Work Text:
THE RULES:
1. If you feel like you want to cut, use a marker or pen to draw a butterfly wherever you want to hurt yourself.
2. If you want, name the butterfly after someone who loves you.
3. Don’t wash the butterfly off.
4. If you cut before the butterfly fades away, the butterfly dies. If you don’t cut, the butterfly has lived and flown away.
5. Another person can draw butterflies on you. These butterflies are extra special. Take good care of them.
6. You can wear butterflies to show support even if you don’t struggle with SH.
ㅡ
Hizashi and Shouta became friends early in their first year at UA, but it wasn’t until their second year that Hizashi found out about the cutting. Shouta’s mental health had been steadily declining for a while. Sometime in November, the cutting became much more frequent, until he had to wear long-sleeved hoodies or his blazer at all times.
Hizashi noticed quickly. And he wasn’t stupidㅡhe knew what this, along with Shouta’s subdued demeanor, pointed to.
After school, Hizashi started following Shouta to his house each day and staying there for most of the afternoon while they did their homework. At first, Shouta tried to make Hizashi stop, but Hizashi firmly told him he was not about to leave. However, he did have to leave each evening and go home, so he continued worrying about his friend.
Shouta knew what Hizashi was doing. He had noticed Hizashi eyeing his sleeves and the way his fingers picked at his bloody cuticles. So one evening when Hizashi finally asked him about it, he told the truth.
“Shouta.” It broke the silence in the room. Hizashi was sitting sideways at the foot of Shouta’s bed while Shouta lay on his side, feet almost touching Hizashi’s thigh. Shouta was scrolling on his phone, but he looked over at Hizashi tiredly. Hizashi hesitated, but then continued. “I’m kinda worried about you.”
“Yeah, I know,” Aizawa responded, his voice rough. Hizashi nodded and looked down at his lap, fidgeting with the strings of his hoodie.
Aizawa sat up and rolled up his sleeves. He unceremoniously held out both arms to Hizashi. Both forearms were covered in band-aids and half-healed scabs. Hizashi’s only reaction was a blink and a slight inhale, not even a gasp. Clearly he wasn’t really surprised.
Shouta kept looking down at his arms, not making eye contact. Slowly, Hizashi reached out and took both of Aizawa’s wrists in his hands. “It’s been a rough few months, hasn’t it,” he said wetly.
Shouta nodded and looked back up at Hizashi. His friend was looking down at their hands as he stroked his thumbs along the band-aids on Shouta’s skin.
Hizashi looked back up at Shouta. After a few seconds of eye contact, he pulled him into a hug. Shouta melted into Hizashi’s arms, closing his eyes at the warm contact. “I’m glad you told me,” Hizashi said.
Shouta wasn’t sure yet if he was glad. “Are you going to tell anyone?” he asked, worried.
“I wanna try something else first,” Hizashi stated. “First answer this: do you want to get better?”
“Yeah,” Aizawa confirmed, nodding slightly.
“Okay. Let me show you something.” Hizashi got up from the bed and plopped down in Shouta’s desk chair. He opened the middle drawer and rifled through it for a moment, finally withdrawing a sharpie.
He then came back over and sat next to Aizawa again on the bed. He took one of Shouta’s hands and drew it into his lap, finding an empty part of his arm, just below the inside of his elbow. There, he drew a simple butterfly with curly antennae.
Shouta stared down at the small design. He stroked his fingers over it. Hizashi re-capped the marker with a sharp click. “Let me tell you the rules,” he said.
Shouta killed his first butterfly. But Hizashi drew a new one on him the next day, then hugged him and told him it was alright. The new butterfly faded slowly until it was gone. Shouta didn’t let it die.
After that, every time Shouta had a bad night, he drew a butterfly on himself. He often let Hizashi sketch them while he was at school. He tried extra hard not to kill those butterflies.
By the time graduation came around, Shouta had been clean for almost five months. Hizashi told him he was proud and drew an extra-intricate butterfly on his arm in celebration.
ㅡ
Shouta hadn’t been doing so well. USJ was a major blow to his mental health, and even a few months into his recovery, he was reaching one of the worst emotional lows since high school.
The villain attacks of the last few months had left Aizawa in a constant state of crippling anxiety. He had nightmares every night about his students dying, Mic had witnessed a few flashbacks to USJ, and he remembered concerningly little about the Kamino Ward battle.
But tonight his depression had come back full-force. As usual, he stayed up later than his husband. At about eleven, sitting alone in the kitchen, the loneliness and terror hit hard and left him sobbing on the floor.
It took about ten minutes before Shouta started thinking about cutting. He was already digging his fingernails into his arm, but it wasn’t enough, he needed more. Shouta looked down through blurry vision at the rows of faded scars on his arms.
Shouta stumbled to his feet, shaking his hands up and down, trying to calm his breathing. It wasn’t working. So he scanned the kitchen counter. His brain urged him to reach for the knife drawer, but he resisted. Instead, he yanked open the junk drawer next to it. He threw the scissors into the sink to remove the temptation and dug through the drawer until he found a black sharpie.
He sunk back down to the ground, back resting against the cabinets. He took a few deep breaths, but it didn’t help much. So he uncapped the sharpie and started drawing lines on his arm. Slowly, applying pressure, he traced five lines onto his wrist.
Then, above them, he started sketching out a small butterfly. Slim oval body. Long, curly antennae. Four leaf-shaped wings. Deep breath.
Shouta stared down at the butterfly on his inner arm. Don’t kill the butterfly.
He drew a few more lines with the marker, then dropped his face into his hands, letting himself cry a bit more. The uncapped marker fell onto the floor and lay beside him.
“Shouta?” The groggy question came from the hallway. Shouta looked up with a sniffle to see Hizashi, in boxers and an oversize shirt, standing at the entrance to the kitchen. “Oh…” Hizashi woke up a bit more at the sight of Shouta on the floor. He shuffled over and knelt down beside his husband. Another painful sob escaped Shouta as Hizashi took his hand and started massaging his wrist.
Hizashi took in the sight of the messy butterfly Shouta had drawn and the uncapped sharpie still on the floor. “Here,” Hizashi murmured gently. He picked up the abandoned marker and started drawing his own butterfly next to Shouta’s. Shouta still couldn’t stop crying, and Hizashi’s tenderness was making it worse, but he let him continue.
And he didn’t stop after the first butterfly. Once he had drawn one, he flipped Aizawa’s arm over and drew another on the outside of his arm. And then another one.
Shouta’s tears had started slowing at that pointㅡhe could see again. But Hizashi just scooted around to Shouta’s other side and took his right arm as well. Shouta watched intently, still sniffling, as Hizashi drew four more butterflies on his right forearm. He added tiny details to them, dots and shapes on their wings until each butterfly was unique. When he was finally done, both of Shouta’s forearms were covered in sharpie butterflies.
Hizashi kissed Shouta gently on the forehead. The pain had drained away, leaving the usual emptiness, but for once it was accompanied by the soft warmth from Hizashi’s affection.
Hizashi stood slowly and pulled Shouta to his feet. Shouta leaned on him while he led them into the bedroom.
ㅡ
The next morning, Shouta felt marginally better. The sight of Hizashi’s butterflies on his arms brought an almost-smile to his face.
In the kitchen, Hizashi greeted him with a bowl of hot rice and eggsㅡmore effort than either of them usually put into breakfast. Aizawa kissed him briefly in gratitude and ate the rice slowly, savoring the flavors of his food. Zashi sat next to him in silence, reaching over and touching him every few minutesㅡrubbing his back, taking his hand, tracing the butterflies. It was comforting.
Aizawa went through the day in his usual exhaustion, napping during lunch and breaks. He was so emotional that he almost burst into tears twice, just because he was looking at his class and was suddenly incredibly grateful they were all alive.
He called in and got out of patrol that day, opting to rest at home for that night. Hizashi got home from the radio station at five, so they cooked a simple dinner together and spent the evening on the couch with Shouta’s head in Hizashi’s lap.
The butterflies were the last thing Shouta looked at before going to sleep next to his husband. He took a few deep breaths and reminded himself of the rules as he traced the elaborate details Hizashi had drawn on his skin, blooming over his old scars.
ㅡ
Showing the butterflies to his class was an accident. But Shouta was almost glad it happened.
The first person to spot the butterfly under his sleeve was Kaminari. Halfway through the period Aizawa came over to help a few of the kids at Bakugou’s table. As he pointed out something on Mina’s worksheet, his sleeve hiked up enough to reveal part of the butterfly on his wrist.
“Yo, Aizawa, you have a tattoo?” Kaminari blurted out incredulously.
Aizawa leveled him with an unimpressed look. He rolled his eyes. “No,” he said firmly, pulling his sleeve down and moving on to the next group of students.
But somehow that afternoon he forgot again and rolled his sleeves up slightlyㅡit had been a while since the last time he had to hide his arms so carefully.
“Hey Aizawa-sensei, why do you have butterflies all over your arms?” Uraraka asked cheerfully, smiling at him. He blinked and looked down again. He didn’t answer for a moment.
“Oh,” Aizawa heard Midoriya say quietly. Startled back into the present, Shouta started rolling his sleeves back down, but looked up at Midoriya. “Is it, um. The Butterfly Project?” Midoriya asked, too kindly for his own good.
Aizawa blinked at him. “Um,” he said intelligently.
Midoriya smiled and pushed his blazer sleeve up, showing everyone at the table a faded butterfly on his own arm.
“Ohh, what’s that for, Deku?” Uraraka asked exuberantly.
Before Midoriya could answer, Aizawa sighed and spoke to everyone. “I’ll tell you about it. It’s called the Butterfly Project.”
He got the whole class’s attention, before starting an impromptu lesson.
“I suppose this is something you should all know about. It can be a really helpful strategy for some people. And you all know that plenty of teens struggle with anxiety and depression.” Everyone was listening silently, even the Bakusquad, who were usually most easily distracted. He cleared his throat. “That’s especially important to remember in a class like this. Everyone here has gone through some really difficult things in the past year.”
Aizawa turned and wrote the rules on the board.
“The Butterfly Project is a strategy to deal with urges to self-harm. All you do is draw a butterfly on yourself with a marker or pen. Or have someone else draw it on you. And then you have to let the butterfly fade away without cutting. If you self-harm before it’s gone, you’ve killed the butterfly. So this is supposed to help you keep the butterfly alive.” Everyone was still watching silently. Aizawa cleared his throat again, slightly uncomfortable.
“And remember, anyone can wear a butterfly. Even if you don’t struggle with self-harm, it’s a good way to show support to others.” He looked down at the butterflies on his own skin. “So if you want to show solidarity, you can draw a butterfly as well.”
A few head nods.
“Alright. Get back to work. I know you all have a project in English and a math test this week, so get going on those.”
While the class worked, Aizawa drew a butterfly on the whiteboard next to his rules.
ㅡ
Nobody asked Aizawa why he had the butterflies on his arms. He wasn’t naïve enough to hope they assumed it was to “show support.” But he was still glad no one brought it up.
As he left the classroom at the end of the period, Aizawa saw Midoriya leaning over Todoroki’s desk. Midoriya already had a fresh butterfly on his arm. He was carefully drawing one on Todoroki’s arm, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth in concentration.
Aizawa smiled ever so slightly and shut the classroom door behind him.