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Aizawa's having a terrible day.
Dysphoria is hitting so hard he wants to hide every time someone looks in his direction, he's so exhausted his vision is blurred and his hands shake uncontrollably, and on top of all that he's developing a killer migraine.
But somehow, he's holding it together. He's reading a student's essay (truthfully, he's just staring at the first page with a pen in hand and trying not to pass out, but he's trying, damnit, he's trying so hard) while they work on whatever they haven't turned in. He does this, sometimes; lets them have a free period every six weeks or so, when too many kids are stressed about homework they haven't had the time or energy to do.
He's still forcing himself to function, if not very well, right up until that afternoon. At some point he almost throws up from the pain in his head, grabs a couple pills from the medicine cabinet, and emerges from his dimly lit bedroom, stumbling to the kitchen to get himself some juice to take them with. He doesn't bother to hide just how bad he feels, because the whole class is on a Shouto-sponsored shopping trip - meaning he stole his dad's credit card again, and insisted on everyone wasting as much money as they wanted.
Shouta opens the fridge and fumbles at the inside of the door where the juice should be.
But there isn't any.
And that's the last straw. It's more than he can handle. He's tired and stressed and hurting and overwhelmed and angry now, too, and really fucking disappointed and it's all too much. He already couldn't take any more things going wrong, and then they did, and now he can't.
He slams the door shut with a bang, far more upset than he rightfully should be about something as simple as a distinct lack of orange juice, and hisses in English, "Fuck!
"F-Fuck..."
The second time, it comes out closer to a sob than a curse, and then he's on the floor, not entirely sure how he got there, not really caring because he feels too small, too exposed, and he curls up into a ball to protect himself even though he knows he's physically safe here and it will only make him feel smaller. Wrapping his arms around his knees reminds him that his hips, his thighs are just a little too wide, feminine, because he didn't start transitioning until he was 16 and now he just looks like that. For the rest of his life, he's going to have a woman's hips and it's all wrong and his head hurts so bad and the kitchen's cold and bright and he doesn't have any orange juice and he couldn't take the pills even if he swallowed them dry because he dropped them like a fucking idiot and now they're gone.
Izuku, for obvious reasons, was not at the mall. He was on the couch, half asleep, staring at a tiny piece of red tape stuck to the ceiling, the only remnant of a half-remembered common room sleepover.
The fridge door opening told him Aizawa-sensei must be around, and he almost called out, but a loud slam interrupted him.
"Sen-?"
Thud.
He fell. He fell to the ground, I heard it, what happened in there? Oh no what if he's hurt?
Izuku hurries to the kitchen just in time to watch Aizawa-sensei curl up in the middle of the floor and bury his head in his knees with a choked don't-cry whimper.
"S-Sensei? What's wrong?"
Shouta feels simultaneously better and worse, now that someone's here to watch his breakdown. On one hand, he desperately wants not to be alone right now, but on the other, he really doesn't want to be seen like this, especially not by one of his kids.
"What's wrong?" Midoriya asks again, even gentler than the first time.
He means to answer calmly, he does, but the moment he opens his mouth, it just decides to be done holding back any sort of noise and he just starts sobbing.
"O-oh, no, I didn't mean to- Um, uhh, what do I- Oh! I can hug you, is that okay?"
Yes please, I'm cold and everything hurts. I need a hug.
Shouta clear his throat, tries again to speak somewhat coherently, fails, and makes weak little grabby hands instead until Midoriya gets the message and comes over to hold him.
"Oh... I-Is that better?"
"Mmhm," Shouta sniffles. "Lil bit."
"Why're you crying?"
As if to remind him, his head gives a nasty throb, and he cringes, squeezing his eyes shut and blocking out the light by burying his entire face in his student's shirt.
"Head hurts. I'm so... So fuc- f-fucking t- so, s-so fucking tired, but it h-hurts and I can't s-sleep and there's not juice so I ca- I can't take the med- i- medic-cine and I- I c- I can't t-take t-t-thi-this-"
By the end of it, he's crying so hard he doesn't know if Midoriya has any idea what he just said, but he doesn't want to say it again. He doesn't want to, and now he's mad and he doesn't know why and it's just so-
...It's...
It.. What on earth..?
Midoriya has... Pulled Shouta, an entire adult, into his lap. He's being held like a fucking baby.
He should probably be offended, but it's actually very nice. He can rest his head more comfortably from here.
"Can you hear me now, Aizawa-sensei?"
No, don't call me that right now, it's weird. "J-just my name. N-no Sen- Sensei, you're ww- watching me c-cry on the floor."
"O-okay, if you say so. Um... Aizawa, I asked a minute ago why you said there was no juice."
Shouta felt a fresh wave of disappointment, similar to the moment he first realized the spot where juice went had no juice in it.
"Th-there is none."
"Sensei, i-it's on the counter. I think someone left it out this morning. You want me to get you some?"
"...yes, please."
His voice sounded so small. Almost... Higher than it usually did. Feminine, his brain told him as Midoriya shifted him back to the floor and stood up, moved away. Where are you going? Please come back, I don't want to be alone right now! He whimpered, high-pitched-weak and he cringed at the noise he'd just made because it sounded wrong and tried to hug his torso to calm down but touching himself anywhere felt disgusting and he wanted to uncurl to stop touching but he couldn't seem to move at all and everything around him and on him and in him was badbadbad
"D-don't cry, Aizawa-se- Aizawa. Here, drink... I found these on the counter, are they what you dropped?"
Shouta took the offered cup of room-temperature orange juice, and- yes, those were the meds he lost. Must have put them down.
He took them, downed them, drank his juice, and felt a little better.
"The headache should be better in about half an hour... W-what else is wrong? I'll try to find a way to help."
Everything. "E-everyt-thing. G-grading takes t-too long, my- I d- I hate th- my f-fucking h-hips are s-so- gh..."
"Your..?"
That wasn't right... A piece slid back into place. My kids still don't know. Oh, fuck, they don't know and I just told him without telling he'll be so confused and then he'll hate me don't hate me don't call me a girl pleaseplease I can't take it right now
"C-calm down, please. It's okay, I promise. I know you're a man. It doesn't matter if you needed hormones or, or surgery for your body to get the message, you're s-still just as much of a man as- as freaking All Might, o-okay?"
Shouta muffled another sob, this time of relief, into Midoriya's chest. When did he get so close again?
"H-hey. You say it too, okay?"
Shouta scoffed tearfully. But that's so cheesy... Ugh. Fine. "I-I'm... I'm a man."
It... Helped more than he thought it would, though he still felt like shit. The warmth of validation spread in his chest when Midoriya just nodded and affirmed what he said.
"S-still feels..."
"I know," Midoriya sighed, "Dysphoria sucks. N-not that I- I mean I don't know from personal experience, but, well, our class isn't exactly full of cishet kids, y'know?"
Yeah, he knows. He's known little Tenya since he was born. He got to watch the kid start socially transitioning at age 6, and then physically when he turned 12 and started going through the wrong puberty.
Now two of his students know he's trans. Huh.
Oops, he's talking to me again.
"..to the couch?"
Ooh, couch. Shouta nodded, not fully realizing what he'd just agreed to until he was being picked up like he weighed as much as a cat what the fuck and carried easily over to the couch, in the living room where it was darker.
Oh. Oh. The cuddles were much better from here. Yeah, okay, he wasn't moving ever again.
That was how 1-A found them, hours later. Izuku slumped on one end of the couch with Aizawa-sensei draped over him, both of them dead asleep.
(Mina took... So many pictures. And if Aizawa caught her sharing them later, and awkwardly asked for a few of them, well. She wouldn't tell.)