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Fatgum never thought he would see a physical manifestation of anxiety, but there it was in the form of his new intern Tamaki Amajiki.
Sure, Fatgum knew what he was getting himself into the moment he sent the request to UA. He knew when his coworker told him the only way Tamaki would ever agree would be because Fatgum’s body could hide him from cameras, something Fatgum won’t lie and say he wasn’t banking on. And he most certainly knew when he watched the retreating dot at the second years’ sports festival—a student that hadn’t done anything particularly exciting except be very clearly scared out of his mind the entire time. Still, Fatgum found himself only able to think, ‘ That one’s gonna be my intern.’
But knowing Tamaki had nervous tendencies and witnessing exactly how much they overwhelmed him are two vastly different things. The poor kid had stood outside the agency for fifteen minutes , hand tentatively reaching for the door handle only to retreat over and over again before Fatgum finally made the decision for him and threw the doors open wide in welcome.
That had been a stupid mistake, he will admit.
Tamaki went sprawling backwards. His quaking hands raised in front of his face and palms sprouted sunflowers in a defense mechanism that was about as effective on Fatgum as it had been on his sports festival opponents. Well, at least Fatgum had the decency to school his good-intended laughter into a reassuring smile. He tried again more gently to beckon his new intern inside.
Fatgum’s second mistake was asking Tamaki to the agency in the first place.
That realization hit when Tamaki emerged from the locker room in a purple long sleeve shirt and sweatpants combination only to tuck himself into the most remote corner of the room. Whenever a hero bustled past, Tamaki ducked his head to the wall. Fatgum wondered if this kid ate stress for breakfast because it seemed like his Quirk was manifesting it in visible waves.
Clearly the daily noise Fatgum had grown accustomed to was deafening to this inexperienced hero-in-training. He doubted they could even hold a conversation together here, let alone persuade Tamaki out of this shell. That wouldn’t do. Tamaki needed something more comfortable, more familiar.
Fatgum approached slowly, like one would a frightened cat. He may have anticipated decreasing his body mass to be less intimidating, but this newfound skittishness made him wary of taking any chances. It had been a shock getting the message that Tamaki was arriving this week; Fatgum wasn’t risking him bolting for the exit now.
“I know ya just got here,” Fatgum said once he was close, “But go get changed out of those workout clothes and into your civilian ones. We’re going out.”
Tamaki turned his head from the wall slightly, his face scrunched up in confusion.
“This is my hero costume,” he mumbled. Had Tamaki spoken with any less certainty, Fatgum would have thought he was joking. He glanced down at the one-note outfit once more.
“No,” Fatgum said. “Absolutely not.”
“Eraserhead wears something similar.” Tamaki’s voice came out as a whisper, but there was a flicker in his eyes. Cheekiness, maybe? Fatgum couldn’t place it, but he wanted to drag it out from behind the shyness and watch what happened.
“Eraserhead ain’t the fashion icon ya should be following,” he retorted. Fatgum thought of teasing that Tamaki need only dye his hair green to look like a giant eggplant, but he had enough common sense to know that would effectively incapacitate his intern. Instead, he asked, “A hero costume is supposed to evoke hope and be good for your quirk. Does this do that for ya?”
And just like that Tamaki retreated back, the flicker disappearing when he shook his head. Damn, that wasn’t what Fatgum wanted.
“Alrighty then,” Fatgum shook his disappointment by clapping his hands. “We’ll add to the list that we gotta get ya in something better.”
“The list?” Tamaki asked.
“The list of things we need to do to get you in proper hero shape. Number one: costume. Now get along, I’ll see ya out front.” With a nudge towards the locker rooms, Fatgum went to exchange his own hero costume for a sweatshirt and vest. He tucked some snacks into a bag, then met Tamaki at the entrance.
Somehow the kid looked even smaller dressed in a bulky coat, a backpack, and a scarf half burying his face. He fluttered out the door by Fatgum’s side like a nervous bird.
But the crisp air and semi-empty street appeared to calm Tamaki. His forehead relaxed from the tense wrinkles it had been stuck with since arriving at the agency; his gaze rose from being focused on his feet. Fatgum decided to take the advantage while he had it.
“Ya got a hero name yet?” he asked casually.
Tamaki startled a bit before hesitantly replying, “Suneater.”
Fatgum whistled, long and low. “That’s one heck of a name. How’d ya come up with that?”
“My friend Mirio gave it to me.” When Fatgum snuck a glance down, he watched Tamaki duck further into the scarf. That didn’t hide the red tips of his ears, though, and Fatgum chuckled. Seemed his intern got embarrassed about everything.
“Mirio, huh?” The name was familiar; he recognized it as Tamaki’s partner in the cavalry battle—the student who could phase through things. “That the kid you dropped at the sports festival?”
It’s a trick question really. Fatgum knew that student fell because he passed straight through Tamaki’s arms, but he wanted to bring back that fire that appeared in Tamaki earlier. He wanted to be told he was wrong.
“I didn’t mean to,” was the answer he got. Fatgum bit the inside of his cheek in thought as he veered right and entered their destination: the city library, a quiet place where Tamaki would have equal footing.
“Your Quirk would have been better suited for that role, ya know,” Fatgum said, squeezing himself through the security sensors. Tamaki followed a moment later with ease. “Your friend slipped right through those point headbands, but you could have grabbed them with a vine or something. You manifest what you eat, right?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t work.” Tamaki’s voice was so quiet that Fatgum was certain he though he was admitting some sort of weakness. Fatgum stopped their pace and turned to him.
“What do ya eat?”
Tamaki squirmed under his gaze, pulling at his jacket sleeves distractedly. His eyes flittered towards the check-out desk at the echoing volume of Fatgum’s voice. “Um…when?”
“Now, this morning, yesterday. What do ya eat for your quirk? How many meals?”
“Whatever’s at home, I guess,” Tamaki said, “Noodles, some chicken…Usually I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“Just three meals?” Fatgum shook his head incredulously. “Ya munch on anything during school?”
“I keep sunflower seeds in my pockets?” As if to prove it, Tamaki pulled out a little bag from his winter coat. “Sometimes I eat these.”
Staring down at the plastic wrapped seeds, Fatgum suddenly understood exactly why Tamaki hadn’t been able to hold the impressively useful set of wings he had sprouted during the festival, yet those flowers were somehow always readily available. Spinning around, Fatgum tracked his way towards the health section and started pulling familiar books off shelves. When Tamaki caught up to his larger strides, Fatgum dumped three books into his arms.
Tamaki scanned the spines. “ Health and the Teenage Body, Food to Energy, Nutrition for Dummies ?”
“Ya ain’t eating enough, kid.” Fatgum said, walking to another section. “Your Quirk’s like mine, ya need more than a normal amount of food to get it going. So—” He found the last book he wanted, one on food related quirks, and made a beeline for the back corner of the library. Tamaki came running after. “Number two on the list: make ya a better diet. The more ya understand about nutrition, the better grasp you’ll have on what stuff ya can make appear.”
Reaching the end of the aisles, Fatgum smiled at the huge area before them. It was perfect, full of comfortable pillows great for his back and graciously empty at this time on a school day.
But when he situated himself on the floor in a makeshift nest next to a brightly colored table, Tamaki still hadn’t crossed the threshold. Fatgum waited patiently, busied himself with removing a bag of chips and protein bars from his bag until Tamaki became anxious enough to voice his thoughts.
“This is the children’s section.” Tamaki said it like it should reveal something crucial to Fatgum. Looking around at the stuffed hero plushees and the kid’s books, Fatgum nodded. “We aren’t children.”
“No,” Fatgum laughed, “But luckily they don’t check I.D. Besides, maybe ya ain’t noticed, but I won’t fit into regular chairs. And this place has crayons which we need, so get in here.”
Tamaki’s face spasmed pleadingly, but when Fatgum only patted the space next to him, Tamaki came anyway. He glanced around the library red-faced to see if anyone was staring at the teenager moving a Cementoss pillow out of his way—but still, he placed his backpack down, laid the books on the table, and sat.
“Great!” Fatgum slapped Tamaki’s back happily and slid him a piece of paper. “We’ll come back to figuring out the best food for your offense. Right now, I want ya to draw your hero costume.” When Tamaki reached for the purple crayon, Fatgum clarified, “Not the one ya got now; the one ya want. Something that will make ya feel confident.”
He should have been more specific because after thinking about it, Tamaki drew what looked like a ghost with legs. There was a long pause as Fatgum contemplated just how to respond.
“No.”
Tamaki’s posture deflated as Fatgum brought him another piece of paper.
“You’re gonna be a hero, kid, not a spirit. Draw something practical.”
“I don’t like people looking at me,” Tamaki mumbled into his scarf. “I see their eyes, and I just—I can’t—my mind stops.”
“Ya freeze,” Fatgum offered. He’d seen it: the spectators, the announcers, the cameras—his intern had been acutely aware of all of it at the sports festival, more than he could focus on the opponent at hand. But that was solvable. Number three on the list then— “How can we limit your peripheral vision of other people to maximize your attention on villains?”
How quickly Tamaki came up with the idea of a hood showed Fatgum something he already knew from watching the student in action. The glimpses he had caught when Tamaki wasn’t so much reacting to his surroundings but preemptively moving. Those wings that had lifted him out of reach before any other student even found their footing in the arena. This kid was smart, could think critically when given the chance.
Fatgum wanted him to have that chance.
Eventually, Tamaki got down something that looked at least partially reasonable. While Fatgum wanted to laugh at how he felt the need for his hood to be accompanied by a mask and a mouth guard, Tamaki’s shoulders had relaxed from where they had been hovering near his ears. He even took Fatgum’s suggestion of attaching a cape for a bit of flair. So Fatgum called it a win.
As Tamaki drew pockets along the waist of his costume—a feature he noted was lacking from his current version—Fatgum twirled a crayon between his fingers and thought of how to broach the next problem. He decided to just ask.
“Ya don’t have a lot of self-esteem, do ya kid?” He meant it in jest, but Tamaki’s hand halted on the page and his mouth started working without words. Fatgum backtracked to try and sooth him. “Hey, look. Ya know why I picked ya as my intern?”
Tamaki leaned away from the table, tucked his hands in his lap, and refused to make eye contact as he responded, “Because you saw an impressive Quirk weighed down by a weak user, and you thought I wouldn’t be difficult to fix into a hero.”
Fatgum’s blood pounded cold. He hadn’t been expecting an answer, let alone one that felt like Tamaki spent time thinking about it. Let alone one so wrong .
Number four on the list: destroy every self-deprecating idea Tamaki had.
“No,” Fatgum boomed, louder than he intended because it jolted his nervous intern where he sat, but he needed to be assertive. He demanded Tamaki hear him. “It’s because I saw a resilient young man put himself into a situation he was uncomfortable with and who didn’t drop out.”
For Fatgum, there was no other way of looking at it. Though he never made it beyond the cavalry battle, Tamaki didn’t surrender to other students, even when they were larger and stronger and not at all fazed by his sunflowers. And although he probably dreaded it, Tamaki still accepted the internship, still sat in the children’s section, still did everything Fatgum asked because he wanted to be better .
Fatgum tried to project all of his impressions of Tamaki straight into his intern’s mind. And Tamaki’s mouth wavered from the hard frown that had settled from the initial question, like he wanted to believe Fatgum.
“But I didn’t win,” Tamaki pointed out.
Fatgum squinted down at him. “So? I never got past the first round of my sports festivals.” Tamaki’s head whipped up in shock. Fatgum nodded and brought his hands up in front of his left eye, peering through the small gap between them. “Yeah, never could seem to fit through that tiny beginning doorway quick enough. Couldn’t waste my fat either because there ain’t no way to gain it back for the battles. Guess I’m less of a hero too.”
“Wh-No!” Tamaki shook his head rapidly.
“Exactly.” Fatgum poked Tamaki’s forehead with the crayon. “I just worked harder outside of that competition, put in more effort to achieve what I wanted.”
Tamaki made a small humming noise and stared at the table in front of them, at the books and the paper. Fatgum leaned into his space a bit, pointing at the costume drawing.
“I’m seeing that right now, too. And ya know what? We ain’t building a hero from scratch, kid.” Fatgum took in the sight of his intern, posture tucked tight and closed off, peering back at him from under his bangs, uncertain. But in Tamaki’s eyes was a burning, something desperately powerful and determined. And Fatgum couldn’t help the broad grin that spread across his face. “We’re building up one that already exists .”