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If Shouta really had a choice in the matter, he wouldn’t be spending his entire afternoon in a preschool classroom. It’s not that he doesn’t like kids - they’re fine, really, as long as he’s not the one who has to take them home at the end of the day; it’s that he got roped into this visit by Hizashi, who then had the audacity to abandon him last minute, leaving him alone at the front of a room with about twenty kids staring at him with varying degrees of boredom and interest.
He doesn’t pay much attention as one of the caretakers introduces him to the kids, taking the chance to instead look them over. A few he can already tell are troublemakers, others are the quiet and shy type, and still others look clearly curious about a hero they’ve never heard of before. One kid close to the back, though, doesn’t exactly fit into any of those categories, and he’s the one Shouta’s gaze lingers on.
A messy head of green hair that curls on the end and equally green eyes switch between looking towards the front of the room and looking down at the notebook on his table, a crayon gripped tightly in his hand as he colors on the page. He has the same urgency as the reporters that crowd around heroes after they’ve taken down a villain, all clamoring for as much information as they can possibly get for their respective papers and newscasts.
Feeling eyes on him, Shouta glances to the side, meeting the caretaker’s expectant gaze. When he realizes what they’re waiting for, he sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, looking over the group of kids once more. “I’m the Erasure Hero: Eraserhead. Anyone wanna guess what my quirk does?”
The question is more sarcastic than anything else but that sort of thing is lost on preschoolers, so several of them raise their hands excitedly. The green-haired kid in the back is one of them, and Shouta is curious enough that he lazily gestures for him to answer while saying, “Include your name, too, kid.”
“Oh! My name’s Midoriya Izuku, and it’s really, really cool to meet you, Mr. Eraserhead,” he says, eyes lit up as he stands from his desk. “Does your quirk erase stuff? Is it a perm-permen-perma-”
“Permanent.”
“Yeah, that! Is it that kind of erasing?”
“My quirk erases other quirks, but it’s not permanent. It only lasts as long as I can look at the person.”
“So you can’t blink? Doesn’t that make your eyes hurt? Does that make it hard for you to see, too? Oh, what if you’re fighting more than one bad guy? If they know who you’re looking at, can’t the other ones try to hit you? Do you hide your eyes? What abo-”
“Okay, Midoriya,” a caretaker says, flashing an apologetic smile at Shouta before returning their attention to the kid, “Eraserhead won’t be able to keep up if you ask him all at once. How about you choose one question and then let a few other kids go before asking another one?”
Instead of looking dejected, Izuku gets a conflicted expression for a few seconds- his bottom lip jutting out slightly, eyebrows pulled together, gaze stuck on his desk as he thinks- before nodding. “Uh, I guess you can pick one of them, Mr. Eraserhead,” he says.
“I wear goggles,” Shouta says, tugging his capture gear down just enough for the kids to see the yellow pair hanging around his neck. “When I’m fighting against multiple villains, I use them to hide my eyes so they can’t tell whose quirk is being erased.”
Shouta wouldn’t be surprised if Izuku completely forgets what the caretaker told him in his excitement at getting an answer. In fact, he’s expecting that reaction. But all Izuku does is smile brightly and thank him before sitting back down, leaving Shouta slightly amused by this preschooler with better listening skills than some of his colleagues.
When he finally gets the chance to move around the classroom, Shouta makes his way over to Izuku, occasionally being stopped by other kids who are brave enough to face his unimpressed expression and blunt words.
They don’t last long.
Izuku is concentrating intensely on his notebook, so focused that he doesn’t notice when Shouta crouches next to his desk. Instead, the black crayon in his hand continues to move across the lined page while his tongue pokes out from the corner of his mouth, his nose scrunched up slightly in concentration. This continues for a few more seconds before he sets the black crayon down, and Shouta clears his throat to get his attention as he’s reaching for a gray one.
He practically jumps out of his chair, green eyes wide and confused, almost making Shouta feel a little guilty for startling him. That dissipates quickly, though, when Izuku’s expression goes from startled to excited. “Mr. Eraserhead!”
Before Izuku can start bombarding him with questions once more, Shouta leans closer to look at the notebook. “What are you drawing?” he asks.
“You!”
It’s said with such sincerity that he doesn’t quite know how to reply at first. Izuku must take his silence as curiosity, though, since he gets an eager smile and moves the notebook so Shouta can properly see the clumsy, unmistakably childish drawing of himself. To the left is an attempt at drawing his capture gear and goggles- they look more like the ones used for science experiments but that’s unsurprising- and at the top of the page is a blue line with nothing written above it.
“What goes here?” he asks, tapping the line.
“Your name. Mom will write it for me.”
Shouta nods once in understanding. Seeing the page dedicated to him is endearing and, despite how low the skill level is right now, he can see a future analyst in the painstakingly clean coloring of the rectangles that make up his chest, arms, and legs. “It’s impressive,” he says, pulling the notebook closer. “Want me to write it?” he asks, gesturing once more to the blue line.
“Really? Are you sure? You don’t have to,” Izuku says, unable to hide the hope that Shouta is serious.
“I wouldn’t offer otherwise.”
“Oh, then yes, please!”
Several crayons are pushed towards Shouta, the red one nearly rolling off the desk if not for him catching it. “You had other questions for me, too, right? I’ll answer some,” he says, glancing up at Izuku and doing his best to not return the huge smile the kid has.
He’s nearly bouncing with excitement as he nods and asks, “Does your quirk make your eyes hurt? What kind of training did you have to do? Does it work on a quirk that makes a person look different?”
Shouta only recognizes one of those questions as being something Izuku asked earlier as he starts to write his name at the top of the page. “Yes, I have to use eye drops so they don’t dry out. I had to learn how to fight hand-to-hand, too, since my quirk isn’t something physical. No, somebody with a mutation quirk wouldn’t be affected by me,” he says, placing the red crayon back on the desk and moving the notebook so Izuku can see his name. Though it’s a little clumsy because Shouta isn’t used to writing with crayons, he did his best to make it look like an autograph.
“Thanks! This is really cool!” Izuku says, hugging the notebook close to his chest as though it’s the most precious thing in the world. It’d be a lie to say that doesn’t boost Shouta’s ego just a bit, and he finds himself thinking that, maybe, he won’t be too upset with Hizashi for ditching him when he gets home.
Recess is just as chaotic and noisy as Shouta remembers it being when he was a kid. Back then, he was more inclined to find a tree he could nap under than fight over the slide or swings. The upside, at least, is that he gets to leave after this, which means he also gets to call Hizashi and demand a free meal as compensation.
For now, he might as well find a quiet spot to wait out the half-hour these kids are given to play. This is easier said than done when the preschoolers are running rampant and more than a few keep looking at Shouta like they’re about to drag him to the swings and demand he push them.
The only reasonably calm spot on the playground is a large tree next to one of the slides, its branches providing enough shade to keep the bright red plastic from getting too hot. Sitting at the bottom of the slide is Izuku, his cheeks puffed out slightly and his hands tightly gripping an All Might action figure. He’s staring at a scrape on his knee that definitely wasn’t there before recess, and Shouta realizes he must be trying to hold back tears.
If asked later, he’d say the only reason he walked over to check on Izuku is that he’s a hero; his job is to keep people from getting hurt and to help them if they already are. He stops in front of the slide and crouches down to Izuku’s level before asking, “You good, kid?”
Izuku doesn’t answer right away, his lips pressed together into a thin line as he takes a deep breath through his nose. His cheeks are still puffed but the strained look in his eyes has changed to determination. “Yeah, this is nothing,” he says, his wobbly voice doing nothing to support his claim.
While Shouta would normally be inclined to agree, he also knows that a child’s pain tolerance would be nowhere near his own. He sighs and opens one of the pouches on his belt, pulling out a bandage. “You’re what, four? It’s okay to say it hurts,” he says, carefully applying the bandage over the scrape.
“But heroes don’t cry over boo-boos.”
Ignoring the definitely-not-endearing use of the term ‘boo-boos’ in that sentence, Shouta stuffs the bandage wrapper into his pocket to throw away later and says, “No, they do sometimes.” He can clearly envision Hizashi tearing up over stubbing his toe against the coffee table just last week. “Besides, you’re still a kid. You’re allowed to cry over stuff like this.”
Izuku sniffles and nods, staying quiet for a few seconds as he concentrates. He huffs, his shoulders drooping before looking back at Shouta. “I can’t cry. It stopped hurting,” he tells him, his expression far too devastated for the situation.
“I wasn’t asking you to cry, Izuku.”
“....Oh.”
He quickly ducks his head, trying and failing to hide his embarrassment; he also misses the small, amused smile Shouta gets but what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. He doesn’t seem to have any other scrapes or cuts but, just to be sure, Shouta still asks, “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Before answering, Izuku checks his other knee, both elbows, and all ten fingers. “Nope,” he says, his gaze dropping down to the All Might in his hand. He looks back up with a sheepish smile and says, “All Might got hurt, though. He says it’s really, really bad. Can you kiss it better?” As he speaks, he points to a tiny scrape on the action figure’s left arm.
Shouta considers refusing but the thought of Izuku crying is enough to convince him to accept the toy. He stares at the iconic smile and pinches the bridge of his nose before pressing a quick, barely-there kiss to the scrape. His ability to look All Might in the eye the next time they meet leaves alongside the action figure as he gives it back to Izuku. “Is that better?” he asks.
“Yep! All Might is all better now,” Izuku replies, his smile far too innocent.
A shrill whistle blows three times to signal the end of recess, cutting off anything Shouta might have said. He stands and watches Izuku get off the slide, glad to see he really isn’t hurt anywhere else. Instead of immediately running off, Izuku looks between his gathering classmates and Shouta, obviously conflicted by something if the pout and furrowed eyebrows are anything to go by.
He makes up his mind a second later and Shouta suddenly has a kid hugging his waist tightly. Hugging back would be difficult because of the height difference, so he awkwardly pats Izuku’s head instead. “Thanks, Mr. Eraserhead! You’re a great hero. I’ll be one, too, the next time you see me,” he promises, his blinding smile catching Shouta off guard.
And then Izuku is pulling away and running to join his class, completely ignorant to the fact that he just made Shouta’s day- not that he’d admit that, though. No, the only thing he’ll admit is that he wishes luck to the poor soul that has Izuku in their hero class in the future; they’re definitely going to need it.