Work Text:
Tonight
About two months after Shouto started dating Hitoshi, he decided to ask for his thoughts one night, as they snacked in Shouto’s bedroom after just finishing some homework together.
“What about?” Hitoshi asked curiously, fishing out a dried squid-flavoured potato chip from an open bag.
“I want to tell my family about us.”
Hitoshi dropped the potato chip on top of his homework. His face flushed cutely, eyes going wide.
“But I want to know if you’re fine with that first,” Shouto added, fidgeting with the chip bag. He wondered if two months was too soon. Was there a standard timeline for this kind of thing? Should he have looked it up on the internet or asked Asui for another ‘trash internet article’ as Hitoshi liked to call it? Or would Iida know what he should do? He thought maybe since their friends (and two, or probably all at this point, of their teachers) already knew about their relationship, his family would be fine to find out too. But maybe Hitoshi had a different way of seeing things. “If you’re not comfortable with that…”
“If you want to, it’s fine with me,” Hitoshi mumbled. It wasn’t a grumpy mumble which was usually when he was sleep- or coffee-deprived, but his shy mumble, like he couldn’t believe that Shouto actually wanted to keep dating him.
“I want to.”
Hitoshi wrapped the unfortunate potato chip in some tissue and wiped the crumbs off of his notebook, tossing it into the trashcan in the corner of Shouto’s room. “Will they, uh. Want to meet me or something?”
He still couldn’t quite look Shouto in the eye.
“I don’t know, maybe my sister will.”
Hitoshi bit his lip a little, like he was physically holding back the question he really wanted to ask – And your dad? – and rubbed the back of his neck instead, nodding. Shouto checked his calendar on his phone. “I’m having dinner with my siblings and father in a few days, so I was planning to tell them then, if you were alright with it. And my mom, when I visit her tomorrow. I’ll text you about it?”
“Sure,” Hitoshi said, playing with his cat-shaped eraser, one of its ears gone and rubbed into a flat edge. “Let me know if I need to go into hiding from the number one Pro Hero. Maybe I’ll have to start my underground hero career sooner than I thought.”
“If that happens, I’ll go with you,” Shouto said seriously.
Hitoshi cracked a smile. “Shouto, an underground hero? Couldn’t picture it. Your pretty face is too dazzling for that kind of work.”
Shouto’s heart warmed at being called pretty. He knew many people called him a ‘pretty boy’ and such, but it always felt different coming from Hitoshi. “Then you’re too cute for it too, Hitoshi.”
He didn’t dodge the eraser flung at him. It bounced off the middle of his chest and fell into his lap. “I’m not cute.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I’m just sayin’, love is blind.” Then Hitoshi blushed even deeper. “N- not that I’m saying that you… I mean…”
“I do,” Shouto said. The words came out easily. “I do love you.”
And maybe it was too soon, but Shouto felt that he deserved to run headfirst into normal teenage problems while he still could. He was nervous, of course he was, but then he saw that look on Hitoshi’s face, the smile he tried to suppress because he thought it looked silly, and felt that he wasn’t going to have any regrets.
“I love you too,” Hitoshi said, soft and shy.
As Shouto leaned over the table to kiss Hitoshi’s cute pout, he thought to himself that maybe this would turn out okay after all.
Tomorrow
“Mom,” Shouto said, when his mother had finished her bowl of miso soup. “I have a boyfriend.”
She blinked owlishly at him for a moment, like she couldn’t believe her ears. Then a beaming smile split her face. Shouto always savoured being able to make his mother smile like that, watching it restore a lively glow to her skin and sparkle in her eyes. “Oh, Shouto,” she said delightedly. “Is he in your class? Do I know of him?”
“His name is Shinsou Hitoshi, he transferred into 2-A from the general course class 1-C. So he wasn’t really involved in… most things that happened last year.”
Mom looked surprised, but not in a disapproving manner. “The general to hero course? That’s impressive. Shinsou, was it?”
Shouto nodded, pulling out his phone to open some of the photos he had of Hitoshi. Neither of them were frequent selfie-takers, with Hitoshi’s pictures mostly consisting of cats and Shouto’s mostly anything but himself, but their friends loved taking pictures of the both of them together during outings or at random moments in the dorms. Shouto had also started making an effort to ask for pictures of the both of them, internally preparing to show Hitoshi to his family. “Because of his Quirk, he was put into the general course in the first year, but he worked really hard to get approved for transfer because he really wants to become a hero.”
Shouto scrolled down his gallery. He was only really nervous about telling Mom about Hitoshi’s Quirk; although he knew she wouldn’t discriminate against him for it, she would probably have unbidden concerns. “This is Shinsou.” He opened a set of photos that Jirou had taken of the two of them a few weeks ago, when they’d hung out at a café together with their friends, and handed his phone to his mother.
In some photos, he and Hitoshi were sitting side by side on a sofa seat, shoulders pressed close together. He was drinking his tea because he hadn’t yet noticed Jirou sneaking photos (although she hadn’t actually been sneaking, she had literally been holding up her phone, seeing how long they would take to notice her) and Hitoshi was focused on his tiramisu dessert; then he finally realized what Jirou was doing because Hagakure had started giggling maniacally beside her, and put up a peace sign while Hitoshi tried to hide his face behind his scarf.
Mom cooed at the pictures. “Awww, these are so cute. Did your friends take these?”
“Yes, they’ve been very supportive of us.”
“That’s really good. Shinsou seems like a very nice boy, a little camera-shy. I can’t imagine what he had to go through to get transferred into the hero course in one year!”
“Aizawa-sensei helped train him,” Shouto said, taking his phone back to look for other photos. “Their Quirks are kind of a similar type.”
“What Quirk does Shinsou have?”
Hoping his voice didn’t betray his nervousness, he replied, “It’s a brainwashing Quirk.”
His mother fell silent, thoughtful.
Shouto couldn’t fault her if she was worried despite her need to be supportive of him, after everything that she had gone through. He’d figured she would worry about his partner, if he ever got one, no matter who they were or their Quirk if they even had one. He’d thought about how to reassure his family that they had nothing to worry about, about Hitoshi’s Quirk.
At last she said, “Is he kind to you?”
“Yes,” Shouto answered quietly. “Hitoshi is really good. To anyone. He… he wants to be a hero. He wants to make his Quirk a hero’s Quirk. And I believe that he will.”
Mom breathed in deeply. Then she nodded, and smiled. Her eyes were bright. “Alright then. I’m happy for you, Shouto. I’d like to meet him one day.”
“I’ll tell Shinsou that so that he can prepare himself.”
“Of course,” she said, voice businesslike, “if he dares to hurt you, with or without his Quirk, I’ll hunt him down before your father can even turn his fire face on.”
He won’t, Shouto wanted to say, but he knew that his mother just needed to say it out loud. She would worry, but more than that, she would trust him. So he said instead, “Thank you, mom.”
She smiled at him warmly. Shouto stood, moving closer to her. He held out his arms.
Her grey eyes shone with tears. Shouto stepped into his mothers embrace, warm and tight, and closed his eyes.
The day after
“I’m dating a boy in my class,” Shouto said.
Natsuo froze beside him, tea spilling from the mug at his mouth; Fuyumi smiled broadly just like their mother; and sitting across from him, his father, well. Shouto slurped his noodles in the stunned silence that followed, watching as all five stages of grief flashed across Father’s face.
His siblings clearly had things they wanted to say, but forced themselves to keep their mouths shut as their father’s jaw worked like he had to unclench it consciously before saying, “Please tell me it’s not that Bakugou boy.”
Shouto chose to take a long, satisfying slurp of his soba, like he was thinking of how to respond.
Father breathed deeply. A vein throbbed in his temple.
“It’s not that Bakugou boy,” Shouto parroted, because he sometimes enjoyed tormenting his father.
His eyebrows started to smoke.
“Bakugou’s not a bad kid,” Natsuo interjected. “He’s pretty cool.”
“Actually, Bakugou is pretty hot.”
Fuyumi coughed into her hand. Shouto recognized it as a signal to stop messing around because their father was going red in the face, and said, “Natsuo-nii, you’re right, but I’m not dating Bakugou. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise to me for that, silly.”
Father sighed heavily. The colour of his face was returning to normal. “Who is it, then?”
Well, here it was, once again. As much as his father had seemed to basically only pay attention to him during the UA’s Sports Festival in Shouto’s first year, he knew he had really watched every single student, appraising and judging. “Shinsou Hitoshi. He was transferred into the hero course at the start of our second year.”
Father frowned like he was trying to remember. “Shinsou… the boy with the mind control Quirk?”
“Yes.”
Fuyumi blinked. Natsuo looked concerned before catching his sister’s eye and hurriedly wiping it off his face. Their father just looked pensively at his grilled fish.
“How long have you been dating Shinsou?” Fuyumi asked, when Father seemed to have nothing to say for the moment.
“About two months. But we were friends for some time before that. Do you want to see some photos?”
“Ohh, yes please!”
Shouto took out his phone and showed them the same photos he’d shown his mother; Natsuo shuffled over to sit beside Fuyumi and they both looked through the pictures. Fuyumi showed their father a few.
From the way his face softened ever so slightly, she must have picked out the ones of Shouto and Hitoshi together.
“Your schoolwork?” Father asked. “Work studies?”
“Everything is fine. Studying with Shinsou has helped me with my grades, actually.”
Natsuo mumbled something and yelped out loud when Fuyumi jabbed him in the ribs, cheeks flushed.
Shouto took another slurp of his soba.
“Are you happy with him?”
“Yes.”
“And you trust him.”
“With my life,” Shouto said.
He watched his father close his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he locked his gaze with Shouto, who returned it steadily. “You’ve told your mother?”
Shouto nodded.
Father studied him for another second before sighing again. “Alright. I trust you know what you’re doing, Shouto.”
“I don’t really,” he said. “But I do know what I don’t want to do.”
“It’ll be fine,” Fuyumi said as she passed Shouto’s phone back to him. “We trust you, Shouto. And if Shinsou was able to move into the hero course by himself, I’m sure he’s a good kid. Just like you.”
Shouto smiled. Natsuo, having moved back to his own seat, patted his back. “Look at you, all grown up and dating in high school.”
Their father, seemingly placated momentarily, couldn’t stop his eyebrow from twitching. “Don’t forget your school and your hero work will always come first. You can leave the ‘grown up’ part for later.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Natsuo protested.
“Don’t worry, I gave him The Talk already,” Fuyumi said at the same time.
Shouto slurped his noodles, keeping his face blank enough to make Father’s hair start to smoke. “Well,” he ground out, “bring Shinsou in to meet us soon, won’t you?”
“Only if you promise not to threaten him.”
“Only if you promise not to let him sleep in your room while he’s here.”
“Okay,” Shouto agreed. “We’ll just go get a hotel room, then.”
Natsuo choked on his tea as Fuyumi cackled, and as Father massaged the bridge of his nose, groaning, Shouto let himself believe that maybe they really were healing, bit by bit.
Chat: Hitoshi
>> I’ve told them.
<< how’d it go
<< do I need to start my career early
>> Not yet. My family accepted it pretty well.
<< oh
<< wow
<< even your dad?
>> Yes, he was mostly concerned that I was dating Bakugou.
<< does your dad even know who I am
>> He saw you in the Sports Festival
<< that only makes me more worried
>> Don’t be.
<< okay. If you say so
<< I trust you, shouto
>> :)
<< (kissy face emoji)
>> They do want to meet you someday.
<< (clown emoji)
>> Well, don’t worry about it yet.
>> I think we’ll be okay.
>> I miss you
<< miss you too shouto
<< (heart emoji)
<< see you tomorrow
>> See you
>> love you Hitoshi
<< love you too
<< (heart emoji)
>> (purple heart emoji)