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Shouta arrives home at 5:32 AM on the dot, as usual, and announces his arrival as he removes his boots in the doorway, getting a shout back from Hizashi right away. He can smell the breakfast Hizashi has prepared because he refuses to allow Shouta to subsist off tamagoyaki sandwiches from his favored stall, jelly pouches, and melon pan, a rule which is unfair, especially since the jelly pouches from Shouta’s brand came out with meal-replacing ones recently — but Shouta still gets tamagoyaki with nearly every meal, at least, so he’ll count that as a win.
(Shouta would be a liar if he said he didn’t smile every time he opened the cat-themed bentos Hizashi made him every day, with the carrots that Hizashi cut into little hearts and flowers to get him to eat more vegetables. He still didn’t care much for carrots. But he liked Hizashi.)
“Shouta, get in here and explain to me what you mean with your cryptic texts! I know you were having way too much fun on the train,” Hizashi complains, and there’s the sound of dishes clinking together.
Shouta tosses his capture weapon over the back of the couch, pausing to giving a few pats to Cryptid, who’s been eagerly bumping against him and staring at him with big, round, unblinking eyes since he got home, then making another stop to scoop up Baby and press a kiss to her little baby head while she dangles trustingly in his arms. He puts her down, then he wraps his arms around Hizashi’s waist, resting his head on his shoulder, while the blond pours soup into bowls for breakfast and thermoses for work. Sphere, their oldest cat at the age of 14, who’d they’d rescued from the shelter a month before the school year started, sits at Hizashi’s feet, clearly hoping to catch scraps. They both ignore this behavior, as anything besides indulging him will result in Sphere ignoring them for the rest of the morning, and they want him to lose weight — this is the desired result for now; they’ll be forgiven by the afternoon.
“Alright, Shouta, who’s the stray you’ve decided to house, and do I know them?” Hizashi sounds terribly exasperated, but it’s Hizashi, and Shouta can read him like a book, and it’s fond, terribly, terribly fond, too.
“It’s your protégé. Hizashi, we’ve been missing all the signs. Me especially.” Shouta stops with any of the teasing he’d been doing before. It’s time to actually talk now, and seriously talk. “He’s a vigilante — has been one since well before the school year started, even. And it’s very clear to me that Grey Hat is homeless now, and if we handle him wrong, he’ll run—”
“And Midoriya is smart enough and skilled enough that the only way we’d see him again is in a body bag,” Hizashi cuts him off, realizing everything Shouta is trying to hint at immediately; he must remember Shouta telling him all about his conversations with Grey Hat about the state of Japan for the Quirkless.
Hizashi has always been very good at that sort of thing.
“So we have to find a way to approach this with him without making him feel cornered, then.” Hizashi says it like it’s simple.
Shouta knows it’s not. Shouta knows Hizashi knows it’s not.
(Another complicated child abuse case. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they were having to look into Todoroki; had been looking since almost the beginning of the semester — that case was slow going, unfortunately. It was, unsurprisingly, complicated to look into the son of the Number Two Hero. That didn’t mean they didn’t look... but it did mean that it was slow. It had gotten even slower as the hero had started to suddenly change his behavior without explanation... but Shouta would keep searching until he knew for sure that everyone in that house was safe, until he knew everyone in that house would stay safe. He didn’t trust Endeavor as far as he could throw him.
It was, perhaps, opening Pandora’s Box.
But Shouta would open Pandora’s Box for any of his students.)
Hizashi starts sitting out the food at the table. Miso soup, no mushrooms because Shouta can’t stand the texture when they’ve been boiled. Shouta grabs the plates for them with the tamagoyaki and salmon, and Hizashi picks up the two bowls of rice, with Shouta’s own being significantly smaller as he’s not overly fond of rice. They dance around each other as they make their preferred drinks, a cup of water and hōjicha tea for Hizashi, and a cup of extra strong coffee with his stupidly expensive imported beans and a large serving of his imported amaretto syrup and a splash of cream. Hizashi’s vyvanse sat in its bottle by his meal.
Hizashi adds a cup of water at the table with a straw for Shouta that Shouta will take a few sips of, maybe. Probably, actually, because Hizashi is watching him with those lovely two-toned eyes, and Shouta’s a sucker for pretty eyes.
“Alright, so tell me how this all started tonight, Shou.” Hizashi says as he breaks up a piece of fish over his rice and takes a bite.
“I’ve started to realize that Grey Hat is out almost every night these days, like he’s not sleeping, because he doesn’t have anywhere to go,” Shouta starts. He pokes a bit at his food. He’s actually quite worried. He doesn’t know how to handle this. But he wants to. He wants Midoriya to have a safe place to come home every night. He hates how tired the kid looks. “He’s looking more and more tired, like a strong wind could blow him over. He used to be a chatterbox, like your kid. Now, he’s quiet. I watched him sit on a rooftop and count yen coins for a single coffee. It was sad, Zashi.”
Hizashi listens silently, looking more and more somber as Shouta speaks. The food goes untouched between them.
“Yeah, Midoriya’s been quiet for me lately, too. And everyone’s been talking about how quiet he is in class.” Hizashi points out.
“Grey Hat wears contacts. He doesn’t have grey eyes, and I definitely spotted a bit of green hair last night. But the most damning evidence of all, Hizashi,” Shouta pauses, and forces himself to at least take a bite of tamagoyaki, even though talking about this kills his appetite, thinking so much of his student on the streets, alone and afraid. “I brought him coffee and food, because I mean, I’m not heartless, and the kid fell asleep in the booth. When I woke him up, he called me sensei, and it was exactly the way Midoriya reacts when I startle him awake in class. ”
Hizashi takes a long, long drink of tea, and Shouta knows it’s only to soothe his nerves, his anger, his frustration. Shouta feels all this too. Nervous because this is a delicate situation. Anger at Midoriya Inko for putting her child in this situation, at society for making it so he had nowhere to turn but the streets. Frustration with himself for not seeing it sooner, because now that he’s spotted it, it’s really so, so obvious.
“Yeah, so what we’re thinking is that when Midoriya Inko came into that meeting with you for the transfer, all her bluster about Midoriya having to follow a certain rule... that rule was that she would no longer house him, right?” Hizashi muses, head tilted as he leans forward, resting his elbows on the table and his cheek on one of his hands.
Shouta nods. “That’s what I’m thinking, yes. It’s the most logical conclusion at this point. I think she thought she’d scare him away from it all, and didn’t think he’d follow through and accept, based on the way she kept going on and on and kept trying to delay, not that that makes it okay. She shouldn’t have even made such a threat, let alone followed through.”
“We need to send Tsukauchi to the Midoriya residence to investigate. Start by having him stake it out for a few days; him and a few other trusted officers, see if Midoriya ever comes home at all. If he does, then we can simply have a talk with the kid to see what’s going on. If he doesn’t, he’ll need to pay the Midoriya residence a visit.” Hizashi states, lip curled. Shouta can sense the rage just beneath his husband’s calm veneer — because they both know that though there’s no true evidence… Midoriya’s not going to go home even once. “I can arrange to join him during my free period. Two sets of eyes to make sure nothing is missed. And I’m sure Nedzu can rush on making sure we get a warrant to really go through the house.”
“Once we get confirmation, we can figure out how to proceed from there. At a bare minimum, a warrant for Midoriya Inko’s arrest, of course, because we both know that she’s abandoned her son. Midoriya is a smart kid, and a flight risk. If we make one wrong move, he’ll run, and I doubt we’ll ever hear from him again — and I’d be surprised if his friends ever heard again from him, either. He’s smarter than that.” Shouta knows from his talks with Grey Hat it’s not going to be as simple as offering to take the kid in. “He’s not going to feel safe without something permanent from someone safe, and I don’t know if there’s many people who meet that requirement.”
Even if Midoriya trusts Eraserhead, and Shouta’s not sure how far that trust goes, or even if he trusts Hizashi, and Shouta thinks that trust goes a lot further. This is a kid who’s been hurt, over and over and over, a kid who knows that kids like him don’t get happy endings, a kid who has probably never felt truly safe in his life and has now had what little safety he did know ripped away from him. If they walk up to the kid and pull him aside and tell him they know he’s homeless and want to take him in, he’s going to be suspicious, despite the trust they’ve managed to build. He’s going to be afraid that the system will separate them and he’ll end up somewhere he can’t trust.
Even if there was something permanent for him, with the right person, it would be an uphill battle. There’s not many people who would take it on. Shouta’s not sure how they can make sure to keep him permanently. (He’s not an expert on this. He’s never tried to take a kid on like this.)
He thinks they’re the right people.
But he’s not sure how to promise permanence, or well, he is, but he is not sure how to do it in a way that is rapid enough to reassure Midoriya.
Hizashi pushes his food out of the way and reaches across the table, making a grab for Shouta’s hand. Shouta meets him halfway, as he always does.
“Shouta,” Hizashi says, and his expression is grim, serious, but without any of the anger it held before. “How do you feel about adoption?”
Shouta’s silent for a moment as he mulls how to respond over, and then he grins. “It seems like the perfect solution... and in any case, we could use a little more noise in the house, couldn’t we?”
Hizashi smiles, wide and bright, and Shouta knows he’s made the right choice for them all. Midoriya will have a safe home, Hizashi will have the child he loves so dearly as a part of their family, and Shouta will sleep easy knowing that his student, his vigilante, is safe and sound.
All that’s left to do is get Midoriya on board… and get help from someone who can help them make this happen.
Easier said than done, but Shouta’s always willing to take on a challenge.