#mtouchdown

[unknees]

—It’s Gonna Be a Long Long Time Till Touchdown

Aizawa Shouta x Haruno Sakura

Chapter: one-shot

Beta: @flowershinobi

Read on [AO3]

It didn’t take an ounce of intelligence to tell how infatuated he was with their PE teacher. Even an idiot like Shirakumo could tell. The only one who couldn’t, of course, was said teacher herself.

“Are you okay, Aizawa-san?” 

He could feel his classmates' eyes on them. 

Aizawa wiped the sweat on his forehead coolly, pushing his hair back so he could see her watching him. He liked it when her green eyes focused on him. 

“Yeah,” he answered, shrugging when Sakura’s eyebrows furrowed deeper. “Really, Haruno sensei. I’m okay.”

“If you say so.” She didn’t sound convinced. Instead, she leaned closer into him and Aizawa’s breath hitched when he felt her calloused palms covering his eyes. “I’ll just fix you up a lil, yeah? So next time you can properly avoid my attacks.”

He exhaled, subtly took a deep breath of her, and held the sweet smell of strawberry and coffee in his lungs for a moment before he wrapped one hand around her small wrist. It never failed to fascinate him how such small hands could punch a hole into the ground.

He sighed dramatically and muttered, “I see them coming just fine.”

“Mhmm,” she agreed. Aizawa couldn’t see her but he could easily hear the teasing smile in her voice. “Of course. You have the sharpest eyes in our class. Yes, yes. Of course.”

When she pulled her hands back, he gave her a deadpan look that he knew would make her laugh. And laugh, she did. His heart soared.

“Fine. I’m sorry that I’m a worrywart. I guess it comes with my old age,” she said, smiling at him as she offered a hand to pull him up.

“You’re not old,” he said exasperatedly. His bigger hand looked good around her smaller one. “You’re 21.”

“Well, back where I come from, you rarely make it to your 20s.” She said it so casually, as though she wasn’t talking about death. “It makes me feel ancient, and—“ she looked up at the sky and smiled sadly “—a bit lonely.”

“Well,” he mimicked her tone, brain whirling with ideas to counter her next attacks, “you have me as your punching bag now. Not so lonely anymore.”

Sakura blinked at him and laughed. Her pink hair danced in his face distractingly as he felt a sharp chop under his chin. “You’re too slow.”

“Calculative,” he corrected, massaging the front of his neck. 

“Yeah, that!” She rolled her eyes, smiling. “While I, on the other hand, am not so patient!”

“Wow, no way.”

“Smartass,” she murmured as she flicked his forehead with a bit of force that he knew would leave a mark. “I’m gonna check on Yamada-san’s vocal cords now. He’s been screaming non-stop.”

“Tell him to watch out for your nasty chop then. I can’t feel my vocal cords,” he grumbled.

Sakura rolled her eyes again as she gave him a salute, leaving him alone to help Hizashi. He wondered, not for the first time, what her life was before she joined UA.

What was life for someone who wielded power that could either break you or fix you? Someone who refused to submit to being labeled a hero just to survive. Someone who could blend in seamlessly, as though she was a shadow, mind as sharp as her tongue, and quick with her wit.

Haruno Sakura was, by far, the strongest, most well-rounded person he had ever known. And he wasn’t even being biased.

Apart from her cringe dad jokes, of course. Even his infatuation couldn’t blind him and save her from that tragedy.

He watched as her thigh muscle flex when she kicked Hizashi across the field. His face heated up at the thought of those same thighs around his face.

“You’re drooling,” Shirakumo teased.

Aizawa blamed it completely on his rampaging hormones. “I’m not.”

“Uh huh.”

He took a long look at her laughing and patting Hizashi’s neck before he pulled his eyes off her. Shirakumo was watching him with that shit eating grin of his. He snarled, “Fuck off.”

“Holy shit, dude. You’re gone gone!” Shirakumo laughed, his cloud acting like a shield around him as Aizawa’s leg thrusted out toward where his head had been. “Just go ask her out! We’re 17. We’re basically done with UA.”

His friend didn’t get to finish as Sakura’s voice interrupted their conversation. And as it was when it came to her, Aizawa’s head turned intuitively to exactly where she was.

He ignored Shirakumo’s loud snort followed by a soft, “Whipped.”

“Alright, class!” Sakura smiled at them. “That’s it for today! Your internship placement will be announced tomorrow so,” she paused as she scanned them, and Aizawa’s heart jumped when her eyes landed on him—he swore her eyes stayed on him a second longer—“I guess, this will be our last class together for a while.”

Everyone wailed a chorus of No! And amidst all the bittersweet byes, there was Shirakumo yelling, “I love you, Haruno sensei! Don’t miss me and Aizawa too much!”

Sakura laughed and her eyes were full with mirth as they met his. “I promise I won’t miss you, Shirakumo-san. But Aizawa-san, on the other hand,” she winked at him, “I’m going to miss him  with every breath I take.”

He knew she was just teasing Shirakumo. But in that moment, Aizawa knew. He was, in fact, gone gone, just as his annoying friend had said.

The whole class shrieked excitedly for him. Sakura, bless her beautiful oblivious soul, looked at them in confusion. She cocked her head with her fists on her hips before she chuckled, shaking her head.

“So, anyway! It’s been a pleasure, you guys! Goodluck for your internship! Have a good rest tonight, kick ass, and keep doing lunges to stay in shape! It would be a—”

Aizawa closed his eyes and sighed.

“—big step forward!”

She was met with total silence.

“Get it?” Sakura, undeterred, lunged forward with a force that made a hole on the cemented ground. Snickering and snorting, she looked up at them excitedly. “Big step forward? Because lunge is where you position one leg forward like you’re taking a ‘big step forward’ that your center of gravity lowered due to the distance between your two feet!”

Gone, he thought, as everyone else left the gym with a groan, and suddenly he found her stupid joke charming. 

Fucking hormones.

“Cementoss is gonna be mad at you again, sensei,” he said offhandedly. He had to will his heartbeat to slow down when Sakura flipped her strawberry-scented hair and grinned at him.

“Cementoss won’t know it was me. He needs concrete evidence. Get it? Concrete—” 

“Goodbye, sensei.”

A Travesty, really.

“Honestly, her jokes aren’t that bad. It’s the asking and explaining that ruins it,” Shirakumo commented as they walked out the PE field.

He hummed in reply, glad that his hair was long enough to hide the heat rising in his cheeks.

“And, as I was saying before,” his friend continued, “we’re basically done. We gonna embark on our new journeys to whereever the fuck it’ll take us. Japan, USA, Beijing, Malaysia. We’re gonna be everywhere!

But Haruno sensei?” Shirakumo’s tone turned somber. Aizawa turned in surprise to find him smiling at him sadly. “We heard what the Principal told her. She can’t leave.”

Aizawa’s eyes widened. How had he forgotten the most important tidbit of information they'd gleaned the first time they saw Sakura? His eyes desperately searched for pink hair. And when he found her talking animatedly to Cementoss as he fixed the hole on the floor, Aizawa suddenly remembered—

Sunset. White curtains. Anesthetic infirmary smell. Pink. And green. As green as the Nara forest that he and his friends had visited on their first year’s summer trip.

Oh. Oh.

He’d been distracted.

“Haruno sensei’s gonna be stuck here in UA,” Shirakumo’s voice pulled him back to the present. “If you want more of this, if this is not just a simple high school crush. This might be your only chance.”

He searched for her again, and his blood rushed to his ears when he found her already watching him. Sakura grinned, waving at him and mouthing, “You okay?”

This might be your only chance.

Aizawa waved back at her and nodded his head. 

Sakura’s grin turned into a soft smile. One that he would add to the ‘Haruno Sakura’ folder in his head.

This might be your only chance.

He turned his back on her and caught up with Shirakumo. His friend’s brows raised before he chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief when he saw his determined face. “You’re crazy.”

Maybe so, Aizawa thought, smirking.

There was lightness in his steps, a thrilling sensation that he couldn’t shake off. The same kind of exhilaration that he would get when he came across a stray cat to be adopted.

And just like with a stray cat, he would slowly and gently approach them. Carefully familiarize himself with and care for them until they grow attached. And it might take a while—days, weeks, months—but Aizawa was a patient man.

So, true. Maybe he was crazy. But, it wasn’t true that this would be his only chance.

He recalled the feeling of her breath against his skin, and squeezed his fists in his pocket harder.

Oh, yes. He was very patient.

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