Work Text:
Hizashi loved his husband, he really did. Sometimes, though, he worried he had a bit of a hoarding problem.
It hadn’t always been this way. When they had started dating and Hizashi had seen his apartment for the first time, he had assumed Shouta had only just moved in. He didn’t even have a bed for one—he slept on the floor in the same damn sleeping bag he lugged to school every day for naps. There was minimalistic, and then there was Aizawa Shouta. Hizashi hated visiting that apartment. He made sure they hung out at his place as much as possible.
‘Stuff doesn’t make you happy, Yamada,’ Shouta had said with a sigh when Hizashi had asked about it. Hizashi had pouted at that—every single last thing he’d ever bought for himself sparked joy, thank you very much!
When they’d moved in together, the house had been full primarily of Hizashi’s belongings, which suited them both fine. It had taken minimal persuasion to convince Shouta to ditch the manky sleeping bag (at home, at least) in favour of the bed.
It had started small, the hoarding. (If Hizashi could really call it that. Could he? He was gonna.)
Hizashi had come home one day to find that there was suddenly a cat living with them. It was a tiny little thing, utterly adorable, and Hizashi found he was more than happy to accommodate their new family member. Bean, they called him, because he had the cutest little toe beans. Bean was almost as loud as Hizashi; it was remarkable how much noise something so tiny could make. Shouta never complained about Bean like he did Hizashi. The voice hero tried not to pout too much.
It took only two months for Hizashi to come home once again to a new addition to the Aizawa-Yamada household. This cat was older but no less adorable. Mochi was oddly fat for a street cat, but it took weeks to get his matted coat shiny and new. Hizashi spent ten minutes each day grooming him. (He quickly learned that any longer resulted in vicious scratches across his arms and face and his face was far too handsome to be maimed like that.) By the time they were done, Mochi was almost as handsome as Hizashi was.
Suddenly they were a hero household with two cats. That was fine.
Then, six months later Shouta went to the local cat cafe for coffee and came home with yet another cat. When Hizashi protested, Shouta argued that he only had one eye and had been looking for a home for over a year, and it was hard to say no after that. Hizashi wasn’t a monster, after all.
Taro turned out to be a great new addition to the family. It took a while for him to trust them (and his brothers), but once he came out of his shell, their family felt complete for it. Maybe now, Shouta would stop?
When the fourth cat arrived, Hizashi realised he had to draw the line before it got out of hand. At the rate they were going, Hizashi would blink and find his home overrun by the creatures. He was pretty sure that would make his husband happy, but they were a couple, damn it, and Hizashi’s happiness mattered too! He had a look to maintain, and it was already hard enough keeping cat hair off his clothes as it was, without adding Keiko to the mix. Keiko’s long coat was a beautiful, snowy white that clung to Hizashi’s hero costume like a fashion statement and shed like Hizashi’s tears whenever he watched a dog movie.
Hizashi turned down his hearing aids whenever Shouta pointed out that the hair wouldn’t be such a problem if only Hizashi would stop carrying Keiko around everywhere princess style.
After the Chat ™ , things were okay. For two whole years, Hizashi didn’t come home to any unexpected new arrivals. It was just Shouta, himself and their four spoiled pussycats, and things were good. Things were great, even. They got married, for one, which, well—dream come true! Hizashi hadn’t even had to pester Shouta about it. Much . Even better, he’d managed to convince Shouta to pose with finger guns for the wedding picture that hung proudly in their bedroom between the row of framed, professional portraits of their cats.
Hizashi should have known the reprieve wouldn’t last.
“Uh, ‘Zashi—” Hizashi knew that tone. He groaned, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“What have you done, Sho?” Hizashi had only been gone a few hours. What trouble could Shouta really have gotten up to in that time?
“I may have picked up another stray.”
“Shouta, no,” he sighed.
He honestly expected his husband to say ‘Shouta, yes ,’ but instead Shouta remained stoic and serious.
“I couldn’t leave him, ‘Zashi.”
“Well, he can’t stay. He’ll have to go to a shelter.” The argument was weak even to his own ears.
Shouta gave him a look at that. “Just come and meet him,” he said.
Hizashi sighed. “What’s his name?” Of course Shouta would have already named him.
“Hitoshi.”
Shouta had even given him a human name. He wondered whether that was because of that one time when they’d watched a movie about a cat that had a hard life, and Hizashi had been especially invested because ‘ He has a people name, Sho! That just makes it sadder .’
“Come on then, let’s meet him.”
Shouta led Hizashi to the living room, and Hizashi froze at the sight.
“Shouta,” he said, trying to stay calm and not to allow his quirk to activate. “Dear husband. That is not a cat.”
“I never said he was,” Shouta pointed out.
“You said you picked up another stray!” Hizashi was feeling a little bit hysterical now.
“I did,” Shouta said. He sounded bored.
“A child is not a stray.” Maybe if Hizashi left and came back, it would turn out this was all a dream. Or an elaborate prank pulled by his very not - funny husband, who never pulled pranks. There was—hopefully—a first time for everything, right?
“They had a muzzle on him, Hizashi. A muzzle ,” Shouta growled softly, and oh .
Hizashi peered at the child, who was quietly playing with all four cats on the sofa. He had to be about ten, with wild purple hair and dark bags under his eyes that were reminiscent of his husband.
He reminded him a lot of Shouta, actually. Almost as if he could actually be Shouta’s secret love child.
Hizashi walked over to the kid and crouched down in front of him, careful to move slowly so as not to startle him.
“Well, hey there, little listener,” he said. “My name’s Hizashi. What’s yours?”
The kid blinked at him warily. He didn’t seem afraid so much as resigned, as if he knew something bad was coming and knew he couldn’t do anything to stop it.
It broke Hizashi’s heart.
Shouta might have taken the kid in without talking to him first, but Hizashi would be damned if he let Hitoshi leave his sight for the next fifteen years.
Three years later, when Hitoshi was thirteen and thriving , Shouta came back from patrol with another child. The boy was Hitoshi’s age, but from how tiny and malnourished he was, Hizashi would never have guessed. He didn’t even bother reprimanding his husband. Instead, he just sat the little boy—Midoriya Izuku, they eventually learned after days of silence—at the table and made him breakfast.
Izuku, it turned out, had been living on the streets for almost a year. His mother had died in a villain attack, and his father was not in the picture. Somehow, Izuku had slipped through the cracks of the system and had been offering his incredible annalistic skills to petty criminals and minor villains in exchange for food. The kid had cried his eyes out as he admitted this and had then surrendered himself for arrest. This had made Hizashi cry, and he had only cried more when he discovered this amazing, talented, brilliant child was quirkless, and that was why he’d had nobody looking out for him.
Shouta didn’t adopt another child after that. They did get another cat, but that was mostly Hitoshi’s influence, so Hizashi wasn’t sure if he could count it towards his husband’s vast collection of children.
Instead of a single child, Shouta adopted eighteen at once. It was about then that Hizashi finally accepted that his husband collected children (and, yes , cats counted as children) like Pokémon.
At least with the eighteen newest kids, Hizashi didn’t have to find bedrooms and clothes for them. They already had families, and while Shouta would do anything for them, Hizashi didn’t think he’d go so far as to kidnap them.
The frustrating thing was that Hizashi couldn’t even be annoyed about it. Class 1-A (of which both his sons were a part of) were a bunch of literal angels. And given how they worked together at U.S.J? How they saved his husband’s life from villains? Hizashi kind of wanted to adopt them all, too.
After class 1-A earned their place as honorary children, Hizashi assumed his husband was done. Shouta wasn’t a people person, after all. Surely he couldn’t have any spare room left in his heart?
Hizashi was wrong.
For their second internships, Shouta took Hitoshi and Izuku under his wing. It was during patrol that their sons stumbled across a frightened little girl and her abuser.
The fight was over quickly. Hizashi learned that Shouta erased the Yakuza leader’s quirk, and Hitoshi and Izuku took him out swiftly and efficiently. Hizashi was so proud he couldn’t hide the tears behind his orange-tinted shades when he heard the story later.
There wasn’t even a question about where Eri would live. She came home with Shouta and the boys, and Hizashi had hardly even mock complained as he’d gotten straight to work decorating her room shades of pinks and white, with a collection of teddy bears that would rival any toy store.
Two weeks after Eri arrived, Shouta came home with a white kitten that he claimed was for their new child. Hizashi had known better, but he’d only rolled his eyes and allowed it. Despite how he liked to protest otherwise, Hizashi could never say no to his husband and his whims, after all. If he could, maybe he wouldn’t have been a father to twenty-one children and six cats at just thirty-one years old. He took a moment to try and picture it, before quickly deciding that he never wanted to know what life would have been like had his husband not collected children like a hipster collected Funko Pops.
Hizashi liked noise, after all, and their house was never quiet.