Paladin

It's Just a Horse Thing

Chapter Summary: The staff and students can't help but notice that Chiron is constantly fixing their appearances. Hair out of place? Brushed back. A bit of rice on their mouth? Wiped away. A couple leaves stuck to the back of someone's uniform? Picked off.

What exactly is it? Well, it's just a Horse Thing.

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It didn't exactly strike them as odd since the first two people he did it too were Astolfo and Gray.

Gray had a bit of dirt on her cheeks after the spar with Bakugou while Astolfo had twigs and leaves stuck in his hair after Sero flung him into the trees.

Chiron had simply reached over and picked them out of his hair before he turned to Gray. He licked his thumb and rubbed the dirt from her face before letting out a satisfied hum.

Chiron parenting (Astolfo called him the mama-taur, Gray admitted he was a lot like a father) the two wasn't that odd. So no one commented.

No one bat an eye when Chiron had walked over while he had been covering Present Mic's English class to wipe a smudge of ink from Todoroki's pen off of the said boy's cheek. Todoroki had been following Gray around like a duck (Aizawa's words, Ashido would tell them, having overheard their homeroom teacher say it in passing while he was talking with Midnight) so if Chiron started parenting him, it wasn't that odd.

When the students finally started noticing, however, was when the centaur was giving them a lesson on ancient literature ("I don't want to teach art today, so you do something in my stead!" Midnight had told him) and he had ended up smoothing down some of Midoriya's wild hair down as he read from what had to be a hand-made book.

Midoriya had frozen up, but Chiron didn't seem to have noticed as he continued his lecture on how Emperor Nero burned down Rome. The green-haired boy only unfroze when Chiron moved on, his hair oddly smoothed down and neat.

The oddities didn't stop there.

Ashido had told the rest of the students later that she had watched Chiron absentmindedly wipe a bit of rice from Present Mic's face while they were talking over lunch. Jiro always remembered it as the day Present Mic burst into tears and hugged Chiron really tightly.

That seemed to be the starting point for Class 1-A— minus Gray and Astolfo, though the two of them seemed to watch a little more than usual. The students found themselves watching Chiron a bit more closely. The way he subconsciously cleaned up the students and other teachers by wiping ink, dirt, or food from their faces. By smoothing ruffled hair, picking leaves and dirt from the strands, or offering a hair-tie to pull locks back.

Astolfo shrugged and simply said it was 'a horse thing' when Hagakure asked him if he knew what was going on. When they asked Gray, she had told them that it was probably because of how horses showed that they were happy and since he was half horse, he occasionally did the same thing.

It was just a horse thing.

The students left it at that.

(x)

The staff had been a bit startled when the sudden 'grooming' started.

It had begun long before they had moved into the dorms, which is when Aizawa said the students first started noticing.

No, it had started after the USJ incident.

It had been small things at first. Just between Aizawa and Toshinori.

Aizawa's hair was a bit messy and he couldn't brush it out? No worries, Chiron had already started brushing the knots from his hair.

Toshinori had a bit of blood on his chin from a coughing fit? Not an issue, Chiron had already pulled a handkerchief out and was holding it out to the blonde.