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Shota is not easily impressed. He has high standards for his students, even higher ones for his co-workers that should already know better due to experience, and it’s rare for any of the two to defy his expectations. Yet here he is, stealing glances at the student sleeping on his sofa for the second time that day and realizing the kid is slowly stomping on any misguided notions he may still have had of him. Midoriya is unexpectedly bright, that is something he’s come to learn throughout the kid’s unplanned stay, in a way that needs nurturing to go from something of a blunt object – amateur and unrefined but full of potential – to a sharp edge capable of giving him an upper hand very few heroes have without a couple years of field experience. Unfortunately, this realization only aggravates the notion that something is wrong, and it’s not just the kid’s newly revealed past relationship with teachers. A kid with the kind of information retention Midoriya has shown should not have so many obviously negative learned behaviors, the kinds that paint a very worrying picture.
This was definitely not the way Shota expected his Saturday to go, he muses as he continues to type an email to Nezu. While Midoriya had risen in his consideration – and in his concern but one thing at a time – one or more of his co-workers were about to sink once he acquired the information in his request. He wanted full names, addresses, and preferably warrants too to make sure the farces posing as educators wherever Midoriya studied before never saw the light of day again. He also had a growing suspicion that information was deliberately being kept from him, information he was now blatantly requesting access to, and hoped the principal would think twice before denying it because Shota has other ways of looking into the quirk registry and is only barely choosing to give his boss the benefit of the doubt that maybe he simply forgot to add to the student files made available to the teachers that his student – his bone-breaking student – was a false negative and a late bloomer.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with those facts of course, no matter what society at large has decided, but the fact that he didn’t know has negatively impacted his effectiveness as a teacher. He’s supposed to know these things! Shota audibly sighs in frustration, hands leaving the keyboard to press against his temples, he can feel a headache coming on out of sheer stress over the situation. Much as he’d deny it if asked, he is an action man, which is why he works the streets instead of behind a desk in an Intelligence agency despite his excellence in stealth and information gathering. Zashi is the one who enjoys unraveling puzzles and has spent hours debating with Nezu over politics, media, or whatever else those two get up to when alone in a room. Shota, on the other hand, likes to see the issue and take immediate steps to eradicate it. Still, in Midoriya’s case, he won’t be able to, not if he wants to avoid overwhelming the child – and that’s what he looks like curled up on the sofa around Uchuu, like a child who needs help – and losing any tentative trust he may have gained so far.
The slightly less negative side to all this is that things are finally starting to add up, though unfortunately, they added up to a rather sad conclusion. A false negative was someone who was previously diagnosed – as if it was an illness – quirkless and yet still ended up manifesting a quirk, though many occurrences were examples of stress activation. A late bloomer was someone who did not manifest a quirk by the time most people did - either at birth or around three to five years old - and instead were assumed false positives, someone with quirked physiology but no quirk to speak of until their late manifestation. It’s not uncommon for quirks with very specific requirements to take longer to be discovered but usually by nine years old most late bloomers have manifested their quirk, with a minority sometimes never being able to or more rarely discovering their quirk well into adulthood, though that is nearly unheard of. A false negative who is also a ‘pretty late bloomer’, as described by Midoriya, would not have the advantage of quirked physiology and most likely be labeled quirkless from the start and therefore be subjected to the treatment society reserves for them from a young age. It’s no wonder the kid flinches at loud noises, mistrusts authority, and seems some mixture of touch-averse and touch-starved. Shota can barely imagine how life has treated him on top of the horrible parts he’s heard so far but with how he watched the child throw himself at a giant robot in order to save a stranger in the entrance exam and then at the Nomu in the USJ to save his teacher, with little to no regard for his own wellbeing, it probably wrongly taught him that he was worth less than others.
Being a ‘pretty late bloomer’ also explains some of the lack of quirk control, though not entirely, which is why he is currently requesting access to the kid’s quirk registry history. He needs to find out how late is ‘pretty late’ and plan accordingly, plus it will give him a bigger insight into Midoriya’s quirk and that can only make the future quirk counseling sessions easier to figure out. He would ask the kid but he has a feeling their past conversations have been overwhelming enough already for a single weekend. The memory of his student insisting that those despicable people should not be punished because he believed his previous quirk status meant he deserved it still leaves him seething if he thinks about it for more than a moment, and the last thing both of them need is for him to trigger another panic attack, he feels bad enough for the previous ones already. As much of a hardass as he is when teaching, it brings him no satisfaction to see his students suffer for absolutely no reward.
The email is promptly finalized and sent, and he closes the tab before returning to his grading, he knows better than to expect a quick reply from Nezu on a weekend since it’s the two days the chimera uses to keep his out-of-school affairs up to date. With a career as an Intelligence hero and a pseudo-agency to run, Shota can’t blame him for properly managing his time, especially since said proper management is what guarantees him a decently high paycheck at the end of the month on top of the IOU arrest-based remuneration and his work as a Law and Ethics in Heroics teacher. Nezu’s employees can say a lot about him, but that they are unsatisfied with what he pays them is definitely not one of those things. As 1-A’s homeroom teacher he would also usually supervise Fundamentals of Heroics classes, though that has unfortunately been taken off his hands so far and he is a hair’s breadth away from demanding the position back from the blond buffoon since learning that All Might has yet to teach any theory during those periods. If it weren’t for the commission’s pressure to hire the hero, Shota suspects a few of his co-workers may have been as tempted as he is to punt the man right out the front gate due to sheer incompetence and lack of any of the required credentials to teach at any school, let alone a hero school.
Shota glances at his student again, he should probably wake him up and walk him to the dorms, but the fact that Midoriya has slept more than fifteen hours in total so far makes him worry about the kid’s sleeping habits – no he’s not a hypocrite – and whether Midoriya has been overworking himself when not under direct supervision. The fact that the kid had been about to go exercise unsupervised on a Friday afternoon after their class had double heroics periods tells him it’s likely. The offhand comment about how his mother used to cook had also been in his mind, especially with the way the kid had practically inhaled both dinner and lunch, was he not eating enough? Surely a good diet was necessary to maintain the kid’s physique if not his health. Hopefully, this is something he can think about later since after moving into the dorms, Midoriya’s – and most of his classmates except for those who opted out of the dorms – diet is now the responsibility of the school at least five days of the week, and the kid did say he could cook even if spices were apparently an issue. Maybe he could help with that.
He’s not the only priority, his brain reminds him and he focuses back on his work. Mochizuki would usually take care of the more day-to-day grading as the second-year Law and Ethics teacher - and not responsible for a homeroom - but the woman was on maternity leave and Nezu found it prudent to dump the excess responsibility on him due to his free time not supervising Fundamentals of Heroics. The free time he would insist on getting rid of and being allowed to supervise his damn class, because lack of proper instruction, especially in their first year, could be the difference between a student’s life or death in the heroics scene later and he prided himself in an extremely low - nearly nonexistent which is a record by itself - casualty rate from his homeroom graduates, or at least the ones who made it to their third year without being expelled. They may usually end up hating him, or at least wanting to punch him in the face as one of them implied more than once, but they’re alive to do it.
Finishing up his grading takes the better part of an hour, at least that is what his laptop tells him as he looks at the time and realizes it’s nearly five in the afternoon. Tired or not, the kid needed to wake up to eat and drink something and to avoid a sleepless night due to napping the day away. He gives the kid a few more minutes of rest by getting up and busying himself with finding something suitable to snack on but coming up short, then deciding the kid can have a couple of his jelly pouches if he wants or make himself a snack at the dorms since if he took any longer to return his student, Midoriya’s friends would probably start to worry. With that decided, he moves back to the living room and leans over the sofa to look over the sleeping kid.
“Midoriya-kun,” he calls, and once again when the kid doesn’t so much as stir. “Come on kid, time to wake up,” Shota hesitates a moment, contemplating his options, but the memory of his student flinching from touch when disoriented by his first panic attack - he’ll be similarly disoriented when waking up too - is enough to make him walk back to his spot on the couch and sit down as he reaches for his phone on the table.
After a few choice actions, he places the phone back on the table, closer to his student than before, and sits back to wait. It’s a minute until the timed alarm starts, some obnoxious song about mornings that Zashi set up as a joke and never got changed but it seems enough to do the job since the kid is starting to frown. A few seconds later, Midoriya seems to fully wake up and squint at the phone as Shota reaches for it to turn off the alarm. He hates it enough as it is, but to be fair he would hate any song that forced him to get up in the morning.
“S-sorry sensei, I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” He holds back a frown at the child’s incessant need to apologize for everything in his existence. Baby steps.
“You’re fine, but it’s already five and you need to get back to the dorms,” He explains, a little surprised when his student seems to tense slightly at the prospect but not choosing to look into it right now. One thing at a time. “You can have some of my jelly pouches to snack on if you want, or make yourself something as soon as you get to the dorms.”
Midoriya nods and his brows crease slightly, looking at the table as if thinking hard about something. Shota doesn’t rush him, pocketing his phone and leaning back on the sofa. He would prefer if the kid ate some actual food, he loves his sweet meal substitute but admittedly it’s a cheap alternative for breakfasts during the week when he barely gets back from patrol and already needs to get ready for class, or when he’s too tired or lazy to cook… or just wants something sweet. No, it’s not an addiction.
“Thanks but I can’t eat j-jelly,” his student finally answers, seemingly coming to some sort of decision, though Shota can only guess what it might be. “The texture makes me- uh, panic, I guess? It’s ‘cause of a villain, before U.A.” he adds in a hurry as if Shota would assume he goes looking for villains in his free time.
“Alright, in that case, I want you to get something to eat at the dorms,” he replies, not pressing for answers just yet. If Midoriya had a run-in with some villain but was still standing here somehow, there was probably a police report with his name on it somewhere to be found. “Thank you for telling me kid,” he adds, because that’s a little bit of trust showing and he wants the kid to know it’s a good thing. “How about you freshen up a bit and we can go once you’re back? Bathroom’s the first door to the right.”
He doesn’t put any pressure on his student one way or the other, instead turning his attention back to the laptop on the table. There’s a short pause before he hears movement on the other end of the sofa and a little meow of indignation quickly followed by whispered apologies directed at the cat. Cute. Shota would warn him not to spoil Uchuu but he doesn’t make a habit of being a hypocrite. Once the kid leaves the room and he can’t hear his footsteps, he stands and grabs his capture weapon from the corner of the sofa where he left it, not wanting the weight on his shoulders all afternoon but knowing he might need it now that they were bound to the dorms if one of the students made any trouble. Midoriya joins him at the genkan while he’s zipping up his boots and slips into his red high tops, and for a kid as shy as he is, the bright red of the shoes seems a little off with how attention-grabbing it is.
“You may have noticed there’s a buzzer by the door, it can be heard everywhere in the apartment,” he points it out while locking the door behind them and calling the elevator. “The elevator will let in any of the students and staff so, if you need something and can’t find any teachers, you have blanket permission to come and find me here, though I don’t speak for anyone else in the building.”
“Are you sure, sensei?” Midoriya’s voice is too low to echo in the elevator but he still hears the doubt in his tone.
“Yes, Midoriya-kun,” he insists even though his student won’t meet his eyes to be sure he means it, “I would much rather be woken up than not be somewhere if I’m needed.”
“A-alright,” is the last thing he hears from Midoriya on their way to the dorms until they start to approach the doors to the 1-A building. He can already hear the movement inside and, by the repeated sounds of explosions, they have either angered Bakugo or are playing video games. Both are equally likely to happen on weekends.
“Aizawa-sensei?” He pauses before he can reach for the door, turning back around to look at his student, who seems conflicted about something. He has no time to wonder about what before the kid crashes into his chest, arms wrapping around him and a muffled thanks whispered against his chest. Oh, kid.
His student is gone as quickly as he came, rushing to open the door as if afraid of giving Shota enough time to respond to the hug or the thanks, and he pushes down any hurt by the still noticeable lack of trust. They’ll work on it. Instead, he walks into the building a few steps behind Midoriya, noticing that the explosions ceased right away. Videogames then, Bakugo isn’t nearly as prompt as a pause button. There’s a blur of pink and blue and suddenly Iida and Uraraka are hounding the kid, asking questions but giving him little time to reply. Shota closes the door, louder than necessary, and watches with slight satisfaction as the class stops their ruckus and moves their attention to him.
He can see Sato and Aoyama in the distance, doing something in the kitchen that he doesn’t care enough to ask about. Shoji, Sero, and Kirishima are sitting in front of the television, controllers in hand but the game thankfully paused, and by the look of the nearby tables, Uraraka and Iida had been studying before their interruption. Good enough, the ones within hearing range can let the others know and those who refused their strong advice to move to the dorms - Ashido, Asui, Ojiro, and Tokoyami - will probably hear about it in the school hallways because not even heroes in training are immune to the power of gossip.
“We’ll work on your situational awareness,” he couldn’t help but point out, earning a few sheepish looks. “Midoriya was involved in a quirk accident and was staying under supervision until now, do not press him for details. That is all,” Uraraka barely waits until he’s done talking before dragging Midoriya toward the study table, Iida not far behind.
Well, at least he’s hopefully in good hands.
Shota walks out of Heights Alliance knowing he has more answers than before, and yet just as many new questions have surfaced due to the new knowledge. He’ll get to the bottom of it, he promises himself, though he doubts he’ll like what he finds there. For his student’s safety, he’ll have to.
Sundays are Shota’s favorite days of the week. Not that he doesn’t enjoy teaching, or resents any students that ask for extra help during his open hours on Saturdays. More than one of the third years has asked for quick supervision while training any particularly dangerous moves with their quirks and he would never turn them down for wanting to be safe while they can like he wants them to be. But the peace he feels when sitting in bed, coffee in one hand and the other lazily threading through his husband’s hair as the blond speaks animatedly about a new podcast he’s listening to is something he wouldn't trade for anything. It means his husband has successfully remained uninjured for another week, and they have time for themselves as people instead of letting their work consume their every waking hour. In fact, it’s a bit of an unspoken rule: no work talk on Sundays. Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part, they talk about other parts of their life that those outside get no rights to, like how Shota wants them to try a new cafe that opened up near the school, how Zashi had a difficult call with a friend from his time in America and how they really need to get groceries but both are too comfortable to move any time soon.
The buzzing sound that rings through the apartment takes away their choice and the couple trades a confused look before Shota grabs his personal phone from the nightstand and opens the app linked to the camera in the buzzer. The sight of green hair and panicked viridian eyes has him standing in a second, coffee abandoned at the nightstand and only sparing an apologetic pat to his husband’s head before hurrying to the door because the pacing student in the camera seems to be muttering to himself and just about to leave if he doesn’t get there soon enough. He opens the door more forcefully than he meant to and wide green eyes turn to him from the kid’s spot near the door of the elevator.
“Midoriya-kun? What happened?” Shota takes a second to inspect his student from head to toe, the green hair is weighed down by sweat and there are a few scrapes on his face, but what gives him pause is the bruised, broken arm the boy is cradling to his chest.
“I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have- but I need to-” the panicked muttering is harder to understand than usual and Shota would be rushing his student down to the infirmary if he didn’t know this was important.
He didn’t expect Midoriya to start reaching out any time soon, he would need time for Shota to prove to him there was no need to follow his previous pattern of behavior around teachers and slowly gain his trust, but apparently, something pushed his student into coming to him, maybe not entirely of his own volition if the fear in his eyes is anything to go by, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t listen.
“Is anyone else in danger, Midoriya-kun?” He asks because the sight of his injured student is enough to remind him of the disaster in the USJ and as illogical as it is, a repeat of that is something he fears. “Was there an attack?”
“N-no, sensei, it’s just me, I promise!” The audible panic at his assumption would almost make him feel guilty if it hadn’t been a necessary precaution.
“ Just you injured is still one too many injuries kid,” he can’t help but correct, “come in, and tell me why I shouldn’t walk you straight down to the old lady for that broken arm.”
He steps back to give Midoriya space to walk in and, after a moment of hesitation, the kid walks past him in hurried steps, cautiously looking back as if scared of Shota doing something, or as if he was being followed.
“P-please don’t let him f-find me,” his student all but whispers, rushed breaths and shoulders hunched as he holds his arm tighter, that’s definitely not good for a broken arm.
“Who, Midoriya-kun? Bakugo?” The explosive student is his first bet since it’s highly unlikely for this to be the result of some extreme form of hide-and-seek. That at least wouldn’t be as surprising as the actual answer that followed.
“All Might,” it was as if the kid was holding his breath, maybe expecting Shota to demand an explanation or call him a liar, because why would All Might be looking for his student on a Sunday afternoon of all times?
“Okay, Midoriya-kun,” he says instead, closing the front door and locking it, not missing the slight bit of tension leaving the kid’s shoulder at the action. “Be careful with that arm, I’ll have to take you to Chiyo eventually but we can talk before that. Put one foot forward,” he instructs as he lowers himself, the kid obeying almost mechanically and he moves to untie the black laces.
“Wha- you don’t have to,” the kid starts in a surprised tone.
“You’re not moving those arms if I can help it,” he warns, tapping the boy’s ankle for the other shoe. He helps Midoriya step out of his shoes and leaves them in the genkan with the slippers he’d put on in a hurry to open the door.
Walking into the living room, Shota meets Zashi’s worried eyes, which only widen at the sight of the kid’s clearly broken arm. He shakes his head, thankfully out of Midoriya’s sight, and his husband seems to get the message as he offers them a smile.
“Good afternoon Midoriya-kun, that doesn’t look good,” alright maybe he didn’t get it, but at least he’s not demanding answers. It’s probably good that he asked, a teacher not worrying might give the kid the wrong idea.
“I’m s-so sorry for intruding, sensei!” the boy blurts out, clearly feeling guilty for interrupting their only day of rest.
“I told you to come to me, Midoriya-kun. You don’t have to apologize for following instructions,” Shota insists, hesitating for a moment before lightly placing a hand on the kid’s back and guiding him past the living room and to the bathroom, “come on, we can talk as I clean up those cuts on your face. Less work for Chiyo’s quirk.”
“Yeah, you’re all good kiddo!” Zashi adds, to the boy’s clear relief.
He also has a feeling that Midoriya would rather talk in private, maybe even forgot that the two lived together. There are no more words as he points for the kid to sit on the toilet lid and reaches for the first aid kit, but he doesn’t mind waiting. No need to make the kid feel like he’s in a hurry to get rid of him, not if he wants to encourage any sort of trust in the clearly frightened teen that probably came to him on an impulse and might already regret it.
“I-I don’t wanna keep hurting myself,” Midoriya admits a moment later after Shota had to brush wet green locks aside to clean up a shallow cut on his forehead, the sort one might get brushing with falling debris or a harsh fall in uneven terrain.
“That’s good, I don’t want you to keep hurting yourself either,” he assures, and the kid’s eyes widen as if the thought of a teacher not wanting him in pain was some sort of novelty.
Maybe it is.
There’s only more silence as he finishes cleaning the few injuries on his student’s face, and Shota puts away the first aid kit before crouching down to meet the boy’s eyes.
“What happened, Midoriya-kun?” He asks again, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible.
“I-” the boy pauses, contemplating something before taking a deep breath and continuing, still avoiding his eyes, “All Might asked if I w-wanted to train, and I s-said yes. But all he tells me to do is the same thing, over and over and over and it hurts. A-and I know I need to get better, I need to get a hold of the quirk or I can’t be a hero but- I-I keep breaking myself and I don’t know if-” he’s crying, Shota realizes, watching the boy choke back a sob in order to keep going, “I-I don’t- what if I c-can’t put me back t-together? What i-if I’m just s’posed to be b-broken?”
Shota has a strange feeling that there’s more to the phrasing than he realizes, but now isn’t the time to focus on that. He can’t believe- actually, he can believe Yagi would be this irresponsible, but not this careless toward a student’s suffering. He can’t imagine being forced to break his own bones over and over again at a teacher’s orders, it’s more akin to torture than training and entirely unthinkable when he knows the boy doesn’t need to break his bones to use his quirk, it’s not a requirement and the boy proved it before during the USJ. Is this what All Might meant with potential? The reason for Yagi’s borderline stalking of the kid and the recurrent training sessions after school hours? He’s noticed the use of the gym but didn’t bother to watch the cameras and maybe he should have if this is what the oaf was doing to his student. What else has he done?
He doesn’t want to think badly of the self-appointed Symbol of Peace, he really doesn’t, but there’s more than one way he can interpret the man’s interest in the child, the questions to the other teachers about whether Midoriya had talked about anything interesting - told anyone? His brain interprets - or the appraising looks noticeable even through the cameras in the recorded heroics lessons. He doesn’t want to think that the number one hero may be taking advantage of a vulnerable child in any way, but his job dictates that he has to, and the kid does have a history.
“Midoriya-kun, I need to ask, is All Might like Kitanai?” He feels like he’s holding his breath while the kid registers his question and understands it, immediately shaking his head in denial, eyes wide in disbelief.
“H-he wouldn’t! Never!” Midoriya insists, and Shota can’t help but be a little relieved. Things are bad, but not that bad. Still unacceptable, but he at least won’t have to kill a co-worker. Probably. “He d-doesn’t even hurt me m-much, he just- he wants me to keep hurting myself, he says it’ll get easier b-but,” he sniffs and carefully lays his arm on his lap to wipe his nose on the sleeve of the gym uniform “It’s n-not. Getting easier I mean. Maybe I’m j-just a bad student-”
“No, Midoriya-kun, you are not.” Shota is quick to cut off that line of thought. Victims of abuse are often quick to blame themselves for the actions of others and he won’t let that happen here. “This is not your fault, and I need you to understand that. All Might doesn’t even have a teaching license, let alone a quirk counseling one, he shouldn’t have been allowed to train you in the first place. I’m sorry this happened under our noses, but I assure you it stops now.”
He wasn’t prepared for the disbelief in the boy’s eyes as they met his own, with a tentative hope that he wants to cultivate even though his student might not entirely believe him yet. I won’t fail again, he tells himself as he hardens his resolve, the many years since the past incident meaning very little when confronted with the too-similar situation.
“B-but it’s All Might,” Midoriya points out, clearly unsure.
“And I’m your homeroom teacher, any decisions regarding your health and wellbeing are under my purview for as long as you’re enrolled in this school,” he rebuts with a tone that leaves no room for doubt, “If I say that All Might is no longer allowed contact with you without supervision, then he won’t be. Teachers are supposed to build you up, Midoriya-kun, not break you down.”
It’s clear as day when his words finally get through to the kid, shoulders dropping from the tense position in clear relief and Shota can’t help the small burst of satisfaction at the fact that the kid chooses to believe him, to accept that he does mean what he says and will set things right. He never thought he might find himself in the position of having to face off against the Symbol of Peace, but if that’s what it takes to gain a little of his student’s trust, he can’t bring himself to regret it.
“Thank you,” it’s soft and full of gratitude and maybe the most honest he’s heard the kid so far.
The sound of the buzzer going off again cuts off any possible response, making them both tense at the first possibility that comes to mind. Shota is quick to hide it before his student notices, sending him a reassuring look and standing up with only minor protest from his knees. One would think spending most of his time crouched on rooftops would make him used to it, but apparently, all it gave him was some more strain.
“Stay here,” he instructs before moving toward the front door. He catches sight of Zashi in the kitchen and motions for him to keep doing whatever he’s in the middle of, “I’ll check it out, just keep an ear out if I need you to interfere,” he adds and it’s to his husband’s credit that he doesn’t question it - at least not now - and just nods. He doesn’t even look at the cameras before opening the door, unsurprised at being met with his co-worker’s skeletal shape.
“Good afternoon, Aizawa-kun!” The number one hero greets, and Shota grits his teeth at the form of address, as if he wasn’t the man’s superior as one of the heads of the school’s heroics department and deserved no respect as a grown man and a hero himself.
“Yagi-san,” he greets pointedly, “what brings you here?”
“I’m sorry to intrude in your home, but have you perhaps seen young Midoriya? He came this way after a silly misunderstanding and I haven’t been able to find him.” The man asks, and maybe if things were different Shota may not have thought much of it, but he had the missing context and found it anything but silly.
“I’m afraid n-” He’s interrupted by the man suddenly activating his quirk and stepping up to look into his apartment. How dare-
He catches sight of a few drops of blood on the entrance floor, quickly figuring out the reason he was being pushed aside but not caring one bit for it. He activates his quirk and the blond oaf deflates like a sad balloon, turning back to him in shock.
“I did not allow you to step into my home, All Might. Kindly remove yourself before I see fit to do it for you,” he warns, positioning himself in front of his emaciated co-worker to impede any further snooping around.
“Aizawa-kun, I must insist-” He doesn’t give the man a chance to finish, grabbing a strong hold of his forearm and guiding the man out the door to the sound of his indignant protests.
“I must insist, Yagi-san, that you stay away from my student,” Shota said with no preamble since it was clear that the man was stubborn as a mule. “As your superior and Midoriya-kun’s homeroom teacher, I’m forbidding you from approaching him or being alone with him without adult supervision, am I clear?”
“What is the meaning of this?” He can tell that his words finally got to the man as his tone takes a turn to indignation, “I am his mentor, you can’t-”
“I can and I will,” Shota cuts him off firmly, barely believing the man that tells his student to break himself repeatedly can call himself a mentor, “You can try to appeal against my decision to Nezu, but I assure you he will not be on your side in this.”
He better not, or we will have words, and some of them not polite.
“I see you will not see reason, Aizawa-kun,” All Might sighs as if terribly put upon for not being allowed to further torture a student. “Tell Midoriya-kun I’ll be there for him once he’s done with this tantrum if he still wishes to become a hero.”
The door closes in the man’s face and Shota has to admit he put a little more force in it than intended. His eyes move to the hallway and find startled green ones half hidden by the bathroom door, did he hear everything? Yagi wasn’t really trying to be quiet so neither had he, so it’s more than likely. Had Midoriya seen him deflate? The sight of blond hair as his husband steps out of the kitchen and casts a look between him and the child interrupts his thought.
“What was that about?” Zashi asks him with a frown.
“I’ll explain later, just know that All Might is no longer allowed near Midoriya-kun, preferably ever but if necessary he may talk to him only under the supervision of someone on staff,” Shota explains, noticing that his student had retreated back into the bathroom.
“I’ll let the others know,” Zashi tells him, holding up his phone. Probably for the best, he figures and nods in confirmation before walking back to the open bathroom.
“I take it you heard all that, Midoriya-kun?” Shota asks as he takes in his student’s reaction to All Might. He’s back to seating on the toilet seat, arm once again laid on his lap as he tries to hide his face behind his working left hand to dubious success. He’s shaking slightly, he realizes after a moment, and Shota can’t tell if it’s from fear or relief.
“I-I’m sor-ry,” he hears the boy say in between forceful breaths, clearly trying to calm himself down.
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Shota reminds him, crouching back down and wondering if this was going to become a habit, “let’s take some deep breaths, alright? Can you look at me?”
He’s not sure how long it takes, but the hand hiding tear-filled green eyes comes down and, after a moment and with very obvious intention, he takes it on his own, tapping a pattern on the back of it with his index finger as he guides his gasping student through counting his breaths. He’s not too far down into panic that it takes too long, so they stop after a dozen deep breaths in and a noticeable lack of shaking.
“He won’t come near you without a witness, which is the best I can do for now,” Shota explains, lightly squeezing the boy’s hand in some sort of attempted comfort. “Caring about your own health is not a tantrum, Midoriya-kun, and it will only make you a better hero for it. All Might is wrong .”
The little giggle that leaves the kid’s mouth sounds part incredulous and part hysteric and Shota tries not to think about the toll all of this might have on Midoriya’s mental health. He should probably schedule his student for a session with Inui, he muses as he squeezes the boy’s hand again, a little comforted at the light squeeze he gets in return.
“I d-don’t mean to laugh,” Midoriya blurts out in an apologetic tone.
“I get it, the number one hero being wrong probably seems strange,” Shota has never hated the pedestal hero rankings put them in more than in that moment, “but he’s just a person, and people are wrong all the time. You’ve just been unfortunate enough to encounter most of the wrong people.”
There are tears gathering in his student’s eyes again but they don’t fall, only making the green of them more intense even as they seem filled with confusion and disbelief. That’s alright, Shota decides, he doesn’t have to believe it all at once.
We’ll work on it.