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There’s a quiet, timid knock against Shouta’s door, barely loud enough to wake him.
He reluctantly cracks an eye open to glance at the alarm clock on his side table. The numbers are still blurry, and it hurts to keep them open for more than a few seconds, but he’s pretty sure it’s somewhere near four in the morning. It’s not any of his coworkers, since he doesn’t bother locking his door - at least, not until Pants figures out how to open the knob here too. Most of them just barge in anyway.
Said cat, though, is staring wide-eyed at the door, sprawled across the arm of the couch he passed out on and thumping his stubby tail in Shouta’s face just in case he wasn’t awake yet. He doesn’t really want to get up. Not when his phone hasn’t gone off yet and he has to mentally prepare to deal with twenty-one far too awake children in mere hours. Kan’s already started to suspect his motives behind suggesting so many joint classes. If it’s that important, they’ll call.
They knock again after a few long moments instead, softer.
Shouta pushes himself up with a groan. Kohaku gives him an offended meow for daring to move his legs out from underneath her, stretching her front paws right into the warm spot he just vacated. Making a conscious decision to not get into a useless argument with a cat, he takes a breath and opens the door.
It’s the problem child, leaning against the door frame with his fingers twisted together. Because of course it is.
He’s not visibly injured in the brief once-over he gives the kid, which is more than he can say about the outcome of the exercise earlier today, but he does look anxious in a way that doesn’t bode well for his nonexistent sleep schedule. And, given that he hasn’t told any of his students which one of the teachers’ apartments is his, Midoriya should be.
Still, he shuffles further back from the door, shoulders near his ears and dressed in All Might pajamas so patently oversized Yagi would probably be jealous. Knowing the theories floating around his class, they might actually be hand-me-downs from the man himself.
“What.” Shouta grinds out.
“Sorry.” Midoriya says immediately, shrinking further into himself. He glances at the clock out the corner of his eye. 4:27. “I didn’t wanna wake you, Sensei, not if you were sleeping because you really don’t get enough and-.”
“Midoriya.”
The kid hunches in on himself even more than he thought possible with another apology, eyes flicking up to his face before skittering away. He keeps rambling, though, keeps coming up with increasingly absurd reasons he shouldn’t have woken him up like it’s not the reason all of the teachers are on campus to begin with. Shouta pushes a very insistent Pants away from the door with the side of his foot and a heavy sigh. “Get in here, problem child.”
Midoriya gets.
It’s an awkward shuffle around the cats with several attempts at tripping them both, once Kohaku decides to see what her brother is yelling about, but the kid’s set up on his couch soon enough. He looks small, half-huddled underneath the thick quilt Kayama bought him years ago with one cat gnawing on his fingers and the other trying to groom his hair. It does nothing to tame the messiness, but at least Kohaku can’t make it worse.
Shouta settles onto the other end of the couch, a leg tucked underneath him to make room and the coffee pot bubbling away behind them because there’s no way he’s getting back to sleep before his alarm goes off. Midoriya doesn’t look at him, clearly uncomfortable and far more focused on the cat. He doesn’t expect him to, honestly, because the kid is a champ at avoiding both eye contact and stating what he needs.
It’s going to be a long day ahead of him.
“What’s wrong.” Shouta says, cutting straight to the point after the moment stretches on too long for his liking. The machine quiets with one last gurgle of steam, letting the apartment lapse into the same not-quite silence as before. Midoriya fidgets.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, smoothing a thumb over Pants’ whiskers, “I just- I had a nightmare and, um. I…I had to make sure you were okay.” The kid doesn’t say anything else after that, hunching over enough to bury his face in overly fluffy belly fur.
He gets it.
Nightmares are never logical, or truly make sense after the fact, but the terror lingers long past turning the light on. Considering the fact that he and Yamada have spent far too many sleepless nights on each other’s floors, he gets it. Shouta doesn’t know what sort of dream Midoriya’s was, there were no details offered and he doubts there will be in the future, but he can guess.
It’s a very, very easy guess.
“I’m fine.” He says. Pauses, because that doesn’t sound adequate by itself and ‘it was just a dream’ is the sort of cliche he stopped believing in elementary school. “We’re both alive and safe, Midoriya. Your classmates are unharmed. There are no villains on campus.”
The kid takes an audible breath, slowly letting his shoulders relax. He waits until Midoriya is as much at ease as usual - which isn’t much, because he seems to be reckless anxiety given human shape, but the difference from before is notable.
“Well, if you don’t count Mic’s snoring.” Shouta says.
That gets a watery laugh, at least, which is probably a good thing. Pants doesn’t like that, apparently, wriggling off his lap and onto the floor with a thud before taking off into the other room. Kohaku scrambles after him a moment later with far less grace, nearly running straight into the wall. But Midoriya’s sitting up straighter now and actually looking his way.
“How d’you know Mic-Sensei snores?” He asks, probably genuinely curious.
Shouta snorts, pushing himself off the couch and towards his neglected coffee machine. There’s no way he’s telling him about his personal life, so.
“How did you find my apartment.” He counters, retrieving his mug and the sugar jar. “You know what his quirk does, Midoriya, extrapolate for yourself.”
That’s enough of a prompt for the kid to go on a verbal tangent, completely ignoring the first half of his statement. Shouta doesn’t mind the background noise, finding his creamer and the tin of hot chocolate mix before actually pouring the coffee in, halfway back to the couch before he realizes he should probably offer Midoriya something warm to drink.
“Coffee or tea?” He asks. Midoriya’s face contorts, cutting off in the middle of a word at the thought.
“Sensei,” he says slowly, “do you even have tea here?”
Which is fair, because Shouta’s pretty sure he threw out the last box he owned moving in.
“Don’t sass me.” He says, flat and unamused right up until the kid makes another overly exaggerated face, arms thrown over the back of the couch to face him and his legs tangled in the quilt. Pants tears out of his bedroom, nails scrabbling on the kitchen tile before running right back in.
It’s the most relaxed Shouta has ever seen Midoriya the entire semester. He doesn’t dwell on the thought.