Work Text:
The problem child and Eri came back from their day on the town with thrice their weight in shopping bags and a haunted look tucked into the corners of their eyes and smiles, and Shouta sinks into the couch as he feels discomfort settle in his gut, and he knows that his life is, yet again, about to get a little bit harder because of the greenette.
Damn problem child.
His students descend on the pair like the locusts they are, keenly curious about all the bags, and Shouta decides that it's a perfect time to take a well deserved nap.
--
Shouta wakes to find that he has, somehow, acquired a lapful of cuddly six year old, gently bundled up in a unicorn blanket he didn't recognize.
It's a...startling realization, he'll admit. Not that the girl had sought his comfort, that was fine and normal, but more the fact that he didn't wake up when it happened. As a Pro Hero- an Underground Hero- he was an extremely light sleeper. It was....disconcerting, the thought that he was so comfortable in the UA dorms that an entire child could get settled in his lap and he wouldn't even wake up.
This didn't bode well. The dorms were for the student's safety, not his own. He wasn't any help if he was too asleep to deal with actual things that happened.
He'd work on it, he mentally noted, added to his endless things to work on in hopes that maybe, one day, he'll stop failing his charges.
There isn't much he can do, now that he's awake, but he's that sort of awake that means he knows he won't fall asleep again. He sighs and opens his eyes to assess his surroundings.
His vision is filled with a neon blue square. A piece of paper? Curious, he lifted the hand that wasn't cradling Eri to touch his forehead, and pulled off a neon orange sticky note.
'NAP IN PROGRESS! DO NOT DISTURB >:(' Was written in hot pink, surrounded by drawn on angry faces and Xs, topped off by a few stickers of knives and a pinch of glitter that, for their sake (whoever they are, but it's not like it'd be hard to unveil), better not have gotten on his face or clothes.
He pulled a face at the eyesore of a note- a definitely not smile, far too annoyed to be a smile, shut up Hizashi sort of face, and crumpled it up with an annoyed shake of his head.
A giggle sounded out from the room, purposefully loud, and his head shot up to look around. With years of practice, they landed on a green head of hair illuminated by a computer sitting on the floor, at the foot of the couch beside him. He relaxed again, petting Eri's head so she didn't stir subconsciously at his alarm as she occasionally did.
"Problem Child." He acknowledged, a little chiding, because the little shit startled him, and also- "What are you doing up at this hour?"
(It didn't matter much that he wasn't sure exactly what this hour was. It was late, he could feel it.)
"Researching Hero Law." the kid shrugs, giving him a quick smile before scowling at his screen. "The commission is bullshit."
"Legally, I can't agree with you." Shouta remarks lightly, just shy of a warning. The kid makes an aggravated noise.
"My point exactly."
"Touché." Shouta sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Anything in particular bring about your sudden interest?"
Midoriya pursed his lips and didn't answer, which was just. A wonderful sign.
"Would it have anything to do with why you were late coming back today?" He prodded, and Midoriya's eyes hardened with suddenly renewed spite.
Damn it, he didn't get paid enough to curb his student's self-radicalization.
"I'll take that as a yes." He remarked when Midoriya failed to reply, and he got a slightly sheepish look. Better then nothing. "So something happened while you and Eri were out today. Something that ended with you taking even more umbridge with the HPSC then usual, and Eri gaining twice her weight in gifts."
"It's what she deserves." The kid muttered, still only paying half attention to him. He wrote something down in a notebook it was too dark for Shouta to see. "And the Commission is bullshit. Nothing new there."
"It was bad enough that you can't sleep." Shouta continued, like Midoriya hadn't said anything. The boy rolled his eyes, which was fair. Most of his students this year had trouble sleeping. "It was bad enough that you won't let Eri out of your sight." He guessed, and Midoriya flinched. Bingo. "You felt guilty about it, so you went on a shopping spree with her."
The kid glared at him. Shouta held his gaze.
"...It was more vindictive the guilty." Midoriya finally admitted, a little defensive, before going back to work.
"Vindictive?" Shouta frowned, trying to figure out what he meant by that. "How do you vindictively burn a thousand dollars of your savings on toys?"
"You don't." the kid offered.
Shouta's a smart man. So he does the smart thing, and lets out very large sigh.
"It wasn't your money." The kid hummed, and clicked over to another tab. Added another note. A terrible but perfectly fitting idea struck him, and he sunk a little into his capture weapon. "It was the commissions' money. It was hush money."
Midoriya hummed, not confirming it, but not denying it either.
"Legally, I can't agree with you." The brat responded. Shouta bit back a groan.
"Problem Child."
"Yes sensei?" Midoriya giggled, and it sounded a little less forced then he first one he did to alert Shouta of his presence initially.
"What..." He started, cause he at least had to try, but Midoriya shook his head.
"You know I can't tell you, sensei." He said, in a voice that mirrored Shouta's own almost-warning. It was actually a little cute, without context.
Shouta took a second to consider what he was about to say, but it wasn't really a question.
"You can. If you want to, if you need to, you can." He whispered. There was no reason to- not even Nezu put camera's inside the dorms, god knows these kids deserve whatever privacy they can afford them- but he did it anyway.
Midoriya's fingers stuttered to a shocked stop, and he turned to Shouta with wide eyes. Shouta didn't shy away from the student's sharp gaze.
"You...are aware that me telling you about it would be in direct conflict with the HPSC's orders and best interest." The kid whispers, voice small and broken, just a little shaking and scared.
His nod was barely there, little more then a tightening of his neck muscles. It's enough to make tears fall down Midoriya's face anyway.
Slowly, Midoriya closes the laptop with shaking hands and shoves his notebook into his hoodie. He lays his head on the couch by Shouta's leg, stares at Eri, and doesn't say another word as his blinks get longer and he falls asleep.
(And if Shouta idly runs a hand through the boys curls, trying to get himself to sleep as well? That's neither here nor there.)
--
Midoriya doesn't talk to him for a few days after that. If Shouta had to guess, he was probably spooked by Shouta's offer- listening to him rant and subtly suggesting reading material is one thing, but such a blatant act of choosing him over the Commission...Midoriya already had a strangely lack self-worth, that wasn't a secret. It wasn't really a surprise that the show of support scared him. Shouta let him keep his distance.
That didn't mean he didn't keep tabs on the boy, though- He was still extremely concerned about Midoriya getting paid off by the Commission. Midoriya and Eri were being extra clingy and inseparable- she'd been found sleeping in his room every day this week- and he was getting more closed off from his classmates as dumped more and more time into whatever revolution he was cooking up way too young. As far as anyone could tell, the only time he was eating or sleeping was when Eri whined at him about being hungry or tired.
It was all concerning, but Shouta shrugs it off for now. Give the kid some space. Better yet, give his friends a chance to deal with it, cause it's not like Shouta was known for his emotional tact.
That all went out the window when he got an alert one night telling him a student had accessed the roof past curfew. His mind flashed with that empty look in Midoriya's eye, and feared the worst despite himself.
He opened the door to the roof, and saw nothing. He looked around the perimeter of the railings and came up empty, and then-
"Aizawa-sensei?" A voice calls, over by the door. Shouta turns around and finally spots Midoriya, sitting up against the back wall to the door down. In she shadow, under a moonless sky, he could barely make out the boy's bright green eyes. There was a still lump against the boy's chest- probably a sleeping Eri. "Are you okay?"
"You're the one alone on a roof after hours." Shouta returned, instead of answering, because he wouldn't admit that the problem child scared him.
Midoriya flinched at the sentence, like it was anything but pure fact.
"Ah, sorry Aizawa-sensei, I'm- I'm not...." He trailed off with a note of uncertainty. His eyes flickered down to Eri and stayed firmly there, like he was actively avoiding looking at the edges of the roof. "Eri wanted to see the stars, but we didn't want to leave the dorm, and my balcony is too small to lay down, so we came up here."
"You broke the lock." Shouta pointed out, strolling over with sharp eyes. Midoriya gives him a slightly sheepish smile and a little nod of consent when Shouta lay beside him. Shouta is just tall enough that his leg almost dangles off the ledge.
"I didn't think there was an alarm tied to it, and I planned to pay for it. Eri wanted to see the stars." He tried to justify. Shouta tried to give him an unimpressed stare, but the angle was too awkward and the lighting to dim to be conveyed well, so he settled for a judgmental huff.
He thought about leaving it at that, nodding and going back to bed, but something about leaving Midoriya alone on a rooftop unsettled him. So instead they sat in silence for a while, watching the stars. They really were rather nice, he'd admit, but most of his attention was still on the two kids beside him. Every so often, Midoriya would pull out his phone and check it, but he didn't seem interested in getting up any time soon.
Shouta accepted that he would be here for a while, and let himself fall asleep. He'd wake up if the problem child got up, and just cause Midoriya was pulling another all-nighter didn't mean Shouta would. He was tired as hell.
By the time he woke up, it was a little less then an hour before sunrise, and Midoriya was laughing.
"What's so funny?" He asked, peeking an eye open. Eri had curled into his left side at some point, which he vaguely remembered half-waking up for.
Midoriya turned to him with a manic grin and shoved a phone into his face. It was only his finely honed reflexes as a pro-hero that stopped it from hitting his nose, as he pulled it back and read what was on the screen.
It was an article, about a handful of commission middle-management being deemed unfit for their positions and dismissed. Nothing of particular note, as far as Shouta could tell.
Still, it was clearly important to his student, so he read the article all the way through. Most of the circumstances around their dismissal were deemed confidential, but the general gist of it seemed to be lies and laziness that almost led to an unspecified threat to the public. He looked up to question the greenette-
and found him pacing the roof anxiously and crying. Shouta was a bit impressed the boy didn't break his neck with that emotional whiplash.
"he- He's..." The boy trailed off, looking at Shouta like a caged animal and stuttering to a stop. Shouta opened his other eye and sat up and made eye contact, as he focused on finding the right thing to say because teenagers were so easy to fuck up. Ugh, why was he a teacher?
"You can tell me. If you want to." He reminded the greenette, voice even, because this was important, it was something he needed to know Midoriya knew.
With a grimaced, whatever mental wall Midoriya was in the process of pulling up shattered. His pacing started again, worse then ever.
"Overhaul's dead." Midoriya gasped. He was, well aware, just like everyone was, so Shouta nodded slowly as he sat up to get a better view of the boy, tenderly readjusting his grip on Eri to lean her against his sitting side.
This was the wrong reaction. Midoriya started tugging harshly at his hair- harsh enough that Shouta winced, and he wasn't even the one who's hair was being pulled out. He's reminded, again, of this teenager's scarily, concerningly high pain tolerance.
"He- He wasn't." Midoriya choked out, like the words hurt to say, but he did anyway. Shouta let him. He wasn't sure what else to do- this seemed like something Midoriya needed to say, no matter how strange. "When...When Eri and I w-went out. He wasn't. Over-Overhaul, he found us, he-" Midoriya clutched at his stomach.
Shouta's mouth went dry with horror, but he couldn't pull together anything to actually say before Midoriya continued.
"He threatened Eri, and I, I tried to just run away sensei I did I swear but he sh-sh-sh-shot me, and it was supposed to take my quirk so I couldn't run and I had to fight, and I, Sensei, sensei I-I-I-I-" He started repeating himself, caught on the word like a broken record. Shouta's light grip on Eri tightened, to remind himself the girl was there and ok. He wished he could do the same to Midoriya, but the kid seemed to be spiraling and he didn't want to risk it, but fuck. Could these kids not get a single goddamn break?
Midoriya made a keening noise, and barreled into Shouta's chest as sobs got impossible to suppress further and spilled out onto Shouta's shirt. Shouta's heart broke, even though he still didn't know what Midoriya did.
It didn't matter. He rubbed circles in the boy's back and turned his head to rest against Shouta's heartbeat in hopes it would keep him calm. He did what he could to calm the boy down, because that was the most important thing here.
He isn't surprised when Eri stirs, what with all the noise and shaking and her seeming emotional telepathy with Midoriya. Really, he's more surprised it took her so long.
But he is surprised when she sits back and stares him down, instead of moving to try and comfort Midoriya. He gives her a questioning look, and she shoots a quick glance at Midoriya- still trying to say whatever it is with little success- and nods, seeming to decide something before turning back to him.
"Deku killed him." Eri reveals blankly, and Midoriya cuts off his rambling to stare at her. Did he notice her wake up? "He tried to hurt me again, so Deku made sure he couldn't." She asserts, voice getting a little shaky at the end. "Don't be mad."
Holy Shit. Midoriya killed someone.
"Eri..." Midoriya muttered, taking a hesitant step towards them. Eri takes this as her cue to barrel into Midoriya's legs and cling on, in something close to a hug. Midoriya absently messes with her hair.
Shouta's first thought is that the kid needs all the therapy, but that's immediately scraped. All the pieces are falling perfectly into place now. The commission thought Overhaul was dead, but he wasn't, so he found and attacked the kids. Then Midoriya killed him, probably on accident, and the commission paid him off to pretend it didn't happen because god forbid the commission be wrong.
He honestly didn't know what to do with this information. He'd need to think on it. But for now....
Midoriya looked at him like a man awaiting a death sentence. Probably thought that Murder would get him expelled, which was fair, but Shouta just couldn't bring himself to do it. Not when there were obviously extreme circumstances, and he clearly isn't proud of or happy about it (though, a little worryingly, Eri might be).
"C'mere kid." Shouta sighed, waving him over. Cautiously, Midoriya approached, and then yelped when Shouta pulled him in for a hug, while Eri giggled at the movement and immediately snuggled back into his side, though she kept Midoriya's hand in a death grip. All the physical contact was unusual, a little uncomfortable, but it was obviously what the boy needed, because even wrapped as tight as a spring he still melted into the embrace in record time, shifting to be more comfortable.
"S-sensei?" He questioned, looking up cautiously. Shouta was too busy thinking to meet his eyes, but he absently patted the kid's curls reassuringly. The greenette let out a sob. "It was- he wasn't- He hurt Eri. He tortured her, and he tried to kill us, and he killed people and tried to bring down hero society and he was obviously going crazy anyway, and- and it's a good thing he's dead. It's better for everyone. No one would be angry with me cause everyone thought he was dead anyway, the world's better off with him gone. We're better off with him gone! I wasn't upset he was dead the first time, so why, why-" Midoriya rambled, then muffled another sob into Shouta's shirt. Eri griped the boy's arm reassuringly, and Shouta ran a head through his hair.
He gritted his teeth. Fuck the greater good. This kid shouldn't have had to kill anyone, and the Commission shouldn't have the right to just....sacrifice his mental health on the alter of 'not causing civil unrest'.
But he did, and they have, and Shouta's just gonna have to work with it, because he refuses to be just another person the kid should be able to trust that fails him.
"I'll figure something out." He promised, watching the sun finally peek over the horizon and start to rise. "You're going to be ok. I'll figure something out."