Paint the Stratosphere Red

103

"So, dating, huh?" Eraserhead said with a smirk as he glanced in the rear-view mirror. Are you going to go public about this? Discrimination has lowered significantly, but your ranking will probably drop."

"With all due respect, we can't imagine anyone else for each other. As long as we do our jobs, I don't see why that should affect us. Plus, we kinda already have a son and a daughter." Hiryur laughed.

Katsuki rolled his eyes from his seat in the car. "Well - okay. Yeah, even though Dabi is older than us, he acts like a child."

Aizawa thought back to when he found Dabi cooking bacon on himself with his quirk and to when Eri had asked him if her 'dads' were okay. "Okay, fine. But you two need to deal with the entire class that is pacing around in the common room and hopped up on coffee. I swear, that class has one collective brain cell, and it belongs to Momo."

"True, they're like our non-official children too."

Katsuki laughs at that. "Yeah. I swear they're all so dumb."

"At least there are the sane ones, right?"

"Yeah, Sato can cook and Jirou is chill. Momo, Todoroki, Iida, Kota, Tsu, Shoji, Ojiro, Shinso, and Hagakure are alright. The others are gremlins."

"What in hell makes you think that Depresso Espresso is in any way sane? He thinks I'd like to be friends with someone who crawls out from the ceiling panels like a demon."

"Yeah, and I'm pretty sure the others would die from food poisoning if we aren't there."

"I'm pretty sure the only reason they haven't, is Iida."

"You don't count as responsible unless you can do laundry properly, cook real food, pay the bills, and stay on schedule."

Aizawa glanced at the children again. "Iida doesn't count unless you count almost blowing up the washing machine. When I asked what he did, he responded with 'I put the clothing in the clothing sink, I put the correct soap in, I waited until it beeped once, and then I moved the clothes into the clothing oven.' I needed to take three Advil's after that and the headache still lasted a week. Also, Shinsou came up to me before and said he gets as much sleep as I do, that is not acceptable. I'm leaving him up to you two."

"Cure for insomnia?" Katsuki scoffed. "Easy! Warm milk, drugs, or both."

Aizawa narrowed his eyes at the boys through the mirror. "What kind of drugs?"

"Not like that. Find some sleeping pills, pour milk into a pot, heat it up on the stove, slip in the pills and give it to said insomniac."

Aizawa nodded as he pulled through the gates of the campus and parked the car. "I'll keep that in mind. By the way, we have dorms now, so you two, the class, Dabi, and Eri are staying on campus." The three unbuckle their seat belts and exit the car. A glance at Katsuki's watch shows that it's only around four in the afternoon, they got to the dorms relatively fast.

"Welcome to Heights Alliance."

The dormitories are large with five floors separated into two wings and a line off rooms connecting the two wings together. Each building has its respective class name posted above a sign that reads "Alliance". Each building is circled by low hedge bushes that leave a path open to the entrance which is comprised of two sets of double doors. Alongside the pathway are two park benches and two towers with lights on them. The first level of the building is white while the upper levels are colored brown on the outside.

"Each dorm building is designed to hold one class of twenty students. Boys are assigned to the left-wing and girls are assigned to the right-wing. There's a courtyard outside the first level as well. Dorm rooms begin on the second floor and end on the sixth floor. There are four rooms per floor with six floors in total. Every student gets their own room equipped with air conditioning, toilets, beds, fridges, closets, and a balcony. You two, Dabi and Eri have the rooms that connect the wings together although I'll take a wild guess and say that you two will be sharing a room."

Aizawa claimed that their belongings were in their assigned rooms, thanks to Dabi and Eri bringing them, and said they could customize it however they wanted as long as they paid for the changes. Aizawa dismissed them with a look that told the two boys that there will be further conversations, and they were left to walk through the doors and were immediately met with eighteen frozen students, one child, and one big brother.

Dabi breathed out harshly, allowing tears to roll down his face as he stared at them with a distant look. He bit his lip and stayed silent, and even though he wasn't looking at them, they could tell that there was something before his eyes that was haunting him.

It happens when you or a loved one faces a near-death situation. All of them will probably deal with a few nightmares of their own in the near future.

They weren't sure what they were expecting to happen when Dabi finally noticed them. Perhaps acknowledgment, an understanding that they'd been to hell and back. Ultimately, whatever they were expecting, they weren't sure how to interpret his frozen state, wide-eyed and left in stunned silence. They weren't expecting him to fall apart.