can't back down. She won't. Izuku remains steadfast, grounded in her position.

"You've changed everything, Sensei," she says, nasally. There’s a moment of silence. It’s one of those rare moments where she actually feels like she didn’t say too much, or too little. She feels like she represented herself accurately, and there’s nothing she would change about the way she said it. Izuku felt proud.

Shota makes one more attempt to get to her, arms reaching for her again. "Baby..." And it sounds like he's begging. Little Izuku has this pro hero begging.

But she steps away. Again. "Unh unh," she chirps, shaking her head, barely voicing her resistance.

She swallows hard, hands still holding her face, feet pressed together, and legs rigid as could be while she stands there looking so fucking delicate like a leaf trembling in the wind. Like she could shatter into shards of broken little Midoriya at any moment.

"This whole time I thought I'd finally found someone who would never hurt me... Some—someone I finally f-felt safe with. Someone I could trust."

"Oh, Izuku, you can," he loudly groans. And for some reason he looks weak, like he's rapidly losing whatever strength he has left. "Darling... When you fall asleep in my car, I want to push the seat back and lie with you. When you're talking about your favorite heroes, I want to fold you in half and squash you so you pay attention to me instead. I want to take you everywhere just to see the wonder in your eyes, to listen to you moan when you eat your favorite foods, to watch you pet stray cats as if there couldn't be anything more to life than that."

It was almost enough, or it would have to be, because she didn't have anything else, and she needed something before she fucking spiralled.

"I hate you," She huffs.

Izuku clenched her hands, nails meeting her palms. Just where Aizawa's hair was a few days ago—right there, right here, just... between her fingers. A howl slips through clenched teeth: "...hate you."

Two battered hands shake as she grips tighter than ever, fingertips busied as they pick and dig and burrow until the pain of that finally signals in her brain that this hurts. You're hurti—

"—ng yourself, baby, give me your hands."

Since when did the voice in her head turn into his?

Her eyes were wide and round, darting around and unable to settle on anything, tears freely dripping down her cheeks. "And, and, and you—you- " She choked, spluttered, retched, throat seized up, couldn't finish, and let out an involuntary short sob.

Shota shifted towards her again, closer this time, haste of a pro hero. "Whoa, hey, hey, Jesus baby," he stammered.

Then, with the speed of a cobra snatching its prey, he latched onto the fleshy part of her arms, just below her shoulders, and tried to corral her frantic and terrified state. "Hey, hey, hey," His strong, protective hands slowly climbed their way up her arms, shoulders, neck, eventually reaching her face. He gently held it in his palms, rough and rugged fingers cradling soft and supple, tear-stained cheeks. With her chest still convulsing from violent breaths, the room spinning around her like a hurricane, her eyes finally settled, anchoring to his. And those deep, dark irises gazed deep into her like she was his everything.

C'mon now, you can't do this to yourself. No matter how upset I've made you," he said, voice soft as silk, palpable with care and... love? Is that what that was?

Izuku was crying, quietly, not sobbing, but still hyperventilating, each hasty breath rocketing out of her with such force her tiny frame was wheezing and shaking.

"Shh, easy," Aizawa soothed, moving himself closer, firm and large palms finding their way to her shoulder blades as he pulled her into him, like he just couldn't get his arms around her soon enough. This time she didn't push him away.

Only lifting a hand off her back for a quick second, he lifted her chin with a finger and looked into her eyes. They were crystallized, sopping wet, and they wilted, somehow more than before, and the poor things squeezed out another pair of sizable juicy droplets that trickled down her freckled cheeks.

Aizawa's throat constricted, as if something had just clamped it shut, next breath nearly wedging itself in his chest, lips quivering at the sight because seeing her cry really did fucking hurt. "I did this to you... Oh, honey," His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard to collect himself, struggling to find his next breath.

"C'mere, baby girl. C'mere, Izuku"

She choked back another sob, the force of it too strong to retreat without a noticeable fight.

"Shh, it's okay. I gotcha. C'mere," he cooed, voice fragile and quavering as he gently pulled her deeper into his embrace, clutching her small self against him.

Izuku pressed the side of her head against his chest. Felt the fiercely protective touch of his hand that cradled the back of her head, the other firmly wrapping around her back and holding her in the best way.

Her arms were limp, holding onto nothing and simply resting by her sides while he held her close, her breakable chest still struggling to suck in oxygen as it pressed against his. Tears dripped down her cheeks, dripping onto their clothes like mini waterfalls. Rapid breaths escaped through her lips and fluttered against his shirt with a hot fury. Watery eyes blankly stared at some stain on the floor as she focused on his heartbeat, his breaths, his scent, his... presence.

Aizawa lowered his lips, dug them into her hair, and gave her a kiss. "Shh, it's okay. It's okay," he softly said, words muffled against the auburn strands. "I'm here. I'm right here."

The girl sniffled, then tried, but failed, to stifle another wave of tears, hands blindly and frantically seeking to latch onto any part of his shirt.

"Shh, baby it's alright. I've got you, everything's fine. Just listen to my heartbeat. Listen to my voice. Follow my breath. Nice and easy. There you go, doing so well for me."

Gentle instructions and soft assurances. Soft assurances that he was there, holding her tight, never to leave or abandon her, and how the fuck did he always know what she needed? She wasn't sure, but thank god he did because it was becoming increasingly more evident by the day that living without him was something hard to fathom. Something... beyond abstract, and quite simply, inconceivable.

So maybe, just maybe, clinging to a connection with someone, a real connection, a real bond stronger than any substance in the universe, was... okay. Good. Great. Maybe even required in a world hellbent on brutally punishing everything in its path. A human connection. An emotional connection. A real connection. A bond so strong and rare there weren't words for it in any dictionary of any language. A bond with him, her teacher who groomed her. Now that was a... strangely soothing thought.

Izuku went still, too petrified to move, too afraid he'd let go if she did. But her breathing began to calm, chest shaking less and less. The glossy trail of tears on her cheeks began to dry, and she closed her eyes, focused on his heartbeat, his breathing, just like he said. There was always something so calming, so stabilizing, so... grounding about him. He was an adult, and from a young age, Inko had taught Izuku that if she were ever in trouble, to find an adult. An adult will always help her.

"That's it. Breathe, baby, breathe,"

The large, strong, and weathered hands rubbing her back, the reverberations in his chest as he cooed to her, the beat of his heart, the feeling of his lungs inflating beneath her as life coursed through him, and the gentle pendulum—like motion of rocking in his arms were hypnotizing. Izuku focused on them. Let herself be entranced by them. They were soothing. And unlike everything else in the current state of the world, it was easy, like walking. Easy... She liked it easy.

Aizawa kissed her scalp again, really kissed it, gave it a lengthy and audible smooch. "Easy now. Easy sweetheart. You're alright. You're okay. You're perfect," he said.

"You..." Izuku sniffles, her nose hot and red-tipped. "You've done something to me." And her voice was quiet, too, a ribbon of breath threading into the breeze. "I don't think I can be who I was before you."

"You don't need to be; I'm not going anywhere. Trips around the world, remember?"

It was a strange feeling, to be the center of someone's universe, the center of someone's attention. To be the centerpiece of their life. To be their whole world. To be the only thing that mattered. To be the most important. To receive nothing but their undivided care. And to be... loved. Sure, Izuku had a wonderful mother for that, but this felt different. Fuck, it felt good. Wonderful even, because she finally had something—someone—to call her own. Huh...

So this is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you've fallen in love. The click of a jigsaw's last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up, and being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. She's where she should be. She's here.

Izuku is afraid of living without him.

"This is all your fault..." She breathed. One last-ditch Hail Mary, "Y-you did this, made me feel this way."

He never gave up, is what he did. Deep down, Izuku loved that, because she was going to be an effort for anyone, and he wasn't easily discouraged.

"When will you see you're just like me..." Aizawa rasped absently, "That this feeling inside you isn't the enemy?" He looked at her like she was a secret to which only he knew the answer... "It's the thing that keeps you going. People like us, Izuku, we're meant to teeter on the knife's edge."

Izuku verged on a response, but... what to say? He was correct, and delusion didn't suit her. She would know. "Look at your hands, baby. You've got to stop repressing it. Let me help you."

What made Izuku so special? Her stalwart pursuit of justice. Her composure. Her goodness. She was the yin to his yang, maybe. Was she willing to meet his expectations?

Yeah. Yes. Because that's what she does. That's simply Izuku Midoriya.

"Don't ever lie to me again," she says, eyes locking onto his with what feels like maniacal precision. And there's a tone underneath it that lets him know she's deadly serious.

Aizawa swallows, nods. "I know. I won't."

"Ever," she says.

"Ever," he repeats with another quick nod. "I swear"

And this time she fucking believes him. Finally. And it feels like the biggest weight in the world has been lifted off her chest.

"I keep you close to me to protect you. I need you here with me. It's a terrible world we live in. Nobody out there is going to love you like I do, baby."

It's as though she'd drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep wrapped in a quilt of roses. It pulls her along—and she knows she's drowning—but she goes down anyway.

Izuku sniffled and coughed. "N-no—no one?"

"Not like I will. Please, please understand that, Izuku. We belong to each other. No matter what anyone else says. It’s just you and me." Aizawa straightened up just slightly to kiss her, gentle and light as a feather, on the very corner of her mouth and then the center. "You're with me because no one else deserves you, and that's the way it should be." And then, as if it were a necessary reminder, "I love you."

And though she could scarcely even feel them, her lips formed the words, and sound emerged, sounding frayed, and small and cracked, forged in her somehow before she was born, since before time, words meant only for him. This isn't a conventional love story. There are all sorts of reasons Izuku shouldn't even be saying what she is but— "I love you too."

Three of the most powerful words in the world offered to one of the most powerful men in Japan in such a small voice. And at first, Izuku thought nothing at all had happened. He didn't blink. But then she realized she'd somehow set him... softly ablaze. Emotion burned from him, and his eyes... she would never forget his eyes in this moment.

And the man who never shed a tear... let one fall. And his voice, in truth, wasn't a good deal louder than hers. "Then it's just as well that I love you, Izuku.”

If it’s love, then don't die to a villain. Don't change your mind. Don't sleep with another woman. Don't think about me getting fat or getting stretch marks. Don't ruin your career to be with me. But be with me. I know that sounds impossible. But...

"Never, ever try to run away from me again, Izuku."

"I won't."

"Promise me, we won't ever do this again," Aizawa said.

Izuku tells him, “I'm sorry.” She doesn't want to say it, but feels like she has to, like he needs to hear it so badly, he's pulling the words out of her like teeth. I'm sorry you'll never get out from under the long shadow I cast. I'm sorry what we did together was so horrific; there's no path back from it. I'm sorry I ruin everything.

Dimly, in the back of her head, alarm bells were clamoring, but she didn't care. To hell with what trouble this would bring; she was alive. She was fucking alive, and Izuku knew that in that moment, she would do anything, everything, just to hold on to that feeling.

“Now get back in the car, Izuku, let me take you home.”

She climbs in obediently. Aizawa keeps a hand on her thigh the entire drive, squeezing her flesh in the way  people who were entirely comfortable around each other do. Izuku almost seemed to be an extension of him, and he, of her. There is love here, she thought. A love that is too beautiful a thing to be bad. Often, a matter of right or wrong is simply just a matter of perspective. To a fox, the hound is the villain. To a hound, the wolf. To a wolf, a human, and so on.

The role of the villain is only determined by who's telling the story. How idiotic of her to only realize that now…

Notes:

say it with me: this is a ✨✨ repost ✨✨

Had a bit of a whoopsie daisy in the mental health department and deleted my AO3 account and all the works on it (fuck me, am I right?) The original story was lost in the chaos, but since I loved it, I tried my best to recreate it.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of how to groom your student in 9 easy steps