"You're joking. A kiss?"
"I promise I'm not, kid. Come here," Hawks lifted up his glasses and motioned for me to come to him.
Just a kiss. A super small price to pay. Not a bad price, considering how attractive he was. The problem was that he knew how attractive he was, too.
A moment later I was in his arms, his wings folding behind my back, enveloping me completely. I had planned on a quick kiss, but he held me there, his tongue asking for entrance, which I granted. I felt myself giving in to the kiss, my hands rustling his golden hair. I'm only doing this as part of my job, I tried telling myself. This guy is an asshole. A shady, rude asshole. An good looking asshole... who, I had to admit, knows how to kiss.
When we finally separated, I had to catch my breath. Hawks put his glasses back on and released me from his wings.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?" he asked, winking.
"Yeah...I mean, no..." I was having trouble forming complete sentences. "So... when... am I meeting your friend?"
"I'll set it up."
Looking back on this moment, I realized that I should have paid more attention. I should have known that someone like Hawks automatically attracts attention everywhere he goes. Maybe then I would have noticed that someone was watching us.
--
"Can't I just stay for good? I don't want to go back to the other class."
The following Monday, class had ended for the day but I had stayed behind to talk with Aizawa. As I sat on the desk at the front of the room pouting, I felt like a whiny child throwing a temper tantrum.
Despite the incident at the gala, hero school continued on as normal. My time in the hero class was coming to a close, and I only had a few more weeks left before I was going to have to return to the support course.
"Trust me," Aizawa said as he stood in front of me, "if I could keep you in my line of vision all day, I would." He lifted my chin to look at him. "Then I could make sure you aren't toying with some of the more promising students."
"Like Shinso? He's not in this class."
Aizawa scoffed. "Yes, but that's not even who I meant. Anyway, the hero course is only for students with quirks. As much as I want to, I can't make a case for you to stay in this class."
I had an idea. A possibly dangerous idea.
"So you're saying," I began, twirling some of the fabric of his scarf in my hands, "I could stay if I had a quirk."
"Possibly. Since we're speaking hypothetically, my guess is that it would have to be a powerful quirk if I were to add a random student."
Pulling the scarf, and him, toward me, I said, "I am not a random student."
He chuckled. "You are definitely not. But you are a quirkless one."
"What if... What if I wasn't?"
Aizawa raised an eyebrow. "That's not something you can fake."
"Aizawa."
"Yes?"
"What if I had a quirk?"
At first he said nothing, but then Aizawa laughed. The sound of his laugh was almost shocking, coming from the usually somber face of a man who rarely showed strong emotions. His laughter quickly ended when he realized I was being serious. Shaking his head, he said, "I don't know why I'm ever surprised by you anymore. Okay let's hear it."
I turned around and shuffled through a few things on his desk, finally picking up a letter opener and handing it to him.
I held out my arm in front of him. "Cut me." When he didn't move, I said it again. "Come on... you know you want to," I smirked.
"In the right context, maybe. But right now, here, Y/n, I am very uncomfortable with this," he said, still holding the letter opener.
"Then you'll just have to take my word for it."
"Why don't you just tell me what happens."
"It's tough to describe." I suddenly felt very sheepish in front of him, embarrassed even. "When I get injured, it's like my body automatically realizes that something is going on and then fixes it. I've healed my cuts and scrapes, burns, and possibly broken bones but I'm not sure about that. I just don't know how to do it on purpose."
"What does it feel like?"
"Sometimes it's like nothing, I don't feel anything at all. And other times there's... it's hard to describe... but it's sort of like... "
"A spark?" he asked.
"Yes! A spark. Small but then big. This is embarrassing. I don't even have the right words to describe it."
As soon as I said that, he turned the letter opener on himself, doing two quick slices on his own wrists. Immediately, red blood came pouring out of the two wounds.
"Wait what are you doing," I said, grabbing his wrists, panic coming out in my voice. "Aizawa. Aizawa, what the hell?"
Aizawa only stared at me. "Fix it," he said.
Blood continued to spurt out through my fingers as I gripped him. I shook my head. "I don't know how!" Looking around for something I could use to stop the bleeding, my eyes raced over the room. The more blood that came out, the paler he looked. Tears started to form in my eyes as I felt more and more helpless. Aizawa was seeming to have trouble standing, so I helped him sit down on the floor, trying to keep pressure on his wrists.
"Stay here, I'll go get help," I stood to get up, but Aizawa's hand reached out.
"No," he croaked. His hand grabbed mine, pressing it against his wrist.
"This won't be enough to stop the blood, Aizawa," I said, my voice shrill, "I can't fix this! Let me go."
"Foc...us..."
"What?"
"Focus. Do it."
"Focus on what? I don't know what to do. I don't know how..."
But somewhere, somewhere in there, as I held onto his wrists, there was a tiny spark. A miniscule jolt, so small I almost didn't feel it. That small jolt became larger, a rising heat in my chest, a warmth that seemed to radiate from every pore in my body, extending out through my hands. My heartbeat was in my ears, as if my whole body was throbbing to the beat of my heart. Just when I thought I couldn't take anymore, I fell down, collapsing on the floor.
I felt Aizawa standing over me.
"This is workable."
When I looked up, the color had come back to his face, and as I watched him turn over his wrists, there was no sign of the cuts, as if they had never happened in the first place.
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to do all of that but I just didn't have the energy to do anything other than lay there and look at the man smirking down at me.
"What the fuck, Aizawa?"
"I needed to see if you could do it. The cuts weren't deep enough to do any real harm, but just deep enough for me to begin to lose some blood. If you hadn't been able to heal it, I am confident that you would have ran for help and I would have been fine. It was a rational deception meant to push you."
I didn't even feel like arguing back. I felt like going to sleep.
"The ability to heal yourself, that's one thing," he continued. "But the ability to heal others, that's the real power. It's been a long time since I've seen anyone capable of doing that, especially someone with as little knowledge and experience with their own quirk as you. It's... impressive."
Pushing myself up to sitting, a little energy started to return. "I mean, Shoto tried helping me, but –"
"Todoroki knows you can do this?"
"That? Heal? No. Hell no. I didn't even know I could do that until just now. But I've let him burn me."
Aizawa raised an eyebrow.
"Don't look at me like that. It's not what you're thinking. It was just to see what would happen. Anyway, Shoto is the only one who knows that I even have a quirk at all. Everyone else who knew...," I paused, thinking back on the friends of mine who had perished in the fire, "they're all gone."
"This is an incredibly valuable quirk, you must know that."
I looked up at him hopefully. "Does that mean I can stay in your class?"
"I'll have to tell others about what you just did."
I groaned and laid back down on the floor. "Think you could just tell the principal but no one else? Then I could still stay under the radar."
He huffed and then started gathering his things.
"You're going to leave me here on the floor?"
"Yes. I can't believe you're that selfish."
"Huh?"
He crouched down at my level, staring me straight in the eyes. "You have the ability to help people," he said in a firm tone. "To be an actual hero. But you want to keep that to yourself as some kind of secret. So yes, I'm leaving you're here. Because you're being a self-centered brat who only thinks about herself."
I closed my eyes and laid my head back down on the cool floor, my breathing finally beginning to feel normal. I felt like I had been hit by a bunch of bricks, and not just because of how I had used my quirk. Aizawa's words stung. Was he right?
Surprisingly, I felt him gently kiss my forehead.
"Stay on the floor as long as you need," he said, less stern now. "It's not a bad place to nap."