Work Text:
Training to be a hero was hard work. With all the physical conditioning and practical application, Class 1-A sometimes felt like there was never enough time to just focus on normal classwork. Doing something completely unrelated to schoolwork was rare, especially with all the stress from the many villain attacks.
Every now and again, someone decided that they needed a break. This led to impromptu movie nights or karaoke water balloon fights on the front lawn. Once they even began a massive hide-and-seek game after dusk in the forest within UA’s walls (they barely made it back inside before curfew that night).
It wasn’t too uncommon, then, that the weekly trip to the grocery store brought back more than just food. There were several people who liked crafts, so many of those impromptu break nights turned into bracelet making, or knitting, or baking. On those nights, they would clear the big table after dinner and lay out whatever materials had been brought back on that occasion. It was a come-and-go kind of setup, where whoever was interested could join in while those who were busy were left unbothered.
On this particular night, Momo had come back with a slightly sheepish grin and an entire bag filled with paint and canvases. “I used to enjoy painting when I was little,” she explained. “I haven’t tried it in a while, but I thought it might be a fun thing to do.”
“Can you fingerpaint with this?” Mina asked with a gasp. She had already grabbed one of the bottles of paint and was holding it up in barely concealed excitement.
“It is nontoxic and washable,” Momo replied. “Knowing how much of a mess we tend to make, I thought that was the safer option.”
It only took ten minutes for the big table to be cleared. Izuku watched fondly as his friends dove straight into the craft, grabbing bottles and pouring paint onto makeshift palettes and gathering paper as a canvas. Mina was grabbing for the blue, Kirishima hogging the red, and Tsu creating a swirl of yellow and green. Uraraka closed up the pink and looked at him with a smile, moving her paper plate over so it waited between them. He looked down at it to see green, red, pink, and blue already waiting in puddles on the plate.
With a grin, Izuku grabbed a paintbrush and moved to dip it in the red, listening fondly as Momo recounted a story from training that afternoon, Hagakure’s sleeve waving as she elaborated enthusiastically. He kept an eye out for the yellow paint, hoping it would come his way.
That, perhaps, was the reason behind what happened next. He reached absently for the green paint on the plate just as Uraraka’s brush darted in for more pink. He jumped at the sudden ticklish touch of the brush, then stared at the line of pink left behind.
“Oh! Deku! I got paint on your arm,” Uraraka said. When he looked at her, she was staring with an embarrassed blush at the color. “Let me just--find where that--”
She tried to turn in a hurry, and another stripe of pink wound up on his hand to compliment the first mark. He missed what she said next, too busy laughing at her mildly panicked expression.
“It’s alright, Uraraka. Momo said it’s washable,” he managed.
“Oh, she did say that, didn’t she?”
Something about that tone made him turn to look at her again, but he didn’t have time to react to the suddenly mischievous grin before a line of blue streaked across his arm. “Wha--Uraraka!” he exclaimed, glancing back and forth at his arm and the blue paint now dripping from her brush.
She giggled then, putting her other hand over her mouth, pinky raised. He found himself grinning back before darting forward and leaving a long streak of green on the back of her hand. He laughed as she shrieked, then lunged for the paint to retaliate.
They were both laughing while they gathered paint on the ends of their brushes, letting it sit in thick globs before lunging for one another. He scored another green stripe next to her elbow, barely dodging the red on her brush and grabbing more paint--blue this time--and leaving a blob on her arm. She raised the brush, still loaded with red, and flicked it forward at him. It went wide, and a surprised croak from Tsu had them freezing, staring at her with apprehension.
Tsu stared down at the red paint on her shirt before very deliberately dipping her brush in the yellow-green swirl and dragging it down Momo’s arm.
It only took a few moments more of shocked exclamations and expressions of disbelief before the paper before them was neglected. Paint splattered itself across arms and found its way into hair. The happy chatter rose to a fever-pitch of glee, screeches of laughter replacing quiet remarks. Izuku soaked it all in, grinning from ear to ear as he continued his paint war with Uraraka. She laughed with him, her chocolate brown eyes bright with joy and her pink cheeks flushed from the force of her smile. They flung paint at each other relentlessly, and Izuku couldn’t deny the way his heart warmed as he paused to take in the sight of his classmates—his friends—laughing freely and letting themselves relax.
He enjoyed it until the shadow of Aizawa-sensei fell over the doorway and a tired voice called out, “What are you doing? Other than making a mess.”
Caught, the entire table froze. They turned as one to stare at their teacher, who stared right back at them.
“Well?” the man prompted. Nobody dared to reply. He just sighed heavily, running a hand down the side of his face. “I expect all of this to be cleaned up before you finish. There better not be a speck of paint left when I come back in the morning.” He sighed again. “I honestly don’t know what else I was expecting,” he said quietly, and Izuku almost winced at the exhaustion in the tone. He lowered his paintbrush instead.
“My apologies, Sensei,” Momo replied, though the sincerity was dampened by the purple mark on her cheek.
Aizawa-sensei just waved the apology off, and it was then that an amused glint entered his eyes. “Just so long as it all gets cleaned,” he said, leaving the room again.
They were all frozen for a few more moments before giggles broke out and there was a sudden rush to clean the paint that had fallen on the table and rinse off the paintbrushes. Uraraka handed Izuku a handful of paper towels. “That was a good match, Deku. I definitely won, though.”
He laughed at that. “Uraraka! You only won because you got the first two marks on me!”
“It’s still a victory!” she claimed, and then they both dissolved into giggles as they cleaned themselves of the paint splatters.
In the end, Aizawa-sensei came to help them finish cleaning, and a few messy paintings got pinned to the fridge for a month before Bakugou tore them down and shoved them back at their respective owners, grumbling about “clutter in the kitchen and terrible artists.” Nobody took his grumbling seriously. Izuku ended up with a pink, green, red, and blue depiction of himself and his three closest friends playing on a beach, courtesy of Uraraka. Years later, he would look back at that night and smile to himself, remembering the relaxed, happy moment between all the chaos of the school year.
It was good to just be a kid again, even if only for a little while.