Chapter Text
“How do you know him?” Shouto hissed after his minute was up.
Hitoshi felt his throat tighten.
“I’ll tell you later,” he forced out. Hitoshi could practically hear the seconds tick by in Shouto’s silence.
“Fine,” Shouto finally muttered. “I suppose we should focus on escaping for now.”
Shinsou nodded stiffly. He sat back and let Shouto take the lead, following the other boy’s quiet, curt instructions. Hitoshi helped Shouto lift Bakugou to his feet, one arm over Hitoshi’s shoulder and the other over Shouto’s. They walked together toward the door.
“If there’s someone on the other side, brainwash them,” Shouto told Hitoshi before freezing the door and shattering it with a kick. Hitoshi held his breath, eyes searching for a human form through the curtain of splintered wood. When the shards finally settled, he exhaled sharply at the sight of the empty hallway. He was about to ask Shouto which way they should go next, but Shouto beat him to it, jerking his head to the left and pulling his half of Bakugou along with him.
“You know the way out?” Hitoshi asked.
“No,” Shouto grunted in response, “but the explosion from earlier came from this direction. Whoever was blowing up the place had to have entered from somewhere. If we find a dead-end, we’ll just retrace our steps.”
Shouto gestured with his head in the direction of the ground, and Hitoshi noticed the scorch marks Shouto was burning into the concrete floor with the fire from his left side.
They made their way through the winding passageways, each one looking the same as the last. The heavy walls rumbled insistently, the sound of a fight going on in the distance. Hitoshi panted, the weight of Bakugou’s body becoming painfully heavy. If Shouto felt the same way, he didn’t show it. The air was lead between them. Although Shouto definitely wasn’t talkative, Hitoshi had grown used to a calm, serene quiet from the him, not this stifling tension, almost mistrust.
Hitoshi couldn’t really complain about it though, could he? After all, he was the one who’d gotten them all into this mess anyway. He stole a glance at Shouto’s stony face and Bakugou’s prone form draped lifelessly between the two of them and felt the lump in his throat grow.
“You weren’t the first alpha to try to get into an arranged marriage with me, you know?” Hitoshi whispered. His voice was barely audible over the groaning of the building.
“What was that?” Shouto asked, cocking his head to the side to hear Hitoshi better.
Hitoshi took a centering breath before saying again, this time in a louder, steadier voice, “You weren’t the first alpha to try to get into an arranged marriage with me.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” Shouto asked, blunt as ever.
Hitoshi wet his lips, suddenly realizing that he was parched. “I – sorry, can we stop here?” Hitoshi was quite sure that he could only speak or continue to carry Bakugou but definitely not both at once. Shouto sighed silently but stopped walking.
“All right. Only for a short while though.”
Together, they carefully lowered Bakugou to the ground and propped him against the wall of the corridor. Shouto turned to face Hitoshi, arms crossed and fists clenched in expectation.
Hitoshi wilted underneath his gaze, unsure of where to start. “I’m not sure if you know this, but my family’s in the pharmaceutical industry,” he began. Shouto nodded in acknowledgement.
“Yes, your social standing and quirk made you a very compelling…match to my father.”
“Well,” Hitoshi continued, “that man with the black hair from earlier, Kai Chisaki, he…he tried to arrange a courtship between me and himself. He’d seen me during the broadcast of the sports festival and tracked down my parents to offer his proposal.”
Shouto was silent.
“My parents were ready to approve it, but they tried to run a background check on him. Nothing came up. So then they went to him and asked what he did for a living, his family, social standing, stuff like that. The courtship proposal fell through after one particular meeting. I wasn’t there for it, but I got one of my father’s aides to eavesdrop.” Hitoshi snuck a glance at Shouto’s impassive face before continuing. “That Chisaki…he’s bad news. He – he sells this drug that can supposedly restore quirks.”
Shouto’s eyebrows furrowed. “Disregarding the mechanism by which that works, why would someone ever need such a drug?”
Hitoshi nodded. “My parents asked the same thing, the question of how someone would lose their quirk in the first place such that they needed it to be restored. My parents broke off the courtship plans.”
“And they didn’t report any of this to the police?” Shouto asked.
Hitoshi shook his head. “They’re the ‘don’t rock the boat’ type of people. And besides, how would they explain to the police how they’d even stumbled across this information? Their public image would be destroyed if the fact that they tried to marry off their omega son was leaked to the press.”
“How old is this Chisaki guy?”
“I – I’m not sure.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Hitoshi started in surprise as Bakugou shakily stood up. "Oh my god are you okay?"
Hitoshi and Shouto immediately jumped to Bakugou’s side to poke and prod at him to make sure he wasn’t injured. Bakugou waved them off in exasperated annoyance.
"Why would they try to do that?" Bakugou asked Hitoshi when he'd finally assured them that he was fine.
"Do what?"
"Try to get you hitched with bird-mask guy. God - you were what? 14?"
Hitoshi shrugged. "When you're the only child of a powerful company, presenting as an omega is essentially the end of the world," he murmured. "And besides, it's not like we'd have had to mate right away."
“Sorry to interrupt, but can you walk?” Shouto asked Katsuki. "We should get going."
Katsuki nodded. They marched onward. No one said anything, but that somehow made it worse.
“I’m sorry, by the way,” Hitoshi whispered into the silence. His voice sounded like glass straining under the weight of the dull concrete ceiling above them, threatening to cave at any moment. His eyes burned, but this time it was from fatigue, not tears. His chest felt like it was crumpling at the centre, emptiness eating him from the inside out.
“For what?” Shouto’s voice was carefully neutral. He reached out a hand to awkwardly pat Hitoshi’s shoulder.
“I knew this would happen. I knew that I’d somehow screw us all over.”
“The hell are you talking about?” Bakugou grunted.
“You guys were right.” Hitoshi took a shaky breath. “You know what you said to me at the beginning of the school year? I – I knew you guys were right. I should’ve stayed away. I always find some way to – to hurt people. If I wasn’t so…so selfish, then maybe this entire thing wouldn’t have happened.”
The silence was incriminating. But slowly, so slowly that Hitoshi didn’t notice it in between his uneven breaths, unsteady gait, and firm refusal to look away from the ground beneath his feet, he felt an arm wrap around his shoulders and then another around his waist. Hitoshi stopped walking, but those two arms nudged him along, gently encouraging him to keep moving forward. He felt more than heard the sigh from his left.
“Fuck how do I say this – ”
“Listen, Hitoshi – ”
Bakugou and Todoroki had interrupted each other.
“Dude what the hell?” Bakugou grunted at Todoroki. Todoroki scoffed.
“Whatever, you go first.”
“We regret what we said to you at the beginning of the year so much.”
Hitoshi’s breath caught in his throat. He’d been expecting an outburst of some sort, if not about their predicament, then about his uselessness in dealing with Chisaki or how they didn’t want him after all, that this had been a huge joke or that even though Hitoshi shared their marks, he wasn’t good enough, would never be good enough for the people he loved and who were supposed to love him in turn. He certainly hadn’t been expecting this.
“We – we’re the ones who owe you an apology.” Bakugou spoke in jerky, halted syllables. The words sounded almost unnatural coming out of his mouth, but the force with which he uttered them conveyed their sincerity and emotion. "So - so here it is. I'm sorry, Hitoshi." Bakugou hung his head. Shouto quietly spoke up from Hitoshi’s right.
“We’re the ones who’ve hurt you. And, speaking from experience, it seems like you’ve been hurt your entire life. This situation is out of your control – out of anyone’s control. No one is blaming you. So please,” Bakugou’s arm tightened around Hitoshi’s waist, “please don’t be sorry. I’m sorry that the things you’ve experienced and our own judgements against you make you think that you’re the one at fault.”
“Weren’t you angry earlier?”
“Yes. But at that time I didn’t understand the entire situation. I was stressed, as you probably were too.”
Hitoshi nodded.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?” Todoroki encouraged gently.
And then it all came spilling out. Hitoshi’s intense shame over being an omega, his knowledge that he was a disappointment to his family, his loneliness due to having a quirk that so easily harmed others – it was ashes and darkness from his life pouring out of his mouth in a stream that seemed to lighten the weight in his heart ever so slightly.
They jumped out of the way when a portion of the wall ahead of them literally melted.
“Hey guys!” Mina chirped cheerfully. She turned her head, calling out to someone behind her, “Great job, Yaomomo!”
Yaoyorozu’s head popped out of the hole moments later. “Ready to go?” she asked with a smile. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”
Xx
It turned out that Hitoshi’s parents had indeed snuck a tracker (more like several trackers) into Hitoshi’s belongings and clothes. In any other situation, it would have been considered a gross invasion of privacy, but Hitoshi and the rest of the UA staff and students decided to turn a blind eye considering that it had the unintended benefit of creating a safe rescue plan for Hitoshi, Shouto, and Katsuki.
“…I told you that Chisaki was bad news from the very beginning, dear.”
Hitoshi stiffened at the sound of his parents’ voices. He felt Shouto and Katsuki straighten up almost imperceptibly and tighten their combined grips on him. His parents stopped in front of them, and they stood in silence for a moment before Hitoshi’s mother offered a rather stilted, “We’re glad you’re safe, honey.”
Hitoshi nodded stiffly, heart thumping in his chest.
His father clucked his tongue. “Look at your mother when she speaks to you,” he said, a faint frown audible in his tone.
“Sorry,” Hitoshi said emotionlessly. He looked up to his parents’ faces, back still hunched over. It was silent for another few beats. Hitoshi could feel his eyes burning, hyper-focused on his mother’s form. Her lilac hair was brushed to a smooth, glossy shine, and her tall, graceful figure was complemented by expertly tailored clothes. His father stood to the side looking the perfect match to his mother, hair neatly cut, moustache trimmed, conservative grey suit, and handmade leather shoes shined to a reflective polish.
“Are these friends of yours, Hitoshi?” his mother asked, offering to make conversation. Hitoshi hated it, hated it, when they said his name. He pushed down the lump of fire in his chest, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
“…Yes.”
“Aren’t they sitting a little too close to be friends of yours?” his father remarked.
Hitoshi knew this was coming. “I – ”
“Sorry sir, we’re actually mates!” Midoriya’s cheerfully polite voice interrupted. Hitoshi’s father spluttered, but Izuku paid him no mind, instead making his way toward Hitoshi, Shouto, and Katsuki to envelop them all in a hug and scent them in relief. Hitoshi noticed Mirio tugging along a small, white-haired girl farther in the distance in the direction from which Izuku came.
“All of you?” Hitoshi’s father asked incredulously.
Hitoshi carefully watched his father’s face from over Izuku’s shoulder, watching it flit from confusion to anger to disdain, seemingly unable to settle on one emotion.
“Yeah, all of us,” Katsuki rumbled. “You got a problem with that, old man?”
“Well, I certainly have a problem with your tone – ”
Katsuki cut him off with an exaggerated yawn. “Put a lid on it, would ya?”
“Katsuki, stop it,” Shouto interjected. “I’m sorry for the disrespect, Mr. and Mrs. Shinsou, but you are aware that Hitoshi has 3 marks in addition to his own, right?”
“Is that true, dear?” Hitoshi’s mother whispered to her husband. Hitoshi’s father shrugged, equally gobsmacked. Hitoshi thought back to the very first heat he spent locked in his room. He spent his more lucid hours buying supplies and, of course, a new set of makeup. When he emerged from his room five days later, neck noticeably blank, his parents hadn’t questioned him.
“Ah, so that’s how it is,” Shouto said mildly. His right side was ice cold though, the line it made around Hitoshi’s waist turning to a frozen river. “Well, now you know. I know this must be a shock to you. You must have worries about continuing our courtship, but I assure you that it will not be in jeopardy.”
“…And how are you certain of this?” Hitoshi’s father asked.
“I am Endeavor’s heir. As long as I mate with Hitoshi in the end, he couldn’t care less about who else is in the relationship. Also,” he said very pointedly, “keeping apart fated pairs is extremely frowned upon by the public. I’m sure that he wouldn’t want his popularity ranking to suffer due to prohibiting me from seeing my soulmates, nor do I think that you want your stocks to fall either.”
Hitoshi’s father seemed to weigh the offer in his mind before finally biting out, “Fine. So be it.” He turned to address Hitoshi, giving him a glance that said, We’ll be discussing this later. “Goodbye, then. I have several meetings lined up for the rest of the day.”
“Well, have fun, boys,” his mother said awkwardly by way of parting before following her husband.
When they were safely tucked away in their chauffeured car, Hitoshi let out a sigh of relief, slumping bonelessly into the arms of his soulmates.
“I’m so glad all of you are okay,” Izuku murmured. “Your parents really are something, aren’t they, Hitoshi?”
Shouto and Katsuki shared a knowing look over Hitoshi’s head.
Hitoshi sighed. “Tell me about it,” he groaned.
“We’ll fill you in later,” Katsuki said.
“Yes, later,” Shouto agreed. “There’s no rush. We have all the time in the world.”