Chapter Text
Midoriya Izuku shot awake from his nightmare, panting and gasping for air. He had a brief moment of panic where he wasn’t sure where he was before his reality sank down onto him. He relaxed back into his pillow and closed his eyes, feeling tears build up behind his eyelids. He’d had another nightmare about All Might, about everything he had done to him in those few months before he’d been arrested.
It had been six months since then, and he was now well into his second year at U.A. High School. Shigaraki and All for One had been defeated once and for all, and everyone at U.A. and their families were safely back at home. Sometimes, Izuku had nightmares about that time as well- being in a war when one was sixteen years old would do that- but mostly, his nightmares were about All Might, and his phantom touch on Izuku’s skin.
He felt pathetic , to say the least. All Might still had another four and a half years in prison, and there was no way he could get to Izuku. Yet, the lingering fear that he would somehow find a way resided in him like an itch in the back of his mind. He had been the number one hero for over twenty years, an all-powerful man who could do anything he wanted. Well, anything except sexually assault a teenager and get away with it, it seemed.
He opened his eyes to stare at his dark ceiling, his lashes wet from the tears he’d tried so hard to push away. While logically he knew that it was common for sexual assault survivors to have PTSD, he still couldn’t help but feel ashamed of it. It was like he felt that he should have been over it by now, not still constantly flinching when someone moved to touch him, not still plagued with nightmares and sleepless nights of unrest. He was training to be a hero for gods’ sake, he would have to deal with much worse things in the field than this.
Heaving a sigh, Izuku forced himself to sit up, scrubbing his hands over his face. He knew he could always go up to Kacchan’s room and knock on the door, but that felt like the coward’s way out. (Kacchan would probably yell at him for saying that, but whatever.) Instead, he got off of his bed and sat down at his desk, opening up his laptop. Once the screen brightened, he took a moment to squint and get used to the sudden light before he unlocked it and opened up his web browser. He stared at the search bar for a moment, wondering what he was even looking for. After a minute, he typed in “coping mechanisms.”
There hundreds of thousands of results, but Izuku clicked on the first result. He waited a moment for it to load before he scrolled down, reading all of the examples.
- Lower your expectations.
- Take responsibility for the situation.
- Ask others to help or assist you.
Izuku stared at the screen for a moment with disbelief. ‘ Take responsibility for the situation?’ Like it was his fault that All Might had groomed and raped him for months before he’d finally been caught? He scowled and clicked out of the page, going back to the search bar. This time, he typed in “trauma coping mechanisms,” and waited for the page to load. The bold text at the forefront of the page held five of the most common coping mechanisms for trauma.
Izuku narrowed his eyes as he read them, muttering out loud. “Overeating, oversleeping, drugs and alcohol…” He bit his lower lip. He didn’t have much of an appetite lately, but he still forced himself to eat what he could in order to aid his hero training. The oversleeping wasn’t an issue, because he hardly could sleep, and when he did, he was overwrought with nightmares. The drugs and alcohol were out of the question, considering he was underage and, again, a hero student.
Then his eyes caught on the last line. Cutting . He stared at it for a moment, letting the word mull over in his mind for a while before he swallowed. He let his eyes flick to the title of the page- “unhealthy coping mechanisms”- before he looked back down at the word. Well, that made more sense. Cutting yourself certainly couldn’t be recommended , even if it was apparently one of the most common coping mechanisms that people used to get through their trauma.
Izuku considered it for a moment. The only sharp things he had in his room were a pair of scissors, and the razor he used to shave his face. The scissors would be a bad idea, considering they were probably dull, but the razor… He shook himself out of it a moment later, slamming his laptop closed. What was he thinking ? He couldn’t start cutting himself! It was an unhealthy coping mechanism, it said so right on the page! Besides, surely his classmates and peers would notice something like that, not to mention Kacchan.
The thought of his boyfriend calmed Izuku down a little, and he let out the breath he’d been holding. Kacchan loved him, and he would be very upset if he found out Izuku was doing something like that. Izuku didn’t want to make him upset, or any of his other friends for that matter. God, his mother would cry her eyes out at the very thought of it. He shook his head, laughing a little at himself as he stood up, making his way back over to his bed. He flopped down and brought his pillow over his eyes, inhaling the familiar smell of his detergent and his shampoo. He was being ridiculous. He could get through this, just like he got through everything. The incident rescuing Eri had been stressful, but he’d done that. Running away from U.A. with Kacchan for two months at the end of their first year had been very stressful, but they’d gotten through that. He could get through this, too, he was sure.
He just had to give himself a little bit of time.
(x)
Deku was being weird. Katsuki watched his boyfriend from his place in the kitchen, where he had a perfect view of him at the dining table, playing cards with a few of their friends. Katsuki was making them some tea, because he’d noticed the dark circles under his boyfriend’s eyes growing bigger and bigger for the past few weeks. Now that their life was no longer a constant onslaught of villain attacks and people to defeat, Deku had a lot of time on his hands. A lot of time spent dwelling on everything, no doubt.
Katsuki would know. He thought about everything, too. He thought about the months he’d missed what Deku was going through, all of the signs he’d ignored. He thought about having to sit in the dorms, staring at his phone, praying that Deku would text him that he was alive during the work studies. He thought about the two months they had run away from U.A. together, when they’d lived on the streets and had to watch their backs every minute of every day and night. He thought about how he and Deku had teamed up to destroy Shigaraki and All for One only a month ago, ending their reign of terror and the war they had started in their first year.
He dwelled on shit too, but not like Deku. Deku had been there for all of it, whereas Katsuki had just sat on the sidelines for half of that. He hadn’t been a part of the raid that rescued Eri, and he hadn’t been the one who was raped weekly by the man who was supposed to protect and teach him. It must have been hell for Deku, something horrifying that he would never, ever be able to forget as long as he lived. Katsuki would do anything to take those memories, that pain , away from him, but he couldn’t.
But he sure as hell could be there for him while he figured out what to do.
He shook his head and took the tea bags out of the mugs, dumping them in the trash can before he grabbed them both and took his usual seat at Deku’s side. Kirishima and Uraraka playfully jeered about how they didn’t get any tea, and Katsuki snarked at them right back, all while Todoroki watched on with a small smile on his face. Deku thanked Katsuki for the tea and pecked him on the cheek before he returned his attention to the game.
Katsuki sipped his hot beverage and wondered what was going on in that beautiful head of his.
(x)
It was an accident the first time, Izuku swore . He’d been using a kitchen knife to chop up some vegetables for his breakfast when the knife slipped, and he sliced open the palm of his hand. He dropped his quickly and hissed, rushing to the kitchen sink to run his hand under hot water to try and stop the blood flow. For those few minutes, all he felt was the throbbing pain of his new wound, his mind completely and blissfully blank.
It wasn’t until he completely bandaged the cut that he realized it. He paused, still packing the first aid kit back up, then stared down at his hand. Since he’d cut it, all he’d been able to focus on was the pain and stopping the bleeding. For those ten minutes, he hadn’t thought once about All Might, about the war, or about any of the other terrible things that ran through his mind on any given day. It was… kind of nice.
‘ I can see why this is common,’ he thought dazedly, still staring at his palm.
“What are you doing?”
Izuku jumped, whirling around to face Kacchan, who was standing in the entrance of the kitchen with his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. Because it was a Saturday, he had woken up a bit later than usual, and hadn’t put on his school uniform. His hair was still rumpled up from sleep, and his eyes were soft around the edges. Izuku’s heart burst with affection for the man, and he smiled at him.
“Sliced my hand open making breakfast,” he explained, waving the offending hand in the air for a moment. Katsuki clucked his tongue and moved forward, taking Izuku’s hand to examine the cleanup job Izuku had done.
“Be more careful, shithead!” He said, reaching up to lightly thunk his fist on the top of Izuku’s curls. “You have enough scars on your hands already, don’t you think?”
Izuku chuckled, waving the offending hand off of his head. “Yeah, yeah, I got it. It was an accident, okay?”
Katsuki shook his head and stepped back, grabbing the knife off of the cutting board to rinse the blood off before he grabbed the sponge. “You go sit down, I’ll do the rest.”
“But Kacchan,” Izuku pouted. “I was making that for both of us! It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“Colour me sufficiently surprised,” Kacchan said dryly. “Now sit down, will you? I said I’ll finish it.”
Izuku grumbled, but did as his boyfriend asked, sitting down at the kitchen table. The sink stopped running a moment later, and then the soft sound of vegetables being chopped started up. Izuku looked down at his hand again, cocking his head to the side.
Later that night, he broke open the plastic on his razorblade and made his first deliberate cut on his upper thigh. He could confidently say then that it wasn’t a one-time occurance, and the pain of it really did help distract him from his problems, at least for a little while.