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Hizashi’s brought home strays before.
Usually this means stray cats, which they tend to keep and nurture and love to death. Once or twice it’s been a vigilante, not injured enough to warrant a hospital but in too much pain to deny their help.
This time, it’s neither. Hizashi brings home something new, and Shouta isn’t quite sure what to make of it at first.
It’s a child, wrapped in a filthy yellow sleeping bag (hah, Shouta sees it) and clinging to Hizashi for dear life. Their eyes don’t quite meet his, but there’s something like recognition in his eyes when they get close.
Those bright eyes are big, belonging to someone small, someone who hasn’t grown into their face.
(They remind him of the eyes belonging to someone who never would, those sharp blue irises that appear behind him in the mirror on long nights.)
“This is Shouta-chan,” Hizashi says, and Shouta shoots him a glare at the nickname. “He’s my husband, and he’s very grumpy.”
“Not grumpy,” he counters, “tired.”
That bundle of yellow and green shifts, and Hizashi sets them down on the couch. They curl further into the sleeping bag, though their bright green eyes still flit around the room inquisitively. Shouta can sense the millions of questions dying on their lips.
“I’m Izuku,” they say after a moment. “You should call my mom in the morning to pick me up.”
Hizashi stiffens, giving an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
“Why aren’t you with her now?” Shouta asks, and Hizashi gives him a look he can’t decipher. Shouta ignores it, and sits on the couch a few feet away from the kid.
“I’m a bad boy,” he says, like that explains everything.
He doesn’t offer anything else, and Shouta doesn’t ask. Instead, he goes to the closet and brings out a blanket.
“That sleeping bag is disgusting,” he says. “At least let me put it through the wash for you.”
Izuku hesitates, then shimmies out of it, kicking it towards Shouta. Shouta throws him the blanket, though not before staring at the kid’s uniform.
“That can’t be comfortable to sleep in,” he says. Izuku bites his lip and looks down. “Do you have anything else at home?”
“Didn’t have time to change, or to pack… I’ll change in the morning.”
Shouta hums, and tells the kid to wake them up if he needs anything. A part of him feels bad for making a guest sleep on the couch, but they only have the one bed, so there’s not much of a choice.
Hizashi stops him in the bedroom, and gives him the darkest look he’s ever seen on the man’s face.
“That kid can’t go back,” he says. Shouta nods in agreement, and Hizashi pulls his hand away, opting to run his fingers through his ponytail.
“It sounds like you know more than I do,” he says, “seeing as you’re the one who brought him home. But from what I can tell, he’s not safe there, is he?”
Hizashi shakes his head. “I don’t know for certain. But if what the kid said was true, his mom isn’t keeping him safe. The opposite, actually.”
Shouta’s face darkens, and he feels a soft hand on his back, rubbing circles into his stiff muscles.
“We can deal with it in the morning. He needs sleep, I need sleep, God knows you need sleep.”
He chuckles dryly and moves to sit on the bed.
Fucking hell, he’s barely known this kid for half an hour and he’s already worried out of his mind for him.
He pulls the comforter up to his chest, and Hizashi turns off the light.
(And if he doesn’t get a full night’s sleep, that’s fine. There’s a kid having a nightmare on his living room couch that’s a bit more important than his already less-than-stellar sleep schedule.)
Izuku brings his blanket to the breakfast table, wrapped in it like he’s still clinging to sleep.
(The dazed look in his eyes and his very slow reaction time tells Shouta that he probably is.)
“Do you like miso soup, kid?”
He nods, and Hizashi grins. “Rockin’! It’s Shouta’s favorite!”
“You say that about any food I don’t spit out,” Shouta huffs, leaning back in his chair. Izuku snickers silently.
“What’s your favorite food, kid?”
Izuku shifts, pulling the blanket down so it isn’t covering his mouth as much. He looks pensive for a moment, then nods. “Katsudon.”
“OOOH! I think we have some pork in the freezer! We could have that for lunch, if you want.”
Shouta blinks, and Izuku is as stiff as a rock. He’s staring at his empty plate and glass of orange juice,
“U-um, I should probably go, I should go home,” he stutters. “My mom will be very mad if I’m not home by eight.”
“We should talk about that,” Shouta says softly. It takes great effort to keep his voice calm, but he knows the kid needs it. “Your mother, I mean.”
“What ab-bout her?”
Hizashi joins them at the table, and Izuku leans back, hunching in on himself.
“Does she ever hurt you, or make you feel bad?”
Izuku’s eyebrows come together, and he shrugs.
“She doesn’t mean to. She’s helping me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Izuku shrugs again. “I only get hurt when I’m being bad, so it’s not her fault, it’s mine. If I could be a good boy on my own, she wouldn’t have to teach me so much.”
And Shouta’s only known the kid for about nine hours, most of which he’s spent sleeping, but he can already peg him as the quiet and polite type. Whatever’s going on at home, it isn’t his fault as he’s been made to believe.
“What kind of things does she teach you, Izuku?”
“Hard lessons of life, she says. Like, how if I get into fights, it’s showing how I act like an animal, and animals don’t get to sleep inside. Good boys do.”
On cue, one of their several cats trots into the kitchen, purring and rubbing up against Shouta’s legs under the table.
“We let our animals sleep inside. And you’re not an animal, Izuku. You deserve better.”
Izuku peers under the table, cocking his head to the side. “He’s a good boy, then?”
Hizashi walks to the other side of the table and crouches down to Izuku’s level. The kid turns and pulls his blanket tighter around his shoulders, but meets his eyes.
“You’re not a ‘bad boy,’” Hizashi says firmly. Shouta nods. “Everyone needs to learn the lessons of life, but not by getting locked outside in the middle of the winter.”
“But-”
“Kid,” Shouta interrupts. “He’s right.”
Izuku frowns, and stares at his hands, wrapped in the blanket.
“But I’m bad,” he mutters. “I’m broken. I need to be fixed.”
Hizashi shares a look with Shouta.
“Why do you say that?”
Izuku’s lip wobbles, and his eyes begin to cloud with tears. Preemptively, Shouta reaches for the tissue box on the counter.
“I’m quirkless,” he whispers. “I’m a useless, quirkless Deku.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Izuku’s chin shoots up, staring at Hizashi where he now stands tall. “It’s just something you’re born with. It might hold you back a bit, but it doesn’t define you.”
“Y-you don’t know w-what your-re talking ab-bout!” Izuku wails. “You’re a h-h-hero! With an am-amazing quirk! I have n-nothing…”
Hizashi shrugs. “I might know more than you think, kid. I was bullied when I grew up for something I was born with and couldn’t control. Sound familiar?”
Izuku scowls at him. “You’re l-lying. To, to make me f-feel better.”
He laughs, and shakes his head. “Nope! I’m deaf, kid! Not quite the same as being quirkless, but like I said: I might relate to you more than you think.”
Izuku blinks at him, glances at Shouta, then shakes his head.
“But you’ve been talking with me all m-morning, and last night. You’re a pro hero. How can you b-be deaf?”
Hizashi grins, shaking his hands in the air: “I use hearing aids! And I know JSL, so I can communicate without them.”
“But… But that’s not the same… I can’t do anything like that for my quirk! You won’t always be deaf, but I’ll always be quirkless…”
“I will always be deaf,” he counters. “It’s a part of who I am, Izuku. But it’s not all of who I am. It’s important to me, and I’m allowed to deal with it how I want. That’s the same about your quirklessness.”
Shouta smirks.
(He remembers a time, many years ago, when Hizashi would argue adamantly that he had to fix his deaf nature. It’s both incredible to see his growth in retrospect, and heartbreaking to see the same ideology reflected in Izuku.)
Izuku is silent, eyebrows furrowed. His hands have come out of the blanket, and he’s picking at his fingernails.
(There’s dirt, and, unless Shouta is mistaken, blood trapped under the nails.)
“I should go home,” he says, his voice hollow. “If I don’t, she’ll…”
“She’ll hurt you,” Shouta says, and it’s not a question. With much hesitation, Izuku nods.
“Do you want to go back to her?”
It’s a simple question, and Shouta isn’t expecting it to have a simple answer. As he suspects, it takes a long ten minutes for Izuku to struggle for his answer, during which Hizashi resumes cooking and Shouta moves to comfort the kid.
(He’s so small, even wrapped in the puffy blanket. Shouta wants nothing more than to wrap him up in his arms and never let him go back to that woman again. Regardless of the kid’s answer, he can’t let him go without launching an investigation on ground of child abuse.)
“I want to stay,” he whimpers. Hizashi is setting down the miso and rice, and Shouta is pushing the tissues towards Izuku. “I don’t… I don’t want to go back to h-her. She’s…”
She’s your mother, he expects them to say. You should love her.
“Okay,” Shouta says. “Let’s eat breakfast, alright? And when we’re done, we’ll take you to the police station and you’ll never have to see her again.”
Izuku takes a bite of rice.
“Will… Will I get to see you again?”
Hizashi smiles. “As much as you want, kid. As much as you want.”