Chapter Text
”Shinsou!”
Hitoshi looked up from packing up his bag to see Tanaka approaching him quickly and hummed in acknowledgment.
“So that group assignment in Chem,” she began, cutting right to the chase, “do you have partners yet because I asked and two people can be a group and if you wanna, like, if you’re free, we could do together?”
Hitoshi strongly appreciated that Tanaka never acknowledged the fact that she was the only person in class who was willing to have conversations with him, let alone choose to do a group project alone with him.
His good opinion of her was not in any way soured by the fact that she was now handing him an out from having to go to the teacher and admit to not being able to find a group, which would no doubt result in him just being placed in an already established group full of people who refused to acknowledge him. Which was not a good time. And she was even framing it like he would be doing her a favor for taking her up on her offer.
“I’m free,” he said, continuing their usual game of pretending that everything was fine. It was the least he could do to pay her pack for her kindness.
“Awesome!” she smiled big, “then, um, I kinda wanna get this thing done as fast as possible, you know, just take an afternoon to knock it out, so if you’re free today, we can go to the library now?”
“I don’t have any plans,” he never did, so no shocker there, “but I want to do well if I can, so we might not be able to get everything done before the library closes.” He didn’t actually know what kind of student Tanaka was, so he felt the need to gauge her willingness to do the work now, even if he was going to work with her regardless of her work ethic. It would be nice to know beforehand if he was going to have to do all of the work himself.
“Oh yeah, sure,” she waved off his concern, “but then we can just divide it up and meet up one more time in a couple of days, right?”
“Sure,” Hitoshi agreed because there wasn’t much else to do.
“I’ll run and get us some prime seats, then,” she turned on her heel as she spoke, not waiting for him to agree, “don’t leave me waiting too long.” And then she was off, leaving Hitoshi to finish packing up.
He briefly considered texting Hizashi to let him know that he might not be home in time for dinner for once so that the man wouldn’t cook too much, but his shattered phone, courtesy of some asshole shoulder checking him in the hallway, prevented any such notions.
Oh well, a few leftovers shouldn’t be a big deal, and Hizashi was nice, so maybe he’d even leave it out for Hitoshi to just heat up once he did get home.
Yeah, it was probably fine.
-
Shouta didn’t usually answer personal phone calls while he was on patrol.
Not because he had a policy against it or anything, but because there were very few people in his life who felt the need to call him, period, and those who did knew that he hated phone calls and therefore limited the amount they called, and they knew his patrol schedule and so tended to wait until he was done if at all possible.
So he knew something was up the moment he saw Hizashi’s name flash across his phone screen.
“What’s wrong?” were the first words leaving his mouth as he answered, a feeling of dread pooling in his stomach as his mind raced through the possibilities.
“Hitoshi’s gone,” was his answer, a little tinny but perfectly audible and by far the worst thing he’d ever heard, “I don’t know where he is and I can’t get a hold of him and I’m freaking out, Shou, I don’t know what to do!”
Panic wasn’t going to help them right now, so he took a deep breath to steady himself and lowered his voice to calm down his husband and put him in a more helpful mindset.
“Okay, calm down, we’ll figure it out. When did you last see him, when did you start getting worried, and where have you looked?” Multiple questions at once weren’t ideal for exuding calm, he knew, but his heart was beating just a little too fast for him to be willing to waste time on spacing out his questions when he knew Hizashi could handle it regardless.
“I – I haven’t seen him since this morning, but I didn’t get any notifications from any of his teachers about him being absent and they absolutely would have told me, so he has to have been to school all day,” Hizashi spouted out in a fast but steady flow, trusting Shouta to keep up. “And, I mean, you know me, I got a little worried when he wasn’t waiting at the car to drive home with me, but I had texted him earlier that I had a meeting and would be late, so I figured that he’d just chosen to walk home because he does that sometimes, right?” Hizashi paused, clearly asking for reassurance that he hadn’t done anything wrong. That this wasn’t his fault.
Which he hadn’t, and it wasn’t, and Shouta was more than willing to spend the time to let him know that, to ensure that Hizashi didn’t waste time blaming himself and feeling bad about something that really wasn’t his fault.
“He does,” he stated far more calmly than he felt.
“Yeah, and, in hindsight, the fact that he didn’t answer my text didn’t feel great, either, but again, he’s not that talkative over the phone, so, I mean – and I’m used to that from you, too,” Hizashi was getting a little too far off course in his panic now, and Shouta would need to pull him back.
“I know,” he drew his voice into a lower, more soothing register, “but what did you do when he didn’t show up at the car?”
“Right, yeah, um, I drove home, thinking that maybe he’d be there, but he wasn’t, and then I got really worried and I drove back towards the school following the route he tends to walk, going slow so I could look for him, but he wasn’t there, and then I checked the parking lot because I thought maybe he was waiting, but he wasn’t, and then I drove back home by a different route, and I still couldn’t find him and he still wasn’t home, and now I’m at home and I’m calling you because I’m really freaking out now. I keep calling him, too, but he hasn’t picked up. Not once, and that just doesn’t feel right,” Hizashi’s voice was bleeding towards panic again, but this time, Shouta didn’t have it in him to keep trying to calm him down.
Because Hizashi was right. This was really worrying. And Shouta needed to get started on finding Hitoshi right now.
“All right, I need you to stay home,” he said, and kept talking to cut off Hizashi’s inevitable protest. “One of us needs to be home in case he comes back on his own, and you’re already there. Not to mention, I’m very close to UA right now, so I’m going straight there to start looking for him.”
Hizashi was silent for a moment before sighing, “okay, but if you don’t have any leads in an hour, I’m calling in reinforcements.”
That was fair.
“All right,” he agreed, “see you.” And with that he shut off his phone and hurried towards UA.
He knew that there were a myriad of different, not dangerous reasons for Hitoshi to not answer his phone, most of them having something to do with that dreaded teenage rebellion that he had yet to see even a shred of outside of the occasional snarky comment. Even though, considering how quick Hitoshi was to regret those, Shouta just couldn’t see him continuously ignoring Hizashi’s phone calls. Which did nothing to alleviate his rising fear.
Because there were also, and this he knew all too well as a hero, a myriad of very dangerous reasons for Hitoshi’s radio silence, and this was a situation where believing the worst and acting accordingly would cost him nothing more than perhaps some mild embarrassment if he was wrong, while hoping for the best and just waiting around to see could end up costing him very dearly.
And he knew which one of those options he would choose.
-
The project was going well.
There was no way they were actually going to finish today with a couple of hours having already passed and dinnertime fast approaching, but they were making considerable headway even if Tanaka’s standards weren’t quite as high as he would have liked.
He was in the middle of looking for a specific piece of information to quote when he felt eyes on him and looked up to see if Tanaka wanted anything, but she was still buried in her own book, not paying him any mind at all.
So he widened his search to the rest of the library and it only took him a moment to find Aizawa staring right at him from the entrance. And there was something about the look in his eyes that made Hitoshi feel very small and he didn’t know why.
He vaguely remembered that Aizawa was supposed to be patrolling today and wondered if something was wrong to make him stare at Hitoshi like that, but he couldn’t think of anything that would warrant it.
Still, he shrunk back in his chair as Aizawa continued to hold his gaze, not making a move to come any closer but still studying Hitoshi with an uncomfortable intensity for what might have only been a couple of seconds but felt like forever.
And then he just… stopped.
Dropped his gaze with a nod and turned around while pulling out his phone, leaving Hitoshi wondering what the hell had just happened.
“Shinsou?” Tanaka murmured after a while, snapping him out of his trance to notice that he was still looking towards the now empty entryway. “Are you okay?”
Was he? He felt dread pooling in the pit of his stomach at not knowing what was going on and somehow feeling like he was in trouble despite not remembering having done anything wrong.
And as he tried to refocus on the project, he realized that he couldn’t. He was too wound up and worried about this to let it go.
But he wasn’t going to say any of that to Tanaka, no matter how nice she was being. She didn’t deserve to be pulled into his mess regardless of what had caused it.
“Yeah,” he said instead, “just realizing how late it is, and thinking about wrapping up for the day. Sorry about not getting it all done like you wanted.”
She waved off his concern again, “Nevermind, we’ll just divvy up the rest and meet up again, yeah?”
Hitoshi nodded and pulled up his notebook to see what needed to be done, determined to finish up that part quickly so he could get home and figure out what was wrong.
And ignore the feeling that maybe home wasn’t a safe place right now because Aizawa might be mad over something, and even if he couldn’t remember doing something wrong, that wasn’t any guarantee that he hadn’t.
And even if Aizawa and Hizashi had been really nice so far (so, so nice and understanding and willing to adopt him out of the kindness of their hearts), he knew better than to expect it to continue that way forever.
-
Hitoshi was fine.
That was the first thing Shouta registered as he caught sight of the mass of purple hair in the school library.
The kid was fine, there was no danger, and Shouta could breathe again after spending a good half hour running around the school in a very focused near-panic. More than likely the kid had been on school property the entire time. He was fine.
The very next thing on his mind was annoyance that the kid apparently hadn’t deemed it necessary to let anyone know where he was or where he was going like it wasn’t fucking common sense to inform his parents of that sort of thing.
That annoyance dissipated quickly, too, though, when Hitoshi sensed him watching and looked up at him, clearly noticing his displeasure as he blanched and shrank back, but not a shred of guilt was apparent in his face.
Hitoshi wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t running away, either, instead keeping his eyes on Shouta. Waiting for Shouta to make a move. Because it was obvious that Hitoshi wasn’t aware that he was doing anything wrong.
And Shouta wasn’t about to embarrass the kid in front of a sizeable portion of the UA student body regardless of whether or not Hitoshi had just unknowingly given Shouta something closely resembling a heart-attack. Because the kid didn’t know.
And yes, they would need to have a conversation about why he hadn’t thought to reach out to his parents and how in the future he fucking better if he knew what was good for him, but they could do that at home. Not here. Not when Hitoshi didn’t mean to.
So Shouta turned around to go home, quickly shooting a text to Hizashi to let him know that everything was okay and that Shouta was coming home now.
He got a reply almost immediately but opted to just hurry home instead so that they could have this conversation face to face.
And when he walked through the door to see Hizashi wearing a trail in the floor with his pacing, looking as frazzled as he ever had, he knew he’d made the right call in hurrying home.
“Shou!” Hizashi abruptly stopped his pacing to storm up to him instead. “You found Hitoshi? Where is he? Why isn’t he with you?” The pacing might have stopped, but the panic apparently hadn’t. And Shouta would need to fix that so they could have a calm conversation when Hitoshi came home.
“He’s just at the school library,” Shouta said, aiming to soothe, “was probably there the whole time, nothing to worry about.”
Hizashi opened his mouth to reply only to then immediately shut it again as he took in what Shouta had said.
Shouta took this silence as an opportunity to take off his shoes and move himself and Hizashi into the living room, keeping his arms on his husband’s shoulders even after he was done maneuvering him around, waiting for Hizashi to finish processing whatever it was that had him so off guard.
“He’s just at the library?” Hizashi sounded doubtful, and Shouta nodded emphatically because that was the important part; Hitoshi was fine. But as Hizashi’s face contorted in displeasure, he realized that his husband might not agree fully with him on that front. “Then why couldn’t he tell us? Why couldn’t he pick up his phone, just once, instead of letting us run around like headless chickens?”
It was Shouta’s turn to be taken aback at the anger in his normally cheerful husband’s voice because while he, too, had been annoyed when he thought Hitoshi had done it on purpose, he hadn’t been anywhere near as angry as Hizashi was now.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly, because to be fair, he hadn’t asked and maybe he should have before leaving the kid to himself again.
Hizashi’s displeasure became a lot more pointed at Shouta after that. “You don’t know? Didn’t you talk to him?”
“No,” and seeing Hizashi’s anger now, he really wished that he had, but he hadn’t wanted to bring unwanted attention on Hitoshi when he already knew that the kid was being targeted in his class. “But I saw him, and he was fine, and I don’t –”
“You didn’t even talk to him?” Hizashi raised his voice then. “He’s been ignoring my phone calls all day, sending me halfway into a panic attack and you just… what? Saw that he was at the library and walked away because that was good enough for you?”
This wasn’t good. Shouta might not know why Hitoshi hadn’t been answering his phone but he’d seen, clear as day on that boy’s face, that he didn’t know that he’d done something wrong and he needed Hizashi to understand that before Hitoshi came home because this level of anger wouldn’t be good at all, even if he knew that Hizashi would never dream of taking it out on the kid. Hitoshi would still no doubt notice.
And he knew from experience how much a misplaced glare could affect the kid and frankly, he didn’t want to know how much worse actual anger would be for him.
“Yes, it was good enough for me, because he isn’t –” Shouta tried, but Hizashi had already gotten angry at him, too, which didn’t help matters at all because Hizashi held a grudge like nobody’s business.
“But how!” He interrupted. “We’re supposed to be taking care of him here, protect him, and we can’t do that if he thinks he can get away with fucking off to wherever when it pleases him without so much as a word to us, Shou. I know you’re soft on him - and I am, too - but that doesn’t mean we can let him get away with doing things that could get dangerous for him. UA is already being targeted by villains. You’re being targeted! I can’t just sit back and let Hitoshi put himself in danger.”
Ah, that was the issue. Hizashi wasn’t angry, he was scared. With good reason to be, honestly. But this still wasn’t right. They’d have to put new rules in place now. Obviously. But it wouldn’t do to blame Hitoshi for not realizing that he needed to reach out to them, no matter how baffling it was that he didn’t.
“I know that,” Shouta hurried to agree in the hopes of pacifying his husband enough to get a word in edgewise. To make Hizashi understand that Hitoshi didn’t mean to. “But I don’t think now is the time to get angry with him.”
He ran his hands up and down Hizashi’s arms as he formulated his thoughts.
And realized that he was too late when the door opened behind him and Hizashi’s face hardened into a frown. All traces of anger were gone in an instant, but they were replaced by fatherly disappointment.
Hitoshi was home. And Hizashi was still upset with him. This wasn’t good.