Valentape but only seriida

A Bittersweet Bouquet

He didn't really know when it started.

He thought Iida was a little weird at first, in all honesty. He didn't blame himself though, considering he'd never met someone quite like Iida before— with his boisterous voice that bounced off of the walls of every room that he walked into and his perfectly ironed school uniform and heroic lineage. It was a lot to handle at first, but as time went on, Sero found himself acclimating to UA as a whole, and that meant acclimating Iida too. He grew to enjoy his near-constant yelling and air chops, grew to admire his determination and straightforward, earnest personality. And it looked like other people liked it too. Really liked it. And they were braver than he was.

She was so much braver.

The two never announced it, not officially anyway— but everyone could tell. Yaoyorozu hung out around the dekusquad more. Suddenly, it was impossible for Iida to do any of his class president duties without the vice president at his side.

He wished he had done something back then. Taken the rejection and moved on with his life. He might've pined from afar for a little, but that was fine. It was normal. Checkbox number eleven on the normal teenage experience; your crush didn't always like you back. He had to get over it. But he didn't. He just sat and watched from afar. He was selfish— wanted that blissful ignorance for just a little while longer. That was a mistake.

And it wasn't just because he was being unmanly, as Kirishima would put it, or that hiding his feelings was just making things worse— no, it's because of the predicament that those feelings got him into. He couldn't have known what was going to happen, though. Couldn't have known that it would come this far. What were the chances of this happening in the first place? Well, even if they were small, now they were real and bad. Really, really bad. The real problem started when he was out on patrol. It was a pretty normal patrol, by all standards. As normal as a patrol could be when you were out with Mt. Lady.

Ha. Of course things started with Mt. Lady.

Out of the three main heroes on The Lurkers, she was probably the worst with kids. And that was fine! You didn't have to be good with kids to be a hero, and kids were confusing! It took Sero years of having younger siblings to understand them, and he still had a tough time. But when you were as well-known, marketable, and as attention-seeking as Mt. Lady, you were bound to be recognized and approached by kids while out on patrol. Despite this fact, she still didn't know how to handle the kiddos.

So that's how Sero got here, shooing Mt. Lady away from the sobbing little girl as he knelt down and took his helmet off, sending her a reassuring smile and taking her hands in his.

Unfortunately, this seemed to be the wrong move, because the girl just sobbed even louder as a pulse of energy travelled from her hands to Sero's. It didn't hurt, only tingled a little, like his arm had fallen asleep, but the feeling travelled up his arms and settled in his lungs, where it lingered uncomfortably. Strange.

Despite the Quirk that he had just been hit with, Sero kept his eyes on the girl, trying his best to calm her crying. The minutes ticked by, and the sobs turned to sniffles and after a lot of cheesy jokes, those sniffles turned into a small smile. Good, good. Smiling was good. But everything went downhill once the girl's mother showed up.

She let out a gasp when she saw the two of them, and she shot forward, scooping her daughter up, a panicked look on her face as she asked why her daughter wasn't wearing her gloves.

Gloves...?

Oh. Probably to keep her Quirk in check. What was her Quirk anyway?

He found out once the girl's mother turned to him, face still panicked and asked— no, demanded to know if Sero got hit with the Quirk. He nodded. She went pale. And then she started to explain.