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Dinner is a very quiet affair in the Iwasaki household, which is surprising, given that there are four kids at the table.
But they all know better than to speak, they all know better than to draw attention to them and even though Hitoshi is the oldest with his fifteen, it's a lesson they all have learned the hard way.
If you speak, you're not grateful enough for the food you're getting. And if you're not grateful, then you don't get anything.
So Hitoshi and his foster siblings learned to shut up and take what they get—which wasn't all that much to begin with—and show their gratefulness by being as quiet as a little mouse.
Still, the two smallest kids squirm around in their seats, clearly still bursting with energy and desperate to get it out somehow, but Hitoshi knows that it's only going to get worse.
Because after dinner they are going to be sent to their spaces in the room and they won't be allowed to leave until the next morning. Hitoshi is just lucky that UA is open after school hours, too, because otherwise there would be no way for him to keep up with his homework, because it's not as if his space has a window.
The two smallest kids share that between their spaces, which leaves Hitoshi and his other foster sister in pitch darkness until Iwasaki-san deigns to let them out in the morning and there's no chance for him to do his homework at home.
He tried to argue one, tried to make them see reason, especially considering that he's at a high-profile school now and needs to keep up with his grades, but Iwasaki had only stared at him until he was done, locked him into his space and then called him in sick for two days, keeping him locked up with no way out for him.
Hitoshi has never spoken up again since. He might be stupid, but he definitely learned that lesson.
They are trying to drag dinner out for as long as they can, unwilling to go to their spaces sooner than they really have to, but it's a delicate balance.
If they are too slow the Iwasaki's are going to accuse them of not liking their food, which will then be punished my getting even less or maybe even nothing the next day, and the kids all need their food; to grow, to train, to fucking live and so they make sure that, despite the fear that is already gnawing at Hitoshi's stomach, they are done shortly after the adults finish their plates.
"Clean up this mess and then go wait upstairs," Iwasaki-san says to them, sounding almost bored, and all four of them know better than to talk, even after their foster parents leave the room.
It's always very quiet in this house.
Hitoshi would love to accuse Iwasaki of quirk discrimination, but he's the only one with a voice-activated quirk; the Iwasaki's just don't like kids.
Which is confusing, considering that they agreed to take in four, but it's hardly something Hitoshi can argue with them about. He can consider himself lucky that someone even wanted to take him in, because his file is a deterrent more than an incentive these days, with how thick it is, with how many infractions have been tallied up against him and he knows that he's not going to get another placement.
His service worker made that very clear, because he, too, is sick and tired of Hitoshi and if he has to figure out a new home for him one more time, he's probably going to kill Hitoshi with his own two hands, no fucked up foster family needed.
Hitoshi is not going to give him that satisfaction though; he's going to keep his head down and somehow survive the next three years and then he'll be a fully licensed hero and he won't need any shitty foster families anymore.
Just three more years.
Hitoshi can totally do that, he reminds himself as he ushers the other kids up the stairs, so they can all wait in front of their designated spaces.
It's an odd framing, Hitoshi thinks, because in all honesty, those spaces shouldn't exist. Going by what he saw in his file, they are all supposed to share one bedroom, which—the technically are but.
This isn't right.
And it wasn't like this when they came to stay here a few months back. When they were first shown to this room, there were four beds in there and the Iwasaki's almost seemed apologetic that they couldn't give them more space, especially considering that there are two boys and two girls, but it wasn't completely out of the norm.
No, the spaces came later.
One day they all went to school and when they came back, there were new walls in their room, separating it into four spaces, leaving something like a little hallway at the side with the door, so they could all enter the space meant for them.
The spaces lock from the outside, and since there was only one window in the room to begin with, only the two spaces in the middle share that; Hitoshi and his older foster sister have nothing in their space and as soon as Iwasaki closes the door behind them it's dark.
And it stays that way until they are let out again.
Hitoshi can consider himself lucky still, because his space has an outlet, so he can at least charge his phone and use the flash-light, but more often than not, he doesn't.
More often than not he doesn't even remember being in his space, because as soon as Iwasaki pushes him in and the lock clicks into place Hitoshi goes into his space.
He isn't quite sure how to explain it, but as soon as he's shoved in, he goes drifty and his thoughts shatter into a million pieces and everything feels distant and floaty and as if he's looking at things from behind a very thick fog.
Hitoshi thinks it's not okay what's happening to him, but it's not as if he can ask anyone and he's not sure he even wants to because his space is small. It's so small that he can't even lay down and stretch his legs, so either he stays curled up or he stays standing if he wants to be stretched out completely and more than once Hitoshi has slept sitting up, because his space is just so small.
And he thinks if he has to go in there without his own floaty space then he's going to panic and possibly choke on his own breath and no one really wants that, so he doesn't question his safe space too hard.
Hitoshi can already feel himself starting to drift away as Iwasaki closes the doors behind his siblings and not even the twins crying can stay his hand, and soon enough, it's his time.
"You're next," Iwasaki says, almost pleasantly, and he looks expectantly at Hitoshi until he starts moving.
It takes Hitoshi a moment too long, because he's already not all there anymore, and Iwasaki takes that opportunity to push him into his space, making Hitoshi trip over his own feet and slamming hard into the wall.
He manages to catch himself just in time, so instead of a busted nose he only has a throbbing wrist and even that pain only serves to drag Hitoshi into the fog that much more quickly.
And it's not as if he's fighting it.
~*~*~
Shouta has tried to sleep for the last two hours, but by now he has to admit that it's just not going to happen. And despite the insanely expensive mattress they bought it's not actually comfortable enough to stay in bed for the next four hours until their alarms go off, so he pushes himself up and drags himself out of bed.
He might as well get some grading in, if he can't sleep and there's also the next training exercise he has to plan for his hell class and he has to adjust Hitoshi's plan, as well.
Shouta might even write the grocery list for tomorrow, because now that they are in charge of Hitoshi they can make sure that he actually follows a meal plan and doesn't just eat the meagre scraps he was allowed in his old family.
So Shouta makes his way over to the kitchen, to check the contents of their fridge, but when he passes Hitoshi's room, he can't help but to slow down.
It has only been three days since they took him in, and Shouta is pretty certain that the boy still believes that this a temporary thing, but Shouta is already overcome with parental instincts and so he doesn't even fight it when his brain urges him to look into Hitoshi's room, just to check if the boy is sleeping alright.
Shouta puts his stealth training to good use and opens the door without so much as a whisper of a sound and he promises himself that it's just gonna be a quick peek, just to make sure that the kid is alright, because after everything they have learned about his previous placements, making Hitoshi comfortable and safe is at the very top of his and Hizashi's list.
He expects Hitoshi to be bundled up in bed, either fast asleep or staring at the ceiling, depending on how much his sleep problems are bothering him tonight, but he was not prepared to find Hitoshi sitting at the edge of the bed, staring off into nothing.
"Kid?" Shouta carefully says after a moment, when it becomes clear that Hitoshi hasn't heard him at all, and even to that he doesn't react.
Shouta steps fully into the room, makes sure to keep an eye on Hitoshi even as he clicks on the lights and that at least gets him a fluttering of lashes, but otherwise, Hitoshi's expression is empty.
Empty enough to worry Shouta.
"Hitoshi?" he asks again, a bit louder this time and again, Hitoshi doesn't react at all.
At this point, Shouta would love to get Hizashi in here to help, because Shouta feels woefully out of his depth, but he's at the radio station and will be there for at least two more hours.
And waiting for him doesn't seem like a good course of action.
"Hey, kid, can you hear me?" Shouta asks as he kneels down in front of Hitoshi, carefully touching his hands, which are ice-cold at this point.
Hitoshi's gaze is horribly vacant and he's not tracking movement at all and it takes Shouta only a second to place that look on his face.
He's disassociating, and he seems to be disassociating hard if his lack of reaction is anything to go by.
Hitoshi didn't mention this when they asked him about his triggers and reactions and so Shouta has no clue what to do here, but he knows he can't leave Hitoshi sitting like that, especially not with how cold he already is to the touch.
But simply touching and moving him doesn't seem like the right choice either.
"Listen, kid, I'm going to get the blankets from our bed and I'll be back in a moment, alright?" he asks and he even waits for an answer, for any kind of reaction, but just like he expected nothing comes and so he gets up and quickly gets their blankets, because Hitoshi was sitting on his own, and Shouta didn't feel like wrestling them out from under him.
He's back in Hitoshi's room in a flash and he carefully drapes the blanket around his shoulders, makes sure to cover him as best as he can and the other one he places over Hitoshi's legs, tucks them in nice and cosy, so that they can get started on getting warm again.
And then he starts to ramble.
Shouta doesn't like to talk, isn't known for going on and on about anything in this household, but since Hizashi is out, he'll just have to suck it up. There are still a lot of things they don't know about Hitoshi, about his likes and dislikes and so he falls back on something he knows the boy loves: cats.
He tells Hitoshi all about the strays he's been regularly feeding on his patrols, talks about the ones he brought to the vet, even the ones he hasn't seen for a while. By the time he confides that there's a very particular cat he'd like to bring home, Hitoshi is clearly coming back to himself, because he's blinking faster than before and sometimes he even smiles at Shouta’s inane ramblings.
Still, he keeps it up until Hitoshi's eyes fall onto him, still seated on the floor in front of him and Shouta cuts himself off in favour of giving Hitoshi a small smile.
"Back with me yet, kid?" he carefully asks and Hitoshi blinks some more before he finally nods. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," Hitoshi croaks out, as if nothing at all was amiss and then his gaze falls onto the blanket on his lap before he frowns.
"You're sitting on your own and I didn't want to move you," Shouta explains while Hitoshi pulls the blanket closer to himself, clearly still cold.
"Thanks?" He sounds so unsure that it hurts Shouta's heart but instead of dwelling on that, there are other, more pressing matters to be addressed.
"Kid, why didn't you tell us that you disassociate?"
"I—what?" There's genuine confusion on Hitoshi's face and Shouta curses himself when he realises that it's highly likely that no one explained this to Hitoshi yet.
"You just went somewhere, right? In your mind?"
"Yeah?" Hitoshi mutters and he's curling into himself as if he did something wrong, as if Shouta is about to lash out and hurt him for it and Shouta scoots further away from Hitoshi, giving him space and trying to make him understand that nothing will happen to him here.
"Why?"
"Because it's easy and safe there," Hitoshi answers after a long pause and Shouta feared as much, but that wasn't actually what he wanted to know.
"Why did you feel you need to go there?" he clarifies his question and Hitoshi's gaze darts to the door.
"Because you locked me in," comes the shaky reply and all of a sudden Shouta remembered that oddly spaced room in the Iwasaka house.
They said they used that as punishment, sometimes, locking the kids in and Shouta had been horrified enough by that that he didn't inquire further but now—
"Hitoshi, this is your room."
"Yeah."
"Have you been locked into your own room before?"
"Not—a room," Hitoshi denies and shakes his head. "But our spaces. They were for locking us in."
If this is where Shouta fears it's going, he'll have to call Tsukauchi immediately.
"As punishment?" he asks for clarification, even though Shouta no longer wants to know, not really and Hitoshi stares at him as if he doesn't understand a word he's saying.
"Always," he finally replies. "Nights. Days, sometimes, when we didn't behave. Two days, once, when I was insolent and Iwasaki called me in sick."
Shouta remembers that; Hitoshi had missed two days at school, but since his guardian had called him in, there was precious little Shouta was allowed to do and once Hitoshi had returned to school, Shouta had thought that he appeared absent. Spacey.
As if he spent too much time in a dissociative state.
"It's easier to go to that place than to have a panic attack and pass out," Hitoshi mutters as if he needs to explain his trauma response to Shouta, who swallows all that anger that is building inside of him down.
Hitoshi is not the right recipient for it, after all.
"You're claustrophobic," he sums up, because being locked in a space as small as the one Shouta saw in that house will do that to a person, that's for sure.
"I'm—not sure? I don't—it was locked. Always locked."
His gaze is going distant again, as if just the memory is enough to drag him back under and Shouta carefully gets up, which gets him Hitoshi's attention immediately.
"Your door isn't locked," he says and walks over to the door. "It doesn't even lock from the outside, see."
He opens it wide, shows Hitoshi that the only locking mechanism is on the inside and then closes the door. He locks it, tries to open it, and then unlocks it again, before he goes outside and closes the door, too. There's no lock to flip there, so he simply opens the door back up and steps into the room again.
"We couldn't lock you in, even if we wanted to, which we don't. You're the one who can decide to lock the door."
He gives Hitoshi a moment to digest that before he goes on, because he's not entirely done yet.
"And you don't have to keep your door closed. We're sorry we assumed that was what you wanted, but you can keep your door open at all times. Either completely or just ajar. There's no need to close it if you don't want it to be that way."
Hitoshi stares at him as if he doesn't comprehend a single word Shouta has been saying and Shouta fears that this is going to be a very long learning process.
For all of them.
"I—don't have to close the door?" Hitoshi finally breathes out and Shouta shakes his head.
"No. Never. We can buy one of those stoppers or wrap something from handle to handle so it can't even close on accident if you don't want. You never have to keep a door closed in this house, not if you don't want it to be that way."
At that, Hitoshi shakes his head.
"Other rooms are fine, it's just—my space. I can keep the door open?"
"Your room," Shouta corrects, because here, Hitoshi gets an entire room to himself, like he should have everywhere. "You can keep the door to your room open. At all times. And you're the only one who can lock it."
Hitoshi slowly gets up and comes over, closely inspecting the door and doing exactly what Shouta had done moments earlier and he seems relieved when he steps back in.
"There is no lock on the outside."
"There is no lock on the outside," Shouta confirms and Hitoshi nods.
"That's—good."
"Yeah. And listen, kid, if you don't feel safe in this room or if it's not big enough, you can always sleep out in the living-room."
It's an open floor concept; the kitchen, the dining area and the living-room separated by a low wall and their furniture, but otherwise it's one big space.
And if that is something Hitoshi needs to feel safe, then Shouta is more than happy to throw out their couch, buy one that can be turned into a bed and let Hitoshi sleep out there every goddamn night until he feels safe enough to sleep anywhere else.
At that offer Hitoshi ducks his head and curls into himself, before he lets out a weak "Really?" and Shouta carefully reaches out to pat his head.
"Really. Whatever helps you feel safe and actually sleep at night. We can also take out the door to your room completely. World's your oyster and you can choose whatever you feel would help.”
Shouta would have never offered no door at all, because it feels like a grave invasion of privacy but in this case—Hitoshi might not have a concept of privacy at all and if they at least get him to sleep like this, then they can work on it later.
"I think—door open sounds good?" Hitoshi offers after a moment and Shouta nods.
"Sure. Completely, or just ajar?"
Hitoshi throws a contemplating look at the door, before his gaze goes to the chair in the corner of his room.
"Completely."
He doesn't say anything about the chair, though, so Shouta brings it up.
"You want me to put the chair in front of it, so it can't close on accident?"
"Please," Hitoshi agrees immediately and then watches Shouta with hawk-eyes as he gets the chair and secures the door with it.
"Good?"
"Yeah," Hitoshi mutters and climbs into bed, still clutching both of Shouta's and Hizashi's blankets close to his body and Shouta is not going to say shit about that.
They have at least four blankets in the living-room, it's not as if they are going to freeze tonight.
"You think you can rest for a while now?" Shouta asks, and watches how Hitoshi makes himself comfortable, though he keeps a close look on the door.
"Yes. Thanks," he adds, almost belatedly and Shouta gives him a small smile.
"No problem, kid. Sleep well, then," he says and flicks off the light before he leaves and instantly freezes when Hitoshi makes a panicked noise.
He doesn't really want the kid to sleep with the big light on, so he switches on the small light they have in the hallway and sticks his head back into the room.
"That light okay or do you want me to turn on the big one again?"
Hitoshi hesitates for a moment before he says "It's fine" and Shouta doesn't believe him one bit but he doesn't change it back.
"If not, you know where your light switch is. You can change it at any time, too," he offers and then leaves Hitoshi to it.
It's not quite a test, but he does smile nonetheless when not even five minutes later he hears Hitoshi get up, before he switches on the big light again.
Shouta can't imagine that it's comfortable, but then again, he is able to fall asleep wherever, so who is he to judge.
If Hitoshi needs this, then that's more than fine.
Now that this is all sorted out, at least for now, Shouta quickly writes the grocery list he wanted to do in the first place, before he starts a second list.
A door stopper is something they definitely need. More blankets. Possibly a new couch. A nightlight. And a therapist.
And this is how Hizashi finds Shouta when he finally comes home, hours later—reading up on dissociative disorder, therapists, nightlights and door stoppers, while their kid is fast asleep in a room that is brightly lit, the door wide open and swaddled in two blankets that aren't even his.
There's a lot Hizashi needs catching up on.