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Hizashi knows that something is wrong the moment Shouta comes home. He doubts just anyone would notice, but he's been married to Shouta long enough to spot the little things and the way Shouta's eyes flit around the room is barely a little thing in Hizashi's opinion.
It speaks of an unsettled mind and that is never a good thing.
Still, he waits to bring it up until Shouta is changed out of his jumpsuit, until he's cozy and as comfortable as he's going to get in his current state on the couch, and it gives Hizashi a little bit more time to observe Shouta.
He sees his gaze flitting around, briefly touching on things in the room, his fingers tapping away against his thigh while he counts, and his gaze always, always strays back to Hizashi himself before it goes off again.
And the counting never stops.
Which means this is bad.
"Shou," Hizashi finally says after one too many rounds of counting and centering himself around Hizashi's presence and Shouta flinches. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," Shouta immediately says, because of course he does, because of course he doesn't want to admit that something is upsetting him enough to make him fall back on one of his oldest coping mechanisms and Hizashi forces himself to take a deep breath.
"That's not true and you know it," he gives back, forcing himself to not make it sound like an accusation. "You've been counting since you came home."
"It's nothing," Shouta rushes out, yanking his fingers away from his tight and wringing his hands together instead, but when Hizashi just continues to stare at him, the tapping and gaze flitting starts again. "It's fine," Shouta still tries, as if he could really fool Hizashi and Hizashi stretches out one leg to poke him in the thigh.
"It's not nothing. Don't shut me out, sunshine, what's going on?"
Shouta works his jaw for a moment, clearly fighting with himself, but Hizashi just waits him out, patient like he sometimes struggles to be and eventually, Shouta cracks.
"It's Shinsou," he admits, taking up the tapping with more vigor again and Hizashi just knows that he's still counting at the back of his mind.
"What's up with the little listener?" Hizashi carefully asks because if it stresses Shouta out this much then it must be bad and he was actually looking forward to a calm evening and not whatever Shouta is about to unleash on him.
"Something is—wrong," Shouta forces out. "At his home. I've suspected for a while but today he came in with—" Shouta trails off and his eyes dart all over the room again, counting all the things he can see.
"Came in with what, sweetheart?" Hizashi gently prompts him and Shouta jumps as if he forgot that Hizashi was even in the same room as him, even though his eyes keep coming back to him, making him the center of Shouta's counting.
"Imprints. On his face. Right here," he mutters and ghosts his fingers over the bridge of his nose and high over his cheekbones.
Hizashi goes cold when he realises what it means because with Shinsou's quirk there's only one possible explanation.
"A muzzle," Hizashi breathes out and watches how Shouta moves his own fingers over his eyes, making sure they are unobstructed.
The blindfold never left any marks or scars on him, at least not visible ones, but it still scarred him deeply and Hizashi hates to see it dragged to the forefront again.
"You can see, you're fine," Hizashi almost absentmindedly says when Shouta picks up his counting again and Hizashi just knows that the big light is going to stay on tonight.
They have a night-light in every room, one that always has to stay on in case Shouta wakes up and it works on a good night.
Today is probably not going to be a good night and Hizashi mentally bids his own sleep goodbye because with what Shouta's parents did to him, Hizashi can't even bring an eye-mask home without freaking Shouta out.
The few days where Shouta's face had to be bandaged up after the USJ attack were the worst of their marriage and Shouta still has nightmares about it, Hizashi knows.
It's probably why knowing Shinsou is being muzzled at home is upsetting him so much right now—the attack hasn't been all that long ago and it's clearly still taking a toll on Shouta.
Shouta barely even reacts to his words and Hizashi gnaws at his lower lip for a moment before he speaks again.
"Tell me what you see. What colours are there?"
"Blond," Shouta immediately says because it's always the first he mentions and one of the reasons Hizashi even keeps his hair like that. "The pink blanket. The green armchair. The red pillow."
He lists off all the colours in their living-room and even though there's no rhyme or reason to any of the colours—forget about actually having tasteful interior design—it's more than obvious that it's helpful for Shouta.
His parents always did like to keep everything muted colours and anything black in their home is a no-go because of the blindfold.
Shouta's jumpsuit is a big fat 'fuck you' to his parents and what they did to him, but even that triggers him sometimes and they have to keep it pretty tightly locked away when Shouta is not out and about as Eraserhead.
"Good, sunshine," Hizashi praises him when Shouta runs out of colours. "Now tell me more about Shinsou."
"He's too thin, despite claiming he eats, he hunches over as if he wants to draw the least amount of attention, he never raises his voice, he only speaks when spoken to, he never asks questions, he sometimes flinches when someone moves too fast, he never allows anything to move in his back, the imprints, and once, bruises," Shouta rattles off and Hizashi wonders just how long he's been sitting on all of that.
Hizashi mentally goes over the list and while all of that wouldn't mean much individually, it paints a pretty dark picture combined.
He can see where Shouta's worry comes in.
"He's in foster care," Shouta then says and okay, yeah, that's probably not going to help, though Shouta is the best example that even birth parents can hurt their kids.
"What do you want to do?" Hizashi asks him and Shouta's eyes go wide as he stares at him.
"Do?"
"I mean, with all that you've just mentioned we can assume he's being abused at home. What do you want to do about that?"
And just like that, some of that lost, hurt look falls off Shouta's face and he's more the tired, settled adult he worked so hard to be.
"I'm going to help him," Shouta decides, just like Hizashi knew he would, because if a kid under their care is going through something like that, it's obvious that they are going to interfere.
Shouta just forgot about that for a moment, with his own trauma clearly looming too closely for comfort but a little nudge was all he needed.
Even his fingers have stopped tapping out that erratic rhythm and Hizashi allows himself a small smile.
"Of course you are," he nods, because he doesn't doubt Shouta for a single second.
They are going to get Shinsou the help he clearly needs.
~*~*~
And he needs so much more help than they could have ever imagined because when Shouta and Hizashi make an unannounced house visit they find Shinsou locked in his room, with the muzzle tightly strapped to his face.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Hizashi hisses as he rushes forward, reaching out to get the muzzle off Shinsou but he comes to an abrupt stop when Shinsou flinches away from him.
Hizashi immediately drops his hands and makes himself smaller, unwilling to scare Shinsou even further and in moments like this he despises his stupid hairstyling choice because like that it feels as if he's looming over everyone.
And clearly Shinsou is not appreciative of that.
"Don't you know that he has a dangerous voice-quirk?" the foster father asks as if there could be any possibility that they don't know their own student's quirk and Hizashi turns murderous eyes on the foster father, just as Shouta wraps his capture weapon around him.
Maybe a bit too tightly if the groan is anything to go by, but Hizashi sure as fuck is not going to tell him to go easy on this asshole.
"Dangerous voice-quirk? I'll give you a dangerous voice-quirk," he hisses out, allowing the slightest bit of his quirk to slip out, to make the words reverberate in the room. "I have the voice-quirk and seeing how you treat my kind I might just feel scared enough to accidentally liquify your insides."
His threat is met with a pale face and huge eyes and the foster father thankfully shuts the fuck up, which was all that Hizashi wanted anyway.
He glares at him one more time, before he turns back around to Shinsou, forcing himself to appear gentler again.
"Now, Shinsou, why don't we get that horrid thing off your face, huh?" he softly asks and Shinsou nods so hard his hair flies around.
Hizashi trusts Shouta to have the idiotic, abusive foster father handled and when he and a muzzle-free Shinsou join him and Tsukauchi in the living-room, Hizashi is not at all surprised to see that somehow the foster father has broken his nose.
Clumsy man must have stumbled over his own feet. Tragic.
~*~*~
Getting Shinsou the help he needs didn't necessary equate in Hizashi's mind to taking him in themselves, but Hizashi is nothing but flexible.
Deciding to foster a moody, abused teenager on a whim? Sign him the fuck up.
Navigating both his husband's trauma and Shinsou's at the same time? Not a problem Hizashi can't solve.
Somehow ending up as a safe haven for both of them? Actually going to make him cry any second now.
Because when Shinsou feels unsafe, when he's uncertain if he's allowed to speak, when he fears the muzzle is going to make a comeback, even though they promised on their lives that it would never show up in their home, he looks towards Hizashi.
And Hizashi kind of has himself to blame here, because he said it himself—he has the voice-quirk. He has a voice quirk so much more destructive than Shinsou's could ever be and if he isn't muzzled, then surely Shinsou won't be either.
It's one of those things that makes perfect sense in Shinsou's mind, just like it makes perfect sense in Shouta's that he can't be blindfolded if he can see Hizashi's bright hair.
And Hizashi is more than happy to cater to both of them.
Even though is efforts are clearly not that appreciated sometimes.
"Why are you always so loud?" Shinsou groans out, slumping over the kitchen table, his eyebags as deep as they ever are. "Can't a guy enjoy his breakfast in peace?"
It's not said completely seriously—there's a whining quality to Shinsou's voice that Hizashi came to learn means he's teasing but he still figures that this deserves an honest answer.
"I'm always this loud so that you can feel safe," Hizashi says as he puts a cup of coffee down in front of Shinsou, who freezes at his words.
"What?"
"If I'm loud—if I'm allowed to be loud, then you're allowed to be, too, right? If no one punishes me for yapping all day long, then no one will punish you either. I don't know if you've noticed yet, but you're more relaxed when I'm loud. Just like Shouta is more relaxed when I have my hair open or up in my Present Mic style."
At that, Shinsou's gaze sharpens.
"You complain about your hair getting everywhere every day," he slowly says and Hizashi nods, because yeah, he does.
It's annoying and inconvenient, just like colouring it every few weeks is a stupid, time-consuming hassle, but—it's all worth it to not have Shouta counting every day.
"But you do it for Aizawa?"
"Yeah. He has his own demons to fight, just like you do, kiddo, and seeing my hair helps him just as much as it helps you to hear me talk."
"Sometimes, when you come home from patrol or the station you complain that you have a sore throat," Shinsou very correctly mentions and Hizashi shrugs.
"So?"
"You still talk. Even then you still talk. Because of—me?"
"So that you can feel at ease, little listener. It's never that serious anyway and a bit of hot tea is the cure of all things, especially when it helps you feeling safe enough to banter with us."
Hizashi was so not prepared to see Shinsou's eyes well with tears at that, and it actually chokes him up a little bit as well.
And Shouta does not help at all when he chimes in with a "I really do love you and everything you do for us."
Hizashi hadn't even heard him come in, but his words are totally enough to make him cry, because he just wants these two to be happy and feel safe and go through life knowing they deserve everything and, well.
If him being loud and tacky and glaringly noticeable is helping, then Hizashi will lean into that even more.