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Five out of six girls in the locker room jolted as they suddenly heard a locker being flung open. They all turned to look at the sixth, Jirou, who was currently in the process of going to every empty locker and roughly pulling them open. She glared inside each one as if expecting to find something before moving onto the next one. Nobody thought to ask her what she was doing until she reached the last one, at which point she lowered her shoulders and sighed.
“Sorry. Was feeling a bit paranoid,” she apologized to the others as she turned around and scratched the back of her neck.
“Expecting to find Mineta inside one of them?” Yaoyorozu asked in a half-sigh.
Jirou just nodded as she headed back to her own locker and continued putting on her costume.
“You know, come to think of it, I haven’t really seen him much this week,” Hagakure pointed out, her glove floating up to where her chin presumably was. “I mean he’s there, but I haven’t caught him staring or anything. Not that I have a lot to stare at, but you know…”
“Yeah, I noticed that too,” Jirou nodded softly, then narrowed her eyes. “Actually, I feel like he’s been avoiding me. He always leaves the common room whenever I show up, and turns in the hallways to avoid going past me.”
Ashido finished putting on her mask and grinned. “I’m not complaining! Nice to get some peace from the ultra-pervert, right?”
“You know that just means he’s planning something bigger,” Jirou frowned, clearly suspicious.
“He already gropes us whenever he has the chance,” Yaoyorozu pointed out with a steely expression. “I dread to even consider what he’d think of as ‘something bigger.’”
Ashido punched her fists together. “Let’s go beat some answers out of him!”
Asui looked up with her usual unreadable expression. “I can understand hitting him when he harasses us, kero, but now you’re going to punish him for NOT doing anything?”
Ashido’s grin and fists both drooped down.
“Alright, when you put it like that it… sounds really bad.”
“Yes, we shouldn’t seek out violence like that,” Yaoyorozu concurred. “Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also a bit worried. Despite his… everything, Mineta is quite intelligent. If he’s lying low to plan some dastardly scheme, it could end up being devastating!”
Hagakure sighed while closing her locker. “But unless we actually know he’s planning something, we can’t really do much but be on guard. Besides, maybe he’s just feeling sick.”
“That’s probably it,” Jirou shrugged. “I guess even he has trouble getting excited about boobs if his stomach is turning inside-out. I get the feeling we’re gonna have to start squishing grapes again soon.”
Asui, having finished putting on her costume, quietly excited the room and headed for the day’s Heroics class.
Asui slowly and cautiously looked around. Camouflaged and crouched in a bush outside the Heights Alliance dorms, she could easily be mistaken for a peeping tom. However, she was there to meet with a peeping tom, not be one. Once she was certain the coast was clear she began climbing up the wall with her Quirk. Luckily her camouflage somehow extended to her clothing, so she’d be nearly impossible to spot for anyone who happened to be looking at the building. Once she reached a particular second story window she gave it a few quick knocks. A few moments later it opened, allowing her to quickly crawl inside. Just as quickly she pulled the curtains shut and turned off her camouflage.
Today was the first day a girl had come into Mineta’s room. And it was about what Asui had expected. Filled with posters and figures of women in revealing outfits, provocative poses and sporting assets that ranged from reasonable to ludicrous. And she didn’t even want to think about what the search history on the computer in the corner looked like.
Mineta himself also looked about how Asui had expected him to look with a girl in his room. Trembling like a leaf, eyes as big as the balls on his head, and a mouth barely able to contain his own drool.
Last week, Asui made Mineta an offer. If he could go one week without harassing any of the girls, she would give him a hug. A lengthy, chest-to-chest hug given willingly. Actual physical contact with a girl that didn’t immediately precede pain. The thought of it had given Mineta the strength to persevere, even through the agony of having to not look when Uraraka bent over to pick up something she dropped, or when Ashido kept jumping up and down making certain parts bounce so enticingly.
“I-I kept my promise!” he said almost pleadingly. “I haven’t been staring at any of the girls o-or trying to touch them or making weird comments or anything!”
Asui nodded. “The girls talked about it yesterday, kero. Nobody’s noticed you doing anything weird to them, so I’ll have to trust that you’re being honest. Even though it’s hard.”
She worded it that way on purpose. Giving him an opportunity for an innuendo would be his final test. Mineta visibly bit his bottom lip, but didn’t say anything.
“Alright, let’s get it over with then, kero. Don’t try anything weird.”
She crouched down and wrapped him up in a hug, his tiny arms doing their best to return it. She felt his thin chest sink into her own, and an excited shiver shot up through his small frame. Mineta was actually hugging a girl, and she was hugging him back. He could feel the way her body moved with every breath, and her body heat mixing with his own, and her soft breath hitting the side of his head, and a bit of her hair stroking against his face, and he felt like he could just scream in joy.
By the time Asui broke the hug, Mineta had lost all sense of time. He couldn’t tell if the embrace had lasted an hour or five seconds. Either way, it was the best whatever length of time it had been in his life.
“If you can go another week like that, kero, I’ll let you squeeze my boob,” Asui offered as she camouflaged herself and prepared to crawl out the window again. “Deal?”
Mineta nodded so enthusiastically it looked and felt like his whole head was about to pop off.
Mineta hesitantly slid open the door to the classroom, and immediately felt like he was going to have a heart attack as Aizawa’s red-eyed glare pierced his soul. The basilisk of myth was real, and it had a yellow sleeping bag.
“You’re three minutes late,” Aizawa stated plainly. His voice was as apathetic as ever, but his eyes said everything they needed to.
Mineta desperately struggled to regain control of his motor functions against his teacher’s petrifying stare, and managed to drag his feet into the classroom. Unsurprisingly, pretty much everyone was looking at him.
“S-sorry… took a… wrong turn somewhere…” he muttered barely audibly before taking his seat behind Midoriya.
Luckily, Aizawa didn’t press it any further, and the lesson continued.
Mineta hadn’t lied when he said he took a wrong turn. He had indeed gone down a different route and in the process gotten lost, ending up needing to get directions from that jacked Tintin that beat up the whole class a while ago.
The reason he went that different route was because he was trying to not walk next to girls in skirts. Not letting his hungry eyes feast was hard enough on its own, so he wanted to avoid passing bakeries as much as he could. It worked in that he hadn’t peeked up any skirts, but he was fairly certain Aizawa’s glare would haunt his nightmares. Mineta knew he had to bulk up his self-control enough to be able to go through the school hallways without issue, or else Aizawa might decide he wasn’t taking things seriously enough. And nobody wanted to make Aizawa think they weren’t taking things seriously.
Mineta blinked a few times to return to reality, as he remembered another crucial thing to avoid Aizawa’s wrath: paying attention in class.
Mineta nervously fiddled with his fingers, his mind racing at a million miles a minute. He had spent so much effort getting to this point, and now that it was actually here he didn’t really know what to do. Asui narrowed her eyes. Ever since she crouched down to give him the promised boob-squeeze, he’d just been standing in place and very intentionally not looking at her.
“Mineta, if you don’t want t-”
“I DO!” he yelled, before immediately clamping a hand over his mouth. When he removed it he was talking at a normal volume again. “I do. I just… I don’t wanna mess this up.”
“Kero. Just make sure you stop when I tell you to. And don’t squeeze too hard. Besides that you can stare and fondle as much as you want.”
Mineta nodded softly, then slowly turned his head to look at Asui’s chest. As soon as he laid eyes on it his body visibly tensed as if he was holding himself back from pouncing, though he was able to gently reach forward and put both hands on her boobs. Asui quietly let him squeeze and fondle her, at first nervously but quickly getting back to his familiar horny groove. Where he once looked downright scared at the idea of looking at her breasts, his dilated pupils were now fully glued to them.
“...alright, enough,” she said after a little while. Immediately Mineta let go and turned his head to the side, returning to his nervous demeanor from earlier.
Asui blinked, her blank face giving no window into her thoughts. “...why were you never this quick to listen before?”
“...more to lose now, I guess,” he admitted.
“So you only listen when you have something to personally lose, instead of caring about what other people feel? Kero.”
“I know, it’s bad…” Mineta hung his head low. “I-I do care, I just… I’m really bad at controlling myself…”
“But you did it this week,” Asui pointed out in a neutral voice, receiving only a nod in agreement. “But only because I told you you would get a reward for it, kero.”
Mineta had stopped responding at this point. He was staring holes into the floor while nervously twiddling his fingers.
Asui stood up and prepared to leave. “But… it seems to be working. To keep the other girls happy, at least. Kero. So, I’ll be back next week if nobody complains about you.”
Asui let out a deep breath after draining half her water bottle. Today’s Heroics class was a freeform training day, and several students from 1-A and 1-B met up to do some cross-class sparring in costume. Kuroiro had proven an annoyingly slippery opponent for the frog girl, especially considering parts of her own outfit were dark enough for him to enter with his Quirk. She won in the end, but avoiding Kuroiro’s numerous rapid attacks that came from unusual directions had necessitated a water break afterward. She sat next to Midoriya, who unsurprisingly was intensely watching the sparring and taking notes.
“I wonder what’s been up with Mineta recently,” Midoriya suddenly muttered, seemingly to himself.
Asui wasn’t quite sure if he knew she was there or not, considering how he often tended to get tunnel vision while deep in his thoughts.
“What do you mean, kero?” she spoke up, just to make sure he knew someone was hearing him. Judging by his confused blinking, it seemed he really hadn’t realized at first. Still, he didn’t seem to mind.
“Well, he gets really rigid when girls walk by, especially if they’re wearing skirts. Like, usually he tries to… uhm…”
“Peek up them,” Asui finished for him.
Midoriya blushed. “Mhm. But for the past few days, his head freezes up and he stares directly forward. His eyes get really wide too, and he looks like he’s really concentrating. I think he’s trying to not make girls uncomfortable anymore, which is obviously great, it’s just… weirdly sudden for him.”
“Kero. You think there’s something behind it?”
Midoriya twiddled his thumbs. “I… I don’t know. Maybe he just started feeling bad and wants to be better, which would be fantastic. But I’m worried that something happened to him, or if it’s like Uraraka thought and he’s planning something. It just feels too sudden and out-of-nowhere. He’s not mentioned it to any of the boys, and he usually tells Kaminari everything. He’s changed beyond that too. He used to make dirty jokes all the time, but I can’t remember hearing one in weeks. I actually stopped using words like stiff and moist while he’s around because he kept using it to make naughty jokes. But yesterday I said both of those words, just to see, and he didn’t even react. I think I enunciated them a bit too prominently though, cause Iida looked at me weird after I said it.”
“You’re probably overthinking it, kero,” Asui stated plainly.
Midoriya wanted to protest that, but found that he really couldn’t. He knew he sometimes blew things out of proportion. “You… I might be, yeah.”
Mineta tilted his head in confusion as Asui dropped a gym bag on the floor.
“Is this… what I think it is?”
“How am I supposed to know without knowing what you’re thinking, kero?”
“G-good point,” Mineta laughed sheepishly.
Asui reached down and unzipped the bag without a word, and immediately Mineta’s nostrils filled with a lovely, if sour, scent. Moments later, Asui zipped the bag shut while Mineta buried his face in one of Asui’s used, sweaty tank tops. She heard some muffled noises from him that translated into “I’ll treasure this forever.”
“Mineta, next week is going to be a bit different,” Asui said, getting his attention enough for him to pull his face out of the smelly piece of clothing. “Kero. Until next time, I want you to apologize to all the girls. Individually, and honestly.”
Neither of them needed to clarify what it was Mineta was apologizing for.
“And since it seems like you need to be rewarded for things like that…”
He looked down, his already small body shrinking in on itself in shame.
“I’ll let YOU choose what your next reward is. Kero. With a few rules. No sex, nothing super kinky or expensive, and no nudity. Kero.”
Mineta perked up at that offer. Asui could swear she heard his heartbeat at this point. His eyes flicked back and forth, his mind racing to think of something to ask for.
“Then… if I can choose anything… could we kiss? Like, on the mouth?“
“...alright, but no tongue.”
Kaminari scratched his head. “Think this is against the rules?”
“Probably, but this class has gotten away with worse,” Sero chuckled before stuffing a bit of chicken in his mouth.
Kaminari grinned. “Yeah. Let’s just enjoy the meal for now.”
Sero had used multiple strips of his tape to hang a table from the roof, and even more tape to hang a few chairs next to it. With his skill using his Quirk, it ended up being so stable that he, Kaminari and Mineta could eat lunch up there.
“I think the teachers aren’t sure if this is allowed either,” Kaminari mused as he looked down. Vlad King, Cementoss and a very familiar yellow sleeping bag were having an animated discussion while gesturing up at the tape-construct.
“How long do you think it’s gonna take for them to bring a ladder or something?”
Sero chuckled and shrugged. Kaminari was about to take another mouthful of rice when he noticed Mineta hadn’t said anything for a while. The grape-headed boy looked uncharacteristically distant, and seemed to be looking at something down in the cafeteria. Though at that distance, it was impossible to tell what or who exactly he was looking at.
“Uh… Mineta? Dude? You ok?”
Mineta sat upright with a start, eyes wide and blinking rapidly as he looked around like he just woke up from a nap. Kaminari even put a hand on his shoulder to make sure he didn’t fall off his chair.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Kaminari sheepishly laughed, then took on a more concerned expression. “You’ve been pretty quiet lately. Everything all right?”
Mineta froze for a second. He could tell him about the grape boy’s ongoing mission to apologize to their female classmates and stop acting like such a horndog all the time, but Kaminari knew him well enough that he wouldn’t buy it happening out of nowhere. And Asui had made it pretty clear she didn’t want Mineta to go babbling about their deal. She trusted him not to tell anyone.
And somehow, not getting the reward seemed secondary to breaking her trust.
“Just, uh… had a string of finding some really bomb-ass porn several nights in a row, and it made me lose sleep…” he lied.
Kaminari and Sero both stared at him for a moment before they erupted into laughter. “Ok, alright, don’t really need to know any more.”
Mineta gulped. He worried if that counted as making a dirty joke. He’d only just started being able to walk past skirts without straining to peek, failing now would be painful. While he could just not mention it to Asui, he also felt that he couldn’t NOT tell her. It felt paradoxical to him. He had nothing to lose by staying silent, and everything to lose by being honest. So why was he overwhelmed by this desire for the latter?
Before he could dive into his own head some more, Cementoss created a tall set of cement stairs to put an end to the boys’ high-altitude lunch.
“It’s fine,” Asui dismissively waved, and Mineta let out a sigh of relief. “I’m… glad you were honest with me, though.”
Mineta felt his chest swell a bit in pride, and a faint smile appeared on his face. The smile grew wider when he saw Asui doing that habit of hers where she put her finger against her chin, which he had come to find extremely cute.
“Kero. I don’t want you to become celibate or anything, I just want you to stop harassing girls and women. Speaking of… how did each of our classmates react to your apology?”
Asui had heard them talk about his apologies, but she wanted to hear about it from his own mouth. See if he made any embellishments to make himself sound better.
“Ok, so… Uraraka was my firs-wait, no no no! That came out wrong! I wasn’t making a-”
“Mineta, it’s ok.”
A simple, but effective statement that immediately calmed him down. He took a deep breath before continuing.
“Ok, let me try again. I apologized to Uraraka first, and she listened even though I stumbled on my words a lot. I guess being Midoriya’s… friend gave her a pretty strong tolerance to that kind of stuff. Anyway, she made it clear she was still kind of suspicious, but as a hero wanted to give me a second chance. Next was Yaoyorozu, who said she had noticed I was making an effort. She didn’t exactly want to be my friend or anything, but was happy to be on neutral terms. Hagakure… said she’d forgive me if I bought her a big candy bar. So I did. Ashido was basically the same as Uraraka, just with more threats of acid burns if I stepped back out of line. And I genuinely have no idea what Jirou thought, she had the same neutral expression and just said ‘hm’ the whole time.”
All of that lined up with what Asui had heard from the other girls, down to remembering seeing pieces of a candy bar disappear into Hagakure’s invisible mouth.
“Alright, kero,” she nodded and leaned forward. “A deal’s a deal.”
Once again Mineta was filled with the visible mixture of eagerness and apprehension that Asui had grown so accustomed to during these secret meetings. “You, uh… you’re ok with this?”
“Mineta. I made my decision, and I’m sticking to it.”
Mineta immediately stood up on his tippy toes to make his lips closer to Asui’s.
She suddenly sniffed and stood up straight. “Kero. Did you borrow Aoyama’s breath mints?”
“I, uh… yeah…” Mineta admitted sheepishly. “I kept hearing people (including himself) say he has the best breath in class, so I wanted to hopefully make this not as bad for you.”
Asui stared at him blankly for a few moments before leaning down again, finally making their lips connect. Had Mineta gotten into this kind of situation a few weeks ago, he would have pounced up, wrapped every limb he had around her and messily tried to shove his tongue in as deep as possible. And then promptly get thrown to the floor, seeing as he was so weak. He often used to make that excuse in his head, that he was so weak and every girl could beat him up, to convince himself that his dirty acts were ultimately harmless. He no longer believed in that excuse, nor did he do anything outside of what Asui had explicitly allowed. His tongue remained firmly inside his own mouth, his arms at his side. No matter what temptations the more insidious parts of his brain shouted at him, he ignored them entirely in favor of enjoying the sensation of Asui’s lips against his own.
When the kiss broke, Mineta almost fell over backwards. He barely managed to catch himself, and looked up just in time to see Asui about to leave again.
“Wait!” he called out. “Do I have some kind of mission for next time?”
“Just the same as usual, kero,” she said before vanishing out the window again.
Uraraka and Asui were out on a late evening jog around the campus, during which they had learned that Hound Dog’s daily exercise consisted of him playing Fetch with himself.
After a little while, Uraraka let out a loud sigh seemingly unprompted.
“What’s wrong, kero?” Asui asked.
“Just thought about Mineta. Knew it was too good to be true…” Uraraka grumbled back, in a bad mood which was clearly not directed at Asui.
Asui stumbled a bit. “What about him?”
“Well, after he made all those big apologies, he’s gone right back to creeping. At least he’s only staring for now, but who knows when he’ll start getting grabby again.”
Asui blinked, and she felt an unexpected pit open in her stomach. Why did she feel like she wanted to tear up? Had she really put that much hope in him?
“Kero… When… has he really been staring?” Asui asked in a neutral tone that masked how she felt.
“I caught him staring at you several times during class. You noticed too, right? I saw how you kept glancing back towards him. He was quick to look away, though.”
Asui looked away. Had she really been glancing at him that often? She had checked on him a few times to make sure he wasn’t doing anything perverted, but she hadn’t looked over that often. Had she?
“Now that I think about it,” Uraraka continued. “I’m pretty sure I ONLY saw him staring at you. I’m scared to think what that could mean… hey, wait up!”
Without realizing, Asui had sped up considerably. And she didn’t slow down, no matter how far behind Uraraka fell.
“Have you been staring at me?”
After he was asked that, Mineta deflated almost like a balloon. He went into a flurry of stutters and arm-waving that could give Midoriya a run for his money, which of course gave no real answer.
“Take a breath, then answer, kero.”
Mineta did as told. “I… yes, I have. I’m sorry, I swear I’ll stop. I-I wasn’t staring at your a-butt or your chest or anything like that though.”
Asui tilted her head, not letting him know whether he was off the hook or not yet. “Kero. Then what were you staring at?”
“Your face,” Mineta admitted, causing said face to grow slightly redder. Lucky for her he didn’t see it, since he was staring directly into the floor. “I just… it was hard to look away. It’s just like when I was staring up skirts, isn’t it? I haven’t gotten better at a-”
“When was the last time you looked up a girl’s skirt?”
“Huh? That… that has to have been before you first offered that hug…”
“Then we’ll say it’s fine, kero,” Asui stated, looking down at Mineta with her usual blank stare. He looked back with big watery puddles full of gratefulness. “In any case, we didn’t agree on a reward last time, kero. What do you want today?”
“Um… there’s two things, actually,” Mineta admitted, taking a small step back. “The first thing… is that we call each other Minoru and Tsuyu. At least in here.”
Asui tilted her head as she continued looking at him. “That shouldn’t be a problem, Minoru. What’s the other thing, kero?”
Mineta took a few seconds to steel himself before asking. “Tsuyu… I want to go on a date with you!”
“No.”
“You ever mess up and just not know how to fix it?”
“Shut up.”
“And then, you think that maybe it can’t be fixed, because instead of anything actually breaking, you instead just kinda realized it was already broken?”
“Die.”
“And you were an idiot for thinking it could be anything but broken?”
“Shut up and die.”
“Because you saw something one way, when actually it was something else?”
“Fuck off.”
“And you kinda always knew the truth but you still kept hoping and then shot your shot and… exactly what you knew was gonna happen happened?”
“Shut off and fuck up.”
“...I think you messed that u-”
“I WILL MURDER YOU, YOU SHITTY GRAPE!”
“Kero. You’ve kept your eyes to yourself, right Minoru?”
Mineta nodded. “I mean, I do look at girls, but not in a creepy way or anything. I look at their face when I talk to them, and don’t linger when just seeing them across the room or something.”
Asui smiled at him, which made Mineta smile back. “Good. I haven’t heard any complaints from any of the girls either, kero. Apparently Hagakure even felt comfortable enough to ask you for help with some math she was struggling with.”
“Mostly because I was the only one around at the time, but yeah,” Mineta chuckled, while letting his hand run across the balls on his head. “So, uh… I’m sorry about what I said last week. I-”
“Actually…” Asui interrupted him, making Mineta’s eyes widen in anticipation.
“I gave it some more thought, kero,” she began. “Do you still want to?”
Asui closed her eyes and let the smell of perfume waft up her nose.
“Thank you again, Aoyama.”
Even though she was pretty sure Mineta would be happy no matter what, Asui still felt like putting on a nice outfit and a bit of makeup… only to realize she was fresh out of several things. Luckily, Aoyama had an entire store’s worth of cosmetics in his room, some of it even imported from France. It had become quite standard in 1-A and even 1-B from time to time to go ask him whenever someone needed something like that.
“Avec plaisir, mon ami☆” Aoyama replied with an unnecessary twirl. “I have a duty to help mon fantastique classmates upkeep their dazzling (though not quite as dazzling as my own) style☆”
Asui smiled softly. While she didn’t usually show it, Aoyama’s eccentricities did always cheer Asui up. A reliable source of levity, one that helped take her mind off of being nervous about her date.
Suddenly, Asui became acutely aware that Aoyama was leaning in awkwardly close. “So… who’s the lucky garçon ou fille?”
Asui stared at him for a little while, blushing brighter and brighter by the second. After not getting an answer, Aoyama continued.
“I may not have the hunger for love-related gossip that Madame Ashido does, but you have piqued mon curiosity. Is this a relationship going public, or a secret tryst under le clair de lune☆?”
“T-the latter,” Asui stuttered. It was rare for her to stutter. “I’d rather you didn’t tell anyone, kero.”
“Pas de problème,” Aoyama said with a delicate bow. He then twirled and posed for a non-existent camera. “I am a stalwart keeper of secrets☆”
“But wow, it’s still SO crazy I happened to run into you here!” Hado giggled. The talkative third year student had gone into a random cafe to buy a donut, only to notice Asui in one of the stalls and immediately going over for a chat.
“You’ve said that five times already, Nejire,” Asui pointed out, smiling nevertheless. She really did find it hard not to smile at least a little bit when talking to Hado.
Hado giggled again. “I know, I know! Hey, do you see more with how big your eyes are?”
Before Asui could answer, Hado’s phone buzzed. Only when Asui gestured towards the pocket with the phone in it did she even realize it was calling.
“Oh, phone! Hello? Oh, hiya Mirio! Right right right, I was supposed to meet you guys 20 minutes ago. Be there soon~”
Hado turned off the phone without waiting for an answer and slipped it back into her pocket.
“Sorry Tsu, I gotta jet. See ya!” she grinned brightly, before disappearing out the door.
A little bit after, Asui winced at the sound of a heavy thud under the table. Mineta had done well to cling underneath it for 20 minutes, but his strength finally failed him. The table had a pretty plain tablecloth that helped conceal Mineta as he hid.
“I’m really glad she didn’t look under the table,” Mineta muttered as he crawled back onto his seat. “Or ask why there were two plates.”
“I have the feeling she was going to ask about the plates, but had a hundred other questions first. In any case, I’m sorry you had to do that.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t ok with it,” Mineta shrugged as he dusted himself off from his fall. “We agreed to keep this whole thing secret. Especially if… it doesn’t work out.”
Asui reached her hand across the table and offered it to Mineta, who slowly put his hand in hers.
“Are you saying it won’t?” she asked quietly.
“I-I want it to! I hope it will. But I also know that I’m… well, me. You’re this super nice, patient, strong badass who’s already more of a hero than most of the actual pros. You helped me not be a horrible pervert. Like, I don’t even have to struggle to not look up skirts anymore, I just look away naturally. And it’s not just because I know it’d disappoint you, I also don’t want to disappoint myself or make anybody else feel bad! A-and also you’re a total bombshell! But me, even if you have made me ten times the man I used to be, ten times zero is still zero! I’m a lame, weak, tiny, ugly, rizz-les-”
Before he could continue, Asui’s finger pressed against his chin and forced his mouth closed. “Kero. We need to work on your confidence next, Minoru. It cracks too easily. But that’s gonna take time, so here’s a quick solution: remember, I agreed to date you. So when you insult yourself, you’re insulting me for being interested in you. So if you’re really grateful to me, compliment my tastes by complimenting yourself.”
A few tears formed in Mineta’s eyes, and he gave a slow nod.
While on one of their by-now numerous secret dates, Asui and Mineta arrived back at the dorms quite late. Barely avoiding the curfew time. By that point the sun had gone down, though the path was brightly lit by numerous lights. As usual, they split up before getting within view of Heights Alliance. Just to avoid any awkward questions about why they were walking back alone together that late.
Mineta arrived first, finding the common room totally empty. With how late it was, and the fact that there was school tomorrow, that wasn’t exactly surprising. Nevertheless, he really didn’t feel like sleeping just yet. He walked over to the couch and hopped up onto it, finding the remote and turning the tv on. Of course making sure to keep the volume very quiet.
Asui came in a little later, and tilted her head as she saw Mineta sitting there. She glanced at the screen and saw the start of a nature documentary. She had previously mentioned to him that nature documentaries were her favorite thing to watch.
“Hey,” he whispered to her when she came closer. “I found this yesterday. It’s about some kind of new purple frog they discovered in Otheon recently. Wanna watch?”
Technically she had already watched it, but decided not to mention it. “It’s pretty late… but I suppose we could watch a little bit together.”
Asui woke up partially under a blanket, with a warm presence cuddled up to her. She was still very sleepy, barely able to register the situation. She wasn’t in her pajamas or underwear, she felt that. It was a full outfit, the kind she might wear to a date. The presence she was hugging she quickly identified as Mineta, which was nice. That made her happy. She closed her eyes to go back to sleep, only to realize that there were voices around.
“Should we wake her up?” “Let her sleep a bit longer. I think she came back pretty late last night.”
Right, she had done that. Came back late and then watched tv until she fell asleep. Not exactly model student behavior, but she could afford doing things like that every now and then. Even if today was going to be a bit heavy because of it.
Knowing that her friends would wake her up in time, Asui let herself drift back into being half-asleep. Somewhat conscious of what was going on around her, but her brain was nowhere near in full operation. If it was, she might have realized what was about to happen.
“Hey… what’s this big lump under Tsu’s blanket?” “I’m not sure… might just be a bundle of pillows or something.” “No, wait, it moved!” “Hold on a second…”
Asui suddenly felt a rush of cold as the blanket was pulled off her, followed by the nice warm cuddle disappearing as well.
“SERIOUSLY?” Ashido yelled loudly, drawing everyone’s attention. Asui slowly opened her eyes, blinking repeatedly as she tried to restart her mental processes. “So much for being a changed grape!”
“What’s going on?” Iida demanded to know, purposefully marching over to where Ashido was lifting a still-groggy Mineta by the ankle.
“This asshole was groping Tsu while she slept,” she growled. The other girls were throwing jeers in Mineta’s direction as well.
“Let go of my boyfriend!” Asui called out, reaching up and grabbing Mineta out of Ashido’s grasp.
Immediately, the dorms went dead silent.
“Boy…” Uraraka began, while Ashido finished with “...friend?”
Asui glanced across the rest of the common room, seeing the entirety of 1-A in various stages of their morning routine staring at her with wide-eyed expressions of shock and surprise. Dark Shadow emerged from Tokoyami to join the stare party, and Ojiro had at least four additional eyes pointed her way. Even Bakugo had the most genuinely confused expression she had ever seen on him. And even if she couldn’t see her eyes, she assumed Hagakura was staring as well.
Asui was now fully awake and coming to grips with what the situation was. The entire class was staring at her, sure, but more importantly: this was the first time she had directly referred to Mineta as her boyfriend. And judging by the awe-struck and tearily happy look on his face, he had absolutely heard her use that exact word.
Asui let out a sigh, then laid back down on the couch. She wanted to get at least a few more seconds of cuddling before the shock wore out on her classmates. Until then, it was just her and Mineta. She smiled.