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It started with the cats getting up for Izuku when he entered the room. Shouto noticed the unease immediately among them. Their eyes would turn at the sight of green, Fish constantly had his hackles raised around Izuku, but no one would say anything about it. He’d never been around cats before he met Izuku, but he was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to act like that. Maybe it was just his hypervigilance.
“I don’t know, I’ve never seen Izuku interact with them outside the occasional chasing. Well, except for the first fight they had. Other than that, I never asked.” Hitoshi had shrugged at him, going back to playing his Switch.
“As long as he promised not to chew on my wires, I told him I was okay with whatever.” Aizawa glared at nothing in particular. “I’m not buying another TV.”
“I mean, I give him treats before the cats.” Mic choked, “Not normal treats! Like homemade stuff. I’m not feeding Izuku that processed crap.”
“Izuku has always had kind of a… complex. When he was younger, I’d always have to keep him from fighting animals in the park. Even when he did get into little tousles, he ended them pretty quickly.”
Shouto wrote all of it down in a little notebook, the same one that he made his observations in. He decided to give himself about a week to watch Izuku and the cats and gather evidence. Although he wasn’t sure what to look for, Shouto knew that he would come out with an answer.
The first piece of ‘evidence’ was their clothes. He noticed that Hitoshi and his dads walked around covered in green fur more than not, except for Aizawa’s costume, which is left completely free of all furs. He didn’t know how it happened until he walked in on Izuku rummaging through the baskets of clean clothes near the laundry, just rolling in them before they were taken and put into closets. As soon as Izuku sensed that someone was there, he’d stopped immediately and hid under the table. Shouto didn’t mention that he’d seen him.
The next day, Shouto’s jacket was missing. He looked everywhere, worried about being late to class, when Izuku came running out of Hitoshi’s room. In his hand, a green-fur covered jacket. Shouto pulled out his book, noting it down. It had been washed yesterday.
Over the week, it turned into more of a ‘figuring out all the weird things that Izuku does’ rather than ‘why is Izuku the leader.’ When Friday rolled around, Shouto stared at his notebook and frowned.
Fed before the cats
Covers their scents
First choice of seat
Is despised by Fish
None of it told him why, though. How was he going to figure this out? It’s possible that something happened before Shouto got there and everyone just accepts it. He had to enlist help.
“I’m trying to figure out why Izuku has seniority over the cats.” Shouto hummed, clicking his pen and waiting for Hitoshi to unlock the whole case.
“Uhh, I dunno.” Hitoshi scratched his nose. Izuku was asleep in his room, while the two of them sat and did homework in the living room. Inko was cooking, so it wouldn’t be long before Izuku came out.
“You don’t know?” Shouto deflated, clicking his pen again and sitting it down on the table.
“Nope, it just seemed natural to all of them.” Hitoshi hummed, “You might want to ask Mom about it, though, just exactly what you asked me.”
So, Shouto made his way to the kitchen. He ignored the way his stomach rumbled at the smell of her cooking and focused his mind back to the task at hand. He asked.
“Oh, well…” Inko put a hand to her mouth, thinking. “It was when he got his second tail that I noticed the way animals reacted to him. We were at the supermarket, and he snapped at this poor little dog for getting too close to me.”
“A… dog?”
“It was in the supermarket, eating food it wasn’t supposed to be. Izuku just jumped down and growled until it went away. When his second tail manifested, he towered over the poor thing. It was something you only see out of those weird werewolf movies.” She laughed, cheeks blooming. “We didn’t know anything about his quirk, then, but it seems like part of being a Kitsune is not wanting to be challenged. He was very pleased with himself.”
“I see….” Shouto jotted it down, eyes narrowing at the page. So, it was a quirk thing. He could go with that, just end the test here and move on, but there was something more eating at the back of his head.
“What’s going on in that brain of yours, Shou?” Inko reached up to ruffle his head, keeping her soft eyes on him while he worked out the words that were stuck in his brain.
“It… just feels like there’s something more to the way that ‘Zuku behaves around us and… stuff.” Shouto ignored the tiny blush that came to his cheeks. He’d never been an articulate person, but Inko always had a way of tempting the words out. He wished that he could tell her how much he loved her, but those words wouldn’t come, either.
“Hm…,” Inko sighed, “This might be a bit brash, but I think you should ask him.” Green eyes crinkled up at him, and Shouto was overwhelmed with everything. Why were the Midoriya’s so kind to him? Why did he feel so… loved?
Instead of answering, Shouto nodded resolutely and walked down the hall to their small bathroom, taking a moment to resist the urge to bash his head against the wall. Of course, he should ask him! He should have done that in the first place - ugh. Shouto felt like an idiot. He never thinks of just asking for something. He had asked so many questions about Izuku, he never thought to ask Izuku himself.
The boy took a second to splash some calming water in his face and obsessively wash his hands while waiting for his brain to stop its spiral. It would be okay, this was something that they could talk about over dinner.
“Shouto, Honey, could you get Izuku up for dinner on your way out?” Inko called from the top of the hallway, and Shouto hummed his affirmative as he stepped out of the door.
Izuku’s door seemed to loom over him for a second, but Shouto has had enough of looming doors in his life, so he just cracked it open and peered in. Izuku was splayed out on his bed in his human for, face down in the pillow and snoring.
He felt something candy-sweet and dangerous tug at his heart. Instantly, his brain was back to the swirling mess of why am I like this? And Shouto stood statue-still and waiting for his thoughts to catch up with the mess that was whatever he was feeling about the picture in front of him.
“Hey, Tumbleweed! Dinner’s done!” Hitoshi called, suddenly and very alarmingly standing over his shoulder with one of his perfect smirks dancing across his lips. Shouto’s eyes grazed across the bow of them, catching on the slight sheen that told of chapstick, and then that same tug had him tilting for a second, skewing off-kilter and into the door frame. He could play this off, definitely.
“S’cuse me.” He huffed, brushing past Hitoshi and absolutely, can not in any way, touch- touch-
Shouto B-lined into the bathroom once more, dropping his head into the wall next to the shower this time and letting everything stop for a moment. What? What was even going on anymore?
“Honey, can I come in for a moment, I’ve got to grab something!” Inko whisper-yelled through the bathroom door and didn’t wait for a response before barging in, cracking the door behind her with a mischievous grin.
Shouto didn’t dare move a muscle.
“Oh, Honey….” The elder woman cooed, pulling him from his place against the wall to rest against her shoulder while she soothed him. He wasn’t even embarrassed about it right now. He didn’t have it in him. “I remember when I realized I had a crush on my best friends way back in middle school. When I look back on it now, I don’t know how they didn’t figure it out.” She laughed, hearty and from deep in her chest. The tension bled out of Shouto like he was a melting ice cube. “You’ll get through this, I believe in you. Give it some time, I’m sure you won’t have to be the one to say something. Just hold it together.” She patted the back of his head once more before leaving him to stand in the bathroom by himself.
“Wait. Inko-san, what did you need to grab?” Shouto opened the door all the way, forgetting about his dilemma all together in order to fix the problem in front of him.
She laughed, all teeth and motherly love, “Oh, it was you, Honey!”
After dinner was spent listening to everyone talk and laugh with each other, Shouto and his best friends - oh no, that felt wrong - settled down into the living room for the night. Inko had long since gone to sleep, storing left-overs in the fridge and welcoming anyone to them. There was an old American All Might Documentary playing in the background in English - it was subtitled, but Shouto couldn’t make his brain think passed a single word of it. Izuku, though, he was enraptured in every word, Shouto spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at his face.
“He’s seen this one four times, by the way.” Hitoshi sank a hand into Shouto’s hair from where his arm bent around the back of the couch, his eyes tired and sinking by the second. Shouto’s entire body lit on fire, thankfully not literally, but it was a close call.
“ Shhhhh, they’re getting into the battle with Elementor.” Izuku hissed, scrunching his nose in concentration as he translated the English in his head. He refused to read the subtitles after learning English. He was almost fluent, and swore up and down that listening to the original made a difference.
Hitoshi scoffed at the smaller one of them, leaning over to rest his upper body obnoxiously over the top of Izuku, who completely ignored him. Shouto’s eyes were caught on the curve of his jaw, the way that his hair dropped a little from a day of standing straight, the pink tip of his ear.
When the taller boy caught his staring, instead of doing anything else like a normal human being, he winked. He winked at Shouto, who definitely didn’t start to smoke. Why, why was he like this? Why couldn’t he just be normal and sit beside his friends on a couch without imploding?
It took Shouto approximately fourteen seconds to decide that hey, maybe looking at them is the problem here and turn away to watch the documentary. Sadly, that was only a reprieve for twenty more minutes - the credits rolling dawned a chest-rattling silence, only interrupted by Toshi’s soft snores.
Izuku’s eyes raked over his shoulder, Shouto was hyper-aware of any movement. He could hear the breath escaping his lips, the rustle of his shirt, when his tongue darted out to wet his lips. Shouto couldn’t look, it would be his end.
“Toshi said that you and Mama were talking about my quirk earlier.” Izuku leaned in towards him, snuggling into the crease of Hitoshi’s elbow and his own shoulder. Shouto couldn’t help the way his head whipped towards the sleeping hunk of flesh. Traitor.
He looked down at his lap, thinking about the journal that he’d been keeping notes in. “I was wondering why you’re the dictator of all the pets.” Shouto flexed his hand, staring at it to keep from looking at Izuku. “They don’t really do anything, but they’re all scared of you, and I was trying to figure it out. I didn’t think to just ask you about in until Inko-san mentioned it.”
Izuku chuckled, burying his nose into Shouto’s side. “Hmm, did you have any other burning questions?”
Shouto hummed, “I got everything other than the most important one figured out. No matter how much watching or interviewing I do, I can’t figure out why you do any of this. It might be a quirk thing all the way, but that just doesn’t make sense.”
There was another long second of silence as Izuku seemed to take in what Shouto had said. It permeated the air of the room, thickening it with humility.
“You…are wondering why I don’t want any animal to feel comfortable around you?” Izuku narrowed his eyes at Shouto.
“Yeah?” He turned, the discomfort from looking at Izuku long forgotten.
Izuku’s face broke into a large grin, and he was quickly reminded. The warmth from his blush spread throughout Shouto’s entire face as he looked into emerald irises.
“It’s because I love you, silly! The only way I can protect you when I’m not around is by making sure everyone knows who you belong to.”
Shouto choked.
Yeah, he was never going to recover from this.