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No matter what anyone else says, Shōta doesn’t do anything as cliché as sigh longingly.
He’s a grown-ass man and not, in fact, a teenager pining uselessly after his crush from a distance.
Shōta pauses at the thought, high-ball glass raised halfway to his mouth.
Well.
He is, at the very least, not doing any of that in the deeply pathetic way that the antibiotic-resistant strain of idiocy that is his social circle has been accusing him of since they found out about his … affections.
Shōta once again mentally reaffirms his yearly pledge to not go drinking with them ever again as it never seems to end well for him.
All of that aside, Shōta has, in his opinion, been perfectly logical about the entire situation.
He is, after all, a relatively warm-blooded adult with working eyes and a healthy, if admittedly focused, libido.
It’s only natural that he finds Dekiru attractive.
Everyone finds Dekiru attractive.
It’s a known fact.
Literally.
He’s been banned from every Sexiest Hero poll and contest in the country this year because he’d won the past four years in a row. By a far more than comfortable lead.
So, no matter what the idiots say, it’s perfectly logical that, circumstances being what they are, Shōta manages this attraction of his as he has been.
Carefully and from a distance.
“Down boy,” Nemuri practically purrs from beside him, one long-nailed finger tracing the rim of her martini glass. “You stare any harder and his clothes might just catch fire. Although, now that I’m thinking about it, never mind. Keep staring. As a matter of fact, ramp it up a notch. We all saw him in the Yokohama Incident, we all know how good he looks covered in soot.”
“Take a long walk off a short pier,” Shōta replies, face half hidden behind his glass but eyes still locked firmly on those shoulders.
“I know someone you’d love to have take a long walk on your pier,” Nemuri cuts back.
Shōta pauses.
Turns to stare at her.
Nemuri stares back.
“No,” Shōta eventually says, turning back towards the crowded ballroom, disappointment arcing through him when he realizes that that single glance away was enough for his crus- the object of his attention to disappear into the crowd.
“I’d give it an A for effort,” Hizashi chimes in then, the consummate enabler that he is. “Not your best work but I gave you extra points for seizing the opportunity.”
“Thank you, I try,” Nemuri replies, eyes downcast so demurely that Shōta’s surprised lightning doesn’t strike her down instantly for the lie of it all.
Shōta very carefully doesn’t roll his eyes because he knows that if he does it as hard as he wants to he’ll somehow give himself a concussion.
“Seriously though Shō, sweetie,” Nemuri turns back toward him, “you need to say something.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Shōta will keep white-knuckling his denials until they pry them from his cold dead hands.
“Please,” Hizashi scoffs. “Your crush is so obvious I’m surprised Yagi hasn’t picked up on it yet. You’re not fooling anybody here except maybe yourself, Shō.”
“We’ve never seen you like this about anyone,” Nemuri adds “It’s honestly kind of cute.”
“Disturbing too,” Hizashi interjects. “Let’s be clear about that.”
Nemuri hums out an agreeing noise.
And Shōta might have vowed to keep denying the entire situation outright while sober but he’s half a drink in already and honestly that’s kind of offensive.
“I’m a human person too,” Shōta protests despite himself. “It’s not disturbing.”
“Well maybe if you didn’t say shit like that,” Hizashi mumbles into the rim of his whiskey glass.
“It’s not strange,” Shōta insists, unsure of how, exactly, he’s come to this point. “He’s … him. It’s perfectly natural to have an interest in Dekiru.”
“Agreed.” Hizashi toasts him lightly with his glass. “For literally anyone else. But for you?” Hizashi gives a dramatic little shudder. “It’s super weird.”
“We’ve gone decades trying to wring even a hint about your type out of you and nothing, nada, zip,” Nemuri says. “You’re famously unflappable.”
“Emi totally took her shirt off that one time just to get your attention and you told her that the mole on her lower back looked like melanoma,” Hizashi reminds him. “And then there was that time Kan had an entire fight in just his briefs and you told him that a real hero would wear pants to sleep so they were always ready.”
“It was Joke and Vlad,” Shōta really doesn’t feel like either of those is a fair example. “I’m borderline allergic to both of them.”
A pause.
“Fair enough,” Nemuri and Hizashi finally both nod.
“The point is,” Hizashi continues. “All of that and more and not a twitch or a second glance or anything out of you. For years.”
“But then Dekiru comes on the scene and suddenly it’s like you’re in heat.” Nemuri teases, a wicked glint in her eyes. “They aired that footage of Yokohama and we were all half expecting you to start baying at the moon right there in the staff room.”
“Oh, there’s a bitch at this table,” Shōta sneers at her halfheartedly, “but it sure as fuck isn’t me.”
A pause.
“A solid B+ for effort,” Nemuri says. “Mainly since I’m still convinced you plan these out ahead of time somehow given how you constantly wreck the curve. But I could be argued upwards for clever association if you ask me all sweet like.”
Shōta just huffs a bit in her direction.
They never grade him fairly anymore.
“Besides,” Hizashi continues, swirling his drink in his glass, “everyone else likes him because he’s cute and built like a daydream. You like him because he cries a lot and you’re, apparently, really into that.”
Shōta immediately whips around to fully face Hizashi.
“I told you that in confidence,” Shōta hisses, hair rising just a bit as his quirk flares.
“You mean you told us, Tensei, and an entire bar full of drunk civilians at 2 a.m. on your birthday,” Nemuri cuts back as she wiggles her cell phone in his direction, grinning even more wickedly than before. “Don’t make me pull up the video again. Or do. Watching you wax poetic about how cute Dekiru’s crying face is has been the highlight of my year.”
Shōta gives deep and considerable thought to tackling her to get it but he’s here, at this gods forsaken event, because of the last time he did that.
Although, to be fair, Nedzu could have easily demanded a worse punishment as repayment for the tea set they’d broken while fighting.
“It was a perfectly valid ob-”
“Ah,” a hauntingly familiar voice speaks up behind Shōta then, cutting him off mid-sentence. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
Across from him Hizashi and Nemuri both light up like the breaking of dawn.
Shōta turns with the kind of creeping dread that he’s normally on the opposite end of.
And, sure enough, standing directly behind him, emerald eyes wide and bottom lip being worried by his teeth in a way that makes Shōta own teeth itch, is Dekiru.
Something in the back of Shōta’s head starts making a high-pitched keening noise and then just doesn’t stop.
“Dekiru,” Nemuri practically purrs. “To what do we owe this pleasure? ”
Dekiru just blinks at her and then turns his attention back towards Shōta.
“Please,” Dekiru says, “feel free to call me Izuku outside of work.”
Shōta tosses back the rest of his drink in self-defense.
“Nedzu texted me,” Dek-Izuku keeps going. “Said that you three were having a conversation I’d find highly interesting.”
Shōta starts rewriting his monthly plans to murder his boss.
“Ah,” Shōta opens his mouth only to stall out for a split second.
He has no idea how to recover from this.
“We were just discussi-” Hizashi goes to jump in, hopefully to save Shōta, but realistically probably in an attempt to make the situation worse somehow.
“Oh no,” Izuku waves them both off easily. “I heard you. Plus Nedzu sent me a video.”
Izuku holds his phone up and, sure enough, there’s an all too familiar video of Shōta in the outfit his idiots had shoved him into on his birthday paused on the screen.
Shōta’s always considered himself an atheist but he’s suddenly aware that he’s going to have to rethink his entire stance on the subject.
Because if the divine doesn’t exist then how can he now intimately know what it feels like for his entire soul to leave his body?
“I don’t normally like people who make me cry on purpose,” Izuku says. “Just, as a rule, you know?”
And then he stops.
Bites that bottom lip again.
Gives Shōta a heavy-lidded once over.
“But,” Izuku continues, a pretty pink blush blossoming across his cheeks, “I’d be willing to make an exception for you, Eraserhead. If you’d like.”
Shōta feels instantly dizzy from the way every single drop, thought, and memory of blood in his body immediately surges south.
“Fuck yes,” Shōta hears himself say even as he shoves his empty glass in Hizashi’s direction and takes a step forward.
Izuku just grins up at him, pretty eyes wide and bright.
Shōta is going to destroy him.