Work Text:
Hero work came with a lot of elements for the job. Taking down villains, paperwork, providing rescue, paperwork, providing first aid if you were trained in it, paperwork, the clean up after all had been done, and of course more paperwork. What hadn’t occurred to class 1-A was the fact they were more often than not going to have to deal with children during all of this. Helping them get to safety, making sure they are unharmed and getting them the care they need if and when they need it. They didn’t realise that sometimes they’d have to be dealing with children coming up to them to tell them they were being hurt at home or at school. It seemed that hero work didn’t stop at big villain monsters - sometimes those monsters were living under a roof, a family member, a family friend, a teacher.
It’s why the class now had to sit in on a safeguarding session. Aizawa had been going over the material on how best to support children in these situations and how they may find themselves in uncomfortable situations like when a child confides in them that they are being sexually assaulted and how they would go about that situation to help the child in need as soon as possible.
The video playing in front of them shows a little boy, no older than eight, sitting in a doctor’s office whilst the doctor hands him a plush doll of a child. “Now, can you please show me where he touched you.” The doctor says and with trembling hands the boy’s fingers brush over the doll and they circle around the doll’s chest for a moment before sliding down and between the doll’s legs. “And did the bad man use just his hands?” The doctor asks then and the boy shakes his head with a little sniffle as he holds tightly onto the doll. It then cuts to a police officer who addresses the audience on what would happen next, how it’s important for the heroes to get the child help immediately to remove them from the danger. He explains the purpose of the doll and how it can help children express what happened without needing to explicitly say it as it can cause them severe distress.
As the video ends Shouto’s hand raises into the air. Aizawa looks over at him and nods for him to speak. “I’ve already done this.” He says and everyone turns to look at him confused. Aizawa stares at him.
“In middle school? You’ve already been over this material before?” He asks because he knows they would have had brief discussions before but nothing quite in depth like this material covers.
“No.” Shouto shakes his head. “Not the lesson. I mean I’ve done that before.” He gestures to the screen that’s paused on the little boy holding the doll still.
“You’ve… Done an exercise using the doll in class before?” Kirishima offers, utterly confused.
“Congrats Icyhot, you’ve done this shit before. What, you want a medal?” Bakugou says to him and Shouto is confused now too. He furrows his eyebrows together.
“I don’t think I need a medal for that, Bakugou. I didn't do a lesson on it, I already said that. I mean I had to show the nurse where the bad man touched me so I know all about this already.” He says it so simply. Says it like he didn’t just tell everyone some man had bad touched him before.
“Todoroki… Do you want to sit out of this lesson?” Aizawa asks, now concerned that maybe it’ll trigger him.
“No? I can listen to it all again. I was six so I don’t remember it all that well, it would be good to cover the material again in case I forgot something.” He shrugs and he hears his classmates gasp.
“Who the fuck!?” Bakugou yells as he stands up from his chair and Shouto looks at him.
“Who what?” Shouto asks, tilting his head to the side.
“Who the fuck did that to you!?”
“Bakugou, we do not need to discuss that here. We will make sure to offer any services Todoroki might need for this.” Aizawa says.
“He was just some guy Endeavour worked with.” Shouto says and he keeps saying these things like it wasn’t bad. Like he doesn’t understand how bad it actually is.
“Todoroki…” Midoriya looks at him with wide glassy eyes.
“Ok, we’re going to wrap it up here. Class is dismissed. Todoroki, could you stay behind for a moment, please?” Aizawa asks and Shouto thinks that maybe he’s messed up somehow. Why would he cut the class short just to keep him back? Was he not meant to say anything about it? He can’t remember if he had been told that when he was younger. Did he breach some sort of confidentiality agreement? Perhaps he was going to have to call his father to tell him he messed up but that was the last thing he wanted to do. It was not something they talked about, even at the time. His father had made it a point that Shouto was never to discuss it once he was done telling the nurses and the police. Did Aizawa know that? Was he going to tell his father he had spoken about it?
He watches his classmates filter out and they all send him worried glances. He does not miss the way Kirishima berates Bakugou for what he had said previously as they leave. “Dude, you asked the guy if he wanted a medal for being molested.” Kirishima says and he hears Bakugou scoff before he replies with “how was I meant to know he meant that!?” And then everyone else had left. Shouto gets up from his desk and walks towards Aizawa’s desk at the front.
“Are you ok, kid?” Aizawa asks him and it catches Shouto by surprise.
“Yes, of course. Are you going to call my father about this? I think I wasn’t supposed to talk about it so I’m sorry if I messed up with that.” He bows his head slightly.
“What did the material cover, Todoroki?” Aizawa suddenly asks.
“In general? It was about safeguarding children and how best to help them if they come to you about a situation like if they’re being hurt at home.” Shouto says. He doesn’t understand why Aizawa is asking him, he was listening to the whole lesson.
“When a child tells you they’re being hurt but then they tell you they’re not allowed to talk about it, what are you then meant to do?” Aizawa asks.
“Encourage them? Tell them that you can help them but it’ll be hard to help if you don’t know what the situation is and remind them that they’re safe with you and they can tell you anything even if they’ve been told to keep quiet about something.” Shouto says as he recalls what had been said in the video.
“Exactly. So, if you want to talk about your situation, Todoroki, you can.” Aizawa says and Shouto gets what he was getting at.
“Oh.” He feels like he’s that kid again. Six year old Shouto who’s sitting in the nurse's office. His legs are too little to touch the ground from where he sits so they dangle and he swings them a little as his father whispers something to the nurse that he can’t quite hear. He’s handed a doll and is being told to show where his father’s colleague had touched him. Has to tell them that it wasn’t just the man’s fingers on him. Tells them that he licked him too, got his peepee out and asked Shouto to lick him back because it’s only fair. Had Shouto’s tiny hand wrapping around him because apparently it felt good.
“Todoroki?” He’s snapped back to the present and looks at Aizawa who’s looking at him concerned. “You ok?”
“Yes. I’m ok.” Shouto says because he is. He’s perfectly fine. It doesn’t matter.
“I need you to know that we’re here to support you. I’m going to get together some resources for you if you decide you need them. I think it might be beneficial if you see Hound Dog about this but it’s all up to you. You won’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with and I’m always here for you, kid. Whatever you need, you can ask me.” Aizawa says and Shouto nods. He doesn’t understand why he’s making such a fuss, it happened years ago and yet he still appreciates the effort.
“Thank you, sensei. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. Now, you can get going. Have a little break before your next class.”
Shouto does not end up going to the rest of his classes instead, he ends up walking back to the dorms where he gets in the elevator, and then to his room and with a heavy sigh, he removes his blazer and tie and goes into his futon, pulling the covers over him. When he closes his eyes, he is back to being six years old again, he hasn’t thought about it for so long, in fact, it’s been years since he last thought about it he doesn’t know why he’s thinking about it so much now. It’s something that did not matter. So why does he feel like he’s six years old? Why does it feel like that man’s hands are all over him? Why does he feel so small? he squeezes his eyes so tightly, he can feel the tears threatening to spill. He doesn’t wanna feel like this anymore. It’s been years, he should be over this. His father would not be happy about this. He wasn’t meant to talk about it. Why did he talk about it? Now all of his classmates know. Were they not ashamed to know him?
He can feel himself spiralling, going deeper and deeper into the thoughts. He feels so small and his clothes feel too big, he tugs at his shirt to pull it away from his neck as he finds himself struggling to breathe. It feels like big hands are on him, tugging at his shirt to pull it off. The big hands are running all over his skin, feeling in places they are not supposed to because Shouto is much too small, and the man is much too big. “Shh, it’s ok. This is our little secret, isn’t it? Your daddy doesn’t let you play a lot, does he? That’s ok, we can play now. I’ll show you all the big boy games.” His hands come up to his hair, tugging on the strands as he remembers it all. “C’mon Shouto, don’t be shy. I just want to see your little kid parts. I can see, can’t I? You’ll let me, won’t you?”. Shouto shakes his head as he sobs, curling further into himself because he doesn’t want to remember this. It’s been too long and he thought it was ok. It wasn’t meant to matter anymore. “Shouto, stop being a brat!” His hands are over his ears now, trying to block it all out. He can’t. He just can’t. “Shouto!”. He needs it to stop. Why won’t it stop? “Oi! Shouto!” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
“Shouto!” His eyes snap open and he sees Bakugou crouching beside him, he looks worried. He slowly removes his hands from his ears and sits up to see the aftermath of it all. There’s ice covering pretty much half of his room, he can see Bakugou shivering from where he’s crouched. He looks down to see half of his shirt is singed off and some of his covers have burn marks in them now.
“What happened?” He asks as he stares at Bakugou.
“Your quirk was going fucking crazy. Making the temperature of the whole fucking dorm go weird. I think you were having a panic attack or some shit.” Bakugou says and he’s not sure how he didn’t even realise his quirk was going off.
“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.”
“Yeah, no shit.” Bakugou falls back to sit on his ass with a heavy sigh and Shouto starts using his left side to heat up the room and melt the ice near them both. “What was that about anyways?” Bakugou asks. Shouto wonders if he should say. Wants to tell him for some reason but he shouldn’t. He’s not meant to talk about it. Only… Aizawa said he could. He was allowed apparently so maybe he should. Would it be fair though? To tell all of this to his classmate? What would Bakugou even do with the information? It wasn’t going to help either of them.
“Oi. What are you thinking so hard about? You either want to tell me or you don’t. It’s not a hard decision.”
“It was just today… in class. I guess it brought back up old memories.” He shrugs with a sigh. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
“Like hell it doesn’t! You’ve been carrying this around with you for years and no one here even knew about it?” Shouto shakes his head and Bakugou wipes a hand down his face with a groan. “I’m sorry I said that thing about the damn medal… I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Yeah.”
It’s silent for a while after that. Shouto looks down at his hands, fiddles with his fingers as he figures out what to do next. What he should be doing instead of sitting here dwelling on the past that cannot be changed. He wonders if he should see Hound Dog like Aizawa had suggested. He wasn’t sure how it was meant to help, he was offered therapy as a child when it happened but his father refused because Shouto didn’t need therapy. He didn’t need something so stupid because some man touched him when he wasn’t supposed to. It didn’t make Shouto crazy. Although, Shouto thinks he’d have liked someone to talk to about it at the time. Someone he could have told how it made him feel, just so they’d listen and he’d feel heard. He didn’t want much from it. Didn’t need solutions or self help tips. He just wanted someone to listen to him.
“Should I get Aizawa?” Bakugou says eventually and Shouto shakes his head because he doesn’t think it’d help right now.
“He wants me to see Hound Dog. Thinks it might help.” Shouto confesses.
“Yeah? What do you think about that?” Bakugou asks and Shouto shrugs.
“I think it’s too late for it to matter. I needed someone to listen to me when I was six. Not when I’m sixteen.” He huffs out. It’s all stupid. All of it.
“I think you always need someone to listen. Something happened to you when you were younger and you weren’t allowed to deal with it and heal from it. You had a fucking panic attack over it because you got triggered. I think you should talk about it.” Bakugou says and he shuffles a little closer to Shouto now the ice is melting and the room doesn’t feel as cold.
“And say what? That I haven’t thought about it in years but suddenly I watch a video in class and all I can feel is that man’s hands on me again and I feel like I’m six years old trapped inside my body and I just want someone to touch me without hurting me?” Tears fill his eyes again when he thinks about it. How he hasn’t been held in years. Not since his mother got taken away. How people don’t touch him unless it's to hurt him. “I want to know what it feels like to be held again. To be held and not fear that I’m going to burn to ashes.” He confesses, tears so close to spilling over once again.
“Jesus. You need bigger dreams.” Bakugou mumbles and then he’s coming closer, hesitates before wrapping his arms around Shouto, pulling him close and Shouto is quick to latch onto him. Buries his head into his neck as he holds onto Bakugou tightly and Bakugou holds him firmly right back. Squeezes him slightly because Shouto deserves a damn good hug and Bakugou will be damned if he doesn’t give him the best one ever. Shouto sobs into him and Bakugou doesn’t mind. Lets him cry it out and he doesn’t let go until Shouto wants to because this is for him. To be held without being hurt and Bakugou thinks he’s capable of hurting things without meaning to but he’s going to get this right, for Shouto’s sake.
So, they hold onto each other. Shifting once when their legs started to ache from the awkward angle and Shouto ends up in Bakugou’s lap. Cheeks pink as he realises how close this makes them. Completely chest to chest but Bakugou doesn’t say he’s uncomfortable with it. Shouto actually feels him trace shapes across his back with his fingers. Sometimes onto his skin where his shirt no longer covers and Shouto likes feeling his hands on him. It feels safe.
He finally feels safe.