𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐙𝐀𝐖𝐀

9

Thankfully, the next day was only a half day for Shouta. Which was a full day for anyone else, but since he was holding down two jobs at the same time, his day off hero patrols at least felt like a half day. He was kind of looking forward to all the things he could be doing with his time off, but deep down inside he already knew that he was going to sleep through all of it and then beat himself up for not getting anything done while he had the time for it. As usual.

He could feel how tired he was getting when the school day was almost over. He didn't have any more classes to teach, thankfully, but he had some papers to grade and some other paperwork to do, before he could finally head home. The only other person that was in the teacher's lounge with him at the moment was Nemuri and she was utterly annoying him by chewing loudly on some crackers.

Shouta wasn't really sure whether he should be saying something to her about it or not. He really wanted her to stop, but then he figured that it might not be a great idea to be a complete dick about it. But the chewing noise was really bothering him, especially every time she reached into the bag to get another cracker out of it. Normally he would have been able to just block it out, but lately every little noise was just grinding down on his nerves and threatening to give him a headache.

So he just kept watching her with narrowed eyes instead of doing any of his work. Which he knew he was going to regret, but he could think about that another time. Right now, he had to decide whether he wanted to give out to Nemuri or whether he wanted to give ignoring her another try. And of course, right in that moment she turned to him and raised her eyebrows at him.

"You want one?" she asked, while still chewing. Shouta sighed and shook his head quickly. No way would he participate in making so much damn noise. It didn't matter that there was no one else around to hear them, this was purely a matter of principle. But he was also kind of hungry. Once again, Nemuri had put a seemingly unsolvable dilemma in front of him and expected him to make a decision in a matter of seconds. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Who did everyone think he was? Some sort of miracle worker? All he wanted to do was get some damn sleep.

"No, thanks." he finally said, deciding that he had food at home. Even though the food at home wasn't half as tempting at this very moment.

"You look tired as fuck, Shouta. Are you sure that you're doing alright?" Nemuri wanted to know while shimmying over to him on her office chair. Oh no. Oh no, no, no. She wanted to make conversation, didn't she? Damn it. Shouta couldn't imagine anything he wanted to do less right now.

"I'm doing just fine, but I am pretty tired. Now if you'd just leave me alone, so I can finish my work, that would be amazing." Shouta muttered. He really didn't want to deal with this any longer. He was getting more and more annoyed. With himself, with his work, with Nemuri. He didn't even really know what he was getting annoyed about. He was just unhappy with the state of the world and his life in particular.

"How much did you get done in the last... twenty minutes, Shouta?" Nemuri asked. Shouta glanced at his screen which was emptier than he liked. He didn't get a whole lot done. There was a single paragraph in an assignment that he had graded. Nemuri was right, he wasn't getting shit done.

"That's none of your business." Shouta replied, before glaring back at his screen. As he was looking at it, the words seemed to swim together. They made no sense. The more Shouta focussed on them, the worse it was getting. He couldn't read anymore. He couldn't think anymore. This was terrible. He really needed a break. And it wasn't terrible that he needed a break, what was terrible was that Hizashi and Nemuri had been right about it. What kind of clown world was this?

Nevermind that dumb itch on his head that had been bothering him all day. His head and his face had been itchy for a while now and it was really annoying Shouta. He hadn't had any time to do anything about it yet, but right now it was really bad and he wished he could just tear off his own skin so he wouldn't have to deal with this anymore. It was infuriating. And worst of all - Nemuri was still watching him with that triumphant grin, knowing that she was right with everything she had said.

"Come on, Shou. What's bothering you? I promise, I won't tell anyone that I was right and you were too stubborn to listen to me." she said. Shouta let out a frustrated sigh and leaned back in his office chair. He knew that he had no choice. She already knew everything she needed to know.

"I'm just tired and the plastic bag with your crackers in it is making a really annoying noise that I can't block out and my head has been itchy as hell for the last week and I've been unable to get this girl out of my head who used to be my student a few years ago and Hizashi has been especially annoying lately and now you want to talk to me and I hate that you're right."

Shouta looked at Nemuri, almost as if he was testing her. He was curious to see how she would react. And to be honest, she didn't disappoint. She looked properly shocked at this sudden outburst, most likely because Shouta had never done anything like this before. He had never admitted that anyone else was right. It felt like a little bit of a victory to be able to surprise her like that.

"Okay... Maybe you should really just take a day off or something..." she replied. Shouta rolled his eyes.

"Wow. How original. No one ever mentioned that to me before." he said. Nemuri sighed and took a deep breath.

"You want me to scratch your head?" she asked with a little smirk. Shouta was about to protest profusely, but... well, there was this thing. Ever since he had known Nemuri she used to calm him down with stuff like that. And she was good at it. And she knew that he enjoyed it. He narrowed his eyes at her again.

"Fine." he grumbled and lowered his chair, before rolling a little closer to her and turning around. He could see the grin on her face and it was making him nervous, but Nemuri had never said anything about this to anyone else and Shouta just had to trust that it would stay that way. He knew that other people would somehow take this weirdly, when it really wasn't weird at all. It was just that Shouta was completely touch-starved, and that Nemuri had no issue touching people.

Shouta felt Nemuri's hands in his hair and she somehow instinctively found just the right spot to scratch. He really hated to admit it, but it felt insanely good and it was relaxing as hell. Shouta closed his eyes and leaned back further and then - he had no idea how it happened. He just... he made this strange noise. It was a familiar noise, but like... it wasn't human. Shouta had no idea what had happened, but interestingly enough Nemuri didn't stop and she didn't make it weird.

"Are you purring, Shouta?" she just asked. Only then did Shouta realize where he knew that noise from - he was, in fact, purring. He immediately sat up and blushed wildly. No way. No fucking way did he just purr when his coworker scratched his head. He would never live that down.

"Nemuri... I... this never happened. This never happened." Shouta stammered. This was the most embarrassing thing. What the hell was he even doing? First, he was hissing at All Might and now he was purring when Nemuri scratched his head? What the fuck was wrong with him? Maybe he really needed some sleep.

"Relax, Shou, it's fine. It was kinda cute. Now get back here. I won't tell anyone anything." Nemuri answered. Shouta shook his head and quickly grabbed all his things from around him. He needed to leave. He needed to go home right fucking now and try to stop thinking about this.

"No, I'm going to go home and get a nap. Bye, I'll see you tomorrow, please don't tell anyone about this, this is so embarrassing, I can't believe this happened, oh God." Shouta said quickly and speedwalked to the door. He needed to get out of here, before he died of embarrassment.