𝐃𝐄𝐈𝐓𝐘 || ᵇ.ᵏᵃᵗˢᵘᵏⁱ

XXXIX

🗡️🗡️🗡️

"Is sparring a good idea? Because I think I might just end up touching you up." Aeri wiggled her eyebrows jokingly as she stretched.

Bakugou paused and thought back to the last time they sparred. Whilst they trained together six times a week since since first year, they hadn't properly sparred since last year's sports festival, and Bakugou didn't feel good about hitting her even if it was for training.

"What are you thinking about?" Aeri queried, throwing off her hoodie.

Bakugou seemed to be battling with himself for a moment before he turned to Aeri with a frown. "I don't want to hurt you," he said reluctantly, seeming surprised at his own words.

"Wow, I'm honoured," Aeri gasped playfully. "There's not many people that Bakugou Katsuki doesn't want to throw a punch at."

"I'm being serious," Bakugou grumbled, "and I don't want to punch everyone, there's just a long list of people."

"Babe, I know it's a really weird situation that most couples don't have to deal with but there's a chance that we'll be paired up to fight in the sports festival like last year, what would you do then, forfeit because you don't want to hit your girl?"

Bakugou thought for a second, battling between his competitive nature and his love for Aeri. "No," he answered quietly.

"Exactly. It doesn't mean anything, we're heroes and the best way to train is to spar with each other. There's no bad intentions behind you hitting me and me hitting you in this context. We're just gonna go healed up after this anyway." Aeri smiled and clomped Bakugou into a hug, resting her head on his chest.

"So you don't think it's weird?" Bakugou asked, wrapping his arms loosely around Aeri's shoulders.

"No, we're not actually fighting, we're training. I spar with my brothers all the time and we break bones and cut each other. We may tease each other about it but we don't hold it against each other because it's just training."

"Okay, let's spar then."

"Okay," Aeri agreed.

🗡️🗡️🗡️

"Good morning 2A!" Present Mic screeched as he burst through the doors. A few people groaned at the sheer volume of his voice at 8:30 in the morning but Aeri was surprisingly excited for Present Mic's English lesson despite it usually giving her a headache. "You'll be presenting your group homework assignments this morning, I want Ashido, Jirou and Tokoyami's group up first please, you have five minutes to prepare! Aeri, since you weren't here, I've got a different task for you. Come to the desk please."

Aeri teleported straight to the front of the room, her jaw dropping at the mountain of paper Present Mic dropped into her arms. "Sir, you know I had English lessons whilst I was in Korea, right?"

"Yeah!" Present Mic smiled. "Work through it anyway, just skip through anything that you did whilst you were away. I don't want you to be behind in the midterm because of a different curriculum so I just printed everything off for you."

"Okay, thank you." Aeri let out a relieved sigh and returned to her seat. She made eye contact with Bakugou on the way back and he laughed at the giant stack of work before offering up his notes.

"You can have mine if you want." He handed her the workbook but Aeri shook her head.

"I won't learn anything just by reading your notes. I'm already behind," Aeri said. Bakugou rolled his eyes but tucked the book back under his desk.