The thirty minutes it takes to drive to Midoriya’s apartment are some of the longest thirty minutes of Shouta’s life. Midoriya stays on the line, and Shouta asks questions, simple questions, easy questions, just enough to keep Midoriya talking and on the line. The three AM lack of traffic is a small relief in the middle of a harrowing situation, but it does little to calm his racing heart or steady his shaking hands. He hadn’t even told his husband where he was going, running out of their house before Hizashi could fully wake up.
Hizashi is fully awake now, it seems, several texts in a row popping up on Shouta’s phone. He doesn’t respond, though, because he’s driving, and maybe he’s pushing the speed limit a little bit, and he would really prefer not to crash and die because he’s texting and driving at this moment.
Hizashi can wait.
Midoriya cannot.
He can barely stand to listen to the kid—for all he’s twenty-eight now, he’s still one of Shouta’s kids, still so young—as he breaks down, because every time his voice cracks, Shouta feels his own heart crack just a little bit more.
This morning, he had come so unbelievably close to losing another one of his students.
And maybe he’s been expecting to hear the news of Midoriya’s death for years now. Maybe he’s been waiting, waiting to hear the news, to see the headlines, to learn of the Number One’s death in the line of action, to know that his failing is final.
It’s… not just his failing, he knows. He knows, better than anyone, that one cannot be helped if they do not first desire to be helped. Midoriya has, for years now, rejected every attempt made to help him, has determinedly continued down the path of self-destruction with the kind of tunnel-vision that comes from someone who only knows one way of being.
It’s still his failing, though, to have never managed to reach him when he was still younger, still more impressionable, still more open and not already set on his path.
Except maybe some small part of Shouta’s attempts made it through, because Midoriya called.
Midoriya called, and he’s on the line now, and Shouta’s pulling into a parking space and tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear before using his capture weapon to scale right up to Midoriya’s window, completely bypassing the stairs. It’s already open, the brief order of “open your window” enough to get Midoriya moving, and the screen’s even out, being leaned up against the wall as Shouta enters.
This is his first time being in Midoriya’s apartment. He doesn’t make a habit of visiting his students’ homes on the regular, but he’s seen most of theirs for various reasons.
Something about the stark minimalism and hints of mess here makes concern and the distinct knowledge that this is not Midoriya’s normal grind against each other in Shouta’s heart, the crunch of a harsh and dissonant chord rubbing against something tender in his soul. Three years of dorm habitation had taught Shouta many things about his students, and one of the things he knows about Midoriya is that he’s a collector. Maybe he’s cooled down on the All Might collections (he had, somewhat, by his third year), but his walls have never been bare. He’s always filled them with color, plastered them with posters and paintings and a small handful of the most meaningful fan letters. His floors have always been filled with rugs of various types and textures, all sizes and colors, but here, they are plain, unadorned, just that shitty fake hardwood laminate that comes in nice-looking-but-actually-not-that-great apartments.
There’s only a few touches of Midoriya here, in the Uravity hoodie draped over the back of a chair, in the pile of big blankets on the couch, in the sticker-covered laptop and messy array of notebooks on the coffee table.
There’s Midoriya himself, standing next to the wall he propped the screen up on, wearing a navy-blue hoodie that’s too big on him and grey sweatpants with a couple stains on them. There are dark circles under his eyes and his skin seems… thin, papery, like if Shouta touches him with too much force, he’ll tear right through it. Those green curls are never not wild and messy-looking, but they’re a little too long now, and maybe Midoriya’s decided to grow his hair out, but it’s much more likely he just hasn’t bothered to get them trimmed.
Many things fall to the wayside when you stop living and start waiting to die. Things like haircuts, and healthy sleep schedules, and eating, and changing clothes and doing your laundry…
It all makes him wonder how everyone’s missed Midoriya’s decline… or if they noticed and did not care to intervene.
Now that he is in the apartment and in the presence of Midoriya himself, he hangs up the call and tosses his phone on the coffee table. That is, coincidentally, where Midoriya’s phone is, and it at least carries a small part of his personality, the vibrant red case standing out against the rest of the depression den.
The sudden movement and the noise of Shouta’s phone hitting the table startle Midoriya, his hands twitching and eyes widening for just a moment before they’re half-lidded again, as if it takes just a little too much energy to keep them all the way open.
Which, well, Shouta’s familiar with the feeling.
The quiet between them hangs thick, because Shouta has not spoken yet, not since coming in the window, and Midoriya has not spoken, and the air around them is delicate like cracked glass waiting for the barest whisper of a touch to shatter and fall, irreparable.
He could keep Midoriya talking. He could make it here. But now that he’s here, he’s almost unsure of where to go next. While it is far from the first time one of his students has come to him in a crisis, this is the first time one of them has called him in the middle of a suicide attempt.
Strangers, he can talk back from the ledge, talk away from the edge, talk into putting down the gun and throwing away the pills and staying the blade from their wrists and the noose from their necks. Strangers are easy, compared to this. This is a situation with thirteen years of investment and emotions and failures behind it, and Shouta is brave enough to admit it, now, that he is terrified of this going wrong.
“I think this is the kind of conversation one should be sitting down for,” he says, jerking his head towards Midoriya’s couch. He watches as Midoriya swallows, and nods, and begins to walk over, movements lethargic in a way that’s antithetical to the boy Shouta had taught.
He moves, though, and that’s the important part. Midoriya takes one step, and then another, and he walks over and sits down and Shouta sits as well, the two of them sitting next to each other on the couch with only a little bubble of space between them. As he sits, he slouches, spine curving and shoulders slumping like there’s no strength left to sit up straight.
Shouta looks at his hanging head and the lines around his mouth and eyes, at the way his flesh hand curls half-heartedly into the cloth of his sweatpants, and he regrets that help was so long coming.
Again, he reminds himself that he cannot help someone who does not want to be helped. This, here, this moment, this is the first time he’s seen hope for Midoriya during his years of self-destruction. In his lowest moment, he has reached for help. Maybe he hasn’t accepted that he needs it, but he’s reached for it, and Shouta’s here to give it.
The quiet persists for a few moments more before Midoriya huffs, a soft little exhale that seems to deflate him even further.
“Fuck,” he whispers, so quiet that Shouta can barely hear it. “Fuck,” again, a little louder, a little more emphatic, as he scrunches his eyes closed. The motion pulls at his mouth, twisting his lips up into a grimace.
Shouta can only begin to guess at the cocktail of emotions behind that action, but he would bet his guess would be accurate, because he’s been here before, he’s been the one in Midoriya’s shoes.
“Thank you,” Shouta says, “for calling.” He’ll start here, because while this is hardly a pleasant situation, it is so much better than the alternative.
Midoriya just snorts, his grimace morphing into a joyless lopsided smile. “It’s, like, three in the morning. I woke you up.”
“And?” Shouta raises an eyebrow. “I’d rather be woken up at three in the morning than be finding out about your suicide whenever your body was found.”
That hits something tender, it seems, if Midoriya’s full-body flinch is anything to go by. And Shouta gets it. He understands. When he had heard that from Hizashi and Nemuri and Tensei, it had been… hard. It had been painful. He had denied it, refused it, because how could they care so much about him?
And it seems like Midoriya might be about to deny it, from the way his left hand opens and closes again, the way his jaw clenches and unclenches, the muscle popping out, and—
Midoriya’s lost weight. Despite the ridiculous amount of muscle on him, he’s always been lithe, always been suited more for speed than strength, but now there’s a hollowness to his cheeks, a thinness to his hand that wasn’t there before.
When he speaks, the expected denial comes.
“Why?” Midoriya asks, grimacing again, a brief flash of his teeth. “Why, though? That’s more…” He stops. He swallows, left hand clenching and unclenching in the fabric of his sweatpants.
“That’s more what?” Shouta asks, once it becomes clear that Midoriya will not continue of his own volition.
He looks away, at the wall, at his hands, at the floor, at anywhere he doesn’t have to look at Shouta. “That’s more trouble than I’m worth,” he whispers.
“You’re worth a lot more trouble than that,” Shouta replies. Midoriya turns his head, and looks at him, but there’s a stone wall in his eyes, one built of thoughts and beliefs stacked up over years and which will take years more to tear down.
“I’m really not,” he says, shrugging. “There has to be a line… somewhere, right? And wherever it is, I crossed it years ago.”
This is said like fact. To Midoriya, it is, something he’s told himself again and again, so often and so hard that it’s become immutable in his mind.
“There is no line,” is Shouta’s answer to that. From Midoriya’s flat expression, there’s no way he buys that, even though it’s the truth, so Shouta tries again. “There is no line, Midoriya. I don’t know how to explain this so that you believe it, but you can’t cross that line because it doesn’t exist. There is no point where somehow you will have caused enough problems that everyone will just decide to be done with you.”
Midoriya doesn’t get the chance to say anything to that, because Shouta continues, because maybe this will go easier if Midoriya knows he understands. “I know that’s hard to believe, right now. I found it hard to believe, too, when I was the one being told that.”
A moment, enough time for a breath, and Midoriya blinks, once, twice, his hands twitching before he looks away, looks down at those mismatched hands.
“You…?” He doesn’t say the words, but Shouta nods anyways.
“Yes,” he replies. “I tried to kill myself, too. Almost threw myself off a bridge because I was walking over it and it just… seemed like the most logical thing to do, at the time. I had been causing my friends nothing but trouble, I was a homeless, dead-end nobody of an underground hero, and I thought there was no way my life could be worth the trouble my existence brought.”
“But I was wrong,” he continues, “and so are you.”
That lingers, for a moment, hanging in the air, suspended between them, before Midoriya sighs, pushing through the silence and leaning back against the couch. The back of his head rests on the top of the couch, positioning him so he’s staring up at the ceiling. “What… stopped you?”
“Nemuri texted me,” Shouta replies, and he can cite that text word-for-word still, so he does. “Sushi misses you, with a winky face and a smiley face. Sushi was this cat that a friend of ours smuggled into school when we were second years, and Nemuri had taken her in. So I texted her back, told her I was on my way, and had my breakdown when I got there. What stopped you?”
The reply does not come immediately, not that Shouta expected it to. He’s fine with waiting, sitting there quietly, watching Midoriya’s left hand fidget with the hem of his sweatshirt.
“I was scrolling… through my contacts,” he says, slowly, speaking the words like they’re unstable ice and he’s testing each one carefully, making sure they’ll hold his weight before trusting them with himself. “I was… looking. At. The conversations. And… I saw yours.”
He inhales, and sits up, and it looks like it takes every shred of energy he has left, but he sits up and bites his lip before continuing.
“I… remembered something that you told me while I was still in high school,” he says. “About… about you… helping me, whether that’s as a hero or not. And I just…” Midoriya chokes, shaking his head and closing his eyes. “I’m a disappointment, don’t tell me I’m not. I can’t take care of myself. I chase death whenever I have the opportunity to. I’m a failure, and a disappointment, and, just, I’m just a wreck, I’m an absolute fucking wreck, but… I don’t… I don’t want to be the wreck forever. And—and maybe I will be. Maybe there’s nothing I can do. But… if I kill myself, now, that’s all I’ll ever be.”
Shouta waits, lets him speak.
He knows how delicate this moment is, and how important.
“So… that’s why,” Midoriya finishes, shrugging, his eyes opening and gaze flicking over to Shouta.
Shouta nods, pausing for a moment to think, to collect his words and line them up.
“I’m glad you called,” he says, and he’ll reiterate that point however many times he needs to, because it means, that in this moment, Midoriya is still alive because he chose to call. “And you just told me not to tell you you’re not a disappointment, but I need to, because you’re not.” Midoriya’s face scrunches, lips twitching, but he doesn’t fight that point, not verbally. “I know you’re not going to believe that right now, so I’ll tell you however many times it takes that you’re not a disappointment, you’re not more trouble than you’re worth, you’re not a failure.”
“But I am.” It’s a whisper, just loud enough that he thinks he was meant to hear it. “I can’t—I can’t even take care of myself.”
Shouta looks at him, again, really takes him in. Twenty-eight, and he already seems so old, so world-weary and wayworn. There’s a weight on his shoulders that’s been there for years, never lifted, never lightened, and it’s been slowly killing him, crushing him under the stress.
Perhaps he’ll allow Shouta to take some of it now.
“That can be worked on,” he says. “Maybe you can’t take care of yourself right now, but maybe you also just need some help. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
For a moment, Midoriya’s frozen, and then—he nods. Short, jerky, but he nods, an acceptance.
“Maybe—maybe I do,” he agrees.
And that—that’s a relief. Midoriya’s not going to keep fighting him. Maybe. It’ll be a give and take, an up and down, but this is a start.
“You called me for my help,” Shouta says, eyes glued to Midoriya’s form, watching his reactions. “Are you going to accept it?”
And Midoriya nods again. “What—what does…” he trails off, licking his lips, eyes flicking towards Shouta so he’s looking at him from the corner of his eyes. “What does that… entail?”
“Well, some of that’s up to you,” Shouta replies. “And what kind of help you want. You don’t need to have an answer to that now, but there are some things that need to be decided and taken care of as soon as possible.”
Midoriya swallows, and nods. “Like… like what?”
“Well…” Shouta pauses, because there is a tentative hope in Midoriya’s expression, built on his delicate trust, and Shouta won’t abuse that. “I can’t know what’s in your head, but I don’t think you should be staying on your own right now.”
Midoriya snorts, the wryest smile Shouta’s ever seen on his face twisting at his lips. “I only just almost killed myself.”
“Yes, you did,” Shouta agrees. “There’s a few options here. Someone could come here to stay with you, or you can stay with someone else. Do you know which you’d prefer?”
“I… don’t know.” Midoriya’s voice cracks as he replies, and he shrugs. So Shouta takes a glance around the apartment, and… yeah. He wouldn’t want anyone coming here if it was him, if this was his depressive spiral, and he can’t presume to know exactly what Midoriya wants and feels, but he can make an educated guess.
Furthermore, he remembers exactly how hard things like making decisions were. They still get difficult, on occasion…
“Do you want me to make that decision for you?” he asks, and Midoriya shrugs, his hands raising out of his lap for the first time this conversation so he can bury his face in them.
“I don’t know,” It’s muffled and mangled by the palms of his hands, but Shouta can still understand him, can still feel the strain in the words.
Maybe he’s pushing too hard, right now. But is he? He doesn’t know, can’t know, how hard to push, whether to ease up or push more. These are uncharted waters.
But, well, this is the aftermath of near-suicide.
He should probably go a little easier on him.
“I think,” he begins, “the simplest option would be if you came to stay with Hizashi, Eri, and I, at least for a night or two. We can re-evaluate tonight, or tomorrow morning, when you’re feeling… less like you want to kill yourself.”
A moment, and then Midoriya lifts his head, letting his hands drop, and nods. “Okay. That—okay.”
“Okay.” Shouta takes a deep breath, relaxes the smallest amount. “What do you need to pack for a couple nights?”
Midoriya twitches, eyes widening, and he jumps into action. With the addition of an objective, something simple and easy to take care of, he seems to come back to life, although his motions are still slowed, and occasionally, he’ll stop, and stand for a few moments, like he’s suddenly forgotten what he’s moving for. He’s muttering as he packs, moving around the apartment, and from what Shouta can catch it sounds like he’s just keeping track of what he needs to pack.
Shouta stays on the couch, letting Midoriya pack without interference. He keeps an ear out, and while his heartrate picks up when Midoriya disappears into the bedroom and bathroom for a few minutes, he reminds himself that it is highly unlikely Midoriya will turn around and just kill himself now. He can still hear him moving around, anyways, hear the opening and closing of drawers, and soon, Midoriya’s back out in the living room, shoving his laptop and its charger and his phone charger into the backpack he’s been packing everything into. He’s changed clothes, into a clean pair of black sweatpants and a soft purple shirt. The shirt has only one sleeve, altered because Midoriya’s prosthetic arm does not get along well with most sleeves. Compared to the hoodie, it leaves the whole thing exposed, and Shouta can see the port, the connection between skin and metal, the sheer mass of scar tissue there, and he can see the swelling. He can see the skin around it, red and inflamed, and there’s no way Midoriya’s not in constant pain.
“Arm off,” Shouta says, and Midoriya freezes and turns around, brow furrowed and mouth twisted into a confused frown. “I can see how bad your shoulder is from here. You need to give your body a break.”
“Oh. Right.” Midoriya nods, walking back to the kitchen table. There’s an assortment of things on it, including what looks like it could be an instrument case sitting open on it, all tough and shiny reinforced steel. With a few quick motions, Midoriya undoes the latches holding his arm on and pulls it off, carefully setting it in the case and pulling out something that looks just kind of like a silver cylinder. It latches on where the arm was connected, protecting the port and the nerves and wiring there.
(Shouta’s seen what happens when something touches the inside of the port that’s not supposed to be there. The results are not nice.)
With the arm off, Midoriya seems lighter, sighing and moving a little easier. He’s probably just lost a lot of pain, not to mention the removal of an incredibly heavy hunk of metal.
It only takes a few more moments for Midoriya to pack up the rest of the things on the table the go with the arm, and then he’s closing the case and latching it shut before walking over to where the Uravity hoodie is. He pauses, hesitates in front of it for a moment, before picking it up and pulling it on. Like the rest of his hoodies seem to be these days, it’s a couple sizes too big.
Shouta, while Midoriya has been packing, has also taken the time to message his husband, to let him know they’re having a visitor, and exactly what the circumstances of this visitor are.
“Ready to go?” Shouta asks, pocketing his own phone before standing up, picking up Midoriya’s phone, and walking over to the younger man. He holds the phone out, and after a moment, Midoriya takes it, sticking it in the pocket of his hoodie and nodding.
“Yeah,” he says, walking over to pick up his backpack and put it on, leaving it hanging off his good shoulder. The next step is picking up the case with the arm, and then they’re leaving, this time through the front door (after double-checking that all the windows are properly closed and latched).
He waits until they’re in the car to drop the next bombshell.
“You need to call into your agency,” he says. “Let them know you need the next few days off.” He’s driving, so his eyes are on the road, but he can still see Midoriya’s head whip around in his direction. “No arguments. I’m not going to fight you about this.”
“…Okay.”
Well, that was easier than he thought it was going to be. Midoriya pulls his phone out and begins typing something on it.
“I’m emailing them now,” he says, and, wow, Shouta was expecting a lot more resistance to that idea than… this.
“Okay. I’m taking today off, too, because I’m not sure how confident I am in leaving you alone the entire time Hizashi and I would be at work. Hizashi is still going in, but I don’t want you being alone in the house right now.”
“Who will cover your classes?”
“Hanta will,” Shouta replies. “He can use the practice.”
“Oh.” Midoriya’s voice goes soft, in a sad, melancholy little way. “That’s right. He’s… a TA?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh. He’ll be an amazing teacher.”
“He will be,” Shouta agrees. “If you wanted, we could invite him to dinner tonight, or tomorrow. I’m sure he’d like to see you.”
And maybe he’s treating Midoriya a little bit like he’s a kid. But he’s not protesting, and, well, Shouta can still remember what it was like when he was fresh out of his brush with suicide. It chafes, but it’s also welcome, in the most paradoxical and most relieving way.
“That… would be nice,” Midoriya agrees, so Shouta makes the mental note to email Hanta sometime today, maybe after he’s had a nap, to let him know some of the situation.
Apart from that, most of the drive is quiet, both of them emotionally wrung out and Midoriya exhausted from… well, years of self-destruction. At one point, Shouta could swear the kid (fuck, he’s a twenty-eight-year-old man, and he’s still thinking of him as ‘kid’) goes to sleep, shoulder belt biting into his cheek, but then he looks and Midoriya’s awake, staring out the window at the early-morning city with blank eyes.
There are lights on in the house when they get there, Hizashi undoubtedly unable to sleep after Shouta’s sudden and dramatic exit. Eri might be awake now, too—she’s in her third year of high school, thriving at the top of UA’s General Studies course, and it’s probably unlikely she missed the three AM commotion of Shouta tripping over a chair in the rush to grab his capture weapon and keys. If she’s awake, then Hizashi will have told her what’s happening, and if she’s not, then they’ll cross that bridge when they get there.
He parks the car, and Midoriya takes a deep breath, lingering in it for a moment before opening his door and stepping out. He’s insisted on carrying his own things inside, and Shouta’s let him. There are lines to push at and lines to leave be and this is one of those that it would probably do more harm than good to push at.
Instead, as they walk up the path to the house, he reaches out and puts his hand on Midoriya’s shoulder. The way he absolutely melts into the touch is telling, so Shouta pulls him closer, wrapping his arm around his shoulders, and the metal of Midoriya’s shoulder port bites into his arm a bit, but that’s nothing, not really, not compared to the way he can now feel the fine tremors running through Midoriya’s shoulders.
He opens the front door, and angles them so he doesn’t need to release Midoriya for them to get through. Hizashi and Eri are, indeed, both awake, sitting in the living room, some shoujo series playing quietly on the TV in the background. They’re both reserved as they say hello, although Eri’s leg is bouncing up and down faster than a jackhammer.
The guest room is on the ground floor, and Shouta guides Midoriya there. The backpack and case go on the floor next to the bed, for the moment, it seems.
“If you want to try and get some sleep, that’s fine,” Shouta says. “You look like you haven’t slept well in months—”
“I haven’t,” Midoriya replies, shrugging.
“Then get some sleep,” Shouta stresses, closing his eyes so he doesn’t roll them. “But, if you don’t think you can right now, or you don’t want to be alone, you’re welcome to come join us in the front room. At any time. You don’t need to isolate yourself here.”
There’s a long pause, the only motion coming in the form of Midoriya’s fingers twitching and flicking, and the noise of Eri and Hizashi talking quietly to each other.
“…Thank you,” Midoriya finally says. “I’ll… try to get some sleep, but if I can’t, I’ll… come out.”
“Okay.” Shouta turns to step out, and then pauses, his hand on the doorknob, before turning to look over his shoulder. Once more, he says, “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you called.” He doesn’t wait for Midoriya to respond, doesn’t wait for him to formulate defenses and reasons why Shouta shouldn’t be glad, he just steps out of the room, closing the door behind him. He lingers, for a moment, standing just outside the door as he sighs and exhales out years’ worth of stress and worry. There will be more to come, but the first steps forward have been made, and Midoriya is currently tucked into his little family unit, hopefully working on going to sleep and catching up on some of that multiple months’ worth of shitty sleep.
There will be hard conversations coming, and hard choices, but for now, for now he can breathe and release his stress.