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High school was designed to zap the energy out of teenagers. It filled their minds with useless information while they sat in class after class for hours every day. Then a lot of them would participate in clubs and sports before they were sent home with ‘homework’. And still, people wondered why they acted out.
Shouta was glad UA wasn’t like that. Their classes were logical and entirely based on whatever the person teaching the class thought the students needed to learn. They even had courses specifically to prepare them for different types of careers (hero, engineer, marketing, etc). Plus, all the teachers at UA communicated with each other to make sure they weren’t overburdening their students.
That being said, there were a few students who pushed themselves harder than was strictly necessary. Not that Shouta was complaining. Go beyond and all that. However, if, say, one particular student was constantly working on improving, without any real breaks, to the point where they couldn’t stay awake to finish the All Might movie they specifically requested for movie night, then Shouta had a problem with it.
They hadn’t even had dinner and Midoriya was barely keeping his head upright.
Shouta sighed softly and subtly glanced around the room. Aside from himself, the only adults in the room were Midnight, who was leaning over the back of the couch over Togata’s shoulder, Hizashi, sitting on the armrest next to her, Snipe, reclining in the Lazyboy, and Ectoplasm, who was sitting to Shouta’s left on a stool he’d brought in from the kitchen. On the couch was Shouta, Midoriya, Eri, and Togata.
No one seemed to notice the greenette’s inability to keep his eyes open, let alone the jerky motion of his head. If it weren’t for the fact that waking Midoriya up would no doubt result in him putting himslef back to work, Shouta would have told the boy to take a nap in his room.
An intense action scene played out on the television and Eri began bouncing excitedly. She accidentally bumped her amr against Midoriya’s and, for a moment,the teen was awake again. But, only for long enough to pull away from her and lean back so he could rest his head. Midoriya’s breathing evened out as he slipped further into unconsciousness.
Now, Shouta wasn’t known to keep to a schedule. The only constant thing about him was the time he started class. But he knew that other people liked to keep to a routine and if Midoriya wasn’t able to get to sleep later and still chose to wake up early to go for a run with Iida, then he may not be able to function properly during school tomorrow.
Midoriya was one of the earliest risers out of all of Shouta’s student’s, so maybe it would be best to let him sleep on the couch that night.
Satisfied with that decision, Shouta returned his attention to the screen. He had a vague idea of what was going on, due to the blond actor wearing All Might’s signature silver age costume laughing heartily while some guy in a dark purple, skin-tight, spandex bodysuit waved a remote in the air and spouted something about leveling a city, “And there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”.
It felt as though Shouta’s sanity was dropping with every word the villain said. How did anyone think this movie was a good idea? Anyone with half a braincell could easily see that there was at least three things ‘All Might’ could do to beat the villain. And one of those choices was not doing anything because Shouta wasn’t even sure Mr. Bad Guy was competent enough to have actually, successfully, built and distributed twenty bombs -or whatever they were gloating about - to distroy the city they were supposed to be in. All in all, the movie was giving Shouta a migraine, to the point where he was almost glad when he was startled from his mental critisysm by Midoriya’s head as it fell onto his shoulder.
Now Shouta had a bit of a problem. Midoriya didn’t look too comfortable, if the slight frown and furrowed brow were anything to go by, and the movie was approaching it’s climax. Which, as everyone knew, meant the sound was about to go through a drastic volume change. If Midoriya woke up now and, consequentally, was unable to participate in school tomorrow, part of the blame for that would fall on Shouta’s shoulders.
The man pursed his lips and glanced around at the others in the room. It looked like he was the only one aware of his student’s situation. Okay. That made this easier. Shouta waited for Midoriya to fidget a bit before slipping his arm behind the teen’s back to pull him into his chest. Midoriya followed easily, settling into Shouta with a small, contented sigh. The man held his breath fo a moment to make sure Midoriya wasn’t going to wake up suddenly. He was almost there. Just one more tiny adjustment, Shouta thought, bringing his hand up to the teen’s head and shifting it so Midoriya’s left ear was flat against him and gently pressed his palm over the other ear just as a bomb went off prematurely in the movie.
Midoriya flinched and Shouta stared down at him, silently pleading with the boy to stay asleep. He really didn’t want to have to deal with a barely functioning teen in Heroics Class. There was a high probability that tired Midoriya would be worse than distracted Midoriya.
And distracted Midoriya was pretty bad.
The teen frowned and shifted closer to him, but didn’t wake. Shouta slowly let the breath he was holding out.
Mission accomplished.
For the remainder of the movie, Shouta’s attention was focused on the sleeping teen. He kept his hand over Midoriya’s ear when the tv got too loud and ran his fingers through the curly hair when something upset his student enough to elicit a small groan.
Now, Shouta was glad he’d been able to keep Midoriya asleep and was satisfied that his class would not fall to chaos tomorrow, but there was something he’d forgotten. A small detail he’d failed to take into account. Watching sleeping people makes you sleepy. And Shouta was already tired.
I’ll just rest my eyes until the movie ends, Shouta thought, fully aware that Midoriya probably had a similar thought before he’d passed out. But Shouta was an adult, so he was fully confident that Hizashi would somehow wake him soon enough.
But Hizashi didn’t wake him and the next morning, Shouta woke up to his phone pinging. When he went to check it, and found a plethora of missed messages in what was supposed to be the teacher’s group chat (how the Big Three got in there, no one knew), he was bombarded with photo after photo of him and his student sleeping peacefully on the couch from a multitude of different angles.
Midoriya mumbled something in his sleep and shifted, bringing Shouta’s attention to the fact that he was still there. Shouta tore his eyes away from the pictures on his phone to look at the subject of them and, for the first time, noticed his own hand carding its fingers through the kid’s hair.
Shouta sighed and looked back at his phone, hoping the pictures would stay in the group chat and not be shared around unnecessarily. He was already losing his title as UA’s heartless insomniac, thanks to his adoption of Eri.
His phone vibrated as a picture from Togata popped up on the screen. In it, the blond hero-to-be was carrying Eri on his shoulder while Shouta and Midoriya slept in the background. Togata and Eri were both smiling brighter than the sun and the little girl was holding up two fingers in each hand.
Shouta sighed again and put his phone down. That one, he thought. That one can get out.