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Shōta isn’t typically one to care about other people’s feelings. Sure, he’s not going to say that—he’ll always listen and offer advice, but he doesn’t really care. It sounds kind of bad, but Shōta’s pretty sure as long as the people who are venting properly vent and the person they’re venting to actually listen, everything is fine.
But things are a little bit different, now. His homeroom class—they’re only kids, and every single one has gone through things that most people don’t go through until they become a sidekick—until they come an adult. Sixteen year olds parading around with knowledge and memories that should only ever echo in the minds of people like Shōta, Hizashi, Toshinori.
It’s an overwhelming thought. When he looks back on his own high school experience, and to his students’, he laughs bitterly. Poor brats.
New demons aren’t always the cause of emotional distress, that much is obvious. Shōta still wakes up sometimes, from nightmares about previous escapades that almost went wrong. He’s still trembling about the USJ—and what almost happened. What could’ve happened.
He doesn’t like to think about it.
Shōta doesn’t like to dwell on his emotions about his mental state. Becoming a hero—(an actual hero, not just one out for the glory of the media)—usually comes with developing PTSD and/or an anxiety disorder. Most of his students haven’t exhibited any of these issues yet, but if they’re serious, they will soon enough. However, a select few have, but he doubts they’re for the reasons he believes responsible.
Todoroki doesn’t seem to care much regarding the USJ, or even the Stain incident, but he gets uncomfortably tense and his eyes glaze over when his father is mentioned. Tsuyu doesn’t crumble at the thought of her nearly being disintegrated—she instead trembles at the thought of losing her friends. And Bakugou—Shōta doesn’t even know where to start with that one.
But it’s Midoriya Izuku that interests him the most. He’s fidgety, and his smile is a bit off. He struggles with maintaining eye contact, but his eyes sparkle when someone brings up heroes. His voice trails off, getting too soft at times, or too loud at others. He flaps his arms when he’s nervous, and his fingers are always moving. Shōta suspects it’s sign language—muttering without the risk of getting accosted for it. The kid cries at any sense of validation, and he vibrates with glee when someone tells him it’s okay to infodump; it’s okay to be yourself.
He recalls when Midoriya told him in the beginning of the school year— Sensei, I’m autistic, so sorry about the, uhm, muttering. And the shaking. And the flapping! It’s just how I cope and keep my mind focused and— Shōta had shut him up quickly enough, telling him it was fine. The misty tears that formed and the watery smile that didn’t look quite right is engraved into Shōta’s head forever, now.
It seems Midoriya was worried that Shōta would hate him for being autistic, which in turn made Shōta wonder what the kid’s other teachers were like, if he was this scared of Shōta’s reaction.
Aside from Midoriya’s autism, there’s also the fact he never takes off his sweater when he’s in the dorms. It’s baggy, loose, and definitely too warm considering it’s summer. But it never comes off.
Shōta doesn’t dwell on it. Maybe the texture calms him down.
“Shōtaaaaaaaa,” Hizashi whines out. “Come on, I did the laundry AND the grocery shopping last time!”
“Hhhhn,” is all Shōta manages. He’s still half-asleep, but wakes up quickly enough. “I’ll do the groceries. You take care of the laundry. We can do them at the same time,” he grumbles, stretching out. Hizashi pouts but complies.
“I’m taking the car, honey!”
This is dumb. Shōta groans in his head. We’re pro-heroes that are also teachers and we still haven’t bought a damn washing machine.
The grocery store isn’t too long of a walk anyways.
When he does get to it, a few stares are sent his way, but that’s more for being a Yuuei teacher than being pro-hero Eraserhead. No one really knew who he was, or what he did, so it wasn’t like he was going to get mauled the same way All Might used to. Used to. The thought feels sad.
Shōta was comparing different cereal brands when an oddly familiar voice echoes in his peripheral scope of hearing.
“W-What are you doing here?” A shaky voice says. Shōta’s ear twitched. Midoriya.
“I dunno, what are you doing here, Sachi?” A deeper, cockier voice replies. “Don’t’cha go to Yuuei? How’d’ja manage to trick them all into thinking you’re a boy, or that you’re not a freak?”
Shōta flickers his eyes to the scene. He recalls Midoriya having left the dorms for the weekend—he wanted to visit his mother. Midoriya has his fist clenched, and it looks like he’s struggling to maintain eye contact. “I didn’t trick them. They just believe in me.”
Nameless kid laughs. “Oh please, Midoriya. Everyone at our school knew you were just a weird little freak—”
“I was never a freak!” Midoriya snaps. Snaps. It’s uncharacteristic of him. “Everyone just decided since I was different, it meant I was some kind of plague on society! I’m not a freak, I’m just transgender and autistic,” his voice steadily rising but not loud enough to actually worry anyone around him. Nameless kid’s eyes widen, his fingers stretching out to an unnatural length, and then he finger guns at Midoriya.
Shōta is stunned. Transgender? It explained a lot, when he looks back on Midoriya’s mannerisms and his tendency to do laundry late at night. The baggy sweater makes sense, too.
How did Shōta not recognize the signs? He did the same damn thing when he was in school.
“Sure, Sachi,” Nameless kid drawls. The way he says the name: it sounds like a weapon. In a moment of horror, realization flashes in Shōta’s mind. His deadname. “Honestly, I thought better of Yuuei. I didn’t know they accepted girly reta—” Another realization hits Shōta like a whip. The kid currently tormenting his student was also a kid that previously tormented his student.
Midoriya looks shaken, terrified, even—and Shōta’s wondering what in Hell made Midoriya so scared of just another human. Another human that wasn’t in Hero Training from the looks of it. And if that human is making Midoriya so scared he’s trembling...
That’s enough.
Shōta walks over to the two teenagers, and erases the kid’s Quirk, watching in morbid satisfaction as the fingers return back to a natural length. “I’d appreciate if you left my student alone,” Shōta says curtly, putting a hand on Midoriya’s shoulder and squeezing reassuringly. The kid gapes, mouthing the word Eraserhead as his eyes freeze in fear. He mutters something Shōta can’t hear, but Midoriya seemingly did since he tenses beneath Shōta’s squeeze. With that, the kid stalks away. Shōta feels his hair return to brushing his shoulders, and he irritably gets his eye drops out.
“Midoriya.” Shōta says after he’s applied his eye drops. The boy flinches, readying himself for a hit. That’s worrying.
“A-Aizawa-sensei,” the boy returns nervously. He’s ringing his fingers anxiously. “H-How much did you hear?”
“Enough,” is all he says. “Why’d that happen?” Midoriya’s still shaking. His eyes flicker off to the side, as if his childhood bully is going to return when the pro-hero Eraserhead is at Midoriya’s side. “You looked scared. I don’t think you looked half as terrified when Himiko came at you with her knife.”
Midoriya scratches the back of his head. His eyes look misty. “That—the whole, ‘oh, you’re a girl’ and ‘what a retard’ stuff—that’s the stuff I grew up hearing. Not a day of my life that I didn’t hear those words. I-I guess I internalized it. And when I hear it from them: the people who were the ones saying it, I just... freeze. Suddenly I was six again, being forced into a girl’s uniform by the boys or having mud shoved into my mouth.”
Shōta’s heart doesn’t feel as tired as it usually does, after someone’s vented to him. He feels sympathetic. He also keeps in mind what he said: suddenly I was six. That implies the harassment was going on for at least a decade. It wasn’t hard to connect those pieces together. Shōta debates whether or not he should bother asking. “Kid,” he says, finally. Whatever. “Did your old teachers ever do anything about it?”
“A-Ah,” Midoriya stutters out. “No… since it was Kacchan’s… friends—” Lackeys. “—doing it, the teachers never stepped in. They were too scared to get in the way because they thought Kacchan was involved, and Kacchan always get what he wants… They didn’t want to danger his education or place in the school.”
“So they let an entire school harass you? What about your education, Midoriya?”
“The loss of one is better than the loss of three. T-The school let me change my name and gender,” Midoriya says, a little too softly but loud enough Shōta can hear. “That was enough for me. I could deal with the burns and the hits and the names as long as no one called me… Sachi,” his voice goes inaudible at the last word. “Kacchan was the nicest about the name thing… he called me Deku, which came from Izuku. When he started calling me Deku, it meant he was basically calling me Izuku. So everyone else did, too.”
Burns. Hits.
Shōta was no where near apathetic right now. This was close to home. “When did this start?”
“W-When I was, um, around four. My Qui—oh…” Midoriya’s voice peters out. “I don’t know if I can tell you any of this. It’s c-confidential.”
“If it’s connected to your Quirk, All Might already debriefed me,” Shōta says wryly, his typical humor breaking out from underneath the cold exterior he was putting on for the sake of conversation. “It would’ve been good to know at the beginning of the year, considering it all, but I understand why a Quirk like that would remain under wraps.”
Midoriya swallows. “My Quirk… I didn’t have one. That’s why Kacchan hates me. Well, there’s that, and his…” Midoriya taps his ear. “I’m sure Kacchan forced his parents not to mark it down, but Kacchan is hard of hearing. I figured it out when we were kids, and I learned sign language to try and reconnect with him… he got upset. A-And he thought I was being lazy, because I wanted to be a hero but I never trained aside from my notebooks. B-But, no one would take me. The gyms were expensive and my mom and I couldn’t afford memberships, and I couldn’t find anyone willing to train a Quirkless nobody one-on-one.”
When Shōta doesn’t say anything, Midoriya seems to think it’s a bad thing. “O-Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time, Aizawa-sensei. I’ll be going now, my mom needs some ingredients…”
Shōta’s a bad person to vent at. He’s not good at relating to other people and their feelings. He’s not like Hizashi, Nemuri—Hell, he’s not even like Midoriya, Uraraka, Ashido, or Kirishima. He’s not good at the whole cheerful thing, or pretending to be cheerful. However...
Midoriya doesn’t need someone to be cheerful. He just needs someone to listen.
Before Shōta can convince himself otherwise, he spits it out:
“Midori—Izuku,” Shōta corrects. “If you ever need support from another trans hero… You can always talk to me.”
His eyes widen. “Y-You—”
“I am,” Shōta interrupts. “I’m not like Tiger—I never announced it, but just know. There are more of us. We’re just not out. There’s also Thirteen… if you want to talk to her.” Shōta feels a little nervous; it’s not everyday you come out to your own student. It’s the first time in his years of working at Yuuei this has ever happened. Honestly, Shōta really likes it.
Midoriya’s eyes are shining. “Aizawa-sensei, thank you so much. I really appreciate this.”
Shōta shoots his student a smile. “Just doing my job, kid.”