Archive of Our Own ^beta

One day, Shouto gives up.

There is nothing particularly hard about this day. It is, in fact, a normal Thursday in the dorms. He is pleasantly sore from training today and nursing a few tender bruises, but they are signs of progress, left by his friends to show their own improvement and to encourage his. His hair is wet from a shower and he can smell a faint spice coming from the kitchen where Bakugou is preparing dinner. For the smell to reach him all the way in his room, even with the door being cracked open while he went next door, shows that the food will likely be spicy enough to water everyone’s eyes but Bakugou’s and his own, both used to the heat. He is flipping through the third volume of a manga he and Sero (Hanta, he’s Hanta now, and the thought sends something fluttering in his stomach) were sharing. There is an unopened text on his phone from Endeavor, asking (stating, demanding-) that Shouto return home for the weekend for training, since they missed the chance last week with Endeavor on a mission in another prefecture.

There is nothing particularly hard, or easy, about this day. It is normal. At this point in his life, it is routine.

He lets the manga drop to the side (closed, he wouldn’t dare bend the pages) and presses against the light bruises on his ribs. It was a good hit, and the little happy dance Kaminari did after he landed it made a smile twitch onto Shouto’s face without any consent from him. Just thinking about the moment, a second of shared happiness and growth, and Shouto decided very suddenly that he didn’t want to hurt anymore.

He thinks of the unread text on his phone. He thinks about the bruises he will gather if (when) he returns home this weekend, and certainty crawls over him like ice when he overdoes his quirk.

He stands from the floor fluidly, ignoring the slight ache from sitting on the floor for so long despite being used to it for years (familiar pain is adaptable, he would know. Routine.), and made his way to the door. Dinner won’t be done for a while yet but if this evening goes the way he thinks it will, he might not even make it back in time. He ignores the raucous laughter coming from Hanta’s room even though he wants nothing more than to duck through the door, climb into Hanta’s bed and curl up like a lonely cat seeking warmth and company. He ignores the fact that, without a doubt, no matter who was in there with him, they would have no problem if he did exactly that.

He wanted that warmth. He wanted it every day, all the time, and he didn’t want to have to feel like he was paying for it, earning it, with weekends of hellfire. He didn’t want to hurt anymore.

He didn’t meet anyone on the staircase, and was all the way to the genkan and tugging his shoes on before someone noticed him in the commons. He was used to walking unheard.

“Where are you going?”

It was Shinsou who caught him. Used to hearing things unheard, or used to being unheard himself, he didn’t really know. He was sure that they shared a kinship of a sort, in a bitter, resigned sort of way.

Shinsou’s call alerted everyone else gathered around the TV, watching some sort of anime with guns and flashy action sequences. Multiple voices cried out in question and welcome, and that same warm flutter was back, multiplied by each pair of kind eyes settling on him. He used to hate being the center of anyone’s attention. With 1A, he found he didn’t mind.

“There’s something I need to do.”

And Shouto’s aware that he always sounds some measure of flat and serious so most of them turn away. The only ones that keep looking are Shinsou, with some measure of knowing in his eyes, and Midoriya, who always finds a piece of his heart to carve out for his friends. He spares a smile for them.

He likes it here, in this dorm with kind eyes and concerned friends. He’s decided he wants it all the time, and he knows exactly how he’s going to get it.

The walk to the teacher’s dorm isn’t particularly long or short, situated in the middle of all the student dorms to make it easily accessible to any students in need. That would be Shouto tonight, finally accepting that he’s been in need for a long time.

He tried not to give much thought to what he’s going to do, and the repercussions of it. He tries not to think of what Fuyumi’s face will look like when she finds out what he’s done, if she will push him away for breaking a dream or understand that he did what he needed to do. He tries not to think of Natsuo’s vindication. He tries not to think of the picture on the shrine, the pristine floors of a hospital corridor, and how despite his courage now, he is still ten years too late.

He tries not to think of what will happen if Aizawa doesn’t believe him, or if they are both going to take on a losing fight.

Present Mic answers the door when he knocks, and he barely has any time to stare at his hair loose around his shoulders with reading glasses replacing his normal shades before he’s being waved inside. None of the teachers lounging in the commons blink an eye at his presence, all too used to the antics of class 1A to do anything beyond a cursory scan to check for injuries or panic. After assuring safety, they return to what they were doing before, a few of them helpfully giving him directions up to the third floor, fourth door on the right.

In no time at all, he was standing in front of a door undecorated with anything other than a metal plate inscribed with ‘Aizawa S.’.

This should be the easiest part. Knocking on the door. If he was going to lose his bravery it should’ve happened on the walk here, or with Mic at the door, or facing down a roomful of teachers who would know what he came here for soon enough. By all means, lifting his hand up and bringing it down on the door should be the easiest step in this.

It isn’t. It feels as if his hand is tied to a thousand bricks.

He remembers the first time someone had called him out on the unexplained bruises. It was in the locker room on a Monday afternoon, right after all the other boys had left after changing. He was slowly unlacing his boots for this specific reason, too exhausted from speed training today to bother changing in a stall and making up an excuse for it. Too tired to do much more than blink slowly at his shoes, echoes of the nightmares that ravaged his sleep last night dancing around his fingers. He could only be thankful that no one commented on it, and that no one was here to see his back when he finally pulled his shirt off.

“Holy shit.”

Or so he thought.

He jerked around to see Sero staring at him, all usual traces of amusement gone from his face as he looked at Shouto’s right shoulder, still angled a bit towards him, as if he could make him turn back around with just a look. He knew what Sero saw; he’d been feeling it since last night, when he was thrown up against the wall so hard that it left a crack and he spent the next five minutes wheezing on the ground, barely able to hear the words his father spit at him before leaving him there.

He hadn’t gone out of his way to see the massive cluster of bruises that must be dotting his back because he never did; looking at what had been done to him only made everything harder to deal with, and he wouldn’t be able to press on if there was evidence of…his weakness? His father’s cruelty? Branded into his mind. So as such, he didn’t really know how bad his back looked right now but, if Sero’s face was any indication, the picture wasn’t pretty.

“I fell during training.” He blurted out, seconds before he realized that Sero hadn’t even asked. Before he realized that literally the only thing they had done in training today was run sprints, and he hadn’t even so much as lost his balance at any point, let alone hit the ground hard enough to mangle his back to the state it was right now. It was a shitty explanation.

He resisted the urge to close his eyes. Gods, he was so tired.

Sero opened his mouth, brow furrowed, before closing it again, pressing his lips firmly together as a storm raged in his eyes. Shouto wanted nothing more than to lay down on the cool stone floor of the locker room and sleep for a hundred years, to wake up in a time where the name ‘Todoroki’ was nothing but a distant memory.

Sero abruptly turned around, heading back to his locker in the corner, closed with the packed bag still sitting in front of it, and started rummaging.

Put your shirt on, idiot. A weathered survival instinct hisses. Cover it up before you have to give an even shittier explanation for a shitty excuse.

He doesn’t move, despite his mind screaming at him to do so. He’s so tired.

He blinks and Sero is in front of him again, a tube of something medical in his hands. “Turn around.” He says, and it is somehow neither a command nor a request. He says it like a conductor, a narrator, like he is dictating how the next moments in time will go. Shouto can do nothing but obey.

The cream is cold against his back, shocking and soothing all at once, and Shouto is surprised to find he still has the energy for his eyes to fill with tears. He doesn’t let them fall, of course, too practiced in holding them back in much more dangerous situations than this one, but marvels all the same. When was the last time he was touched like this? Tenderly, caringly, healing not necessary in the long run but offered all the same. Sero has no reason to be going out of his way to do this, and yet he does.

“You know,” Sero says, working the cream over his bruises firmly but also gently, careful not to hurt him more than is unavoidable. “When you get hurt, you’re allowed to ask for help.”

And it was so simple, patient and clear like he was teaching a life lesson to a kindergarten class. Like Shouto had lost his favorite toy and didn’t want to ask for help to find it. Surely Sero didn’t know what he might be referring to, with his ‘hurt’ and his ‘help’. Surely he didn’t know just from seeing bruises on his back what had happened.

He ached to tell Sero that it wasn’t that simple, that the problems in his life were more complicated than his classmate could dream. He wanted to hurl it like knives, scream in the kind boy’s face about how he’ll never understand, about how no one would ever be able to help him, about how he will always be alone with this misery.

He didn’t think much of it at the time, too tired and hurt to bother with anything other than a terse thanks as he practically yanked the rest of his clothes on so he could leave the locker room as fast as possible.

Now, months later, he stands in front of his teacher’s door, and he thinks of the USJ. He thinks of Aizawa, beaten and bloody, held broken in a monster’s grip and still pushing that bit further to protect the children under his care. He thinks of red eyes surrounded by blood and ruin, trapped and still fierce in his duty.

Shouto gathers every ounce of courage in his body, every moment he sat curled in Sero’s room in safe silence, every easy laugh from his friends at lunch, every time his sensei put an encouraging hand on his shoulder during training, critiquing or encouraging or both, and he knocks on the door.

There are a few shuffling noises from inside before the door is pulled in. Aizawa is either half out of his hero costume or half in, jumpsuit and utility belt but no capture scarf or boots. His goggles are askew on his neck, and his hair is pulled into a ponytail with a few strands slipping out. There is a lamp situated right next to the door on the inside of Aizawa’s apartment, and its light bounces off the scar sitting under his teacher’s eyes, permanent proof of his devotion to his students.

“Todoroki?” He asks blankly after doing the same assessment that the other teachers had done.

“Sensei,” He says, thinking of bruise cream, laughter, and warm warm warm, kind eyes and concerned smiles. Sunlight dancing on his dozing body, a bed not his creaking as someone sits down next to him, a gentle hand in his hair, lips on his hairline.

“I need to tell you something.”