Chapter Text
Izuku and Tenya put in their adoption application just after Tenya’s thirtieth birthday.
They didn’t plan it around any specific dates, but it happened to work out that way. Izuku thinks there might be some symbolism to it, but he’s too caught up in logistics and paperwork to wax poetic.
They’ve seen the local social workers almost as much as they’ve seen their coworkers over the past few weeks. Character references, home inspections, parenting classes, background checks, they’ve done all of it. Izuku is still reeling from the one woman who went through their fridge while asking intensive questions about nutrition.
“It’s good that they’re making sure you’re safe,” Shouto had said over lunch the next day. It’s such an excellent point that Izuku leaves early to make cookies for the next batch of social workers, feeling guilty for being annoyed by them before.
They pass all the tests. Their apartment is clean, safe and has plenty of room for a new addition. Tenya has more up-to-date information about dietary health than some nurses Izuku knows. Izuku could recite his notes from the parenting classes in his sleep and, according to Tenya, sometimes actually does.
They’ve been talking about kids since they brought up marriage for the first time, back when their tenure as sidekicks was coming to a close. That was almost seven years ago now. Risks were weighed, surrogacy was discussed, friends and parents were consulted. There was a wedding, a hunt for the perfect apartment, a shift from combat-oriented hero work to rescue-oriented hero work.
When they get a call to come into the adoption agency to talk about specific children, they’re ready.
Izuku still doesn’t sleep well the night before. He’s awake before the alarm goes off, and spends the last few minutes before Tenya wakes up with his face pressed into his husband’s chest. The soft fabric of Tenya’s pajamas is an antidote to the gnawing anxiety that says someone is going to change their mind and decide he isn’t good enough.
They’re going to do this together, as partners, just like they always do.
*
“Tenya, relax your shoulders,” Izuku whispers, placing a gentle hand on his husband’s back. Tenya never has a problem with the ‘standing up straight’ part of posture, but when he’s nervous his shoulders start aspiring to merge with his ears.
He relaxes them abruptly when Izuku reminds him, but that probably just looks stranger to the social worker currently walking across the lobby to meet them.
“Tanaka-san! It is excellent to see you again! How are you!” Tenya says, too loudly. Izuku is so used to Tenya’s shifts in volume that he barely notices it.
“I’m doing well. You two are so early!”
Izuku laughs nervously.
“Um. Better early than late, right?”
“Precisely!” Tenya agrees, as eager to back Izuku up as he always is. Tanaka shakes her head a bit, but she’s smiling in a way that seems sincere.
“Why don’t you two come into my office? I’ll show you my case files and we can take it from there.”
Izuku’s heart lurches in his chest. This is really it! His future child might be waiting in one of those files! He looks up at Tenya with determination. The years since they first met have closed the height difference somewhat, but Tenya is still taller.
They nod nearly in unison. It feels like one of their field gestures, and the world seems to steady.
Tanaka’s office is small, with warm colors and an outdated computer monitor on a desk decorated primarily with toys. There’s a welcoming vibe in spite of how anxious Izuku is about being in here; it must be easier on the kids as well.
“Take a seat,” Tanaka instructs, walking behind her desk to grab a stack of folders.
There are three chairs in front of the desk. Tenya takes the one in the middle, and Izuku the one to his left. Izuku wants to hold his hand, but not in front of the social worker. It’s an old hang up; they’d gotten together in their second year of high school, and spent the next year and a half living in the same building. As teenagers. Staff member suspicions were high.
Being married adults is an entirely different situation, but the instinct to downplay physical intimacy in front of authority figures remains.
“You both expressed interest in adopting an older child, so I’ve put together a list of a few that we think would be compatible. We try not to tell the kids too early that they’re being considered, to avoid getting their hopes up prematurely, so you should be aware that none of them have consented to being part of a hero family. That’s something we’ll address later in the process.”
“That sounds perfectly reasonable. Izuku, do you agree?” Tenya asks, looking over at Izuku. Izuku nods hastily.
“We don’t do as much heavy combat as we used to, but I think it’s still really important to make sure they’re okay with it.”
“Excellent. If you’d like to take a look at this first folder…”
The next 45 minutes are extremely overwhelming. Tanaka has eleven folders in her stack, and each kid has their own charms. One of them has a quirk that reminds Izuku pleasantly of Kirishima, with a big toothy smile. Another is a member of the track club at her school, so she’d probably like going for jogs with them.
But the second to last folder is the winner in the end.
“He is wearing sunglasses indoors,” Tenya comments, frowning a bit as he examines the photograph that’s just been handed to him. The boy in the picture is about eight or nine, with overgrown bangs and a godzilla t-shirt. He looks a bit put out, like he’s impatient to get back to something more important than school pictures. “But these frames look high quality; are they prescription?”
The woman behind the desk laughs.
“Oh, you’ve found Hikaru. Yes, he’s quite nearsighted. But, as for the sunglasses... Hikaru is on the autism spectrum. His quirk is light-based, and he has some issues with controlling it when he’s overwhelmed. Creates a bit of a feedback loop, because he really doesn’t deal well with bright lights. Letting him wear the sunglasses was a compromise while he works on quirk control.”
Izuku looks at Tenya and finds him staring at the photo with absolute focus. He puts a hand on his shoulder to pull him out of his trance. Tenya looks up to make eye contact, and smiles.
Izuku knows exactly what that look means. He turns back to the social worker.
“Could you tell us more about him?”
*
Hikaru is eight years old, with a birthday in the middle of May. His mom died of untreated appendicitis when he was five, and his father was never in the picture. He’s afraid of doctors but not of dentists. He’s carrying a plush stegosaurus in six of the seven additional photos Tanaka is able to find for them. He asks for disposable cameras for every holiday but hates having his own picture taken because nobody will let him bring props to school picture day.
They set up a time to meet him on Sunday.
*
Tanaka calls this the ‘meet and greet room’, and Izuku isn’t sure he likes it. There are weird cartoon animals on the walls, and the boy they’re here to meet is tucked into the very corner of a couch in a way that makes him look desperately small. Hikaru’s bangs are even more out of control than they were in the pictures, and the rest of his hair has grown out too, curling a little around his ears and at the back of his neck. He has his stuffed dinosaur in his arms, and he’s running his fingers across the bumps of fabric along its back.
He sits straight up when Tanaka leads them in, visibly nervous. Izuku understands the feeling.
“Hi!” he blurts out, glancing between Izuku and Tenya from behind his sunglasses. He doesn’t look either of them in the eyes, but Izuku is neither surprised nor bothered.
“Hello!” Izuku says, smiling and waving. Was that the right thing to do? He isn’t sure. It doesn’t seem to have a negative or positive effect, so it can’t be too much of a mistake.
“Hi!” Hikaru says again, then visibly winces and stares at the floor. “Sorry, I already said that.”
“That is perfectly alright! You did not do anything wrong!” Tenya hurries to assure him. When that doesn’t get him to lift his head, Tanaka steps in.
“Hikaru, you brought something to show them, yes?”
That gets his attention immediately.
“Oh, yeah! I’ve got some of my pictures!”
He dives over the arm of the couch, leaving his legs sprawled awkwardly across the cushions while he grabs something from the floor. It’s such an exuberant, uncoordinated motion that Izuku can’t help but smile.
Hikaru comes back up with a binder in his hands; it’s the kind with the plastic cover you can slide a piece of paper into. He’s printed out an old godzilla poster to put in it, but there are lines of off-pink that indicate the printer was running out of ink.
“Um! My quirk lets me do some really cool stuff with light, and cameras work using light, so I’ve been working on making monster pictures! Like Nessie but way better!”
He opens his binder and holds it out to Izuku and Tenya like something sacred. Izuku takes it and sits down on the couch with Hikaru, taking care not to sit too close and encroach on the kid’s personal space. Hikaru watches nervously as they look at the first page of photographs.
Izuku sees now what he meant by ‘monster pictures’. The very first one is the parking lot of this building, with an ethereal silhouette of some kind of serpentine creature skulking between two of the cars. It doesn’t look like a real creature, but it doesn’t look photoshopped in either.
“You make these? They’re really good!” Izuku says, flipping to the next page. This one is similar, except the creature is peering over the side of a bed. When he looks up, Hikaru is watching him expectantly.
“You think so?”
“Yeah! Do you use a computer too?”
Hikaru makes a face, his nose crinkling with distaste.
“No way! It’s all my quirk! And, um. Sometimes puppets. I make everything myself and nobody will buy me robot parts so I can’t make real animatronics. I really want to someday, though! The librarian at school let me take out extra books over the break so that I could read about programming, and I really think I could figure it out if I had an interface!”
“What kind of animatronics would you like to make?” Tenya asks, which makes Hikaru beam. He’s missing a tooth on the right side; Izuku hadn’t noticed before.
“Monsters! The ones from the first Jurassic Park movie are the best! I can’t find a version on the internet with good Japanese subtitles but I watched it anyways, even though I’m not that good at English, and they were the coolest! It would be even better if I could do something like that with my quirk, but I can only do small things right now. Um! Do you… want to see?”
The hesitation that had faded as Hikaru got excited about robots comes back all at once when he offers to show them his quirk.
Tenya and Izuku respond in unison.
“Absolutely!”
“Yeah!”
“Something small, please,” Tanaka says, sighing. Once he’s been given permission, Hikaru holds out his palm, takes a deep breath, then exhales all at once. A stag beetle appears in his palm; it's glowing faintly and the colors are way too pale to be realistic, but it looks like something you could reach out and touch.
“That’s amazing!” Izuku says, leaning in closer to look at projection.
“It took a long time to learn to make, like… things, instead of just spots of light, but I got it! Eyes are really cool, you see color based on what light bounces off things you’re looking at, so really all color is just light, so I thought if I get the right colors at the right level of light, I could make things that look real!”
“It looks very solid,” Tenya says, sounding as impressed as Izuku feels.
“Try touching it! Your finger’ll go right through!” Hikaru says, offering his light beetle to his potential parents. Izuku takes the plunge, reaching out to try to touch the beetle. He goes right through it; the only sensory feedback is a bit of warmth.
“So you make these and stage pictures of them?” Tenya asks.
“Mmhmm! You can look through the whole binder if you want!”
Tanaka steps in again.
“I don’t think we’ll have time to go through the whole binder. Why don’t you tell them more about yourself?”
Hikaru looks suddenly lost.
“Um. Okay. Hi, my name is Hikaru! I like dinosaurs and monster effects in movies! I’m eight years old and my favorite food is anpan! Please treat me well!”
Oh, god. That was a speech for introducing yourself on the first day of school. Izuku’s heart breaks for this kid; he’s trying so hard.
“It is very nice to meet you, Hikaru-kun! My name is Tenya, and this is my husband, Izuku! I really enjoyed hearing you talk about your pictures, so it is okay if you want to talk about them some more!”
That startles Hikaru, who blinks at Tenya for a moment before a smile slowly grows on his face.
“I don’t mind that you’re heroes!” he blurts out, instead of saying anything about his pictures. “I think it’s really cool that you help people, and I know you could get hurt but I really like talking to you and I think you’d be really good dads!”
Izuku’s chest aches like he’s had the air physically knocked out of him. Is it appropriate to cry because someone wants to be your son?
“Well, I think you’d make a great son,” he says.
Tenya and Hikaru look at him with nearly identical expressions of delight.