Fic rec - A Guide to Getting Your Teacher a Date

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: A Guide to Getting Your Teacher a Date

Author: deafmic

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Aizawa/Yamada

Warnings: angst?

Other notes: holiday fic (Christmas), adoption, family, holiday party, ensemble, secret relationship, students & teachers

Length: 25k

Summary: 1-A decides to throw a holiday party and try to set their Aizawa up with Present Mic. Shinsou Hitoshi ends up orchestrating most of it while spending his first holiday with his new family and stumbling through the motions of new holiday traditions.

 

 

Ok, this isn’t quite the right time of the year for this. I tried doing that, back when I started writing fic recs — theme weeks, holiday-centric recs, stuff like that. I had much more free time on my hands five years ago. This year I just forgot to plan for anything.

Actually, I was kind of reading this author’s backlog. The first one that caught my eye was Aizawa Shouta’s Day Off, which — well, I have the first inklings of a  MHA fic forming. I don’t think I quite have the characters down, but there’s something. So that’s cool.

But what strikes me with this fic is — yeah, this is pretty much how I feel about Christmas. I don’t hate it, but I am also not excited about it. And somehow indifference seems to be the hardest feeling to convey. Like, I do understand it — I get why people are happy around the holidays. Many (though not all) people are off from work or school, seeing family and friends they might not see, picking out gifts and receiving them. Yet I don’t feel the connection, so much. I could hate the holidays, and for decent reasons: I’ve worked retail during the holidays, I am extremely anxious in crowds of people and stressful driving conditions, and my social skills are low enough that picking out gifts — well, I can barely even do it in video games. You know, where the characters usually tell you what they’re looking for in the literal dialog?

Ah, but being indifferent, that’s a hard feeling to convey — an utter feeling of meh, a dissociated, distant sort of, I should be feeling this, but I don’t.

I’m also reminded of a supremely awkward time in my life where I tried, really hard, to fit in with other people, to be as excited as they were, in the hopes that, ah, maybe I just hadn’t quite experienced things the right way, and suddenly it would just, you know, poof, and suddenly it would click in my head.

Ah — it didn’t. Well, not the way I expected it to.

And that is an aspect of making new relationships, romantic or friendship or familial. I’ve always heard that children keep you young, because when you go to show a child something for the first time, you remember how exciting it was for you. Now, I don’t have kids, so the closest I’ve found to that is introducing friends and lovers to new things.

And yet.

Ah, why do I feel melancholy when this is such a cute fic?

I tend to read a lot of fic that’s comforting. This is something happy, nice, simple. Be nice if I had some more of this in my life. That kind of feeling. So, if I’m still grumpy and mildly anti-social, why not read a fic where a person who is grumpy and mildly anti-social gets a little happier and a little more sociable?

Also I have a soft spot for the “they’ve been a couple for so long no one notices” sort of trope. Especially the “let’s get these oblivious idiots together but whoops they’re already together” trope. I don’t know why I find that trope so adorable. Actually, it reminds me a little of On The Courting Rituals of Angels, where the classmates are trying so hard to IRL ship their classmates. Like — there’s a sort of sitcom-like-ness to it? Slightly surreal? In that, to me, in real life, someone mooning over my love life would be pretty weird and bit anxiety-inducing, but in a fictional setting, it’s soooo adorable. Just, hmm, just the idea that these people are so well suited for each other it, like, radiates out and everyone can see it.

I straight-up just adore Aizawa’s characterization in this fic. I gotta admit, I’ve seen a couple of youtube react videos for MHA, and a lot of people go into this expecting Aizawa to be a Snape sort of figure — the old, angry teacher who just doesn’t believe in the protagonist. And, wow. You watch that first season, man, and most people go from “this guy is such a dick, really” to “most bad-ass, loving teacher ever we love him, please let him adopt everyone.”

And this fic, man, I gotta quote a nice big chunk here:

“If you think I’m letting any of you have a ladder or anything similar after that, then I obviously need to send you to some sort of common sense course,” He sighed, setting his bag down before digging through it to find the unopened package of the medication he was prescribed for his eyes. “You could’ve missed. You could’ve hurt her. Don’t do it again.”

He squeezed a couple of drops into his eyes, tilting his head up and soon enough, the burning stopped. He regretted looking back at the two girls, though, because their expressions could only be described as disappointed. He frowned at the two of them, wondering why he suddenly felt a little bad in being so strict, and glancing around the room answered why they looked to dejected.

He hadn’t seen it upon coming in, since the first thing he’d seen was one of his students precariously making another student float, but the entire common room was decorated. It looked almost completely different. There were tinsel and garlands strung from just about every surface available, ornaments hung from hooks, decorations and fake snow on the windows. Somehow, in the time he’d been out taking care of errands and spending time with the two people he did count as family, they’d even dragged some sort of fake holiday tree in here and decorated that, too. He’d only been out a couple hours, and the entire place looked different.

And to make matters worse, ten other kids stared at him, all with various things and decoration in their hands, all with the look in their wide eyes as if they’d been caught breaking the rules red handed.

Sorry, lol. More quoting that me actually writing. But this thread of how Aizawa sees himself and how other people see him is just so masterfully done through the entire fic.

Like, you take that first line of dialog. He’s sharp. Straightforward. You guys are definitely not responsible enough to have a ladder, you don’t have common sense. Harsh. But almost immediately it softened into complete concern — you could have been hurt.

But. But. Aizawa realizes almost instantly that there’s been a miscommunication — he reacts to the sight of his kids goofing off in a  dangerous way, without realizing what or why they’re doing it. He reacts, yes, but he analyzes and re-evaluates just as quickly. And yet — and yet. He doesn’t actually share the fact that it’s a miscommunication. His brain goes so fast. He analyzes things, makes a conclusion, acts on it, realizes he made a mistake — all in the instant it took to get Asui to stop floating.

Well, even saying “mistake” isn’t quite right. The students were doing something dangerous, and he would have stopped them anyway. He just missed a crucial social part of the interaction. And that is Aizawa’s issue. Maybe not “problem,” per se, but it drives a lot of the narrative. He isn’t always a great communicator — not because he’s lying or hiding things. He’s truthful, most of the time. He just doesn’t always get the emotional or social components of his interactions. He’s just one of those characters where his feelings run really deep, but he’s so gruff people tend to assume he doesn’t have any emotions.

Gosh, every component of this fic just makes me happy. Shinsou becoming safer and happier with his new family, Aizawa learning to enjoy the holidays, the class slowly catching on to the fact that their seemingly lonely teacher is possibly the happiest guy alive with his husband and new son. Ahhh. Makes me squee.

Okay. Gotta find a cut off point to post, ha. Um, fic recs. I haven’t re-uploaded all of my holiday fics to dreamwidth yet, but they are still up (albeit disorganized) on tumblr. Mostly Christmas fics, it turns out.

As far as Aizawa-sensei, though…I generally enjoy this fic’s author (deafmic) and KuriKuri. Kurikuri just finished up By Moonlight, which was a fun little romp. I also recently read By The Numbers, which was grade A adorable. My MHA fcs bookmark list is pretty big, so hit me up if you want more recs.

 

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Originally posted on pillowfort on 03/06/19