Sencha (Green) Tea
"I'm off work next Tuesday, how about I brew another cup then?" He suggests it.
"Of course." And her mug disappears from the table- and he knows that he will find it later already washed and dried in the cupboard. "It's always a pleasure Izuku."
"As it is with you, Ochako." He says her name and watches her reaction. It's a shiver and the air around her ripples.
She hums and strangly she does not disappear when he blinks again. Instead she leans across the table, taking his hand again. "I like you because you are selfless and kind." She tells him, and suddenly her other hand is tilting his head up before he can resist.
His eyes meet hers.
Green emeralds burn into the void of space that is her own, staring into the infinite void of stardust and nebulas. He can see the universe in her eyes, fragments of gas giants swirling in the depths of her eyes and accented by a smattering of stars.
He blinks, and she pulls away, a smile on her lips. "Oh, I always knew you were special Izuku." She says, leaving him with no explanation as he blinked again.
And found himself alone at the kitchen table, a mug of lukewarm green tea in his hands and the sound of rain beating against the glass window.
Tuesday is sunny and bright and when Izuku wakes he immediately can feel the weight of Ochako's presence in the house. He can feel it in his chest- how his first breath takes more effort to draw- like the air is being sucked towards her instead of into his lungs. He fumbles with his phone alarm, swiping it off and begrudgingly rolling out of bed.
"Good morning Izuku." She hums as he ambles out of his room to the bathroom.
He glances down the hall, frowns when he sees it empty, and then looks up.
She hovers against the ceiling, lounging above him in a pair of sweatpants and a cute pink sweatshirt. There are tea crackers in her hands, and as he watches one disappears and the sound of crunching resonates around them.
"Good morning Ochako." He mumbles back, trudging the rest of the way to the bathroom to relieve himself.
He showers while he's there, brushing his teeth and wiping out the sink before he trudges back to his room. At this point he's more awake, so when he stops by Ochako's swinging legs in the hall he has the consciousness to ask, "Why are you on the ceiling today?"
"Gravity's being a bitch and I decided fuck her." She responds evenly.
Izuku decides that's an approach he can't quite argue with, especially not when he's still in a towel and Ochako is floating on his ceiling in a pair of sweatpants.
"Be downstairs in a moment." He tells her, ducking under her feet and heading back into his room.
"Mmmm." She hums back. "I want green tea today."
He glances back at her when he gets to the door, frowning at her. "Green tea?" That was… unusual.
She liked stronger blends, sometimes black or chai, but usually not green.
She shrugs instead of answering his question, "I'm feeling wistful."
Wistful is not a mood that Izuku feels like belongs on an eldritch being that refuses to tell him what she has and has not seen. Nevertheless, he gets dressed in a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved shirt before heading downstairs.
She's already waiting for him, lazily drifting through the air, one ankle resting on the opposite knee- resulting in a somewhat distracting glimpse of her thigh. He pushes that image out the thought of his head, and instead moves to the kettle.
He finds it already filled, and so he sets it on the burner and clicks it over.
The process is habitual, a run through of motions he's done hundreds of times now and will likely do hundreds more. Pour the cups, dunk the tea bags. Finger. Knife. Band-Aid. Stir in the sugar into hers.
He carried both cups to the table, only to look up and frown as she remained contently on the ceiling.
"Are you… coming down?" He asks.
"Mmm." She hums, considering it before she snaps her fingers. "I think you'll have to come up."
Gravity shifts, and suddenly his feet brush and scrape against the floor as he drifts up to the ceiling.
"Careful, you brewed it, I don't want you to spill it." Ochako says, and one of her hands reach out, plucking both of their mugs out of his hands.
There's a moment when her fingers touch his and the world focuses and recenters on it. It's a microsecond or less but he shivers at the connection.
Her skin is cold but there is a heat underneath it that burns and makes him gasp and lean into the touch. Like it's something he can't fathom but suddenly realizes he misses.
"Ah ah ah Izuku." Ochako murmurs, and when he looks up her galaxy-filled eyes gleam and spark with the literal light of a thousand stars. "Don't go making cute noises like that." She winks at him. "I'll eat you up."
He isn't sure that's a joke considering the fact that she takes her tea with two drops of Midoriya.
Anti-gravity, or is it zero gravity…? Either way, Izuku finds himself spinning around for only a moment longer before it feels like the air around him thickens and his body stills.
He can still move freely, and that is demonstrated when Ochako hands him his tea back. But it feels like he's been tethered and supported suddenly, like his new gravity is oriented at this space, or he's floating in water.
"How…?"
"Is that really the question you want me to answer?" She replies, glancing at him again.
It's still unnerving, being able to look at her face. Not that it's unpleasant, but growning up believing one thing and having that thought shattered in a singular instance- and then attempting to remedy habit and superstition, was nearly impossible.
Every time she met his gaze he wanted to jerk away and look to the floor. She would laugh when he did, but he found himself being able to match her gaze- if only for a moment.
"I suppose not." He murmurs, peeling his eyes off her face and staring down into his cup of tea. "Why can I look at you?"
"And not have your skull cracked open or your mind melt into a puddle of delicious-but-wasteful mush?"
He grimaces at that, unsure if the fact that she's made two comments about him being edible is a sign of her being in a good mood or the sign of his impending doom. "I-I guess?"
She hums, kicking her legs again before shrugging. Her lips part into a smile, and for perhaps the first time in his life he sees her actually take a sip of the tea instead of realizing it disappears.
"I think you've just built up an immunity over your lifetimes." She shrugs again, "I'm not a human, so I'm not exactly sure, but I suppose it could also be that your body has naturally adapted to preserve itself."
"Lifetimes?" She blinks, cocking an eyebrow at him before clicking her tongue and nodding. "You mentioned that before."
"Well it's not like you're the only instance of Izuku Midoriya that I have conversations with." She says it calmly and easily- like that isn't an earth shattering and mindboggling statement.
"Other… instances?"
"Sure sure." She hums, and again doesn't give him an answer.
"Could you… tell me about one?" He asks.
Her smile is dazzling, and he can't tell if that's because she's chosen to appear dazzling to him or if that's how his brain manages to comprehend the eldritch, ancient and likely-all-powerful-being-in-front-of-him. But her smile sends a shiver down his spine and a heat in his chest that he isn't sure is healthy or good.
"When would you like to start?"
He picks a date.
Well.
He panics and picks a date.
"1281." He winces, realizing in his haste he's picked a random date he can only vaguely recall being important in his history classes.
"Oh, I loved you in that armor." Ochako murmurs, a comet streaking across the void that is her eyes.
There's the sound like a billion pages being turned all at once, a library's worth of books being paged through before she snaps her fingers. Then there's the sound of every single one of them slamming shut- as if she's found the right story or the right section. She takes another sip of her tea, and then grins at him.
"Hope you like movies."
He blinks, and suddenly he's no longer suspended in the air of his kitchen on a sunny Tuesday morning. He is floating in an open grassland, pouring down around him yet never touching him.
It's like he's inside a memory.
But one that is not his own and doesn't look to be Ochako's.
She floats beside him, humming softly to herself as she peers down into the grassland below.
"What are-"
"Shhh." She shushes him, gesturing across the field to the tree line. "This is one of my favorite parts."