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The Only Way Out

Summary:

When the League of Villains attacks, they don't only take Bakugou. They also take Shinsou, and even when he escapes, what assurance does he have that things can be alright again? His foster parents keep talking about adoption, but nothing's final. He used his quirk on someone he claims to like. It's only a matter of time until he's kicked out, right?

Chapter 1: Crash Landing

Chapter Text

Hitoshi came back to them shaky and jumpy, but he came back. When you'd spent long enough as a hero, you knew that was enough. But no amount of time as a hero could prepare them for the way it felt when it was their own child.

Hizashi wept. His voice had been jumping since Hitoshi was taken, and the speakers of his voice modulator left miniature honeycomb impressions on Hitoshi's cheek. Shouta put his arms around both of them and accompanied Hitoshi through the formal debriefing and then shook during the entire taxi ride home. Hitoshi, bless him, insisted that the villains hadn't done anything more than detain him (and Bakugou) and make threats they didn't act on, so he'd be fine after a good night's sleep. (Neither of his dads expected any of them to be fine after anything as brief as a good night's sleep, and neither did they expect anyone to sleep much, let alone well.)

At last, they were all home and takeout was ordered from the little diner on the corner. Hitoshi opted to take a shower, wash some of the paranoia off. (And all of the stink of being kept as a hostage, but his fathers weren't about to mention that.) It would help him: getting warm, feeling normal. Feeling clean, too, hopefully.

It was not helpful to his parents, who sat on the couch and held hands and listened to the shower sounds with the same desperation as someone who's too injured to move, but hears an ambulance.

"He's back," Shouta said, faking certainty he didn't feel.

Hizashi curled against his shoulder and cried again. "He's right in the bathroom," Shouta continued, and Hizashi nodded insistently. "He'll be out in a minute," Shouta added, his voice cracking, "and we'll try to convince him he's our son even with a fresh trauma, and it won't quite work, so things'll come to a head in a few days and we'll have to tell him again." That was their kid: scared and flighty around his foster parents, always certain that his adoption was contingent on impressing them in some way. Always trying to be a perfect, studious, uncomplicated child while his parents tried to encourage him to go out more and bring friends home without making him think it was a command or criticism.

Hizashi pulled away from him and took a few steps away from the couch. Shouta let him go. He put a hand over his mouth. He made a strangled sort of noise in his throat that still came out loud. Then he turned around, his hands frantically signing "sorry" over and over.

"Heyyy, hey," Shouta said, putting his arm up on the back of the couch so Hizashi could sit with him again. Hizashi kept signing desperately, even when his hands were more or less in Shouta’s lap. "You didn't hurt anything. It's all okay." He threaded his fingers through Hizashi's soft hair. "My two sweet boys, afraid to speak in case they hurt someone. You're alright, Hizashi. You aren't hurting anyone any more than Hitoshi is."

Hizashi pulled away just enough to use a heroes’ sign that meant “cut the power.” Shouta sighed and nullified his husband’s amplification. They’d talked about how much he didn’t like doing that, how he worried about hurting Hizashi’s voice, but now wasn’t the time to argue it. “He won’t even trust us with this, will he?” Hizashi asked, sounding hoarse with half his vocal range out of commission. “Even if we weren’t his dads, we are pros…”

“He won’t trust us because we know what’s up,” Shouta posited. Hizashi knew people, generally, but Shouta knew fourteen-year-olds, in particular. Hitoshi wasn’t nearly as complicated as he imagined himself to be. He tugged Hizashi’s hair gently. “Hey. It’s alright. He came home. We have as much time as we need to sort this out.” He kissed Hizashi’s forehead, eyes still open, still protecting Hizashi from the fear of hurting him.

“It only sounds true when you say it to other people,” Hizashi complained. “I need to get myself under control, or dinner’s gonna be a nightmare. I can’t be crying and quirking.”

“You can eat away from the table, if you need to, but I’m not nullifying you during dinner,” Shouta warned. Even if it wasn’t dangerous for Hizashi’s voice, it was a lot of work when they were going to have a very emotional meal, and Shouta was sure his quirk would fail at exactly the wrong moment.

The doorbell rang.

“Are you alright if I stop?” Shouta asked, unwrapping his arms from Hizashi’s body.

“Yeah. Go ahead,” Hizashi said, nodding. Shouta got up, looking at the door instead of his husband as he went to answer it.

Accepting the bag with their dinner in it was simple. Accepting the bag with their dinner in it was excruciating. The villains had a shapeshifter, Shouta was pretty sure. He knew the kid who did delivery for the corner diner, but he didn’t know him well enough to know if his home was being infiltrated. That wasn’t something you usually had to know! But Hitoshi was newly home and Hizashi was at risk of blowing the poor kid’s eardrums out when he tried to thank him, so Shouta did it, nerves and all.

Nothing happened, because that was never going to be the ploy the League of Villains used to get to his family, but that meant nothing to the paranoia you felt after your son was kidnapped.

Shouta put the bag on the dining table and joined his husband on the couch again. In the bathroom, the water stopped running.

“Do we have a pep talk?” he asked Hizashi. “Something like: it’s going to be really rough for a few weeks, and we’re happy to talk with you about how you felt while you were kidnapped. And then we say how scared we feel, even now.”

Hizashi nodded. And walk him through the bad things that happen when your feelings go nuts, he signed.

Shouta nodded. “Yeah, don’t want him taken off guard. Should we talk to his other teachers, or is that too involved?” Hitoshi balked at anything he considered ‘special treatment,’ now that he was in Shouta’s class. Of all the kids to get kidnapped at USJ, it had to be the two prickliest little monsters, the exact two people who wouldn’t thank him for intervening on their behalf.

Don’t tell either of them if you do, Hizashi signed, finally smiling a little.

The bathroom door opened.

One step at a time. That was how you did this. There was no more interacting with anyone outside the family. There was no more leaving the relative safety of their nondescript apartment. It was going to be okay.

"We're on the couch," Shouta said. Hizashi moved away to make room for their kid, who was home, and safe, and hadn't been either of those things for a couple days. "I think we both need a minute before dinner." Hitoshi rounded the corner, his shock of fluffy, purple hair looking only marginally flatter now it was wet. Shouta gestured with his head to encourage Hitoshi to sit between them.

“Your pops is feeling a little loud,” he said, to explain why Hizashi wasn’t saying anything. Hitoshi understood. The effect of his quirk was more like Shouta’s, but the shape of it was more like Hizashi’s. When Hitoshi felt too demanding, too arbitrary, too much, he clammed right up in the interest of– well, right now, of not getting kicked out, but eventually, hopefully, it would be in the interest of letting everyone make their own decisions.

They both put their arms around their son, navigating the tangle of too many people in a hug. The smell of Hitoshi’s awful teen-boy shower products was like a balm. That was his son. He was home. “Welcome home,” he said, knowing Hitoshi could hear how hoarse he was and really, genuinely not caring.

“I’m home,” Hitoshi said, the usual prompt for Shouta’s words. Hizashi clutched him tighter. "Pop, I'm back," he said, and turned toward him. "It's alright. They didn't do anything to us."

That wasn't quite true, but Hizashi was pressing the sign for "precious" into Hitoshi's chest and sniffling at a volume that would have been impressive if he were anyone else, so Shouta wasn’t going to contradict him.

“We were both going out of our minds,” he said instead, and leaned over Hitoshi. He kissed Hitoshi’s hair. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

After a few moments where they all held each other, which helped Shouta feel like Hitoshi was really home and hopefully helped the other two feel the same, Hizashi signed something about beef and something about food, and Shouta said, “Right. We got gyudon. Probably too much; I know I’m too keyed up to eat much. Try to eat something, anyway.” He patted Hitoshi on the shoulder and started to get up, himself. Hizashi stood up and went into the kitchen to get them all some water. Shouta was pretty sure he was getting some tea started, too.

“Your dad is good at looking all serious and unaffected,” Hizashi said, still turned away from them, “but don’t think for a second that he feels any less. He’s barely eaten, the last couple days. This morning, he yelled at Endeavor.”

Hitoshi’s shoulders hunched in and he bent his head down, staring into his lap. “Sorry,” he said, like he had something to be ashamed of.

“NO,” Hizashi said, and took a deep breath and said, “No. Hitoshi. What I really mean is: we’re glad to have you home.” He brought three glasses of water in and put Hitoshi’s down first.

“We did want to talk,” Shouta said, because he figured he should probably put his foot in his mouth, too, and he figured he probably would now. “Kidnapping is a big deal, so we want you to know what to expect. You’re going to feel a lot of relief, and a lot of left-over fear, and spend a lot of time on high alert for a while. And all those feelings do weird things to your body. You might get tension or weakness.”

“Nausea,” Hizashi added.

“Nausea. The worst,” Shouta agreed. “Headaches. Shakes.”

“After my first time as a hostage, I got a fever,” Hizashi volunteered. “Your dad, the first time he ever went to therapy he’d been nursing a sore ankle for a week, and I finally said: you’re either getting your foot checked or your head checked, but you definitely aren’t alright.”

After a short pause, to see if Hitoshi responded, Shouta said, “We’re telling you this so you won’t be surprised. And so you’ll know you can talk to us. We won’t think it’s weird if you have a lot going on for a few weeks.”

“Weeks,” Hitoshi said, sounding a little strangled.

Shouta shrugged. “Months,” he conceded. “It shouldn’t feel as constant after a week or two, though.”

“I was only gone for two days,” Hitoshi said, like it was some sort of defense. “I’ll be alright soon enough.”

“You’re very resilient,” Hizashi soothed. “We just didn’t want you to think we expected you to act like nothing happened.” He nudged some pieces of beef around with his chopsticks. “It’s safe here. You can recover however you need to.”

Hitoshi nodded and moved a piece of pickled ginger to the edge of the dish so he could assemble a proper bite. They all ate quietly, the adults trying to take cues from their kid. No one even finished half their dinner.

"Alright," Shouta said when none of them had actually eaten anything for three or four minutes, all of them rearranging the ingredients into shapes that ought to be appetizing. "Movie time. Hitoshi, pick a comedy." He took his and Hizashi's takeout bowls into the kitchen and pressed the lids onto them, then wrote their names on with a marker. Pushed the lever on the electric kettle, while he was there, since they'd let it cool without pouring the water.

He was just taking Hitoshi's bowl as he said, "Um. I think that manzai group I like just put out a new special. Is that…?"

"That's perfect," Hizashi said, and got up, presumably to figure out the TV. "Do you know the channel?"

"I'll look it up."

"Oh, speaking of looking up," Shouta said, "Don't look up news coverage about yourself. It never helps. You tell yourself you're just going to read the local news version, and then next thing you know, you're ten articles in and you can't stop shaking." The water started to bubble again as he put the leftovers in the fridge, so he picked it up and put it down again to turn it off. He grimaced at the earthenware cups Hizashi had put out. "Hizashi, I'm not using these teacups when I'm like this. I'm getting us mugs with handles."

"He's nodding," Hitoshi called as Shouta opened the cups-and-mugs cupboard.

He brought two mugs in and went back to the kitchen, but he didn't trust himself not to spill hot tea all over his hands, or drop the mug, so he said, "Hey, Hizashi, can you get the last one? I've gotta tap out."

"I can do it," Hitoshi said, starting to stand as Hizashi got up.

"You're the guest of honor, kid," Shouta told him. "It's your homecoming. Relax." He walked to the couch and collapsed onto it as Hitoshi sat down again. "Are these the guys that did the 'I saw All Might at the konbini' sketch?"

"Yeah, them." Then the kid just about jumped out of his skin when Shouta put a hand on his shoulder.

"Sorry! Sorry," Shouta said, keeping his hands to himself. Hitoshi settled on the far end of the couch, breathing hard. "Didn't mean to surprise you." Thinking of how he specifically hadn't wanted to handle hot tea when his hands were shaky, he asked, "Hizashi, are you alright?" He looked down at his knees, not wanting to have to see the looks on the other two's faces.

Hizashi set the last mug down on the table and hurried back to the kitchen. Shouta heard water running and winced.

"I think he burned his hand," Hitoshi said, and got up and ran to the bathroom. Shouta heard him rifling around in the medicine cabinet.

If Shouta were a responsible adult, he would go to the kitchen and get a towel and wipe the tea off the table before it stained. But he was, in fact, all responsibled out, when taking responsibility meant getting up and doing a task. He leaned against the arm of the couch, fully tapped out, feeling sick with guilt at scaring his kid and surprising his husband, who was holding hot tea at the time because Shouta was too shaky to manage it.

Fuck.

"Here, I've got some burn cream," Hitoshi was saying in the far end of the kitchen. Shouta saw Hizashi shake his head. "Was it… not that bad, then?" Hitoshi asked, and Hizashi squeezed out a wet tea towel and wrapped it around his hand, then gave a thumbs-up with the other hand.

Shouta needed to be on the other side of the couch. He couldn't be on the right side of the couch when Hizashi's right hand was hurt. It was just about what he could manage to go to the left side of the couch and lean there.

Hitoshi settled into the middle of the couch, not quite touching him. Hizashi came over and kissed him on the temple, which made him smile a little even though he still felt terrible. "I'll perk up," he promised. "You know me: I'm tired on a normal day." He leaned lower against the arm of the couch. "I'm sorry for making you spill tea all over yourself, though.”

"It's fine," Hizashi said, as casually as if he hadn't been intermittently mute for two days. "All better by morning. Probably by bedtime."

Oh, right. "Do we have a bedtime in mind, tonight?" Shouta asked. Hitoshi had pretty bad insomnia, which meant he'd probably barely slept with the villains, scared and unmedicated as he was. But he was clearly also freaking out just as badly as his parents.

"I think whenever we can," Hizashi said, and leaned forward to pick up the remote. "Ah, right: Hitoshi, if you want one of us to sit with you while you're falling asleep, it can really help."

"I'm fine," Hitoshi said, sounding confident that he would simply be able to fall asleep, when he could barely manage to on a normal night.

"Tell us if you change your mind," Hizashi said lightly. "Goodness knows, you wouldn’t–”

“Stop it,” Hitoshi said, and Shouta could feel the cord of his connection to Hizashi. He considered nullifying Hitoshi, but being out of control and lashing out because you were upset were different things. “Stop offering things! Just act normal!"

The commands wouldn't be very effective; they weren't near specific enough, and commanding multiple things at once still took a lot of focus. Hizashi looked surprised, more than he looked like he'd been muted against his will. It was a few seconds before Shouta felt (saw?) the thrum of Hizashi trying to resist Hitoshi's command.

Hitoshi broke the connection and ran to his room, stumbling over Hizashi's feet on his way.

The door slammed and Shouta could hear Hitoshi making some kind of noise – breathing heavily? – but it was a crap shoot whether Hizashi could hear. "Think he'll believe us now?" he asked as Hizashi let out a deep breath.

"Hopefully," he said. "I'll give him a few and go talk to him." He frowned. "You haven't been stress-testing the kids."

Shouta snorted. "Sorry, did he not exert enough influence over you?" he asked. This early in the year, they did hand-to-hand drills, obstacle courses, and cartoon scenarios, and some of the kids still got overwhelmed. They started on more complex situations in the second semester, but using your quirk under real pressure was second- and third-year stuff.

"If he couldn't do it to me, he couldn't do it to the villains," Hizashi pointed out.

"Hey," Shouta soothed, and leaned across the couch toward his husband. Hizashi looked pained. "Hey, no. You know how it is when you're a hostage. Lots of time to think things through. He talked circles around them, I'm sure. They probably had to gag him to keep him and Bakugou from just walking out the door." He stroked Hizashi's face, his hair. Just about crawled into his lap to loom over him. In Hitoshi's room, there was a thwump like something soft being thrown on a bed, accompanied by the gentle jingle of small metal fittings clattering. "Shit, I think he's packing in there. You should talk to him now."

"Packing?" Hizashi asked. "Packing wh– shit."

"Definitely talk to him," Shouta instructed, and got off him.

Hizashi got up, looking almost frail after a couple days barely eating, and carefully arranged himself into a casual slouch before he went to knock on Hitoshi's door.

"Just a second!" Hitoshi yelped. The door opened barely a second later. "Sorry, I was just–" Shouta heard the moment Hitoshi realized it was his pop, and not his dad, who'd come to talk to him. "Um! Sorry. I shouldn't have–" His words broke off. That was fair enough; Shouta wouldn't know what to say, either, and he had actual, professional experience in deciding when to remove someone's free will.

"Can I come in?" Hizashi asked gently. "Or we can talk out here."

"No, you can– I was just– Here," Hitoshi said, and rushed back in. It sounded like he was pushing his duffel against the wall. The zipper pulls jingled again.

“Going somewhere?” Hizashi asked. At night, when they were all in their own rooms, he asked Shouta what he could possibly do to make Hitoshi feel more welcome, as if it was his own personal failing. He was definitely keeping cool for Hitoshi’s sake, but he was so damn good at it. Shouta heard him sit delicately on the bed – no sudden movements.

“I can be out of your hair tomorrow,” Hitoshi said. Hizashi could have been holding him at gunpoint, for the strangled way the words came out of his mouth. “I’m sorry. It– was really uncalled for. I hope you know I didn’t mean to. Just, please let me stay the night?”

Silence hung in the air. Shouta wasn’t sure he knew how he would respond to that, but after a (long, excruciating) moment to consider his words, Hizashi said, “Could I ask you to stay the night? Would it… be an imposition if I asked you to stay for a week? Maybe longer?”

More silence, then Hitoshi sobbed and the bed creaked. “We told you, didn’t we, kid?” Hizashi asked. Fabric rustled softly. “You aren’t yourself. Neither are we. We were going out of our gourds, worrying about you. So I’ll keep acting a little too worried, and you can act a little bit cornered or frustrated if you need to, but I really don’t care what you say or how you say it as long as you’re still my kid.”

Hitoshi cried for a while. It broke Shouta’s heart, listening without being able to do anything, but Hitoshi needed to work this out with Hizashi. His job was to stay quiet and not interfere.

“You were scared,” Hizashi said when the hysterics had died down a little bit. “And you know there’s nothing to be scared of anymore, but your body hasn’t gotten the memo yet. Let it do its thing. Let your heart go through all the feelings it pushed aside while you were kidnapped, and then some other feelings you got from being safe again. That’s fine. But we finally got you back, Hitoshi; there’s nothing we want more than to sit on the couch together and watch manzai with you.”

“I can keep quiet tonight,” Hitoshi offered. He offered it, the way he’d offered scheduled quiet time (which, of course, would only apply to him) when he’d first come to live with them and they were sorting out the house rules. “I probably should.” He sniffled. A moment later, there was the sound of a tissue being pulled out of the box.

“Did I get your ears?” Hizashi asked. “Did I blow out some of your little ear hairs?” After a short pause, he said, “No? Then why are you acting like you didn’t hear me? I’d rather hear you command me like that a thousand times over than never hear you in my house again, you got that?” After another short pause, he said, “Oh kid. You’re ours, Hitoshi. The paperwork moves as fast as it moves, but you’re my son for the rest of your life. No wimping out on me, okay?”

Hitoshi barely managed a weak, tearful “Mm-hm” that sounded like it was said directly into Hizashi’s chest.

“Yeah. You got this, Hitoshi. Now, come on; let’s do something fun. Take your mind off it.”

"I need to see my boys," Shouta called out, just to be as embarrassing a dad as possible.

"Here we come!" Hizashi called back. More quietly, he said, "Here we go, what did Shouta call you earlier? Guest of honor? We need you so we can get started."

Hitoshi came back with Hizashi's arm around his shoulders, clutching a crumpled tissue, his head ducked down like he was embarrassed, but he did come back to the living room. When he sat down, Shouta grabbed him to claim his own share of hugs. "Welcome back," he said, and kissed his son on the cheek. There. He wasn't allowed to think of himself as anything other than theirs, ever again. Hopefully, he knew that now.

Hitoshi continued making wet, sad little noises for the first few minutes of the show. Hizashi passed him the under-the-end-table trash can and the coffee table tissue box as needed. Shouta rubbed his back and repeated the funniest lines of the show. The kid perked up pretty quickly, considering there were a few minutes when he thought they were going to kick him out forever. Teenagers got so dramatic. And, in fairness to Hitoshi, it sounded like his former foster parents didn't have the slightest clue what to do with him or what proportional consequences looked like.

Fucking weaklings. Hitoshi was a delight.

They were all laughing their guts out by the end of the show. It was easy to forget how funny manzai was, especially when your kid was crying at the start of it. It really helped all three of them get their heads straight.

Hitoshi was yawning by the end of it, too, which was fantastic. "Hey. Think you can sleep?" Shouta asked. "I put your meds back on the bathroom counter." It had seemed appropriate to unpack for him while he was kidnapped, and more importantly, it was something to do when he was so worried, no one would let him actually do anything.

"I can try," Hitoshi said, which was a comfortable response. A familiar response. He was talking like Shouta's kid. "--Oh. Oh, I can finally brush my teeth again…"

"Get yourself all settled in," Hizashi soothed. "In the morning, it'll be that much easier."

"And come get us if you need anything," Shouta said, because he didn't know if that offer had been lost in the flurry of quirk use and yelling and crying. "We only got you as a teenager, so you aren't anywhere near your quota for waking us up in the middle of the night."

Hitoshi nodded and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Hizashi and Shouta weren't long following him, though Shouta ducked into Hitoshi's room to throw his duffel bag back in his closet. No use having that reminder around.

"If he does need us later," Hizashi said as they curled up together in bed, "who's sitting up with him?"

"You sleep like a rock," Shouta teased. "Anyway, you're injured. You need the rest."

"And you're exhausted," Hizashi pointed out. "You've been shaking all day, babe."

"You spent the last two nights sleeping with your modulator on," Shouta said. "You need some real rest. We all do. Is your hand really alright, by the way?"

"Oh, yeah, fine," Hizashi said, wiggling the fingers of his right hand, no longer in its cooling wrap. It didn't even seem to have any visible damage. "I was… It hurt a lot more that he thought we'd ask him to leave."

Shouta smoothed a hand over Hizashi's golden hair. "Well, now he knows," he said, like it wasn't eating him up, too. "He's stuck with us. Never getting rid of us. We love him too much for that."

“Mm-hm,” Hizashi agreed. “And, if you weren’t still trying to be everybody’s rock in the whole damn house, you would say…?”

Shouta groaned. “C’mon, I’ve got a good thing going here. Can’t I avoid having feelings for one more day?”

“Not allowed anymore,” Hizashi teased, and kissed his nose. “You lost your deferring privileges years ago.” He skooched down to lean his head on Shouta’s shoulder. “Here, I won’t look at you while you say it. How’d you feel when he thought we’d kick him out for that, Shouta?”

It wasn’t an easy answer to give. He felt a lot of things. Wounded, mostly; Hitoshi was always walking on eggshells with them, and they’d both lost sleep over it since he moved in.

“Responsible,” he said at last. “I saw him doing it. I could’ve stopped him before it had any effect. But I knew you could handle it, and I didn’t think it was that bad a thing, for him to realize it was a big deal and his feelings were exactly as volatile as we’d been saying. I thought, maybe he’ll believe us now. I never meant to scare him like that.”

“Y’might want to tell him tomorrow,” Hizashi murmured. “‘Specially since he thinks we’re babying him.”

"I have more than that to apologize for," Shouta pointed out. "I only took the kids out because I wanted them to be more prepared to look after themselves." And then there had been that big attack. Two of his students were kidnapped, and he was the one who put them in a position to be kidnapped. "Maybe I'm the one who isn't safe to have around."

"It's scary shit going on out there," Hizashi said. "You haven't done this before, you can't see the future… What the hell would the League usually want with some first-year students, anyway?" He snuggled closer. "I probably would've done the same thing. You heard me say it, before you put in the field trip request: I thought it would be good for them to run around and do some higher-level stuff. Make them feel more in-control. When the League of fucking Villains throws their full weight at an individual class of freshmen, and none of them die, I'd call that a success. Because we do know that now, Shouta: they all lived. Hitoshi and Bakugou get to recover. All their classmates get to welcome them back."

"Fuck Endeavor," Shouta said, because the guy saying 'Then maybe you shouldn't have taken our kids out to the middle of nowhere' hadn't stopped playing in his head all day.

Hizashi pulled away. He held up a finger to ask Shouta to give him a moment. He got out of bed and went into the sound booth that used to be a linen closet. (Shouta still missed having all that linen closet space.)

"FUCK Endeavor!" came, muffled, out of the sound closet. Shouta was smiling when Hizashi came out.

"I'm glad we built you a quirk room," Shouta said as Hizashi snuggled back into bed with him.

"Had to be said," Hizashi murmured. "Now, stop stressing so hard; I was almost asleep before I got out of bed. But I can't let you fall asleep thinking it was your fault when everyone involved in the planning thought it was a good move."

"And I can apologize tomorrow," Shouta agreed.

"And you can apologize tomorrow, but I really don't think he blames you. I don't think he would even if he knew you were thinking about it." His voice was quieter and sweeter as he added, "And you have all the time you need to explain." He was getting sleepy, his arms steady around Shouta.

He wasn't asleep yet, but he was trying. He'd only slept lightly since Hitoshi was taken, but now his head was tucked against Shouta's chest. Shouta tugged his pillow down to wedge under him, and Hizashi lifted his head to help him. He murmured, "Sleep lots, Shouta," and his breathing started evening out.

Shouta hadn't slept enough, but he hadn't had the world's hardest travel pillow blocking him from lying down properly, either. And he didn't like going to bed with unfinished business. The thoughts swirled around in his head, but with Hizashi sleeping next to (well, on) him, it didn't take as long as it might have. He drifted off before ten, he was pretty sure, which was earlier than he'd slept in a few months (even if Hizashi did manage to fall asleep around nine.)

.-._.-._.-._

Shouta woke in the early morning, as you did when you were a hero and your mind was on high alert and something was wrong.

He and Hizashi had drifted apart, Hizashi still catching up on his deep sleep, unmoving. Pale street light drifted in through the curtains. The bedroom was quiet. It was probably something to do with Hitoshi, if it wasn’t just his brain being dumb. (That was also a strong possibility.)

Shouta rolled off his side of the bed and braved the cold night air outside the covers. The things you did for love! And he gently padded out of the bedroom in his bare feet.

Hitoshi sat at the kitchen table, the overhead light on low, reading a book. He looked up as Shouta approached him.

"Couldn't sleep?" Shouta asked. They had insomnia together, sometimes.

"Nightmares," Hitoshi said.

"Good night for them," Shouta agreed. "You hungry?"

Hitoshi shook his head.

Shouta went to the couch and grabbed a couple throw blankets. "Bet you're freezing," he said as he settled one around Hitoshi's shoulders. Hitoshi tugged it tighter, so at least there was that.

Hitoshi pretended to read his book for a while. His eyes scanned over the lines, but they looked just barely out of focus.

"It's supposed to be better when you're saved," he said at last. "It's– on the news, it's always good news."

"It is good," Shouta told him. "Biggest relief I've felt in years. Maybe ever. That doesn't mean it isn't hard."

Hitoshi slouched, hugging the blanket tighter around himself. "I mind-controlled Pop," he said.

Shouta took a deep breath. "I wanted to apologize for that," he said. He'd planned to do this in the morning, but for all he knew, that was what the kid's nightmares were about. "I didn't–"

"Don't apologize," Hitoshi said, clearly struggling to keep his voice down. "I'm the one who did it! You were–" He looked surprised, and then his voice was a lot quieter as he said, "You were tired. You couldn't even grab a few mugs of tea. So it's only my fault."

"My quirk worked fine," Shouta confessed. "I saw what was happening, and I considered stopping you. You have a very easy quirk to stop. But I thought: maybe what Hitoshi needs is proof that he's as jumpy as we keep saying. I didn't think you'd scare yourself that badly."

"It's the worst thing you can do to someone," Hitoshi whispered.

"You're his kid," Shouta countered. "Not you-when-you-don't-use-your-quirk. You, period. You ran off and he was horrified, not because you commanded him, but because you did it so sloppily. He was scared I hadn't trained you well enough to… to weather a kidnapping."

"They watched the Sports Festival," Hitoshi said. "They wouldn't talk to me, and then they gagged me. All the training we did together, and I never even got a chance."

Shouta nodded. "I thought probably," he said. He smiled a little. "Wouldn't need a big, heroic rescue if you could have just walked out of there with Bakugou."

Hitoshi's eyes suddenly teared up. "I shouldn't have done it to Pop, though."

"Alright, no sulking in the kitchen in the middle of the night," Shouta said. "Back to bed; you can sulk, but you don't have to sit up. I'll hang out for a while."

"But how did he feel?" Hitoshi pushed. "Okay. Sure. He thought it was worse that I did it badly. But how bad was it that I did it at all?"

Shouta considered the question. Hizashi's feelings about Hitoshi using his quirk on him were so mild, they were easily pushed aside in favor of other things. "I think he was surprised, more than anything," Shouta told him, remembering the look on Hizashi's face before Hitoshi left the room. "You're very… let's say 'careful,' and you don't use your quirk even when it wouldn't hurt anyone, so he didn't expect it. But, after you ran off, he was mostly worried."

"And mad?" Hitoshi guessed, wincing as if he already knew the answer.

"Just worried," Shouta corrected him. "Maybe a little sad, because he felt like he pushed you too hard. Originally, he was going to give you a second to cool down and then go in and talk with you about it, but then I heard you packing, so the timeline got moved up."

"I'm… If you change your mind…" Hitoshi said, and fuck, that really wasn't something to bring up ever again.

"Absolutely not," Shouta told him. "Not unless you're the one who wants to leave, because we'll always want you here." He sighed. "There's nothing wrong with your quirk, Hitoshi. I don't think there is, and your pop doesn't think there is. We don't want to hold you to an impossible standard. Let us forgive you?"

Hitoshi started crying.

"Yeah, let's get you to bed," Shouta said. He stood up and helped Hitoshi up. Led the kid into his room nice and slow, and looked at the book he'd grabbed off the table. "Okay, new house rule: don't read depressing, Modern horror mystery novels when you're already feeling your worst," he said, and put Masks on the nightstand. "What've you got that's light?" He started picking through the small selection of books Hitoshi had brought with him when he moved in, accompanied by ones his dads had thrown his way. "Three Kingdoms has to have something funny in it, right? Have you actually read it, or is it more aspirational?"

"I started it, and then the school year started," he said.

"Got it. Is the internet light novel any good?"

"Uh. Yeah, it's a superhero Cinderella sort of thing. I could read that."

"You can help me out by relaxing," Shouta told him, and went to shut the door. "This is the hardest time. A few days, a week, a month, it won't be so hard anymore." He sat down by the foot of Hitoshi's bed. "That's a hell of a cover. Is that supposed to be Hawks?" She didn't have Hawks' coloring, but she had blue-and-white wings like a kestrel and was punching someone who looked like the head of the Hero Commission in the jaw.

"It's from before he became a hero, I think," Hitoshi told him.

"Alright, but that's definitely Mero. Great foresight, if Hawks wasn't on the scene yet." He opened the book and paged through until he found the dedication. "To Cutie, who takes care of my cat while I'm away." He flipped the page. "Chapter 1: A Guy Like You Should Wear a Warning."

Hitoshi was asleep within an hour. The book was some cheesy light romance with a side of overwrought action, which was perfect. It soothed something in Shouta that he didn't know was upset, even as he tried not to think about the author's obvious appearance quirk kink or the way Hitoshi had been looking at Tokoyami during class. He left quietly, returning to his room where the streetlights still shone gently onto the ceiling. He crept back into bed with Hizashi and didn't even use his husband's calves to warm his feet. He was so selfless tonight.

He was so selfish and unthinking before tonight.

Maybe he wasn't meant to sleep much tonight.