Work Text:
“SHOOOTAAAaaaa…”
Present Mic’s shout dwindles to nothing when his quirk is cut off. Shouta, tired from patrol, getting up early to teach the hellions of Class 1-A, and a morning without his regular coffee as the machine had broken down the night before, glares with red eyes at his husband, who had definitely not made his morning any better.
“What?” he snaps irritably, blinking away his quirk after a moment. Hizashi wilts under his gaze, but steps into the room anyway.
“We may have a slight problem…” He trails off nervously, and Shouta’s ire turns to confusion, because Hizashi is not often nervous.
The class is staring now, nineteen pairs of eyes focused on their teachers. Shouta thinks he has never been more tired.
“What is it?”
“Ah.” Hizashi holds out his phone for Shouta to peer at the screen, and then frowns. Detective Tsukauchi from the Musutafu police station — or one of them anyway, he moves around a lot — is calling.
Things just went from slightly unusual, because Hizashi hardly ever interrupts Shouta’s classes, to downright weird. Shouta is almost always the one calling Tsukauchi, especially during his patrols, and the only time it’s the other way around is when the detective has found something on a case Shouta has been assigned to. He never calls during lessons because he knows Shouta keeps his phone stored away in his desk, and the man is hardly ever up before nine in the morning. So that begs the question of why he is on the phone with Shouta’s husband to talk to him at eight forty-five in the morning.
“It’s,” Hizashi pauses for a moment, and then says, “your Problem Child.”
At that, most of the class adopts looks of confusion. They’re used to being called ‘Problem Children’ at this point in the year, but the wording is a little too specific.
Shouta however, doesn’t manage to conceal his shock this time, and reels back in surprise. His Problem Child can only mean Izuku. And the only reason Tsukauchi would be calling about Izuku is if…
Shouta pales. “Don’t tell me he’s been arrested for something… What the hell happened?”
Hizashi nods grimly. “I’m afraid so but I’ve no idea what for,” he says. “We’ve got to go pick up the little listener and sign some forms. Nedzu has excused us for the morning.”
Right on cue, Hizashi’s phone pings, and a message appears on the screen.
Nedzu:
You and Hizashi-kun have been excused for the morning to collect Midoriya-kun. Please inform Class 1-A that they are to go to Nemuri-chan’s classroom for the rest of homeroom. Your morning classes will be study periods. Please bring Midoriya-kun back to my office once you have collected him.
Shouta sighs deeply. The rat clearly knows something they don't.
Turning a quirked glare to his students, he says, “You hellions, head to Midnight’s classroom for homeroom. She’ll tell you what you’re doing this morning, and behave.” He reaches into his pocket and shoots off a quick text to Inko, then hands Hizashi’s phone back. With a final, long-suffering sigh of something one could only describe as regret for their life’s choices, Shouta leaves the classroom.
“Let me out,” Izuku repeats for probably the fifth time in as many minutes.
“No,” Tsukauchi says, not lifting his eyes from his computer screen. He continues typing as if he’s the only one in the room.
Izuku sends a scowl in his direction, and resumes struggling against the quirk-suppressing handcuffs and cords tying him to the chair placed very purposefully in the back corner of the room. Through a good few minutes of writhing around, he had managed to turn the chair from facing the wall to facing the rest of the room, and then hadn’t achieved anything else. It wasn’t like the cuffs were doing anything anyway.
“My face is itchy,” Izuku says loudly. “I just want to scratch underneath the mask quickly.”
“Tough luck,” Tsukauchi tells him unapologetically. Izuku makes another face at the man but he knows the detective can’t see any part of his face regardless.
The viridian green mask muffles his words, even through the distorter hidden inside, but doesn’t make it entirely unintelligible when Izuku says a very vehement, “Fuck you.”
Tsukauchi snorts, finally lifting his eyes from the computer screen. “Got quite a mouth on you, huh kid—”
“I’m not a kid!”
“You know my quirk, kid. Don’t bother trying.”
Usually by this point, Izuku would make a rather rude gesture at the detective — this is far from the first time he’s been caught, after all — but with his hands tied behind the chair, the most he can do is let out a steady stream of curses in the direction of his captor.
“Well… I suppose I could let you scratch your face if you fancy telling me your name…”
“Fuck off.”
There’s a pregnant pause, before Izuku continues, “It’s not itchy enough for that.”
“I suppose you’re stuck here for now then,” Tsukauchi says, face blank even as his eyes gleam with suppressed curiosity; the need to know that builds every time Izuku finds himself trapped in this shithole of a police station and the detective asks for his name.
“Say, shouldn’t you be in school right now?”
That was a good point. There weren't any clocks in Tsukauchi’s office, but Izuku could make a guess from the daylight beaming in through the window that his capture had gone on longer than expected.
Of course the one day he leaves home early to do a spot of vigilantism before he heads to school is the day he ends up tied up in a police station missing out on his precious learning time in UA’s highly coveted General Education course. And really, he’s not even a few months in.
“Maybe there’s a reason I can’t be at school right now. Gee I wonder how that happened?” Izuku snarks. “If you would just let me go...”
“No can do. Need I remind you you’re under arrest for vigilantism, Kyuusei?”
Izuku makes a point of lifting the quirk-cancelling handcuffs as far from his body as he can. “What, with these doing fuckall? I don’t even use a quirk. You can’t arrest someone for vigilantism if they never used a quirk and anything that happened was in self defence.”
Tsukauchi sighs and rolls his chair away from his laptop. “Unfortunately, while I would very much like to take your word for that, there’s no tangible evidence that you haven’t used a quirk—”
“I’m literally quirkless, dipshit.”
The man’s eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline. “Oh? Well Kyuusei, that’s helpful information. Thank you.” With that, he rolls his chair back towards his desk and resumes typing away at his computer with renewed vigour.
And suddenly it hits Izuku that he’s probably just given away his identity. It’s not hard to pin down one quirkless teenager in the area with the quirkless population so low overall. “Shit,” he mutters softly.
Mum is going to kill him.
Actually, scratch that. She’ll be fighting for what’s left after Chizome-Sensei is through with him.
“Midoriya Izuku,” Tsukauchi read out, eyes focused on his computer. “Uncle is Aizawa Shouta…” he trailed off, then turned to Izuku, a shit-eating grin on his face. “How about we give him a call?”
Oh, Izuku is so dead.
Shouta storms into Tsukauchi’s office not twenty minutes after leaving UA, Hizashi hot on his heels. The detective is sitting at his desk, but looks up when he enters and sends a pointed glance across the room.
Kyuusei is sitting in a chair in the corner, hands cuffed behind his back and legs fastened to the chair legs. His eyes are downcast, and his body tenses up when Shouta marches straight towards him.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asks the vigilante crossly. “Running around the city fighting people and committing numerous crimes at fifteen? Hell, at twelve! Three years of putting both your life and your future in danger, Izuku, and for what?”
Above the dark mask, the bright green eyes that could only be Izuku’s look up slowly. “I just wanted to help people,” he mutters. His voice is as distorted as usual, but meeker.
How on earth did Shouta not make the connection before?
“You attend UA. You know as well as I do that just because you’re in Gen Ed now, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a shot at Heroics.”
“Yeah right,” Izuku interrupts with a scoff. “They changed the rules four years ago but would they really let a Null in? You barely got in and you have a quirk at least.”
“I would have advocated for you, kid. Nedzu would have too—”
“It would be useless!” Izuku shouts, eyes defiant. “It’s not up to him, is it?”
Shouta sighs, “Kid…”
“No, you don’t get to say anything! I’m doing my part to help, and technically it’s not illegal. You can check CCTV or something. I’m innocent.”
“Try telling that to the HPSC,” Hizashi butts in, eyebrow raised and arms folded. Then he winces. “I’m sorry, Zu. I wish it were different.”
A long sigh. “I know,” the kid mutters. Shouta purses his lips unhappily, then bends down and wraps his nephew in a hug. As much as Izuku tries to suppress it, Shouta still feels the sob wracking his small frame and the slow tremors while the kid tries not to cry.
“Nedzu’s just sent an email through,” Tsukauchi says from somewhere behind him. “I’m just processing Kyuusei’s report so we can let him go, and then Nedzu would like to see you three, he says.”
“Alright.” Shouta pulls back from the hug with a few pats on Izuku’s back. He reaches back to open the handcuffs, then bends down to untie his ankles. “Come on kid, let’s get you to the rat.”
Izuku, arms finally free, pulls his hood down, then removes his mask. “What… what for?” he asks uncertainly.
Hizashi reaches over to ruffle the fluffy green curls. “Well, my favorite little listener,” he says with a grin, “you remember Shouta talking about the new vigilante programme a few months ago?”
“Yeah? I don’t…”
“Nedzu has just found his first subject,” Hizashi tells him, and Izuku’s eyes widen almost comically.
“I’m going into the hero course?” he asks, all sadness from earlier gone from his face.
“That’s right, Problem Child. You’re about to meet all the other Problem Children I have to teach.”
Tsukauchi stands up, hands Shouta a USB flash drive and printed out report, and nods to the kid. “You’re free to go,” he tells Izuku. “I don’t want to see you back here for another few months, you hear me? I’m due a break.”
Izuku smiles cheekily. “No promises,” he says. “Have a nice break.”
Tsukauchi narrows his eyes, the bags beneath them dark under the harsh office lights. “Alright, kid. Stay off the streets.”
He sees them out of the police station, and heads back into the building once they’ve all climbed into Hizashi’s car.
A few minutes into the drive, Shouta turns around in the passenger seat to stare at Izuku. “Oh, and don’t forget your mum will be called about this whole thing.”
Izuku winces. “At least she’s a vigilante too?” he mumbles eventually. Shouta’s eyebrows furrow.
“Yeah, and I’m sure she’ll be delighted her twelve year old son was running around fighting people twice his size in the middle of the night. At least she’s an adult with a licensed and trained brother.
“Right…”
Shouta sighs and turns back around to watch the road. “Don’t worry, kid. Nedzu will sort it all out.”
Izuku nods, even though he knows his uncles won't see it. He's ecstatic about finally entering the Hero Course, even under his circumstances. Things are finally looking up after all!
At exactly that moment, it hits Izuku that Chizome-Sensei still has no idea, and has just lost his student. Suddenly, being captured for vandalising the windows of Endeavor’s agency pales in comparison.
Screw the vigilante reform programme, he’d be dead by the end of the week anyway.