A/N: You know what's difficult? Learning Golden Hour on the lyre. Fast fucking fingers I do not have. Anyway, do enjoy this chapter. Thanks for any and all reviews and if you feel so inclined, drop me one—they make me smile. Have a great day!

**I do not own these characters or the world, that belongs to our lovely author of MHA, Kohei Horikoshi. Also, cover art was a commission by me from the artist Krumbs. Follow them on if you'd like! They are extremely talented!

Nine
Invention of the Term 'RILF'

By the time Uraraka and Deku got back to the dorm it had gotten a bit colder. Deku had noted that Uraraka hadn't worn her brown wool coat and had quietly worried over her temperature. She didn't look like she was shivering but he felt like she must be cold. Her hand in his didn't feel cold and her cheeks were rosy as ever, but still he worried.

As they approached the front door of their dorm they stopped and faced one another. With their hands still entwined he was uncertain if they should go in holding hands or go in like they had any other time. Did they want everyone to know about what was going on? He wasn't sure he wanted that.

Why not? A small voice asked inside him and he struggled to think of exactly why he wouldn't want that. However, any progress on knowing why was halted by Uraraka speaking.

"Maybe…maybe we shouldn't tell the others, or well, maybe we should keep it to ourselves. I don't want anyone to make a big deal over, well, uh, us holding hands," her voice had sped up at the end of her sentence and she was blushing much harder now.

But what even would they be telling the others? That they'd decided to hold hands every now and then? That Uraraka had been excited to hug him that she'd floated up and away? That he'd masturbated with her on his mind? He shied away from that thought and again wondered what they would be telling the others. Were they dating? Were they a couple? What did that even mean? What did couples actually do?

"I, I think that might not be a bad idea, at least, well," he paused uncertain how to proceed. "At least until we know exactly what we'd be telling them."

Uraraka nodded in agreement which was a bit of a relief. Though even as that relief passed through him, he wondered why Uraraka didn't want anyone to know…but again that raised the questions of what exactly it was that others should know about?

"Right," she began and looked down anxiously at their entwined hands. She slowly removed her hand from his and faced the door. Deku was immediately struck by how empty his hand now felt but also how sweaty it was.

Oh no! I had sweaty palms! Was it that sweaty this whole time? Did she want to stop holding hands with me because my hand was too sweaty? Is she grossed out? Was her hand sweaty? All these anxieties plagued him as she opened the door and stepped inside. He followed woodenly behind her, still lost in thought that she might very well be repulsed by his horribly sweaty hands.

Upon entering their dorm, he also suddenly felt very visible and aware of having just held hands with Uraraka. Was it just him, or was everyone staring at them as they entered the common room? Did he leave handprints on Uraraka's palm that screamed, 'Izuku Midoriya was here'!?

"Ochako!" Called Tsu from the couch. She hopped her way over to Uraraka who smiled in greeting.

"Hey Tsu!" She chimed cheerfully. Deku still felt like he must be red faced, excessively sweaty, and somehow guilty looking, though no one seemed to pay him much attention.

"Did you want to go over some of the classwork? I could use some help, ribbit," Tsu asked, her tongue just poking out of her mouth.

"Sure, just let me—" she began until Ahsido was suddenly at her side with a big grin on her face.

"We're going to have another study session tonight! We can do it all then! But dinner is soon, so come on!" Ahsido exclaimed and pulled Ochako and Tsu away.

Deku was left standing alone and staring after the girls. Uraraka shot one glance over her shoulder, something akin to apology in her eyes. Deku slowly started to trudge forward; he needed to drop off his bag and change out of his school clothes.

As he ascended the stairs he passed by Bakugo and suddenly remembered that it had been several days since they last trained together with black whip. He knew that All Might would likely be available if he sent him a text asking for his help.

"Hey Kacchan," began Deku somewhat nervously.

"Yeah, spit it out nerd," snapped Bakugo without looking at him. He seemed utterly bored while somehow also appearing very irritable.

"After dinner do you want to do some training with black whip?"

"You mean more of you failing and explosions in your face? Pfft, whatever," he said with a shrug and continued down the stairs.

He had hardly said anything that mean to him! What an improvement! Deku practically floated the rest of the way up the stairs. Kacchan must have really been in a good mood to have helped out Uraraka earlier and to agree to train black whip without even an insult!

After changing out of his clothes and putting away his backpack, Deku went back down the stairs to dinner. He briefly noted that Mineta had arrived at some point and wondered where he'd been. Had he still been in the school? He vaguely recalled Mineta hanging back to speak with Mr. Aizawa. At that thought he had a brief cold shock of fear run through him. Had he seen anything? But wait, what was there to see? All they'd done was hold hands and that wasn't really all that peculiar, was it?

However, as Deku got his food and took a seat at the table, the diminutive boy didn't even spare him a glance and behaved like he'd normally behave on any other day. That was at least a relief, though something about it still made Deku uneasy…again he asked himself why it would even matter if Mineta saw he and Uraraka holding hands.

He'd eaten his dinner quietly and kept mostly to himself, only speaking a few times when spoken to. Izuku was mostly lost in his own thoughts until someone called his name and he was pulled from his inner thoughts to the present. Kaminari sat across from him and looked at him expectantly.

"Uh, sorry, guess I missed that, what did you ask?" Deku asked with an embarrassed and apologetic smile.

"Sheesh Midoriya, I would've thought you'd be paying more attention," Kaminari said as he continued to shovel soba noodles into his mouth. "What I asked was what was it like to have the number five's sweet rear in your face? Her tail basically in your mouth!"

Deku broke out in a bright red flush at that question as he recalled the whole encounter. It'd been awkward to say the least. Not only had he had to bear close witness to Mienta being pervy and Mirko's response to said perversion, her bottom—albeit extremely well-toned and attractive bottom—was basically right in his face. She'd been perched in such a way that her little pompom of a tail had flicked and hit his nose making him sneeze. It'd all been very uncomfortable.

"Honestly, it was kind of…embarrassing," Deku admitted sheepishly.

"Seriously!?" Kaminari asked, astounded. Clearly, he thought that such a situation was enviable.

"Gotta admit Midoriya, I'm a little jealous," Sero added with a smile. He was seated next to Kaminari across the table.

"You should be glad she just has a little rabbit tail. Imagine if she had a tail like mine, you'd have a broken neck!" Mused Ojiro who sat on the other side of Sero.

"Even I must admit that I was impressed by her impressive acrobatics!" Exclaimed Aoyama who'd come to sit next to Deku, or had he been there the whole time?

"She seemed to cause Hawks quite a bit of frustration. I've not seen him be that annoyed before," murmured Tokoyami who was on Midoriya's other side.

"I guess he did seem a little flustered," agreed Deku who thought back to Hawk's side glances and narrowed at Mirko.

"He's probably just jealous that she chose to pay attention to me and not him," Mineta said. He sat on the other side of Aoyama causing Deku to lean over to look at him.

"Haha, come on Mineta! You're just lucky that Hawks didn't also join in in embarrassing you," Kirishima added as he walked behind the table that the boys were seated at.

As if completely oblivious to Kirishima's statement or the fact that Mirko had not in fact been flirting with him, he said, "I've come up with a new term. RILF."

All the boys around the table exchanged quizzical looks before looking back at Mineta in qestion. Bakugo was suddenly at Kirishima's side, apparently having gained interest Mineta's new word.

"What is a RILF?" Ojiro asked, confusion evident on his face.

Mineta smiled and said, "Rabbit I'd like to fuck."

There was a mix of laughter and snorts of disgust from across the table.

"Haha, seriously, only you Mineta!" Kaminari laughed.

Bakugo seemed to lose all interest in the conversation, snorted and muttered "morons," and then trudged off. Deku took that as his cue to also be done to go work on black whip training.

A quick text to All Might and he was on his way to the gym to get to work.

After an hour and a half of black whip training, Bakugo, All Might, and Deku called it quits for the night. While Bakugo had continued to be able to blast Deku with explosions, Deku was getting significantly better at using black whip and had managed to avoid quite a few blasts. Despite having avoided several blasts this go around, he had still been on the receiving end of quite a few of them and so his hair was a smoky, charred mess. So straight after training he'd had a bath and then proceeded to complete his homework and look over his notes.

As the hour crept toward ten o'clock, Izuku heard his phone buzz. He'd been deep into his math notes so it'd had to buzz a few times to finally gain his attention. Once he'd picked up his phone from beside his bed he'd been surprised and pleased to see that he had gotten a handful of texts from Uraraka!

"Oh wow!" He murmured softly to himself as he scrolled through the messages.

2000 "Hey Deku! Sorry we didn't get to talk much before or after dinner. I'm studying with the girls right now, but maybe we can talk later?"

2045 "I just saw you come back from training with Bakugo. Wow! He never holds back does he? I hope he didn't burn too much of your hair."

2100 "Do you think that we'll have some time to talk after we're both done with our homework?"

2130 "Study session complete! How's your homework going? Did you finish?"

2145 "Want to talk if you're done?"

2149 "We could go talk in the common room, or I could come down there and we could talk in your room."

2150 "I was thinking of coming down to visit you, but Bakugo and Kirishima are out in the hall having some sort of loud conversation with Ashido, well actually Bakugo left and I think it's just Kirishima and Ashido…but they're right outside so I can't exactly go downstairs, plus there might be someone down on the third floor or out in your hallway."

2152 "Wait, I think that sounds bad! I wasn't trying to invite myself into your room or anything. I was just saying that I wanted to talk to you and that I could come to your room if that was something you wanted. Sorry! I'm making this awkward."

Deku's eyes widened as he read those last three messages. She wanted to talk…in his room. A girl wanted to talk to him in his room. A girl and a boy alone in a dorm room, nobody else around. His mind instantly started conjuring horribly adult scenarios that made his cheeks flush red and his palms break out in a sweat. Stop thinking like that! She wants to talk and nothing else! Deku pinched his arm to try to banish that line of thinking.

Think of a reply, think of what to say. She clearly wants to talk; do I want to talk? Yes! Okay, calm down. We both want to talk and we could potentially do that downstairs in the common room but there will be other people there. Jiro is usually a night owl and will almost certainly be down there. We could talk…in my…room, he thought to himself in a panic. He briefly imagined Uraraka sitting on his bed looking at him with a smile on her face but imagining her on his bed quickly warped to them holding hands which then escalated to a conjured image of Uraraka without a shirt on, with nothing on but a bra, her bare stomach the center of the imagining and his trembling hand reaching out to touch it—STOP!

Taking a deep breath, he looked at his phone again and thought about what to do. He wanted to talk to her but he wasn't sure that talking alone in his room was a good idea. The thought of being alone with her was both exciting and terrifying. His phone buzzed again.

2200 "Deku?"

Was it already ten o'clock? It was getting late, perhaps they should just try to have a talk on another day. No! I want to talk to her, she clearly wants to talk to me and well, I'd really like to see her before I go to sleep. Maybe even hold her hand or hug her if she'd be okay with that. His cheeks warmed at that thought, about how nice it might be to hug her, to hold her, to pet her hair…

Before he could stop himself, his fingers were hurriedly typing out a message that his brain had little say in.

2202 "Sorry it took me a while to get back to you. Was caught up with my math homework. I would love to talk to you but it is getting a little late and I don't want to keep you up. I'd be okay if you came to my room if that is something you're okay with!"

He'd sent the message before he knew it and watched in muted horror as the message sent away and was marked as delivered. Oh no, oh no! This is bad! I just invited her to my room! And I probably used too many exclamation points…she probably read that as me shouting. Stupid! What do I do?

Deku moved around his room in a panic. He grabbed the bottle of lotion and box of Kleenex that were on the other side of his desk and hurriedly stuffed it in a desk drawer. There was a drawing of All Might on the wall that he'd hung up that now somehow looked horribly drawn and awful—he pulled that down and shoved it under his mattress. With panicked glances, he looked around his room and took in all the All Might paraphernalia. Well, there was no way he could possibly remove all of that in a timely manner, besides she already knew he was a mega fanboy.

His comforter was ruffled back so he hastily drew it up to make it at least somewhat presentable. There was some random debris on the floor that he quickly collected and haphazardly tossed into the rubbish bin. Deku realized that behind the garbage bin was a dirty magazine that Mineta had given him the day before to "assist" with his supposed masturbation problem.

Huffing in frustration and panic, Izuku snatched it up and briefly spared a glance at the cover. On the front cover was a high definition photo of Mirko in a very revealing bikini with big bright lettering that read, "We know they're short but are they curly?! Insider tells all!" Deku wrinkled his nose in embarrassment and quickly shoved that under his mattress as well.

There was suddenly a frantic knock on the door and Deku froze in place, terrified of who he knew was on the other side of the door. He took a step forward and then stopped, too petrified to move closer.

Without thinking he called out, "Uh, yes..?" He immediately regretted it because if Uraraka was out there trying to sneakily knock on his door, she didn't exactly need him to be shouting out greetings. So stupid!

"Midoriya! What are you doing in there? I keep hearing you thud around in there like you're trying to dance! Wait…are you trying to learn to dance?" Came Mineta's voice from the other side of the door.

Relief washed over him like an ocean wave. He instantly crossed the gap between he and the door and swung it open a little too fast. Mineta practically fell forward into Deku's room because the door had opened so quickly. It took him a moment to regain his balance but once he did, he shot Deku a puzzled look.

"Why are you so sweaty? And why do you look like I just caught you with your dick out?" Mineta asked suspiciously. He leaned his head sideways and glanced into Deku's room. Nothing looked out of the ordinary aside from the rubbish bin now appearing to be overflowing with garbage.

"I was moving things around and cleaning, that's all!" Deku explained far too quickly to be convincing.

Mineta narrowed his eyes and looked even more suspicious. "Midoriya, were you like, beating off with props or something?"

Deku felt like his whole face must've turned red. "What? Props?! How would—no! I was cleaning!" Mineta just stared at him.

Mineta eyed him dubiously and remained silent. Finally, after a painfully long pause he said, "Sure you were, Midoriya." He gave one more doubtful look at his classmate and then turned away. Deku gratefully shut the door and then sunk down to the ground. How embarrassing! Was it better or worse that it was Mineta at the door and not Uraraka? He wasn't really sure.

Just as his heart had slowed down a bit, he heard a very quiet scratching at his screen door. Puzzled, he rose to his feet and moved over to the glass door. The curtain was pulled shut and as his hand closed over the fabric he wondered if he was going to find cheese outside his window again. Oh Aoyama.

He pulled back the curtain expecting to see some sort of design with cheese but was shocked—so shocked he let out a little screech—to see Uraraka floating just outside his door. He stumbled backwards and tripped, barely able to catch himself.

"Ura—" he began loudly but immediately dropped his tone and quieted.

She floated just outside his room dressed a pair of pale blue gym shorts, socks with bunnies on them, a light pink hoodie and what looked like something black underneath. She hovered delicately, her face bright red but a hard look of concentration there as well. He realized that she must've made herself weightless and had to maintain that for quite a while since she was two stories above him and on the opposite side of the building which meant she'd likely floated up and around the dormitory to end up at his window. He briefly wondered how she knew which one was his from the screen door alone.

Looking back briefly to the door and hesitating, expecting to hear Mineta or someone else banging on his door demanding to know why he was making so much noise. After that moment's hesitation and no one shouting at him, he very quietly moved to his screen door and opened it. Uraraka floated in, silent as the grave. The moment the door was shut again and he was facing her, she let out a breath, touched her fingers together and gently landed on the ground.

"Uraraka!" Deku exclaimed in a whisper. She looked at him with red cheeks.

"Sorry…I got your text and I was planning on just, well, walking, but Ashido was in the hall and I didn't think I could get down here without being seen…so I, uh, I used my quirk," she admitted, sighing heavily, her face slightly red from prolonged and precise controlled usage of her quirk.

Deku stared at her, equal parts surprised and impressed. Surprised that she was actually here standing in his room, just an arm's length in front of him! Impressed that she'd made herself weightless long enough and provided enough direction and momentum to get herself to his room.

A small, sly little voice whispered, this could come in handy in the future, that he immediately blocked out. He didn't have time for devious thoughts in his current agitated adolescent state.

"Wow! That must've taken some work," Deku marveled quietly.

Silence followed and they both stood there, awkwardly, neither one knowing what to say in that moment.

Okay think Deku! She's in your room…what do you do now that she is here. We both wanted to talk, or well, maybe just see each other since we didn't get to talk much tonight. So what do I say? Wait! I got it!

Thinking fast, Deku moved over to his book bag that was up against the foot of his bed and pulled out one of his notebooks. This particular notebook housed a lot of his detailed notes on his classmate's powers and costumes. Uraraka had several pages dedicated to her quirk and all iterations of her hero getup during their time at UA.

Deku flipped through the pages as he moved to Uraraka's side. He was going to break the silence by asking her about her most recent costume modifications and what the inspiration was. When in doubt, one could always talk heroes!

Uraraka wore a puzzled expression on her face as she watched Deku flip through his notebook. About half way through the book, Deku flipped to the page that detailed Uraraka's first costume and the first notes he'd ever made on her quirk.

"I was going to ask you about your costume and the new look I've seen you in. What inspired it?" Deku asked cheerfully as he flipped to the second page that was also all about Uraraka.

Much to his alarm, Deku realized that on the second page he'd doodled her name multiple times in the margins of the notebook. Even more mortifying, was a little heart he'd drawn next to one of the smaller doodles he'd made of her name. Toward the bottom of the page there was a small footnote about her costume and its perks and then the phrase skin tight, which was underlined twice. He flipped onto the next page in a panic which was a bit safer, though he realized that again, he'd doodled her name in the margins.

"Uh, sorry…guess I was uh, distracted when I made these notes," Deku mumbled nervously. To his horror, he then realized that he'd hastily scribbled out some lines commenting on the fabric that her costume was made of and how it wouldn't really leave much for undergarments. One particular line made him flush a healthy shade of tomato, read, 'it look's like it is form fitted perfectly to her body. Must be moisture resistant, heroes do a lot of sweating. What kind of underwear would she be able to wear under it? No underwear? Support built in? Bounce control?'

After reading those lines, Deku abruptly tossed the notebook aside, toward his bag and gave Uraraka a sheepish smile. "Uh, never mind…they're mostly just, random notes and uh, things, that I take note of, err, that is, um stuff!" Shut up! Don't keep talking, you're making it worse!

"Oh, that's okay Deku!" Uraraka said with an equally embarrassed smile.

Great, now she thinks I'm a lunatic who is obsessed with what she wears under her costume, he thought to himself miserably. Silence returned to the duo and he struggled to think of what to say or do. Why was this so hard?

"Uraraka," he began and cast a nervous look away from her. What did he say now? Where did they go from here? "To be honest, I don't really know what to say. I don't have any experience with this kind of thing…or with girls." He felt his cheeks burn an even darker red.

A gentle hand touched his shoulder then, surprising him. He looked at Uraraka who was now giving a reassuring smile and actually touching him!

"That's okay Deku. I don't have any real experience with this kind of thing either. You're, well you're the first boy that I've like, liked a lot I guess." There was a faint blush in Uraraka's cheeks that somehow looked adorably endearing to Deku. He felt like his heart was expanding in his chest just from looking at her.

I'd really like to hold your hand again, he thought to himself. He eyed her silky auburn hair and wondered what it would feel like to run his fingers through the soft tresses.

"I don't know really what it is we're supposed to do. Do we start like going to movies together or something?" He asked softly.

Uraraka dropped her hand from his shoulder and tilted her head to the side as if in thought. With her hand no longer resting on his shoulder he started to feel the compulsion to hold her hand. It wasn't touching him anymore; couldn't he just take it? Just take it, a little voice inside him whispered persuasively…but she might not like that, another voice cautioned.

"I guess before we do that, we should uh, figure out what this," she pointed to the both of them, "is and what we want it to be."

Deku nodded. That made sense…but what were they? He'd asked himself that earlier in the evening when they'd been holding hands before getting to their dorm. He'd not been able to flesh out the answer to that question.

What are we? What do I want us to be? He looked at her as that thought ran through his head. Without really even thinking deeply, a part of him already knew the answer to that question. I like her, I really like her. I'd love to go to the movies with her and hold hands! I want to share ice cream and pocky sticks with her! I want to be able to hug her and touch her face and stroke her hair. I want to see her smile and laugh because of something I said or did. I want her to have a twinkle in her eye because she knows that we're going to do something fun together. I want her to accidentally make me float like she made herself float today because she's so excited! I want to write her love notes and buy her All Might action figures! I want, I want, to see her bare stomach again,maybe even her whole body…

At that thought, Deku immediately stopped himself. No! He would not think those things. That would just get him all flustered and embarrassed. Besides, he wasn't even sure that Uraraka wanted those things and that was kind of a very important part of this. She had to want those things too.

"Uraraka, I, I think for right now, well," Deku stumbled and struggled to find the right words to use. "I think for right now, I just want to be around you…I like being around you and I really like talking to you and holding your hand today was so nice. It made me happy. I don't know if that means we're like a couple or anything—I'm not even sure we have enough time to do normal couple stuff like go to the movies—but I think, I think that I just want to be together and do whatever comes with that." He honestly had no idea what came with that other than holding hands, going to the movies, sharing ice cream, and announcing their couple status to the world…and he wasn't sure how feasible a lot of that was. He also wasn't sure he wanted for everyone else to know. He liked the idea of it being just them, especially when it seemed neither of them really knew what to do.

"I like that idea. Just being together," Uraraka said softly and looked at him with those big beautiful brown eyes. Izuku felt like his heart might melt in his chest. She was so pretty! Why had he never realized before that she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen?

"Okay," he whispered and then in a moment of boldness, closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. The movement seemed to surprise Uraraka because she was extremely stiff at first but slowly relaxed and wrapped her own arms around him.

The two stood like that for a while, locked in each other's arms, just enjoying the shared space. After a little while, they separated and were awkwardly silent again. Uraraka eventually broke the silent moment by moving to Izuku's bed and sitting down. She gently patted the spot next to her and he nervously took a seat beside her.

He was sweating bullets as he sat next to her and she smiled at him. Here they were sitting alone on his bed…this seemed too fast! But then she surprised him by starting to talk about her costume and the new modifications she'd made to it. Her talking hero stuff immediately broke his anxiety and he was able to engage with her much more comfortably.

For the next forty-five minutes they talked about their work studies, costume modifications, Deku's training with black whip, Uraraka continuing to press the limits of her zero-gravity quirk. It was a conversation that had become relatively relaxed and easy for both of them. They were so engrossed in their conversation that they lost track of time until Deku briefly glanced at the bedside clock on his night stand. It was already quarter past eleven!

"Whoa, Uraraka! It's really late! We need to get to bed!" He said with a yawn. He wasn't sure how he'd managed to stay up this late without feeling tired until just now.

Uraraka looked at the clock too and then back to him in surprise. "Wow, guess that time really flew by!" She was quiet briefly before adding, "Guess I should head back to my room. I imagine the halls are probably mostly empty by now."

"Yeah," Deku murmured. He didn't realize it until just that moment, but he was actually kind of sad at the thought of her leaving. He'd enjoyed talking to her and just being near her. Her leaving would somehow make his room feel so empty.

"Can I, uh, use the toilet before I go, though?" She asked with a nervous smile.

Blushing, Deku nodded. "Oh, yeah, sure!"

Uraraka got up quietly and moved over to where Deku's bathroom was. For one panicked moment, Izuku worried that there was something horribly embarrassing in the bathroom, but in all honesty, he didn't spend much time in there so the chances were low. Still, the thought of her in his bathroom did fill him with some anxiety…and perhaps, excitement?

He heard the door to the toilet slide open and then closed and he sat quietly in his room, trying to ignore the sound of her moving around the bathroom. He'd never realized how thin the walls were until this moment.

To distract himself and perhaps to calm himself as well, Deku lay down on his bed and began focusing on his breathing. Breath in and breath out, he thought to himself as he lay on his bed looking up at his ceiling. He felt himself begin to relax a little as he laid there breathing slowly and thinking about the day's events and about the girl he'd been lucky enough to hold hands with and even hug. At that thought, he smiled to himself and briefly shut his eyes. He'd only intended to rest there on his bed for a few minutes while Uraraka used the restroom, but apparently, he was more tired than he realized and once his eyes were shut, sleep claimed him.

A few minutes after he'd dozed off, Uraraka quietly came out of the bathroom. She looked toward the direction that she'd left Deku and was quite surprised to see him lying down on his bed. Moving silently, Uraraka made her way over to the bed to look at him. He'd not moved when she'd exited the bathroom and he was very still now. He was asleep! Ochako couldn't help but smile to herself as she watched the sleeping boy. He looked so peaceful.

She cautiously moved to the door but hesitated. She couldn't leave the light on! Uraraka made her way over to Deku's light switch and flipped it off, shrouding the room in darkness. In the darkness of the room she could hardly see a thing as her eyes hadn't adjusted yet. After a few minutes of adjusting to the light change, she could make out the shape of Deku's desk, bed, and window. Again, she moved over toward the door and gripped the door handle when she heard a soft murmuring from Deku's sleeping form.

Uraraka turned round and stared in the darkness at the shape of Deku on the bed. He was murmuring softly enough that she'd not been quite able to make out the words but she thought he'd muttered something familiar sounding.

She moved away from the door again and closer to the bed. Once she was within a foot of the bed, she couched down and leaned her head toward where Deku lay. It was quiet at first and she wondered if she'd missed whatever whispering in his sleep he was going to do.

"One For All," he quietly murmured, surprising Ochako. She strained in the darkness to try and see him, but could only make out his form and nothing else. One For All? What was that? Weird, she thought to herself when he began to mutter again. "Uraraka."

Ochako felt herself flush red at hearing her name. Was he dreaming of her? She wondered what kind of dream he was having if he was in fact dreaming about her. "I hope it's a good one," she whispered very quietly.

She was suddenly struck by an overwhelming compulsion to climb in the bed with him, snuggle up to his side, rest her head on his chest and quietly listen to the beating of his heart. Ochako felt herself move forward but stopped herself.

What are you thinking? That is awfully forward! He didn't invite you into his bed and he is tired enough that he fell asleep knowing I was still here. If I climbed in bed with him that would be not okay for a lot of reasons. First of all, it'd give him the wrong idea and I don't want to do that! Secondly, he didn't invite me to stay the night and thirdly, it would probably make him sleep poorly if I woke him up now by invading his personal space, Ochako thought to herself as she continued to stare at the sleeping Deku.

But the compulsion and desire remained within her. Talking with him, hugging him, holding hands, using her quirk to get to him tonight—it'd all been so nice! If she carefully placed herself next to him that wouldn't be so bad, would it? She just wanted to listen to his heart for a few minutes. That was harmless, wasn't it? If he woke up, she'd just explain and that should make it okay…right?

She thought of his words earlier in the evening about how he just wanted to be near her and a fond smile bloomed on her face. I want to be close to you too, she thought to herself.

Against her better judgement, Ochako very carefully climbed into the bed next to him. At first, she made sure to not touch him and lay on the very edge of the bed, almost ready to fall out of it. When he didn't budge or wake, she silently scooted closer to him so that she was on her side and his shoulder just barely made contact with her chest. She had her left arm tucked under her head but her right arm remained free and she cautiously moved her hand over Deku and placed it onto his chest. He continued to sleep without being disturbed.

As she settled into her side lying position, she began to feel the soft thump of his beating heart and couldn't help but smile. She wasn't entirely sure why feeling his heart was such a nice thing, but for whatever reason it made her feel warm and fuzzy.

I want to listen to it, she thought to herself nervously but made no effort to move forward. She laid like that for some unknown amount of time until her own eyes began to grow heavy. In the darkness of Deku's room and lying next to him, things were too cozy to not get sleepy. Besides, it was a rare day that Ochako would be awake past 10pm.

Have to get up, not proper to fall asleep with him. He didn't invite me, she thought to herself sleepily but made no move to get up. All she could focus on was how nice the soft beating of his heart felt under her palm and how pleasant it was to be next to another person who was warm, especially since there was no blanket on either of them. She briefly thought that she should've grabbed some of her mitts that she would wear whenever she'd go to a slumber party with friends. Inadvertently activating her quirk in her sleep was a real problem.

However, the tug of sleep was too great and even though she knew that this decision would have ramifications, she fell asleep next to Izuku Midoriya.

F/N: I'm gonna share a quick but most amazing poem ever written with everybody. The Woodchuk by Sim Pink:

The woodchuck in my backyard

Doesn't trust me.

& he's right.

Because the first chance I get

I'm gonna put this tiny witch hat on him.

Stupid piece of shit.