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Shouta Aizawa took a deep sigh, something he found himself doing quite often the past few years. Maybe it was his old age of…thirty-two. Maybe it was the Christmas season, which the erasure hero was forcing himself to actually care about for once or well, try to care about.
The reason for that, of course, was the young girl that he been entrusted to his care and he unofficially adopted as a daughter, Eri, who was just a broken and just as sweet to make even a grump like him find a way to go above and beyond to make occasions like this one, Christmas, overly important.
The erasure hero was of course distracted from his thoughts at the sound of a certain person’s voice, who he found both pleasant and deeply grating. “Shouta, we can’t decorate the tree all by ourselves!”, the voice of Emi Fukukado said, tone cheery and with a hint teasing.
Shouta stared at his green-haired girlfriend, who was helping Eri separate pieces of tinsel from a box. “I don’t see why. I decorated the first tree with her. She wanted you to decorate the second.”
And yes, he had gotten her two trees because she had loved decorating the first one so much and well…he was very bad at saying no to her. He focused on the the silver-haired young girl, seeing her cheerful face and just how angelic Eri could look. Like something from a children’s book or fairytale. It was something he cherished and would do anything to keep that smile on her face.
Then, there was Emi, clad in a ridiculous looking Christmas sweater and green (of course) Santa hat, whom he had begun dating a little over six months ago and this would be Shouta’s first Christmas where she would be a massive, integral part of his holiday season. It was a strange feeling for a man who had often spent Christmas alone save for a visit to his mom’s house on Christmas Eve, often volunteering for a shift on the day of the infamous holiday.
So, that left the semi-retired night-hero with a strange feeling of his life at a crossroads. He never planned to have a family, but he had one. He was a father to Eri and he had an annoying girlfriend that was somewhat ideal for his own personality and needs. His life was changing.
“Mr, Aizawa”, Eri’s soft voice uttered, “I wanna put the star on.”
Eraser looked at the tree and then back at the 7-year-old, getting up to walk over to her. “The tree is only half decorated.”
“And whose fault is that?”, Emi teased from his left, which earned her a glare.
Suddenly, Aizawa saw the “star” she wanted to put on the tree….an All-Might decoration. He heard a laugh from his side and looked at nervous young girl and bent down to get on her level.
“Mydoriya?”, he asked her, already figuring out why a ridiculous item like this would have gotten into the possession of his young adopted daughter.
“Uh huh!”, she said excitedly, “Deku said he had one too! Now, we can match.”
Aizawa sighed. He really did not want to put that ridiculous All-Might star on his tree, but he knew that Eri was just beside herself at thinking that she and the problem child would have the same decoration at the top of the tree, so he resigned himself to the amount of teasing he would receive from anyone who found out.
He held out his arms, “C’mon. We wouldn’t want to disappoint him, would we?”
The girl excitedly jumped into his arms, as he lifted her up as she put the ridiculous All-Might star on the tree. As he did, he felt Emi’s grin on him, which made him blush a little. He wasn’t used to being this open about his fatherhood.
“You look like you could some cake to celebrate, Eri”, Aizawa said, distracting himself as the young girl smiled very excitedly at him.
Later on, Aizawa put a very tired Eri to bed, walking out of her bedroom to his girlfriend waiting for him with an odd look on her face. Somewhere between quizzical and excited. The erasure hero quirked an eyebrow, looking over the sea-foam haired woman.
“Something on your mind?”, he asked.
She giggled, “You still haven’t opened your present, Shouta.”
Shouta frowned. “Do you want me to open it?”
He still was getting used to all this…relationship stuff. His birthday hadn’t come up yet and neither had hers, so none of the gift exchanging had taken place yet and therefore, he wasn’t forced to do these things yet. However, Emi was always very eager to cross these relationship benchmarks, so he humored her.
The black-haired man scratched his neck uncomfortably, “Where is it?”
She laughed, “Under the tree of course”, Emi said, bending down to grab the present.
As she handed it to him, Shouta awkwardly took it and felt the package, the box with cat wrapping paper shaking slightly. He began to slowly rip off the wrapping paper, catching Emi’s glance, staring at him like a child on Christmas morning.
As he finished with unwrapping, he was met with a cardboard box and opened it up, finding a simple item inside…a black sweater with a nice pattern across the middle. He looked up at her in confusion, surprised she got him something so…ordinary. Then, he looked at what was taped under the sweater…a note.
“For my favorite gloomy hero and future husband! Hope we can spend Christmas Eve on patrol next year as well! Love your favorite hero, Ms. Joke!”
Shouta looked down and then back up at her, realization dawning on him immediately. Spending Christmas Eve on patrol? That happened…ten years ago and that meant something…very different.
“How long have you had this gift?”, Shouta said, his voice sound distant.
She smiled a bit forlornly, her eyes meeting his. “A long time. I thought you’d look so swoony”, she teased.
Shouta folded up the shirt and left it to the side and tilted his head, watching her intently. “And you held onto it for this a decade?”, he says, knowing his voice sounding softer.
She nods, walking a bit closer to him and grabbing his hand, her fingers tracing over his knuckles. “That girl wasn’t brave enough to really put herself out there and not be just content with seeing you on Christmas Eve, to hope for and commit to something that could end in heartbreak-”, then she looked up, soft smile on her face, “-but things change, don’t they?”
Shouta just stared, mind wracked with a million emotions, his gift for her of a sweatshirt with a bad joke seeming much less like an appropriate gift anymore. He just looked in her eyes and then looked at the tree. He thought of a lot of things to say or do, his previous contemplations about how his life had changed and what that meant. Looking at her right now, well he felt he knew what it meant.
Shouta must hugs her, kissing her forehead as he looked at the lights on the tree and answered her question, “Yeah, things do change.”