Work Text:
Hitoshi looks down at his six-year-old foster brother who is standing beside him, wrapped in Hitoshi’s one remaining blanket and staring at the inferno that was their home less than an hour ago. “That was an overreaction to not getting what you wanted, don’t you think?”
“It got me the blanket, didn’t it?” the boy says smugly.
Kamis save him from baby omegas. “And you’ll be giving it back.”
“What? No!” His foster brother looks flabbergasted.
He sighs and crouches down so they’re at the same eye level. “Look, I get that it’s a great blanket and that you probably want it because it smells like me, but that’s the only thing I have left from my mom, so you can’t have it.”
“But you put it on me!”
“Because people are more important than things! I didn’t want you dying of smoke inhalation before I got us out of there. We could’ve found a blanket just like it and I would’ve scented it for you. In fact, we can still do that. But look what happened because you lost your temper. All your other blankets are gone now and we almost lost your mom to the fire because she was in the bath when the fire started. No one can bring back people from the dead, you know.” Hitoshi points out, trying not to yell. “Also, your parents aren’t going to want me in the house now that this happened. Not to mention that we don’t have a house anymore, so there’s nowhere for any of us to stay.”
Yoshio’s little face goes tragic. “No! You can’t go away!”
Of course that’s what the stubborn little thing takes away from this mess.
“It’s not up to me, buddy. Actions have consequences. Without the house, your parents aren’t going to be able to take care of me any more. That’s even if they want me in the first place.”
“Of course we still want you, Hitoshi,” a hoarse voice rasps.
Hitoshi turns to see Hideo and Atsuko Iwai and a police officer.
The police officer clears his throat. “I need a statement from you. Neither of your parents know what happened.”
He winces. Yeah, no one is going to believe this one.
“No, no, no! You can’t take Toshi-nii away! It was me! I was bad! I made the fire to make Toshi-nii give me the blanket!” Yoshio wails, suddenly throwing himself at Hitoshi, who plops on his ass with an ‘oof’.
The policeman frowns and asks sternly, “Young man, did you take a blanket away from a baby omega?”
Atsuko coughs, sounding rough. “Hitoshi, is that the blanket from your mom?”
“No. Yes, it is.” He answers both of them.
“Oh.” Hideo looks like he suddenly understands what happened. “Officer, don’t blame Hitoshi. That blanket is the most important one in his nest. It’s the only thing he has left from his mother. Yoshio’s pretty attached to Hitoshi, so he probably just wanted something that smelled like him and picked that because it smells most like him, not understanding what he was doing wrong. Our Yoshio is stubborn and has a temper. He also has a bad habit of setting things on fire when he’s upset.”
“You don’t blame me?” Hitoshi asks in as small a voice as he can manage over the screaming and sobbing Yoshio is doing.
“Why-?” Atsuko breaks off coughing.
“Why would we blame you, Hitoshi? You’re not the one with a fire quirk and you’re not careless. Don’t worry about the house. We bought top notch quirk incident insurance when Yoshio’s quirk came in. It might take a couple months to get a new house, but we were thinking of moving to a more fireproof house anyways. In fact, we put a bid in on one last week.”
That’s news to Hitoshi.
“You’re our son, too, Hitoshi,” Atsuko adds raspily.
“She’s right. We’ll probably have to redo the safe household certification, but your social worker has adoption papers with your name on them, just waiting for your signature,” Hideo affirms and ruffles his hair. “You did good getting Yoshio and yourself out safely.”
Hitoshi doesn’t know why he’s crying suddenly, but he’s reminded of why he’s had his foster parents’ scents in his nest for years now. They’re nothing like the few foster parents he’d had before them, who couldn’t find an excuse to get rid of him fast enough for their taste. Nothing like that woman who had duct taped his mouth shut after he asked her a question. Instead of treating him like a villain, they’d helped him learn to control his quirk and have shown him nothing but love and care. It’s just that he’s always had the fear in the back of his mind that it would all be taken away, that they’d get sick of him one day and throw him away like the others had.
~
In the end, Hideo must’ve done something, because it’s less than two weeks before they’re moving into a mostly fireproof house twice the size of their previous house and Hitoshi and Yoshio only had to stay at the group home for five days before their parents got them back. His social worker explained that it would’ve been longer if Hideo and Atsuko hadn’t lost her number in the fire, but Hitoshi calls bullshit on that. Hideo’s memory for phone numbers is legendary. They’d just put it off because they’d decided to. It’s whatever. He’ll take a week of living in a hotel room over another week in the group home.
The new home is almost overwhelming. None of them have much to bring to make it look homey. Just a week’s worth of clothes they shopped for while living in the hotel, Hitoshi’s blanket, a blue blanket almost the same as his purple one for Yoshio and a few blankets Atsuko had picked out to start rebuilding her nest with. It takes maybe half an hour to ‘move in’ and then things start being delivered.
Beds, furniture, scent-neutralized bases for Atsuko’s, Yoshio’s and Hitoshi’s nests in the appropriate sizes.
Scent-neutralized Emergency Nesting Boxes, two for adults and one for a juvenile. They spend a couple hours picking through the boxes and scenting items for each other. The extras get dumped in one of the extra bedrooms.
Kitchen appliances, starting with a stove and refrigerator. Food supplies.
A full toolbox and some boxes of nails, tacks, screws and picture hangers.
Curtains and rods.
Rugs.
An entertainment system, computers for Hitoshi, Hideo and Atsuko and a game device for Yoshio.
A heavy-duty wash machine and dryer.
Bathroom supplies. Trash bags.
By the time they’re finished setting everything up, it’s well after dark and Yoshio is conked out in the middle of Hitoshi’s nest, wrapped in his own replacement blanket. Well, that’s not too surprising. Yoshio has refused to be separated from Hitoshi at bedtime since the fire. Most of the rest of the time, too, honestly. Separation anxiety is a bitch. Though Hitoshi’s pretty sure Yoshio would be clinging to Atsuko instead if he understood what ‘dead’ actually meant. Personally, he’s never going to forget the sheer dread he felt when it looked like they wouldn’t be able to get Atsuko out in time. It had been a near thing. He’ll never quite forgive himself for not stopping by the bathroom to warn her on his way out of the house, even though he’s been reassured repeatedly that he did exactly the right thing in getting Yoshio out immediately.
He crawls into the nest and closes his eyes.
If he knows his parents, and he does, tomorrow is going to be another long day. Just because they have the bones of the home in place doesn’t mean they’re going to be satisfied. There’s still lots of little missing pieces that make up a proper household that they’ll undoubtedly be shopping for, either in person or online. Dishes and utensils for one and more trashcans and more clothes. Not to mention things like music and a proper gaming system for Hitoshi and toys for Yoshio. And the basics for the guest bedrooms, his parents’ offices and books for the library that currently has all of one dusty tome, an outdated dictionary, moldering in one corner. Also, more cleaning supplies, a not-scuzzy broom and dustpan and a vacuum cleaner that actually works. And-
He falls asleep mid-thought.
~
“You’re back? I thought you’d finally gone and turned villain on us.”
Hitoshi scoffs at the asshole. “No, actually, my house burned down.”
“Damn. I knew you’re a bad seed. But burning down your own house? That’s pretty low.”
Seriously.
“Well, it’s nice to see your faith in my quirk randomly mutating into a fire quirk, but now that I have a fire quirk, do you really think you should be provoking you? What if I set you on fire this time?” He says sarcastically.
Silence.
He glances up to see the asshole backing away from him wide-eyed.
Oh, come on. He can’t be that gullible.
Apparently, he is. It’s all over the school by lunchtime that Hitoshi’s quirk now lets him speak flames into existence. The sane ones give him sympathetic glances, the crazies scurry away from him and the rest of them try congratulating him on his quirk evolution.
“What’s this I hear about a quirk evolution, Shinso?” Ito sensei asks, mildly amused. Fortunately, the teachers don’t treat Hitoshi like he’s some villain in the making. Most of them actually like him because he’s a good student who maintains top grades.
“I was being sarcastic! He said I burned my house down, so I told him he should be afraid of provoking me and my newly evolved fire quirk! Ugh. Why is everyone so stupid?” he bemoans.
“A question I ask myself often.” Ito sensei chuckles in amusement. “Usually when I’m grading essays or attending board meetings. It’s amazing the number of people who mix up first person plural with first person singular.”
Hitoshi snickers a little.
“Well, as long as it’s not you deliberately spreading the misinformation, I see no harm in the rumors. If it becomes a problem, however, let me know. Did they actually find the cause of the fire?” Ito sensei asks amiably.
He grimaces. “My little brother expressed as an omega recently. He tried to steal the blanket I have from my birth mom out of my nest and I refused to let him, so he set the room on fire to convince me. He’s promised never to do it again, but we moved to a fire-resistant house.”
“Oh my! What a strong-willed child. I’m glad you all got out safely.” Ito sensei remarks sincerely.
It probably says something about humanity that a baby omega setting a house on fire to get a blanket is dismissed as ‘strong-willed’ rather than people freaking out about pyromaniacs and suicidal tendencies.
“Thanks. We got him a similar blanket and I scented it for him, so there shouldn’t be a repeat,” he offers dryly.
“I should hope not! It’s sweet that he’s so attached to you.”
“Sweet is one word for it.” Hitoshi smirks. “Personally, I’ll be glad when he moves back to his own room and I quit waking up via a foot to the bladder.”
Ito sensei chuckles again. “Understandable.”
~
Two years later…
Hitoshi blinks down at the tiny girl inexplicably in his house.
She startles, then screams and backs away.
“Wow, I didn’t realize my hair was that scary,” he jokes.
The little girl stops and pouts, pressing her palms together. “Not scary. Burn you if touch.”
“Really? Do you burn anything you touch or just people?” He asks.
In answer, she reaches out and touches the couch, which sends up a wisp of smoke before she yanks her hand away. The couch smolders for a moment before stopping.
“Wow, that’s one dangerous quirk. Pretty scary for you, huh?”
She nods. “Hurt mama.”
“Hm. Did you know some people find my quirk scary?” Maybe he can talk her through this.
“What do?”
“I can make people do what I tell them to do.”
The little girl lights up like he’s just handed her an icecream cone. “Make quirk go away!”
He blinks. Well, that’s an idea. It’s worth trying.
“You want me to tell you not to use your quirk?” he asks carefully.
“Yeah!”
It’s a little scary how she almost shoves her mind under his control. He keeps his mental touch as light as possible. “Touch the couch without using your quirk.”
She does.
Bingo.
He lets go of her mind and says, “Remember this is how it feels to have your quirk off.”
Her brows scrunch up in concentration, but her quirk doesn’t turn itself back on.
“Just keep this feeling unless you need to use your quirk. And when you’re done using your quirk, you just turn this feeling on again, okay?” he tells her calmly.
“Kay,” she agrees.
“How about we touch hands while you have your quirk off?” he suggests.
She frowns up at him. “But hurt mama.”
“You won’t hurt me now that you know how not to. And if you do, I can make it stop again. Deal?”
“Deal,” she says after a long moment and reaches out to him super slowly.
Hitoshi makes sure to move just as slowly to meet her, first touching one finger and then when her quirk remains off, her entire hand. “Good job! I knew you could do it.”
A soft noise makes Hitoshi look up to see his parents and social worker watching them with soft eyes.
“I do it! No hurt!” she squeals, bringing him back to the moment.
“That’s right! Do you want to show Ms. Kato how well you’re doing?” he suggests.
She turns around to run into the other room, only to stop short and hide her hands behind her back when she sees the three adults watching them.
“I see you’ve met Infalna, Hitoshi,” Ms. Kato greets him. “Do you have something to show me, Infalna?”
Infalna puts a hand out in front of her. “No hurt!”
“Oh my!” Ms. Kato pretends surprise, and comes over to crouch down and put her hand against Infalna’s tiny one. “Ohhh! Very good job! It doesn’t hurt at all.”
The tiny girl beams. “No hurt mama!”
Ms. Kato looks sad. “Oh, honey. I wish you could see her again, but you can’t.”
Oh crap. That doesn’t sound good.
“But no hurt!” Infalna insists.
His social worker bites her lip. “Honey, some people, when they get hurt, they get scared and don’t want to see the person who hurt them, even if it was an accident and they won’t get hurt again. I’m sorry.”
“But mama?”
“I’m sorry,” Ms. Kato repeats helplessly.
Infalna stares at her silently, then turns and stares at Hitoshi. “You make me go away too?”
“Never,” he reassures her.
She throws herself into his arms and starts sobbing. “Mama no want me.”
“Some mamas are like that,” he sympathizes. “Before I came here, I had mamas that didn’t want me either. Some of them were really mean about it.”
“Why? No hurt,” she asks shakily through her tears.
“Because they were scared I’d make them do bad things,” he explains.
“But no hurt!”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t, but they were too scared to understand.” He brushes the tears away from her face, regardless of more falling. “Look at the good thing though. Even though your mama is a scaredy-cat, she’s alive. And even if she doesn’t want to see you, she still wants you to be happy. I know it hurts, I know. But you can’t let the bad things take away the good things, okay? It’s okay to be happy even if things have to change. And it’s okay to be sad when it hurts. Cry as much as you want, okay? I’m here.”
She sniffles into his shirt and nods. “Kay.”
Then she cries herself to sleep.
Stiffly, he gets to his feet, holding her against him. “Please tell me that you brought her here as a foster placement and I didn’t fuck things up by promising she could stay.”
Ms. Kato smiles. So do his parents.
“That’s exactly why I brought her here. This is the only mostly fireproof placement we have. The doctor said her quirk staying on was a mental block, but he was unable to talk her through it. Your parents and brother are all somewhat fireproof due to their quirks and we thought she could learn to not touch you until she got her quirk under control. We didn’t expect you to talk her through it before we could even introduce you,” Ms. Kato admits.
“I used my quirk to get her through the first bit,” he admits.
“Well done. I admit, I wouldn’t have thought of that use for your quirk. Since when can you give commands that people follow once you let them go?” Ms. Kato praises.
He frowns. “I didn’t. I just let her go so carefully that she didn’t realize I’d let go right away. She was just too scared to turn it off. Once she saw that she could, she immediately got the hang of it. I barely had to do anything. It was all her.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that as an accusation. I just-” She sighs and starts over. “I know you’re responsible with your quirk. Her quirk came in this morning. Her mom ended up in the ER with severe burns and she insisted on signing over her parental rights as soon as she was stable enough to talk to me. Infalna was hysterical to begin with and her mom wasn’t the only one that got burned and she also started several small fires before someone hit on the idea of having her press her palms together rather than touch something. The quirk doctor managed to calm her down finally and she’s been very good for me, but it’s hard when I can’t let her touch me. Your parents agreed to take her as a short-term emergency placement, but I’ll admit, none of us expected her to bond with you so quickly.”
“Where’s Yoshio?” he asks, deciding not to address any of that.
Atsuko chuckles. “He’s making up a bed for her. Apparently he likes the idea of being a big brother.”
“He told Infalna ‘Toshi-nii will fix you’ when they got introduced and he was warned about her burning hands,” Hideo laughs. “Then he ran off to fix up a room for her.”
Hitoshi snorts. “Bet that he raided the room with the nesting supplies and made her bed into a nest.”
“No bet!” both his parents say immediately. Cowards.
Ms. Kato laughs tiredly. “I’ll take that bet. 2000 yen says he won’t, but the bed will be messy.”
Hideo smirks. “Shall we go see?”
~
The chosen room looks like a whirlwind hit it. Somehow Yoshio has managed to drag the top mattress off the bed onto the floor and has built a cozy nest on top of it from the blankets on it and extras from the extra nesting supplies room.
The bed itself has been converted to a toy and stuffed animal shelf. Yoshio has clearly chosen older toys and stuffies, but there’s more than Hitoshi would have expected him to donate. There’s also some that he doesn’t recognize, clearly taken from the things Infalna brought with her.
Yoshio himself is carefully hanging up small dresses, though the closet bar hasn’t been lowered to a proper height.
Hitoshi lets Ms. Kato get a good look, then smirks at her. “Bet.”
She rolls her eyes fondly. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get you the money before I leave.”
His brother turns around and then perks up when he sees Infalna sleeping in Hitoshi’s arms. “I told her you would fix her!”
“I helped a little, but she mostly fixed herself,” Hitoshi argues.
“Because you helped her!” Yoshio insists.
A smile grows on his face. “Can’t argue that. She would’ve figured it out eventually, though.”
“Hmph. What were you betting on?”
“That you’d turn her bed into a nest,” Hitoshi admits easily.
“Obviously.”
“Why obviously?” Ms. Kato asks.
“You said she’s an omega. Everyone knows omegas need nests even if they aren’t precedented yet,” Yoshio tells her.
“Presented,” Atsuko corrects. “And usually there’s a few years where an omega doesn’t have a nest between sleeping in their parents’ nest and getting their own. Remember? You just had a bed for a while.”
“Plus, you’re supposed to let omegas choose their own nesting materials,” Hideo reminds him.
“I put what she had with her in it!” Yoshio protests.
“Actually, he’s not wrong,” Ms. Kato intervenes. “For traumatized kids its’ better to have a nest to take refuge in, even if they aren’t presented yet, even for alphas and betas. Hitoshi should probably scent at least one of those blankets, though.”
“And we should let her go through the nest and get rid of anything she doesn’t like,” Hitoshi suggests. “Infalna. Infalna, wake up.”
The little girl stirs, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “Mama?”
“No, I’m Hitoshi, sweetheart. Do you think you could wake up and check out some blankets for your nest?”
She blinks at him for a bit, then nods and he lets her slide down to stand on her own. “Nest where?”
“Right there. Yoshio made it for you, but if there’s anything you don’t like, we can change it, okay?”
“Kay.” She crawls into the nest, poking and pulling at it and sniffing now and then. Infalna seems pretty satisfied with it overall, but she pulls out one well-loved blanket and throws it as far away as she can. “Mama bad. Mama don’t want me. Don’t want mama.”
Hitoshi exchanges a worried glance with the adults in the room. Such a sudden rejection can’t be healthy for her emotional state.
“Okay, if that’s what you want, that’s fine, Infalna,” Ms. Kato says. “Do you want Hitoshi to scent something for you instead?”
“Mmhmn!” She kicks the rejected blanket and turns back to the nest and digs around until she pulls out a blanket that resembles an explosion of purple fuzzballs. “This!”
Hitoshi ignores Yoshio’s snicker and his parents’ smile. Yeah, yeah, yak it up. It’s not his fault his hair looks like he stuck his finger in a light socket. Instead, he scents the blanket liberally before handing it back.
She gives him an adorable grin. “Thank you.”
“Any time,” he promises.
~
Notes Section:
You think ‘wow, this kid is a grade-A asshole’ and then you realize he’s six and acting on new instincts and has no idea what he just did, despite seeing his house burn down. He grows up okay.
Hitoshi is like twelve. His room catches on fire and he wraps the disputed blanket around his foster brother as protection and books it as fast as he can manage away from the fire. It wasn’t actually that fast, given their respective sizes.
Hideo was out on an errand and came home to find his house on fire and firefighters on scene and his wife missing. It took a few years off his life until a firefighter came out with Atsuko wrapped in a towel over his shoulder. And then like two minutes later, the roof came down. She was fine other than smoke inhalation and some minor spark burns.
Both of them are terribly proud of Hitoshi for getting Yoshio out of there first thing. They’re actually friends of Ms. Kato (who is married but goes by her maiden name at work) and got their foster license at her plea to provide a safe home for Hitoshi.
Also, why resort to a muzzle when duct tape is easily available? And she wouldn’t be the first adult to duct tape a kid’s mouth shut (that’s so dangerous). It was after this incident that Ms. Kato begged the Iwais to get their license and take Hitoshi in. Getting their foster license was something they’d discussed before but hadn’t gotten around to, so they were easy to convince.
Move-in day.
I think Emergency Nesting Boxes are now a thing I’m going to add to my new a/b/o fics. Maybe off-screen for the most part, but definitely a thing.
Scent-neutralized nesting stores are not as common and are a little more expensive than regular nesting supplies stores, but they cater to those sensitive to foreign scents or chemical smells. The displays have test strips of materials to feel rather than letting customers put their hands all over and leaving their scents on otherwise neutral items.
It only takes one quirkest idiot to spread misinformation like wildfire. Or just idiot, period, but him being quirkest influenced what the rumor grew up as.
Tiny, scared child. Almost as lethal to Hitoshi’s heart as an abandoned kitten. Until Hitoshi walks her through it, her quirk is auto-on due to traumatic quirk activation. If she hadn’t met him when she did, she would have struggled with it for years afterwards because that trauma would’ve been mentally connected with her quirk control a lot more strongly.
Ms. Kato is doing her best. She needed to find a home to take Infalna immediately because her auto-on quirk was far too dangerous for a group home to risk. She thinks the best of Hitoshi, but she doesn’t expect a boy in his early teens to use such delicacy of his own accord, so her mind goes to a quirk awakening or some such.
Infalna’s situation is truly a tragedy.
Her mother spent nearly all her time with her, so they were very close. But her mother was burned bad enough to have multiple hand-sized scars on her torso, arms and hands and she happens to be the kind of person who cannot face the source of a fresh trauma, no matter that it was an accident. She may try to reconnect with Infalna later in life, because she does love her, but she needs serious therapy first. Infalna may or may not give her a second chance. She’s pretty straightforward. If you cut her out of your life, she’ll return the favor, no matter how much it hurts her.
She’s also very young, though, barely four, so her personality will most likely evolve over time and she’ll model some of her behaviors on her new role models.
It’s temporary, but she’s replaced her mom with Hitoshi. Eventually she’ll come to see him as a brother instead of a parent.
She’s never had her own nest before and she is too young to express dynamic, but she spent a lot of time in her mama’s nest, so she knows the basics of how one should be built. Yoshio won a big piece of her heart by making Infalna her own nest. Having two loving big brothers and parents who are kind but very different from her mama will go a long way towards soothing her trauma. She’ll probably be clingy towards Hitoshi for a long time and have a lingering disdain for scaredy-cats, having permanently connected the word to her mama’s betrayal/abandonment.
Infalna may not be the last foster kid they take in, but she’s probably the last one they’ll keep long-term. Infalna’s mama is French and she doesn’t have a fire quirk. The father is unknown.
Just decided that Hitoshi foster kid was a good angle and while I love Dadzawa, I decided to give him a good family for once. (shrugs) So now he has two younger siblings who think he’s hung the moon. They’re both outgoing and popular and sometimes people are surprised when they realize that these kids with ‘ideal’ fire quirks are so adamantly anti-quirkest. Due to Hitoshi having a so-called ‘villain’s quirk, they hate the idea that a quirk determines whether one is a hero or villain. As far as they’re concerned, Hitoshi IS their hero. They are quite open about their beliefs and they influence those around them for the better.
Hitoshi is not as bitter as he is in canon about ‘perfect quirks’ because he’s seen how much damage ‘perfect’ quirks can cause to families. His siblings’ adoration also takes a fair bit of the sting out of having a ‘villain’s quirk’ and the false rumors actually improve his middle school popularity, so overall he’s less spiteful about it. He is salty about the entrance exam, though. Hitoshi started working out after the house fire, because it made an impression on him how hard it had it had been to lug someone half his size out of the house. So he actually did better on the entrance exam! He just hates how it’s geared towards physical quirks or destructive emitter quirks.
This entire fic is pre-UA, though.