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Shota isn’t quite sure what about the bowl of soup is so triggering for Hitoshi, but it’s undoubtedly a fact that it is. The way Hitoshi goes all still and quiet, his hands lightly trembling and his eyes almost unseeingly fixed on the bowl speak volumes.
“Hitoshi?” Shota carefully asks, wary to exuberate the reaction the kid clearly is having right now, and he was right to be wary, too, because as soon as Hitoshi hears his voice, he jerks back, chair clattering to the ground as Hitoshi stumbles away from the table.
“No, no, please, no,” Hitoshi gasps out, his voice barely audible under all the panicked breaths he takes in and Shota aches to follow him, to get close and put a hand to his shoulder, maybe even pull him into a hug, but they know better by now.
Hitoshi needs space when he has a panic attack and as long as he’s in sight, Shota is more than willing to give him that.
It’s hard, seeing Hitoshi as panicked as he is right now, Shota is not going to lie about that, but he has to keep a cool head to guide Hitoshi through it as best as he can.
Crowding him is a no-go, but talking to him seemed to ground him in the past so Shota takes a deep breath before he starts to talk.
It’s not his strong suit, Hizashi is way better with keeping senseless babble up, but Shota finds himself willing to try for this kid.
“It’s alright, Hitoshi, it’s just us here. Hizashi went out to buy some dessert, remember? He should be back soon and he’ll definitely bring more than we can reasonably eat in one evening, so you’ll get to pick some dessert for tomorrow, too, how does that sound?” Shota knows he’s not going to get an answer, but it can never hurt to include the kid at the off-chance he wants to contribute something but all that happens is that Hitoshi’s breath continues to come in too fast and too short.
Shota is just about to open his mouth again when he hears the front door open and Hitoshi must hear it, too, because he jerks violently and stumbles further back, slamming into the wall and Shota moves on instinct.
He has his hand stretched out, in a futile attempt to keep Hitoshi’s head from slamming against the wall and Hitoshi crouches low on the floor, arms coming up above his head as Shota comes to a stop, hand still uselessly stretched out.
“Don’t touch me, don’t, don’t,” he gasps out and Shota’s heart positively breaks in his chest.
“Kid, I’m not—”
Shota has never given much thought to how it would feel to fall under Hitoshi’s quirk. It would happen sooner or later—preferably during training so they can challenge his limits in a controlled environment but Shota was prepared to have it happen at home, too.
They allowed Hitoshi to use his quirk on them if he ever feels unsafe after all and Shota is almost proud of him for enforcing his boundary right now, if the entire situation wasn’t so heart-breaking.
Shota isn’t even sure how to describe the effect Hitoshi’s quirk has on him; he’s still in his body, he can still almost feel it, but it is as if he’s trapped inside a glass case. He still fills the same space as he did before inside his own body, but there’s something keeping him from actually using it. He can still see and hear and think, but everything is muffled and distant.
It’s almost peaceful, Shota has to admit, if you take away the fact that he is no longer in control of his own body.
“Step away from me,” Hitoshi says, his voice shaking so much that it takes Shota a moment to even make the words out but as soon as he understands their meaning, his body is already stepping away from Hitoshi.
He distantly wonders how many steps he’ll have to take, if he’ll have to cross all the way to the other side of the apartment but after three steps his body comes to a stop.
Shota should be scared of the fact that he’s no longer the one in control, but he doesn’t have the time to spare a single thought for himself. He can only think about Hitoshi.
Hitoshi who is still panicking, who is still crouched low on the floor, who feels unsafe enough to have to use his quirk on him—without the activation requirement, no less—and all Shota wants to do is hold the kid until he calms down.
Even though it would be the worst thing to do, as his current predicament shows.
“Sho? Kiddo?” Hizashi calls out finally, when no one welcomes him home and Shota strains against Hitoshi’s control as hard as he can, not that it’s doing anything.
Hizashi steps into the room mere seconds later, two bags dangling from his hands—definitely more dessert than they can eat in one evening, Shota knew it—and he takes in the situation with one glance.
“Hey, kiddo,” Hizashi softly says, putting the bags on the ground and crouching down a few feet away from Hitoshi. “I see you’re currently not doing so well, huh?” Hizashi asks, even though it’s more than obvious by the way Hitoshi is still hyperventilating.
Hizashi’s eyes slide back over to Shota and even though Shota knows he can’t do anything he still tries to convey with just his eyes that he’s currently under the influence of Hitoshi’s quirk.
Hizashi frowns briefly before turning back around to Hitoshi and even though Shota can see the tension in Hizashi’s shoulders, he keeps his voice low and gentle.
“How about we try some of those breathing exercises, kiddo? Do you remember how they go?” He waits for a moment, though of course no answer comes from Hitoshi and Hizashi doesn’t drag it out needlessly. “That’s alright, too, little listener, that’s what we’re here for, ya dig? I’ll just do them and you try to follow along with me, how does that sound?”
Hitoshi drags in a particularly rough breath and Shota panics slightly when he realises just for how long Hitoshi hasn’t been breathing right. Hizashi seems to harbour the same worries, because he doesn’t waste any time falling into exaggerate breaths.
He’s actually the perfect person to do this with, because thanks to his quirk he has amazing control over his breath and he doesn’t hesitate to be loud with them, either.
Hizashi is definitely loud enough to be heard over Hitoshi’s panicked gasps and Shota relaxes slightly when he notices that Hitoshi is trying to follow along. It doesn’t work very well, not at first, but eventually he manages to match his own breathing to Hizashi’s.
“You’re doing great, kiddo,” Hizashi praises him between breaths and Shota is glad to see that Hitoshi manages to continue the rhythm without Hizashi’s own exaggerated breathing.
Shota only gets a second for that, because then Hitoshi’s head flies up and wide eyes meet his. Logically, Shota knows that using his quirk is cause for panic for Hitoshi but he did not expect to see that panic etched so clearly into Hitoshi’s face.
“I’m so sorry,” he somehow manages to get out, Hizashi turning around to follow his line of sight and then Shota feels the effect of the quirk falling away.
It’s not gradual, just like being put under the quirk hadn’t been gradual. One moment he hadn’t been able to use his own body and the next he was in complete control again.
“Kid—” Shota starts, keeping his voice low and soothing but as soon as he opens his mouth, Hitoshi jerks to his feet and flees the room.
Hizashi and Shota are left staring after him as Hitoshi vanishes into his own room, firmly closing the door behind him without actually slamming it and it’s still quite the statement.
They have an open door policy in this home after all, and Hizashi and Shota promised him that if his door should ever be closed completely they wouldn’t come in without his permission. Shota doubts that right now, Hitoshi would give his permission and even though he stands by that rule, it feels wrong to let the kid go like that.
He was still in the middle of a panic attack after all.
“What the hell is going on here?” Hizashi breathes out after listening to absolute silence in the apartment for a few seconds and Shota slumps where he stands.
“We’ve had a bit of a hiccup, I’d say,” he whispers, eyes falling onto the by now probably cold bowl of soup on the table.
“No shit, Sho,” Hizashi snorts out and comes over to pull Shota into a hug.
Shota gladly falls into it, even though he wishes his husband could hug Hitoshi like this right now, and he breathes for a moment, safe in the knowledge that at least their kid is in the same apartment.
He could have made a dash for the front door, but he opted to hide in his own room and Shota has to remind himself that that is most likely progress, even though it doesn’t feel like it.
“He used his quirk on me without a question,” Shota mutters after a moment, right before he pulls away from Hizashi.
“What? I thought he has to ask a question to activate it.”
“I thought so, too. We’ll have to ask him about that. Maybe his panic overrode the rules of his quirk; if that’s the case we’ll need to take that into account for his training.”
“Sho, you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Hizashi gently chides him. “Let’s just focus on the fact that our kid is panicking in the next room, okay? You know what caused it?”
“I put down a bowl of soup in front of him,” Shota replies, his eyes falling back onto the table, their dinner still untouched.
“Soup? That seems like a strange thing to panic about,” Hizashi muses before he sighs. “That is something we’ll have to ask him about, so we can avoid this in the future. Did he make you do something when you were under his quirk?”
“He didn’t want to be touched,” Shota shrugs. “Told me to step away from him. I’m not sure if he was even aware of the fact that he activated his quirk in the moment. He just wanted space, I think.”
“Okay, we can give that to him,” Hizashi says, even though he seems unhappy about it, and there’s nothing but worry in his eyes when they fall on the still closed door. “I don’t like leaving him alone to panic, though.”
“Me neither,” Shota agrees. He’d be calmer if he could actually see Hitoshi, he knows that, but he’s not about to barge into the kid’s room just to satisfy his own feelings.
They have to put Hitoshi first and they have to trust that he’ll come back out once he’s calmer. It’s all they can do for now.
~*~*~
Hizashi is slumped over the table by the time the door to Hitoshi’s room opens up again. Shota elbows him none too gently and Hizashi startles up, wildly looking around before his eyes fall on Shota, who nods his head towards Hitoshi’s door.
Shota knows that Hizashi wants to say something, yell even, maybe, but he presses his lips together and forces himself to keep sitting at the table, just like Shota. They have long cleared away the soup that started all of this away and Shota just hopes that Hitoshi is willing to explain just what set him off so they can avoid it in the future.
He does not enjoy seeing his kid in that state.
Even though the door is open now it still takes Hitoshi a moment to step through, and when he finally does he looks impossibly small somehow. His head is lowered but Shota can still see how red rimmed his eyes are and he looks absolutely exhausted.
Shota gets stuck on the duffel bag slung over Hitoshi’s shoulder though.
Hitoshi shuffles into the doorway of the kitchen, his head still lowered and it gives Hizashi and Shota a moment to share a confused look.
“Hey, kiddo,” Hizashi finally speaks up, always the one to break a silence first. “Are you going somewhere?”
It’s not ideal; Shota has no desire to let Hitoshi out of his sight at the moment, but if he wants to go somewhere, then they’ll make it happen.
“When is she coming?” Hitoshi whispers, his gaze still lowered and it only makes Shota frown.
“Who, kid?” Shota asks in return, not understanding who Hitoshi could be referring to but when he glances back over to Hizashi he’s taken aback by the crestfallen look on his face.
“Your social worker is not coming, kiddo,” Hizashi answers before Hitoshi can ask again and Shota almost feels as if he’s been sucker-punched, but of course. Of course that would be something Hitoshi is worried about.
They know he has been ready to leave, to be taken away, to be kicked out again ever since he came to stay with them.
“Tomorrow then?”
“She’s not coming at all,” Shota interjects and now that gets Hitoshi to look up at them, eyes painfully wide.
“She has to, though. I used my quirk. You told her.”
“We didn’t, kid. We didn’t tell her and no one is going to come and take you away from us,” Shota says with more patience than he really feels because he just gets so angry when he is reminded of how the system fucked this sweet kid over.
“But that’s how it goes,” Hitoshi breathes out. “I used my quirk on you, you have to tell her!” His voice gets progressively louder as he talks and Shota fears that he’s just a few wrong steps away from a panic attack again.
“Hitoshi, what is the rule for your quirk use in this house?” Shota asks, putting a hand to Hizashi’s when it seems as if he wants to go off on a rant.
It would probably not help the kid right now.
“I’m not allowed to use it. I can only directly talk to Yamada-san, so you can erase my quirk when I slip up.”
“If you slip up,” Shota corrects, because that distinction is important but that’s not actually the rule he was looking for. In fact, that is the rule he wishes Hitoshi would forget completely. “What rule did we give you regarding your quirk?”
Hitoshi opens and closes his mouth several times before he lowers his gaze again. “I’m allowed to use my quirk if I feel unsafe and think I need it to protect myself,” he finally mutters out and Shota nods.
“Correct. And you did just that. I’m proud of you for that.”
Shota wouldn’t normally praise using a quirk out of fear like that, but things are different with Hitoshi. The fact that he used his quirk at all is a big step for him.
“How can you say that?” Hitoshi wants to know, his voice desperate and lost. “I used my quirk on you.”
“And you did it to protect yourself. You felt crowded and unsafe and when I tried to touch you, you enforced your boundaries. That’s a good thing.”
Hitoshi gasps for breath, his eyes wide and wild, his gaze flickering between Shota and Hizashi without really stopping anywhere.
“Hey, little listener, you need to tell us what’s going on, okay? Take a deep breath, please,” Hizashi carefully cajoles Hitoshi, who sucks in a breath almost reflexively. “What’s got you all panicked again?”
“You—you’re mad at me,” Hitoshi eventually gets out and it’s surprising enough to make Shota frown.
“We’re not.”
“Scared of me then,” Hitoshi goes on, barely pausing to take another breath and Hizashi shakes his head.
“We could never be scared of you. Why would you think that?”
“You’re all the way over there,” Hitoshi gasps out, his hand reaching up to tangle in his wild hair. “Usually you would be—why aren’t you—” he tugs on his hair with so much force that Shota fears he’s going to lose a few strands and it only takes a second for everything to fall into place.
“Kid, you told me not to touch you. You used your quirk because you were so afraid I would touch you. As long as you don’t tell us otherwise, we’re not going to do it,” Shota gently tells him.
They have been a little bit handsy with him, Hizashi especially, in an attempt to get him used to it. It’s painfully obvious that Hitoshi is touch starved and that the only real touch he ever knew was a painful one and they’ve been trying their best to show him that it doesn’t have to be like that.
Shota has to admit that he likes ruffling the kid’s hair or pressing their shoulders together when they sit next to each other on the couch and Hizashi has taken to pulling him into a hug whenever he can get his hands on the kid.
And it seems they did get him used to it, at least when he’s not actively in a panic attack.
“Please,” Hitoshi gets out. “Please.”
It’s so desperate that Hizashi is out of his chair before the second ‘Please’ has even left Hitoshi’s mouth and he pulls the kid into a hug, holding him tightly. Hitoshi clings just as tightly to Hizashi and Shota doesn’t even have to hear it to know that the kid is crying again.
“We didn’t mean to make you think you did something wrong,” Hizashi mutters, pressing his head into Hitoshi’s hair. “We were just trying to respect your boundaries.”
“We’re here, Hitoshi,” Shota adds, finally joining his husband and rubbing a hand over Hitoshi’s back. “And we’re not leaving you and we won’t let anyone take you away from us.”
It only makes the kid cry harder and when Shota shares a look with Hizashi over his head, he can see tears in his husband’s eyes as well.
“Why don’t we move this to the couch, huh?” he gently suggests and Hizashi shuffles them over there without actually letting go of Hitoshi at all.
They sandwich him between them and going by the way he clings almost painfully to the both of them, he doesn’t mind at all. It takes him a while to calm down again and Shota hates to break the tentative peace they’ve achieved but they need to know what caused all of this.
“Kid, you don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to, okay?” he starts with as he cards his fingers through Hitoshi’s hair, because it’s important that he knows that. “But we’d like to know what triggered you today, so we can avoid it in the future.”
Hizashi doesn’t seem too happy with his approach if the glare Shota gets for his trouble is anything to go by, but Shota holds his gaze steadily. He isn’t looking for a detailed explanation, he’s just looking for a what, not the why, not if Hitoshi doesn’t want to tell them and he wills Hizashi to understand that.
“It was the—” Hitoshi’s voice breaks over his words and it takes him a few tries to actually finish the sentence. “The soup. It was the soup.”
“This specific kind of soup or all soup?” Shota asks for clarification and Hitoshi wilts where he sits.
“All soup.”
It doesn’t make much sense to Shota, because how could it, but that isn’t important. The only thing that’s important is that it makes sense to Hitoshi and that they are going to avoid soup in the future. It’s as simple as that.
“Thank you for telling us,” Hizashi tells him, dropping a kiss to Hitoshi’s head.
Hitoshi leans into it and then he looks over to Shota before he slightly reaches out to him. Shota doesn’t leave him hanging, taking his hand in his and squeezing it reassuringly.
“They—they always gave me soup before—” Hitoshi needs a moment to regulate his breathing again and Shota desperately wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to explain, that they don’t need to hear this, but it’s clear that Hitoshi wants to get this off his chest and so Shota only nods encouragingly at him. “Before they locked me in the closet,” Hitoshi finishes, his voice barely audible in the space between them.
Hizashi sucks in a surprised breath and Shota can only hope that he manages to keep any emotion off his face because the kid doesn’t need to see how angry he is.
Sometimes, Shota thinks that villains might be on to something. That previous foster family certainly doesn’t deserve good things in their lives.
“I know you wouldn’t, I know—I guess I just forgot,” Hitoshi admits and Shota squeezes his hand again.
“And that’s alright. It will take time. You’ve been through a lot and it will take time for you to feel completely safe with us. And until that happens, no more soup,” he adds with a wry smile and it’s enough to bring out a small, shaky smile on Hitoshi’s face as well.
“No more soup,” he agrees and then leans back into Hizashi’s chest. Hizashi immediately tightens his arms around the kid again and Shota fears that he’s going to have to pry Hitoshi away from him tonight.
Or maybe they can just have an impromptu sleep-over in the living-room. That should work as well.
“Hizashi still brought dessert. Think you can stomach some of that?” Shota asks after a while and before Hitoshi can answer him, his stomach audibly growls.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Shota nods and pushes himself up, content to leave Hitoshi in the arms of his husband.
There’s still the matter of how Hitoshi used his quirk to talk about but Shota thinks that can easily wait a day or three. There’s no reason to rush this, no reason to overwhelm Hitoshi with this as well today and it’s a sensitive topic for Hitoshi anyway. They’ll have to tread carefully there and today is absolutely not the time to do that.
So instead of freaking their kid out any more Shota busies himself with getting as many desserts as he can into the living-room in one trip, while Hizashi sets up a movie.
With everything that happened today, Shota doubts Hitoshi will manage to stay awake for long but that doesn’t matter right now.
All that matters is that Hitoshi is safe and sound between them, that he still feels comfortable enough with them and in this home to allow them this close, and that all three of them ruin their stomach with as much sugar as they can.
And they do exactly that.