Shouta wakes up on Saturday morning, bad elbow aching and Hizashi wrapped around him like an octopus. He has hair in his mouth, and from the fine texture, it’s Hizashi’s. They spend an inordinate amount of time with each other’s hair in their mouths, although Shouta is smart and braids his back before going to sleep so it’s not spread out everywhere, getting tangled and finding its way into his partner’s mouth.
He carefully spits the blond strands out of his mouth, tugging them away with one hand and trying his hardest not to break any off. Hizashi’s hair grows slow and delicate, and there will be hell to pay if Shouta ruins any of it, even accidentally.
Mouth freed of hair, he carefully frees himself from Hizashi’s death-grip. It’s simple enough: the man sleeps like the dead, unless their cat (shy, almost a cryptid, shows up occasionally from wherever in the house she hides to cry pitifully about her food being empty) or breakfast are involved. Once released, Shouta takes a moment to let his lip curl over how sticky and sweaty he is, his clothes clinging to him in the spots where Hizashi had been gripping.
It’s nothing a quick shower can’t fix, and by the time he’s done, Hizashi is mumbling and groaning as he stirs to awakeness. It’ll be a few more minutes before he’s fully-conscious, but for now, Shouta bends down and presses a quick kiss to his husband’s forehead.
He is so, so very lucky.
The other early-riser (at least, the only other one who is a permanent resident) is up and eating cereal, eyes focused on her phone as she lifts her spoon to her mouth.
“Morning,” she says through a mouthful of cereal, and he grunts in response. Eri, angel that she is, has already made coffee, and it sits, hot and fresh in the coffeepot, ready for Shouta to pour himself a mug full of the elixir of awakening.
He tries not to let himself be angry. Mornings are not the time for anger. But as he sits down in the living room and sets his coffee down on the table next to him, he can’t help the way his mind turns to the conversation (if you could even call it that) he had with Midoriya Inko the day before, and he can’t stop the brief flash of pure rage that heats his chest. She’s all-but-abandoning her son—and for what? Because she thinks Shouta will be better at helping her son than she would’ve been?
And, well, he can’t argue with that, not based on the couple minutes’-worth of phone call.
The anger, at least, is short-lived, a mere taste of what is really hiding, deep under the surface of his skin. There will be time, sooner, hopefully, rather than later, where he will be allowed to express it and feel it and let it out without worrying about it hurting his family or reaching Midoriya and hurting him. It doesn’t matter that the anger is on Midoriya’s behalf—he sees the way the younger man holds himself, and he’s known him for years, he knows how Midoriya reacts to any form of anger in his vicinity. His childhood trained him so well, that even when he’s almost pushing thirty, he’s still reacting in those learned ways.
(Still, Shouta thinks, and he has to scoff at himself, because he can remember a different Midoriya, one who could handle being around peoples’ anger, one who was almost healthy.)
(Again would be a more accurate word to use.)
He sits in his chair, and he drinks his coffee, and he listens to the sound of his daughter moving around in the kitchen as she washes and dries and puts away her bowl and spoon. She goes back upstairs, after she’s done, probably to work on her homework or chat with her friends. Maybe she’s making plans to go out later, or maybe she just needs a refuge, needs a break from the storm that’s hit their lives.
Shouta probably needs a break, too, at some point. Or, well, he’s been having small ones, little ones, taking a breath here and there. Has Eri learned how to do that? He thinks she does, thinks he’s managed to pass on that valuable lesson, and even if he hasn’t, her therapist probably has, but for just a moment, worry gnaws at him as he considers whether he’s taught his daughter how to take breaks.
(And, well, looking at who’s staying in his guest room, it’s a valid worry. Obviously, some people never manage to teach their children how to take breaks. And, well, if he still needed to teach her, he has the perfect example of what not to do, staying in his house.)
(Is that uncharitable? He thinks it’s maybe a bit uncharitable, but whatever. It’s true.)
His coffee mug is empty, so he stands and walks into the kitchen and pours himself another. He also opens the fridge, glancing at what’s in there, before closing it and turning to make toast.
As he’s waiting for the toaster to finish toasting his toast, the very object of his thoughts stumbles, almost silently, into the kitchen. Midoriya already looks better, at least physically. The circles under his eyes are a little lighter, he has a little more color to his face, he looks less like a strong wind could knock him around. He hesitates in the doorway, fingers pressed to the doorframe, which, if Shouta has to guess, is probably a subtle grounding measure.
“Morning,” Shouta grunts, half-raising his coffee cup in a sort of salute-wave. Midoriya relaxes, his shoulders lowering, and he nods to Shouta as he continues into the kitchen.
And proceeds to hesitate again, his hand lifting to hover somewhere around his waist as he fidgets with the fabric of his shirt and glances around the kitchen. And Shouta remembers: this is the first time he’s actually experienced a normal breakfast time in the Aizawa-Yamada household, during this stay. Eri dragging him out of bed to make pancakes is. Quite far from normal. Pancakes are normally a dinner food.
“Help yourself to whatever,” he says, gesturing with his coffee cup.
Midoriya blinks and looks over at Shouta, raising an eyebrow. “I… don’t know where anything is,” he points out, and Shouta could kick himself. Midoriya doesn’t know the routine, doesn’t know where everything is, and what’s more is that Shouta’s standing here, waiting for his toast, present while Midoriya is struggling.
Shouta knows exactly how comfortable Midoriya is with others observing him not knowing things.
(Of course, they haven’t rearranged their kitchen that much since the last time Midoriya spent real time here, however long ago that was, so that begs the question of whether he’s just forgotten or if it’s just real discomfort and awkwardness manifesting itself…)
“Bowls,” Shouta points at one cupboard. “Spoons,” is a drawer, and “cereal” is another cupboard. “And you can always just open the cupboards to check. Hizashi forgets where the spatulas are kept every time he cooks, so we’re used to it.”
“I’m sure it’s not—”
Both men twitch when the toaster pops up. Even when you’re expecting it, it’s a little startling, and Shouta doesn’t judge Midoriya one bit for the way his hand jerks and his words cut off.
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Midoriya tries again as Shouta pulls his toast out and butters it. It takes Shouta a few moments to reply, as focused as he is on buttering it the right amount, and in that time, Midoriya grabs a bowl and spoon.
“It is that bad,” Shouta replies. “But he only cooks once a month, if that, so that might explain it.”
“You’d think after almost nine years of living here, he’d know where the spatulas are,” Midoriya quips back, a little more life in his voice than Shouta’s heard out of him in the past couple days.
Shouta shakes his head and takes a bite of his toast. “One would think, but nope.”
He waits as Midoriya finishes pouring his cereal and milk, and then sits down with him at the kitchen table. Midoriya glances at him, one eyebrow quirked, a question asked in the shape of his mouth. In response, Shouta shakes his head, and Midoriya shrugs and starts eating his cereal.
Midoriya should get the chance to at least eat some of his breakfast before Shouta starts hitting him with the hard questions and conversations.
There’s one of those that he’ll be putting off for a while, though, he thinks, as he watches Midoriya. He’s balanced on the edge of the precipice, right now, and Shouta’s not sure what hearing the words his mother said would do to him. It’s probably best to wait to give him that bad news, wait until he’s a little steadier before breaking it to him.
(Shouta knows, if he had heard his mom had given up on him when he was suicidal, it definitely would have been the push he needed to fall the rest of the way.)
So he waits, finishing his toast and sipping his coffee while Midoriya eats his cereal. He waits while Midoriya stands and walks into the kitchen and puts his bowl and spoon in the dishwasher.
He waits, and then stands and beckons Midoriya into the living room with a tilt of his head. Midoriya blinks, the okay mood almost falling away as his shoulders tense and he presses his lips together.
“We have a lot to talk about,” Shouta says.
“Yeah,” Midoriya agrees, following him. It’s a short trip, just enough time to text Hizashi and let him know they’re having Sensitive Conversations in the living room. He sits down on the couch, and gestures for Midoriya to sit down next to him (or at the other end, whichever is more comfortable).
Midoriya ends up next to him, and Shouta’s not quite sure how to interpret that, so he puts it out of his mind. The younger man’s hand ends up in his lap, fingers rubbing together and flicking as his head lowers. “So.”
“So,” Shouta agrees, nodding. He looks at Midoriya, makes sure he’s looking at his face even as he’s mimicking his slouched posture. If this were one of his current students, he’d be crouching on the floor, putting himself below the kid, but this is one of his adult students, and that’s not quite going to work here. They’re closer to equals than they were back then, would be equals in any other situation. “Before we start, I need you to know that you’re welcome to stay for as long as you need to be here. That room is yours, for as long as you want it.”
Midoriya swallows. His nod is jerky, but he nods.
“Okay. Good.” Shouta pauses, takes a breath. “And I mean it. However long. Okay?”
“Okay,” Midoriya replies, his voice thin, and Shouta sees his teeth catch at his lower lip. “Okay.”
Shouta nods as he considers his next words. “Now… we need to consider the next step for you. You can’t go back to the way you were living.”
“I don’t want to,” Midoriya says. Shouta blinks, frowns, but Midoriya glances over and his eyes widen. “Go back,” he clarifies. “I don’t want to… I don’t want to live like that anymore.”
He sighs, a breath of relief, because for just a moment he thought Midoriya was confessing to not wanting to consider the next step, and that’s a bundle of feelings he doesn’t need to analyze right now because they’re not relevant. “Good. Okay. That’s good to hear. Now, moving forward…”
“Therapy,” Midoriya mutters, shrugging and glancing away. “I’ve. Been thinking. Not like I can really do much else…” He shakes his head and moves on before Shouta can say anything in response. “But. Well. Going back to therapy is… probably a must.”
“Definitely a must,” Shouta agrees. For a moment, he’s about to continue, but he sees Midoriya shift and his eyes flick in that way they do when he’s thinking hard. He doesn’t mumble, not like he did when he was fifteen, but there are still easy tells as to when he’s thinking like that. So, Shouta waits, lets Midoriya puzzle out whatever he’s thinking about.
It’s less than a minute of waiting before Midoriya’s speaking again. “I… I don’t… I don’t know if… I…” He stops and takes a deep breath, and, oh, his hand is shaking—whatever he was thinking about, whatever he’s about to say, it has him worked up, and when the words finally come out, they come out all at once. “I’d prefer not to go to inpatient if it’s really possible… I mean, I’m sure they’re confidential and all that, but still, it really only takes one person saying the wrong thing, and I just… I know they’re not bad, well, most of them aren’t, and, like, I know it would…” He pauses, blinking and shaking his head. “It would help, but… I just… I’m… not sure I could… give up that much control? I don’t… I don’t know. I just.” He shrugs, and for the moment it looks like he’s done.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Shouta replies. “For the moment, I don’t think you need to. That could change, in the future, but…” He pauses and takes a moment to just look at Midoriya, to look him up and down and take in his shaking hand, his wide eyes and the way his leg is bouncing with nervous energy. “I don’t think you need to,” he settles on.
Midoriya exhales, all the breath rushing out of him as his head drops. “Thank you,” he says, relief coloring his tone. He stays slumped for just a moment before sitting up, squaring his shoulders. “Okay. Okay,” he says, repeating the word, giving himself a launching-off point. “Therapy. I… It’s been a few years, but… I wonder if Dr. Mori is still…”
“She’s still practicing,” Shouta says, because maybe he’s done a bit of thinking about this, too, done a little bit of research in the time since he brought Midoriya here. “I’m sure she’d be more than willing to have you back.”
Midoriya nods, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his sweatpants and typing something into it. Shouta can see the gears turning in his brain as he types and pauses, types and pauses. After a few moments of this, he sets his phone down in his lap and looks up, fixing his eyes on the wall. “I need to do something about my agency. About… work.”
“Yeah,” Shouta agrees. “You are. Do you want to hear my thoughts, or explain yours first?”
Teeth catching at his lower lip, Midoriya turns his head towards Shouta. “…Yours?” he asks.
“Honestly, I think you should take a leave of absence,” he replies. “That’s the… standard protocol for when a Pro attempts or almost attempts suicide, and while it seems like you’d prefer to keep this quiet, there’s a lot of different reasons someone can take a leave of absence.”
Midoriya nods, pauses, takes a long breath in through his nose, and nods again. “I—” he cuts himself off, and takes another breath, deep and long. “I. I’m. Uh. I’m.”
It’s like he physically cannot force the words out, Shouta realizes, watching as Midoriya’s face screws up in frustration, his knuckles paling as he lets go of his phone in favor of gabbing a fistful of pantleg. It’s a good thing he does, electric energy, like the feel of a storm rolling in, beginning to fill the room, his quirk reflexively activating in response to his emotions. It’s not even enough to summon the green sparks, just enough to feel, but considering what Midoriya can haul around without his quirk active, he probably would have crunched his phone if he had kept holding it.
That pressure releases as Midoriya exhales, a long, controlled sigh accompanied by the deactivation of his quirk.
“I’m not sure that, that, being… I’m not sure that being a hero is really the best thing for… for me, anymore,” he whispers.
Ah.
Shouta understands, now, why it was so hard for Midoriya to find those words, to say them, because being a hero is the only thing left in his life, now, the one constant Shouta’s seen accompanying him through the years. Come what may, Midoriya’s always had heroism there in some way, shape, or form. People may come and go, times may change, but Midoriya’s always had hero work and training and everything that comes with it.
Speaking those words must be terrifying.
So Shouta reaches across the gap, and he puts his hand on Midoriya’s shoulder—the bad one, and part of what he can feel under his hand is cold, smooth metal, but he can also feel warm skin underneath his fingers, so he presses his fingertips briefly, gently, into that skin (gently, because he knows how sensitive this shoulder gets, who knows how much more sensitive it’s gotten over the years).
That same shoulder shakes as Midoriya lets his head drop. He tries to hold back at first, breath hitching and catching as he tries to restrain himself, tries to maintain some semblance of coherency, but it’s a futile attempt, and Shouta finds himself pulling Midoriya to him as the younger man falls apart, sobbing on his couch. Midoriya’s phone, which had been in his lap, slides off his thigh and onto the floor and comes to rest there, unimportant in the moment. Shouta wraps his arms around Midoriya’s shoulders, tucks his chin over the top of his head as Midoriya’s hand finds Shouta’s sleeve, fingers gripping the fabric tight.
It takes several minutes for Midoriya to wind down, and Shouta’s there the whole time, holding him steady. At some point, he realizes he began rocking, slowly, back and forth, the old familiar self-soothing motion returning. He lets it continue, because hell if they couldn’t both do with some soothing.
Eventually, Midoriya does stop crying, sniffling and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. When he pulls away, his cheeks are pink, and he doesn’t look at Shouta.
“That took a lot of courage to admit,” Shouta says, soft, tentative as he reaches out again, puts his hand on Midoriya’s shoulder again. Midoriya nods, hand dropping back to his lap as he finishes drying his eyes.
“I think I’ve known it for a while,” he replies, and Shouta has to strain to hear him. “I just… haven’t… accepted it, before. And—and. The other morning. That was me accepting it.”
Shouta lets his hand drop, and Midoriya takes the moment to lean forward and pick his phone up off the floor. This time, he sets it down on the couch next to him.
“So what are you going to do about that?” Shouta asks, and Midoriya shrugs, biting at his lower lip again.
“Well, my last solution to that was suicide.” It’s stated, plain, unadorned. Not a joke, just fact. “I. Haven’t. Really given a thought to what my other, more reasonable solutions could be.”
“You have time to figure it out,” Shouta says, and Midoriya snorts in response.
“Do I, though? My manager’s already hounding the shit out of me. It’s not like I can just go dark with no warning like that and expect people to just… accept it,” he says. He unlocks his phone and holds it up and, wow, that’s a lot of messages from a contact listed as Queen Yuuki, light of my life.
“You have time,” Shouta repeats. “And if people hound you, you tell them to screw off.”
This earns him another snort and an eyeroll. “I’m not Kacchan.”
“No, you’re not, but you’re still perfectly capable of telling people to screw off when you want to, if in more polite terms.”
Midoriya shakes his head and sighs. “Yeah, well, I can’t… exactly do that here. I mean, you said leave of absence, and… and I could do that, but I don’t think anyone would accept that. Not without… not without a reason.”
Shouta raises an eyebrow. “And your health isn’t a good enough reason?”
“It—” Midoriya’s teeth click together as he closes his mouth, and he takes a deep breath. “I know what you’re trying to do. And. And I know the answer you want out of me. But if the press release just says I’m taking a leave of absence for my health, the press will lose their minds.”
Shouta sighs. That’s right: the press. He’s only had to deal with them on a handful of occasions, given his status as an underground hero, and those few occasions were nothing compared to what Midoriya must deal with. He’s a public figure (one that maybe the public demands too much from—and hadn’t Shouta been trying to avoid this, with how he trained his class? Hadn’t he been trying to avoid the creation of another Symbol of Peace? And yet, that’s exactly what ended up being created, anyways).
“Hizashi would probably be a better option to talk to about dealing with the press,” he says, because he knows when he is out of his depth. “And your manager. You should probably keep her… at least a little bit in the loop.”
“Yeah.” Midoriya nods. “I’ll… message her. And… talk to Yamada. And call Dr. Mori.” He sighs, the spark of life that’s been possessing him for the past conversation seeming to flee from him as he slumps against the back of the couch. “And I think I might be seeing Mirio, today or tomorrow, and I still haven’t really told anyone else about…” He makes a gesture in the air with his hand and sighs, closing his eyes and letting his head lean back against the top of the couch.
“Don’t forget that you can ask for help,” Shouta says, and Midoriya nods.
“Yeah,” he says, opening his eyes. He inhales, and Shouta watches as he sets his shoulders and sits up, nodding again. “Yeah. I. I’ll try not to.”
“Good,” Shouta says, and it seems like that signals the end of the conversation, for now, but Midoriya’s not getting up, and now he’s starting to bite his lip again, fingers twitching and eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance as he thinks.
“You’re…” he begins, and swallows. “You’re serious about me being allowed to stay?”
Shouta’s heart doesn’t break, but it does ache as he nods. “Yes,” he replies. “I am.”
“I don’t…” Midoriya closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “I don’t want to… impose, too much. Or. Or just. I. I’m not. I don’t want to… take advantage of, of…” His eyes open as he makes a circular gesture in the air with his hand. “Of your kindness.”
“Kid,” Shouta sighs, shaking his head. “You’re the last person I’d suspect of even being capable of taking advantage of someone.”
And Midoriya sighs, giving him this look, so completely deadpan and unimpressed that Shouta can’t help the quiet snort in response.
“Aizawa,” he groans. “That’s not… that’s not reassuring.”
“But it’s true,” Shouta points out, shrugging. “And, besides…” He didn’t go into this conversation expecting to talk about his feelings, or be vulnerable himself, but that’s just how it goes in life—it’s a give and take. Midoriya has been so incredibly open and vulnerable and just… un-guarded for him, and it would be unfair of Shouta to not return that trust. “You’re still family.”
Midoriya frowns at that, opening his mouth to reply, but Shouta holds up a hand.
“You are,” he says. “Hitoshi invited you in, and maybe he never got the chance to actually ask you the question and give you the ring, be we all knew he was planning to. And we all knew the two of you had been talking about marriage for a while, and that you were going to say yes, because you both wanted it. Hitoshi invited you into our family, with all our agreements, and as far as Eri, Hizashi, and I are concerned, you never left.”
Midoriya looks at him, eyes wide and shining, tears welling up in his eyes. His mouth is still slightly open, and his hand has come up to tug at his hair… For a moment, he looks young, incredibly so, with no guardedness in his expression, no walls up.
“I—” he begins, and stops, swallows, shakes his head and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “I—fuck. God. Fuck. I’m—” He swallows, taking a deep breath through his nose while his fingers press against his lips. “I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s a little muffled, a little hard to understand, spoken through his fingers as it is. “I—I should.” A breath, in and out, and Shouta lets him collect himself. “I. I shouldn’t have… have assumed. I just. After… after.”
He shakes his head again, lets his hand drop into his lap as he glances off to the side, glances over at the wall again.
“I still have the ring,” he whispers.
“Good. It was for you,” Shouta replies, running a hand through his bangs. “And… some of the blame lies with us, too, for not making our thoughts clear. I could explain it away in a lot of different ways, but regardless, we still could have reached out and made sure you knew what we thought.”
Midoriya nods, head turning as he glances back over towards Shouta, rubbing the fabric of his sweatpants between his fingers. “Um. Since. Since we’re on the topic… you’ve… been calling me Midoriya, this… this whole time.”
Shouta sighs. “I didn’t want to be… too familiar, in case you felt uncomfortable with that.”
“Never,” Midoriya replies, shaking his head. “You can… you all can… you can always call me Izuku.” His voice cracks on the always, but his mouth is set and sure as he looks at Shouta, as he pins him with his gaze.
“You can use my first name, too, you know,” he replies. There’s a moment of stillness, after he says that, a moment of just himself and Izuku sitting together, on the couch, in the quiet.
The stillness is broken by Izuku, as he slowly, tentatively, scoots closer. “I… this… this seems like the kind of moment where we should hug? You know, we just had a whole… emotional reveal, and all that, just had a lot of emotions…” His rambling trails off as he looks away, hand lifting up to scratch at the back of his neck.
“It sure is, huh,” Shouta replies, and he doesn’t hesitate, reaching forward to pull Izuku in. The younger man yelps, surprised despite the fact he was the one bringing it up, but he doesn’t hesitate, either, turning to wrap his arm around Shouta and press his face into Shouta’s shoulder. There’s a tiredness in Shouta’s chest, along with the feel of a weight lifted and the warmth of this moment. They mask an undercurrent of rage, something that will have to be dealt with in time, but for now, Shouta just hugs one of his kids and lets himself exist in the moment.
There will be plenty of time later to deal with those other things.