Chapter Text
Aizawa was not intending to spend his night as a cat.
The day started normally enough. Hizashi woke him with the smell of an American breakfast and a steaming pot of coffee. After eating, Aizawa reluctantly changed out of his bright pink sweatpants and into his hero costume. He took the train to UA and enjoyed the solitude of his empty classroom— he expelled all of his students already. They’d barely even lasted two weeks.
Unfortunately, his lack of a class meant that Nezu could shovel shit tons of paperwork onto him, so Aizawa spent the work day reading over, sorting, and signing papers. He was stuck as a paper pusher until he could begin the whole re-enrollment process.
Aizawa was tired and unsure if he was capable of reading a single sentence more by the time he was ready to head home.
He took the train again, ate an instant ramen pack for dinner (Hizashi would surely murder him for it later), and began his hero patrols.
The patrol, much like the rest of his day, was normal enough.
And then, the mugger he was working to apprehend had a quirk awakening.
From what Aizawa had gathered, the guy had the ability to mimic animals and shape shift parts of his body. He’d been panicking, swiping a pair of tiger claws through the air, and when he sensed that jail was imminent— his quirk evolved as a last ditch effort to escape.
And Aizawa’s clothes all fell to the floor.
Luckily, nobody witnessed his indecency, because Aizawa had four paws and a tail.
And that is how he ended up wandering the city nightlife as a feline creature, with no idea how to get home or when he’d turn back into a human.
He’d made a few attempts already to hiss and paw at police officers, but they either shooed him off or tried to offer him scratches. Aizawa bared his teeth at both options.
The buildings around him were unrecognizable— he’d strayed too far from his patrol route earlier, and when you’re only a foot tall signs are much harder to read.
So basically, Aizawa is fucked.
His plan A is to continue meandering the city in hopes of finding someone who can communicate with him or who knows him personally (unlikely). Plan B is to wait out the quirk curled up into a little ball.
Aizawa ditches plan A. He’s cold.
Luckily, the alley next to a high-end barbecue restaurant has warm air blowing out from the kitchen. There’s the yelling of “order up!” and “Pick up!” from the restaurant staff and the clanging of pots and pans, but someone’s abandoned a baby blanket right by an open window.
Aizawa decides to settle for the night— he won’t do any good if he’s tired. The blanket is soft and pillowy;
It’s perfect.
Until it’s not.
“Oi, kid,” Someone says behind him, and for a second Aizawa disregards the voice because there’s no way it’s actually talking to him, but then there’s a hulking mass standing before him, fur puffed up and eyes glowing yellow.
“This ain’t your alley,” The cat says. She has a striped coat, but its matted and some patches are missing, revealing slivers of scars. The area above her eyebrow is all gnarled skin, and one ear is clipped, twitching uselessly. “Your mama ever teach you manners?”
Oh, Aizawa realizes. He can understand other cats now. His new tiny cat brain can comprehend the little twitches and shifts, the clicks of her tongue, and the hunch of her shoulders as language.
He wonders what his cats would sound like, Fuckass and Sailor all alone at home, but that thought doesn’t last long because scarface hisses.
“Well, don’t you look pretty,” Scarface circles him, and Aizawa isn’t quite sure what to do in this predicament. “Your coat is shiny. You got someone pettin’ you at home? Housecat, what are you doin’ out here?”
Aizawa gets the feeling that he’s being sized up.
“Does your owner clean up your shit for you?” Scarface cackles. “Is kitty witty lost in the scary city?”
It’s then that Aizawa realizes it isn’t just Scarface. There are dozens of eyes, peeking out from the shadows— they glow in the dark, several floating circles of territorial anger. He’s surrounded, with Scarface blocking the mouth of the alley and the rest of his crew lingering in the darkness, ready to pounce if he so much as breathes wrong.
Being a cat is not as fun as he thought it would be, he thinks as he makes a mad dash to slip past Scarface, more instinctively than logically. A claw lands on his snout, and with the hiss of a thousand rattlesnakes there are three more upon his back.
Definitely not as fun.
And that, my friends, is how Aizawa Shota got jumped by a hoard of felines. It’s high school all over again.
But unlike high school, he has no home to return to. He’s sure his apartment is safe and sound, bolted shut with way too many locks, but his keys are in his pocket and his pocket is across the city.
Aizawa limps past a convenience store, the blood from the Great Jumping of The Alley Cats beginning to crust and make his fur mat. The multitude of scratches across his everywhere protested with every step, and he’s sure that he doesn’t look much like a house cat anymore.
He needs a game plan. The city has proven itself to be unsafe, dare he say even more unsafe than as a human, with high drops and traffic threatening his every moment. If someone isn’t about to step on him, he’s being cursed at (he discovers that there is a slur for stray cats) by mice and other critters from the safety of their crawlspaces. What’s even worse is the cooing— at least a dozen people had stopped to bend down and try to pet him or assess his injuries, only to act surprised when he hissed a warning.
“Aren’t you a cutie?” A waitress on her smoke-break had purred, crouching down to her ankles. “Aww, but what happened to you? Did the other kitties bully you? Daww, hehe.”
Aizawa is never baby-talking his cats again.
In the late night/early morning blackness, streetlights cut yellow spotlights into the street, casting even harsher shadows over the sidewalks where trash bins and mailboxes sat. The neon sign of a tattoo parlor flickered, on and off, on and off, despite the sign flipped over the door reading “CLOSED.” The convenience store’s fluorescent lighting leaked from its windows, weakened through thin layers of newspaper clippings and ads.
The convenience store isn’t high end by any means— the walls are gritty and the trashcan sitting by the door is overflowing. Aizawa can barely hear trashy music playing from a speaker inside; it’s a song he recognizes. Hizashi used to play it all of the time.
“Have a nice night, Abe sir,” a bell tinkles above him, and the automatic doors of the store make an unholy sound as they slide open. The smell of cheap cleaning wipes and microwaved meals seeps out in waves.
And then someone’s tripping on him.
“Oh Lord-“ It’s all Aizawa can do to keep the pained yowl from escaping his mouth. His probably sprained leg is white hot with pain, ow ow ow ouchie ow.
The person who has tripped over him, fucking idiot I’ll skin them, stumbles but is quick to correct themselves, sputtering in surprise. They turn, and in the darkness they’re hard to make out, but Aizawa thinks he sees a head of untamed curls and wide eyes. They’re wearing a gakuran- the uniform is recognizable enough for his blurry little cat eyes. A student, then.
But why outside so late? And still in uniform?
“What did I— oh!” The student, a boy on the shorter and slimmer side, finally spots him. Aizawa gives his meanest glare, glued to the concrete by his injured leg. “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.”
What the man isn’t expecting is for the boy to kneel to his side, hands flailing as if to touch him, but then pulling away and wiping them on his uniform shirt in a fidgeting frenzy. The boy apologizes profusely… to what he thinks is a stray cat.
This kid’s either really weird or on crack cocaine.
“Oh no, you’re hurt. Um, okay, that looks painful. And fresh. Umm, oh no. Goodness,” The kid mumbles, eyebrows pinched in concern. He really does look crazy, on his knees and rambling to a cat.
“Okay,” Curls finally takes a deep breath in. And out. It’s practiced— he must panic like that often. He stands, and Aizawa thinks he’s just going to leave, but then Curls points a stern finger at him, a non-threatening frown on his face. “Stay there! I’ll be right back!”
Curls runs back into the convenience store. Aizawa is left confused, bamboozled, and in the middle of a sidewalk.
And then, Curls emerges once again, but this time he’s holding in one hand a pair of crisp, white, new bandages.
And this is all very confusing, you see. Aizawa has had a long day; a very long, tiring day, and mostly he just wants for it to be over, even if that means leaving his wounds untreated. He wants to nap. He wants his husband. He also really wants to fucking nap.
The street is empty at this time and in this neighborhood, so Curls settles himself against the concrete wall of the convenience store just a few feet from Aizawa and sets down his newly acquired bandages. He digs around in his pockets for a second and pulls out a granola bar. Then, he unwraps it, breaks it into cat-sized chunks, and rolls a piece over.
Aizawa glares at the granola bar. Then at the boy. Then he lowers his eyes back down to the granola bar.
The granola bar that’s looking really sexy right now. The boy who’s picking at his nails, waiting patiently. The granola bar.
You’d best believe that Aizawa nearly snorted that shit.
It didn’t have much of a taste, but goddamn did that one chunk satiate the rumbling in his stomach. He didn’t even notice when the boy slid over the remaining granola chunks, too busy getting used to the feeling of chewing with sharp little teeth, but when he did he wolfed those down too.
A minute and a half later, Aizawa is a less grumpy cat.
“I hope that helps,” Curls murmurs, toying with the fraying hem of his jacket. “I don’t really have anything else food-wise on me… But, um, if you’ll let me…”
The boy picks up his bandages and carefully tears one of the rolls from its packaging. Despite how odd it must be from an outsider’s perspective, Aizawa is grateful that this kid is talking to him like any other human, even if he doesn’t quite look the part. After a full day of cooing and/or angry shooing noises directed at him, he’s happy to have a one-sided conversation.
Seeing the boy holding out his hands, palms up with a roll of bandages in his left, Aizawa gets the message. He lets it happen, because even though his pride has practically taken a fatal wound, his logical side reasons that he’s in a weakened state and should take any help he can get.
Curls knows what he’s doing.
He’s careful not to surround or overwhelm Aizawa at any point, and even though Aizawa is actually a person (meaning Curls doesn’t need the preventative stray cat measures), he appreciates the apprehension and kindness in this young boy.
“Ow. It looks like you got into a tussle, hm? I get it. I get into tussles too, but I don’t really mean to. Maybe you’re the same way,” Curls mumbles. A troublemaker, huh? “Can I see your leg?”
Aizawa doesn’t struggle when he examines his leg, prodding it and twisting it gently to see what he reacts negatively to. One particularly ungentle poke gets him a hiss, and Curls shrinks, “I know, I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Don’t apologize, kid, Aizawa sighs. This just sucks.
Three minutes later, Aizawa is bandaged comfortably yet snuggly, and he feels more like a mummy than he usually does.
“I think your leg is sprained. It might take a little while to heal,” Curls packs up his materials into an ugly yellow backpack (But Aizawa has an ugly yellow sleeping bag, so who is he to judge?) “I think I’m going to take you home and give you a warm bed, and then try to find a good shelter for you.”
Aizawa wants to object at first, wants to run away, but then he recognizes the opportunity. If this kid can get him back into the city, he’ll be able to find UA! He could also try to use the kid’s computer or something to type an email to his superiors. Even if an opportunity doesn’t present itself and Aizawa gets stuck in a shelter, he’ll have a warm bed and food until he can figure out what to do (or until the quirk wears off).
Considering all of these options, he doesn’t try to scramble off when Curls very carefully slips his arms under him and brings him to his chest.
Frankly, this is real fuckin’ embarrassing, but the pros outweigh the cons right now. Aizawa’s sure that if he had a human face it’d be twisted into a frustrated scowl and quirk-enhanced glare, but for now, all he can do to express his displeasure with the whole situation by flexing his claws.
Curls doesn’t mind. He takes it in stride, adjusting Aizawa in his arms, and starts down the sidewalk. He’s muttering under his breath as he walks, a couple miscellaneous things about “homework” and “dinner.”
The scenery passes in a blur. It’s all just concrete and filled in windows for a while, graffitied urban sprawl. Aizawa yearns to sleep, more than he’s ever yearned, and it must be the cat instincts that have seemed to stick to him. But Aizawa forces himself to stay conscious— memorize the route, every twist and turn that Curls takes into a residential (albeit rundown) area.
The night is quiet. There’s the whizz of cars in the distance and of crickets spread sparse through the darkness. A raccoon scuttles under a porch. A train rumbles somewhere far off. Aizawa thought that getting kidnapped would be less peaceful—Curls speaks softly when he breaks the quiet.
“My name is Izuku,” Curls says. He scratches the indentation between Aizawa’s ears with one finger, and yeesh that feels better than a massage. The name suits him.
And then he’s climbing a set of stairs to an apartment complex. It’s a bumpy ride, and Aizawa counts each stair to keep himself focused on anything other than falling asleep. And then they’re standing at an unpainted wooden door, 406.
“Please be quiet when we go inside,” Izuku shifts Aizawa so that he can reach into his pocket and pull out his house-keys. “I don’t think mama is home, but if she sees you then…”
Izuku’s suddenly fearful tone makes Aizawa’s concern flare.
“Then I’ll be in trouble. Or something,” Izuku shrugs, then he opens the door slowly. Slowly, so slowly it barely creaks, and then he peeks into the dark apartment for several seconds before deeming it safe enough to tiptoe inside.
And boy, does that make Aizawa’s teacher instincts flare up even more.
There’s no lights on, but with enhanced cat eyes, Aizawa can see the barren space in front of him easily. Its emptiness rivals his apartment, which is impressive considering he’s a minimalist at best and doesn’t even live there half of the time at worst. The only place with evidence that this house is inhabited at all is the living room. There’s empty beer bottles, half empty beer bottles, crushed beer bottles, shattered vodka bottles, empty vodka bottles.
The apartment fucking reeks of alcohol.
Aizawa looks a little closer, now. The sink is nearly overflowing with dishes. The trash can is stuffed to the brim. There’s something brown splattered across the hallway closet’s door. The carpet is hiding a big stain that peeks out from its edges.
Fuck.
“She’s not home,” Izuku breathes, and Aizawa knows without a doubt that this boy is a victim of some sort of domestic violence. As a pro hero, he’s seen it way too many fucking times, and every time it hurts just a little bit more. One more crack in his heart every time he sees the outcome of a hurt child.
He doesn’t want to admit it. Doesn’t want to think it. But the splatter on the closet door is most definitely old blood and the stain under the carpet reeks the same scent of copper.
Now, this moment when Aizawa enters Izuku’s apartment for the first time is the exact moment that Aizawa’s goals shift. It’s the moment that his top priority goes from “get home to Hizashi” to “keep the kid as safe as he can.”
Izuku doesn’t notice his internal dilemma. He walks down the hallway, his footsteps eerily silent even with shoes on, and shoulders open the door to his room. It’s as bare as the rest of the house, but on his homework cluttered desk there are a few All Might figurines and there’s a colorful quilt sprawled on his mattress.
“Welcome to my humble abode, kitty,” Izuku sets him down to explore, closing the door behind him and setting his backpack, shoes, and jacket next to his desk. “I’m sorry it’s cramped, but you’ll probably have to stay in here until I can find a shelter for you.”
Aizawa says, “It’s okay. I’ll live,” but it comes out as a meow.
Izuku smiles.
Aizawa decides that his smile is a heartwarming thing.
“Luckily, tomorrow is Saturday so you won’t be alone. I’ll check all the local places and see if they can fit you in,” The boy reaches into his chest of drawers and withdraws a pair of jeans, basketball shorts, and three shirts. Aizawa is confused what he’s going to do with those, but then he starts folding the clothes and setting them down next to his bed in a pile.
Izuku’s making him a bed.
He gathers the sheet from his bed, which had been crumpled at the edge of the mattress, and used it to keep the clothes together. A makeshift pillow and pillowcase. When he’s finished, he pats the pile down and steps away.
“I hope this is comfortable enough,” He sits down in the chipping wooden chair at his desk. “If Mama comes home tomorrow, I’ll have to move it under my bed. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Aizawa says again. It comes out as a meow again. “I’ll live.”
Izuku starts working on his homework after that. Aizawa takes this time to explore the tiny bedroom that he’s been sealed to. The soft glow from the desk lamp makes the room look warmer, makes the popcorn walls cast little dot shadows.
The bed takes up most of the room’s space, and the remainder of that space is used up by the more tall than wide chest of drawers and the wobbly desk that Izuku is currently hunched over. Other than those three pieces of furniture, there are scarce decorations and even scarcer personal items. The only personality this bedroom has is the patterned quilt and the cheap hero figurines.
The horror of the apartment had made Aizawa’s adrenaline spike, but now he’s more disappointed than surprised, and the exhaustion of the day is crashing back onto him. The scratches along his back still sting and he’s limping off of his injured leg.
“I’m going to bed now,” Aizawa informs Izuku, and the boy barely looks up, too engrossed in his work to hear the tiny meow. “You’d better get some sleep, too. I see those eye bags.”
Izuku spares him a glance and a quirk of the lips, then he’s back to writing. Aizawa sighs and hobbles his way to the makeshift bed (his hope in the new generation is slightly restored when he sees the lumps of clothes and sheets) and curls up atop it.
Aizawa’s been kidnapped by a teenage boy. Aizawa’s a cat. He doesn’t know when he’ll get to go home. Hizashi’s probably unleashing all hell upon his coworkers.
The bed’s not the comfiest thing per se, but it works. It’s warm and lying on his cuts alleviates some of the pain via pressure, and he’ll figure things out in the morning; and Aizawa’s eyes are already falling, and yep he’s definitely falling aslee. . .