Supernova

Chapter Sixty Seven - Cultural Differences or Sick Game?

I was getting tired of putting out fires.

It was awful convincing Katsuki, and everyone else, that no, I was not still into Elias, and no, we weren't gazing into each other's eyes longingly during the King and Queen's March. It was awful in that it felt so ridiculous and irrelevant to me, but if I showed that in my words or my voice, it really looked like I was lying, so I had to lay the sweetness and apologies on thick.

Dance practice too, was admittedly, a pain. I couldn't imagine how an entire class of heroes had so little body awareness and coordination. They were first years, I found myself reminding myself. Still, though. Yikes.

To add to my displeasure and disappointment, Midoriya was the worst out of all of them. The rage filled monster who almost scared me from the recalibration gym was nowhere to be found in the dance rehearsal hall. He was all muttering and jerky movements and red cheeks and apologies. Mina smacked him upside the head and demanded he focus more than anyone else.

I was so viciously offended by his lack of skill in this domain that it bled into our recalibration sessions. One afternoon when he got there, I told him I was going to teach him the Cotillion Waltz until he couldn't possibly fuck it up, and then we were going to play a game. We'd dance the Cotillon Waltz, and then at one point during the dance, I was going to hit him. Hard. It was his job to pay attention to my body and his at the close proximity enough to block it.

It wasn't necessarily strange, I didn't think. I ran this exercise with a lot of my students back home in America, and I'd done the same thing with Elias. But for the first time in a while, Midoriya looked like I was about to bite him.

"Come on," I said, holding my hand out for him to take, already growing irritated by his uneasy and uncharacteristic hesitation. He did not take it. "How are you supposed to fight villains if you're scared of a little dancing?"

I took a step towards him, and he took a few stumbling steps back, pulling his hands out of my reach.

"Seriously?"

"Kacchan's going to kill me," he eventually muttered under his breath.

"You bet your ass she is if you don't get over here!" My voice was a little harsher and louder than I'd intended, but that's how my coach voice was at the best of times. I sighed and dropped my hands. "Come on kid, I'm not hitting on you. It's a training exercise."

"Can't we just run the regular program?"

"No."

"Why not?" He asked, taking yet another step back, biting at his fingernail.

I sighed again. "How are you ever going to impress Uraraka if you can't dance for shit?"

Midoriya's green eyes widened. That phrase alone had sent him into a blushing and muttering session of epic proportions. It's not like that! We're just friends! Honest! Well, okay, I mean, she is a little pretty, and she smells nice, and she's really nice, but you know, we're just friends. We have hero training to focus on. It's really not like that!

I rolled my eyes. Real convincing, kid. I tried to assure him I genuinely didn't care if he liked her or not, which just made the muttering and defense continue, so I eventually switched tactics and told him dancing is good for combat training, and he wanted to be a worthy successor for All Might, didn't he?

"Yeah," he said slowly, taking a few uneasy steps back in my direction. I held my hand back out, and he looked at it cautiously, but he didn't back off again. "Mina says dancing helps a lot with her combat training, so maybe it would make sense to learn."

I wasn't all the way convinced it wasn't about impressing Uraraka, but he took my hand and let me take him through the motions. He really couldn't dance for shit. I was genuinely surprised, because I knew from sparring with him that he was agile and precise in his movements, but I supposed that's when he wasn't thinking about impressing pretty girls, being this close to me, or the fact that my explosive boyfriend would one hundred percent take this the wrong way.