#you painstakingly taught him? Yeah I didn't think so

[gingermintpepper]

I've seen so many interesting and fun greek myth ships over the years both divine and mortal supported by text and just for fun, and yet I fear tonight, I will be throwing my hat into the ring as a propagator of niche greek myth ships because like, no seriously how is Aristaeus/Dionysus not already thing.

[queenofbaws]

oooh! May I have a (Control) Trench/Northmoor thing? Been a while and I loved what you did last time. Preferably something soft and light-hearted?

(I'm currently too clammed up and angsty and generally blah to write anything, so *someone* has to do it.) <3

catch me catching up on some not-quite-six sentence sat(or)sunday!

The interdepartmental bulletin had gone over like a lead balloon - at least in the executive suite. Its phrasing had been cheerful, almost irreverent, peppering in all the buzzwords du jour: synergy, community, appreciation, morale, describing the exercise as everything but what it actually was.

A bad idea.

Trench had seen the surveys go out - neat, painstakingly organized things they were - and for a good week after the copy machine had cooled off, each pneumatic THWOOP! of an incoming mail tube made him wince. There was no way in hell this didn't break bad, no. Way. In. Hell.

Yearbook superlatives were still yearbook superlatives by any other name; and maybe he wasn't some high-falutin' expert on the matter, but he was pretty damn sure this sort of juvenile popularity contest counted as archetypal, no matter how wild and/or wacky the categories were.

Whoever's idea this little team building exercise had been, well...he hoped they realized they were playing with fire. If not metaphorically, tempting the Oldest House with a tasty morsel of iconography, then, uh, literally. They might literally find themselves set aflame.

The thought occurred to him again when the day finally came and he found himself standing in front of the corkboard in the Executive wing, his eyes moving with slow, calculated saccades across the pages of dot-matrix printing posted up there. Perhaps, he thought - perhaps - they'd skirted the Oldest House's wrath through careful consideration (the sides of each sheet torn off perfectly at the perforations, the proper usage of an even number of Bureau-issued nondescript thumbtacks, the wise omission of any of those digital smiley faces the younger agents seemed so fond of those days), but he'd seen Broderick's name on the list. He'd seen the title he'd been awarded.

No one was out of the frying pan yet.

Like the cliche alone betrayed him, a familiar warmth filled the room. Without glancing away from the list, Trench swirled the (now steaming) coffee in his mug and took a sip. "Director," he said by way of greeting, not without the faintest upward tick to the corner of his mouth.

"Had one of these in high school, you know," Northmoor answered, all bluster and proud swagger as he joined Trench at the corkboard. "Most likely to succeed. You believe that? Like somehow, in someway, the whole graduating class was prescient. Who woulda thunk, huh? Oh, if only they knew..."

Ah. All right. There he'd been, expecting the water coolers to be bubbling over while the wallpaper glue melted off the damn drywall, and yet there was Broderick, grinning like the cock of the walk. Trench was still fully, fully of the opinion that this whole mess had been a bad idea - an awful one, really - but now he added an asterisk to that thought, a footnote down at the very bottom of his mental write-up of the scene:

The superlatives had been a bad idea.*

*But funny, too.

With his mug, he gestured towards the corkboard, offhandedly asking, "You've seen it already, then?"

"On my way in, yeah," Northmoor answered, folding his arms and squaring his shoulders in a self-assured stance as endearing as it was obnoxious. "Great way to start the day - really puts a spring in your step, doesn't it? Seeing how the rest of them think of us?"

Trench hummed a soft "Mhm" of agreement into his coffee, experience having taught him to savor it now, while he had the chance. Soon enough, he suspected, that wouldn't be the case.

"You hardly sound enthusiastic about it. Here, what'd they give you? Hmm...Zachariah...Zachari - ah, there you are!" His finger traced its way down the list from a safe distance, the paper darkening in a spot or two along the way. "Most likely to benefit from a vacation. Ha! Hey, you have to hand it to them, they're not wrong." Without waiting for a response, he continued, obviously just excited to share his own title. "Try not to look so grim about it, Deputy. I mean, it's not what I was voted, but c'mon...not everyone can be Hottest in the Bureau."

Echoing himself, Trench once more hummed in agreement. "True," he said flatly, hoping against hope there wasn't anything on his face suggesting how close he was to snickering. "You'll have to excuse my candor for saying so, but I don't think anyone here has a leg to stand on if they argue you're not the hottest one in the Bureau. That's just simple fact."

He waited. That probably made him as much a part of the problem as whoever it was who'd put the surveys out in the first place, but he did it. Trench waited until Northmoor turned to look at him, his grin sideways and shining and perfectly fetching; Trench waited for that very moment, and then, perfectly calm, fanned himself with the case file he'd been holding in his other hand.

The grin didn't drop all at once. But it dropped. Doubt flared in Broderick's eyes, then realization, then fury, then actual honest-to-god embers. The room positively wilted in the ensuing heat pouring off of him as he whirled around, shouting at some poor pencil pusher to "GET ME THE NAME OF WHATEVER CLOWN THOUGHT THIS COCKAMAMIE BULLSHIT UP," and Trench? Why, he loosened his tie. Kept fanning himself. He set his coffee mug down as its contents began to boil, and he forced himself to admit maybe there was a bit of truth behind those superlatives after all.

He probably wouldn't get a suntan from watching Broderick burst into flame upon realizing the whole Bureau had joined together to make a horrific pass at wordplay at his expense, but the ambient heat he was putting off was the closest he'd come to a tropical vacation in at least ten years, and if he was honest with himself...yeah, yeah, he was benefiting from it, all right.

[bee-a-garbage-shipper]

Yamada would be the contrast for how Todoroki handles a one-sided crush.

Like his feelings are so painstakingly obvious that both 1A and 1B know perfectly well who he likes.

(This could also be cause to Izuku to doubt his worth and if Shouta really does like him because he spent his life as The Quirkless Loser™, the lessons taught to him over the last 10 years aren't just gonna magically disappear just because he has a Quirk now.)

But at the same time he's never presumes that he has the right to Shouta's feelings just because they're friends. At the end of the day he respects Shouta to much to make those types of assumptions.

I mean yeah when AiDeku initially gets together he's gonna extract himself from the situation because that type of shit hurts. But it's temporary, Shouta is his best friend and the fact he wanted more when Shouta didn't isn't gonna change that.

Also I can see him talking to Todoroki to try and get him to back off because Izuku is not interested and Shouta is very much losing his patients.

And blissfully ignorant and entitled Todoroki just looks at Yamada like why wouldn't Izuku like me ? we had a moment . he broke his bones for me when he barely knew me

And Yamada's just fighting the desire to scream because holy shit someone this obliviously unaware of the world should not possibly actually exist and maybe he can sneak some of the liquor that Midnight-Sensei thinks she has hidden from the students because he is absolutely to sober to deal with this.

Because Izuku's self worth is so low it hit the ground and started digging. He broke his bones for Ochako when he barely knew her to. He's just like that.

And then Todoroki brings up Izuku calling him hot and Yamada's just like dude Asui called you hot and she's a raging lesbian that sort of thing isn't an expression of interest it's a statement of fact.

Later Yamada just walks up to Izuku places his hands on the shorter boy's shoulders and says "I am so sorry".

....

AU

AiDeku and One-Sided TodoDeku

Shouto: Midoriya-San and I are endgame.

Shouta: I'm not sure what that means, but I am sure that it sounds irritating. And I don't like it.

It's Pride Month so... full on rant.

In this AU we are swapping Shinsou and Monoma for Aizawa and Mic. Shinsou is the tired as fuck homeroom teacher, Monoma is the loud English teacher, Aizawa is the grumpy gen ed kid who clawed his way into the hero course, and Mic is the loud blonde in 1B.

Difference is Mic isn't like Monoma.

But anyway- so Aizawa ends up in hero course because his Quirk can in fact kick everyone elses asses, and due to a really bad performance, Mineta is thrown out of hero course.

And then Izuku. Izuku who is loud and cheerful and who thinks Aizawa is so cool just talks and talks to him, and ropes him into friendship and Aizawa is like: who the fuck is this? But finds he loves it to because it feels safe.

Then Todoroki. I'm torn. Because a part of me wants: naive Todoroki who thinks they'd be perfect for each other and misreads everything to show affection.

And another part wants: Spoiled shit Todoroki who is convinced he's a better choice for Izuku because of latent belief he is the strongest and the best match for Izuku.

Because usually I'm nice with Todoroki, but right now I wanna be mean.

But anyway, Aizawa and Izuku are getting closer, Todoroki is trying to sway Izuku, and Shinsou just watches his disaster class in pain while his loud blonde of a husband mocks him because 'Oh god it's you from years ago.'