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Hitoshi lets out a long breath when the door behind him closes. He looks around the room, painstakingly taking in every detail, so he can leave it exactly like this when he gets kicked out again.
It wouldn't do to create more problems for Aizawa and Yamada after all and having to renovate the room would certainly count as one so he makes sure to take in as many details as he can. He's going to make a list later, maybe even print some photos if he gets a chance to do so, all so that he can leave it behind perfectly untouched afterwards.
Once Hitoshi has a general picture of the room saved, he gets out his calendar.
He puts it on the table and carefully crosses out the first day, making a corresponding line at the back of it, so he can better count the days.
The moment he stepped into Aizawa's and Yamada's apartment his mental countdown had started and he gives himself sixteen days.
Sixteen days before he fucks up badly enough that they are going to kick him out again.
Hitoshi knows how this goes after all; it's not his first stint in a new family and because it's him it won't be his last either. It'll just be a matter of time, really, until Aizawa and Yamada realise what kind of mess they have invited into their home.
There are a number of ways he can mess up, Hitoshi knows that: he can do too much, or too little; he can be too present or not be present enough, he can be too loud, too silent, too demanding, too ungrateful, too much. Sometimes, he can even breathe wrong and he is just mildly curious to know what's going to get him kicked out here.
Sure, Aizawa and Yamada have been adamant that they want to help him; they have said that he's welcome to stay with them forever, as long as he wants, but—it's not the first time it started like this.
This is not the first home that took him in and promised that nothing bad could ever happen to him here, and by now Hitoshi has learned his fucking lesson.
It never lasts—promises are empty words that mean nothing, especially when it comes to him.
He's simply too fucked up to be able to stay anywhere, and yeah, sometimes it's the way he breathes that gets him into trouble. His eyes once; his smile too, which is how he learned not to do that anymore.
There really are so many things that can fuck him over and it won't be long at all before Aizawa and Yamada realise their mistake.
They might be genuinely worried and they might genuinely want to help him but they don't know Hitoshi. They don't know how fucked up he is, how disruptive, how wrong because they never had to spend any significant time with him.
Training at school is just for an hour, an hour and a half sometimes; when they invite him for dinner afterwards, it's double that, sometimes, but it still ends.
It ends and they can go home and rid themselves of his presence and reset everything and then they can deal with him again the next day. Sometimes not even that, if it's the weekend.
Hitoshi learned early on that people need that downtime from him, need to be away in order for them to stomach his presence and now that security net is gone.
Now, they are going to be faced with his continuous presence and Hitoshi gives them sixteen days until they kick him out or employ different methods of punishment.
If he thinks about it, it seems like such a low number—just barely over two weeks. Two weeks until they are going to get physically sick of him and yet—
The longest anyone held out was nine days, so he's already being generous and taking into account that they might be more resilient due to their jobs as heroes.
Or maybe they'll be able to look through his bullshit much faster and figure him out in even less time than that.
Hitoshi counts the days down on the calendar to mark day X with a red circle and he realises with a sinking stomach that day sixteen falls on a Friday. If his prediction is correct, he'll probably have to spend three nights on the streets, because his caseworker doesn't like being disrupted on the weekends and they don't answer his or his guardians calls after noon on Fridays, Hitoshi learned that the hard way.
He makes a mental note to scope out the area in the next days, so he can find a place to sleep in and then he puts his bag at the end of the bed. There's no use unpacking—this is all he has and the more tightly he keeps everything together the faster he can be out of here when the time comes.
It'll be fine, it has to be. Hitoshi is used to this.
It will be fine.
~*~*~
The house is warmer than his last four have been and Hitoshi hates it. It's always so much harder leaving houses like this, it sets him back so fucking much when the time comes and he's not looking forward to this.
There are cats there, which only makes everything worse, because there are cats and he's allowed to touch them and they are certified little cuddle bugs.
Hitoshi thinks leaving them behind is going to hurt worse than anything else he had to live through so far.
"I can't believe this," Aizawa grumbles out as he sits next to Hitoshi on the couch and Hitoshi goes still.
He slows down his breathing, takes great care in blinking in set intervals, forces his thoughts to quiet down in case Aizawa can hear them and he definitely stops petting the cat.
Aizawa's eyes are still on the cat, so he notices that immediately but instead of calling Hitoshi out on his behaviour, he leans back with a sigh.
"It took me ages to get Firefly to cuddle up to me and I was the one who saved him," he mutters and now Hitoshi freezes out of fear.
Aizawa sounds displeased. He sounds displeased and he complained about Hitoshi's behaviour and he mentally takes two days off his time here, shortening his time to exactly two weeks, but taking away the danger of ending up on the streets for a while.
Hitoshi isn't sure if it's a blessing or not.
"Sorry," Hitoshi quietly says and starts to move the cat off his lap, much to its displeasure, if the little noises are anything to go by and Aizawa blinks at him.
"That wasn't a real complaint," Aizawa says and now Hitoshi stills in confusion. "I probably should have worded that better," Aizawa says with a wince and then pets the cat still happily perched in Hitoshi's lap. "I'm glad he took a liking to you. Leave your door open at night and he'll cuddle right up to you."
Hitoshi starts to sweat.
He no longer knows if this is a complaint or not; if it's an order or a warning or a 'you better not do this' kind of thing—and it's not as if he can ask for clarification.
People don't like him talking after all, much less asking questions and this is not the school.
This is Aizawa's private home and Hitoshi knows better than to stupidly blurt out everything on his mind.
So instead of vocally answering him he simply nods and then proceeds to very inwardly panic over what he's supposed to do this night.
Open doors invite a kind of danger Hitoshi is not ready to face but if it was an order then he has to and if it was meant genuinely then it could mean he gets to cuddle the cat some more but it could also all be a fucking test and Hitoshi thinks he's going to pass out from stress.
He wants to get it right—that has never been the issue. He's not antagonising people for the fun of it, he's not hopping houses because it's his hobby and he's not asking to be hit, but he can never ever get it right, no matter what he does.
Even when he thinks he has something figured out, it still turns out to be the wrong thing to do and in the end, that's what allows him to take a deep breath.
It doesn't matter what he's going to do—it will be wrong anyway.
He only has to weigh having a cat close up against inviting danger into his room and—Hitoshi really does love cats.
It's not even a question, even though it leaves him shaking in his bed the entire night.
Not even Firefly, curled up on his hip, is any help.
~*~*~
When Hitoshi steps into the kitchen and finds Yamada at the stove he freezes but it's already too late.
Yamada throws him a glance over his shoulder and Hitoshi can do nothing but wait and hear what the hell he did wrong now.
He stepped where he doesn't belong; he interrupted Yamada's alone time. He is a lazy piece of shit who doesn't help; he expects everything to be catered to him.
So many accusations to choose from, so little time.
Hitoshi flinches when Yamada does finally speak up.
"Hey, little listener, you wanna help?" he asks and Hitoshi lets out a measured breath.
This is easy, this is something he's familiar with. He needs to earn his keep, he knows that, and there are a number of different ways he can do that. Physical labour, being a punching bag, he's used to all of it and cooking has always somehow been his favourite way of paying for being taken in.
He has honestly waited for them to tell him what he needs to do here so this almost comes as a relief. If he cooks well, maybe he can squeeze out a few more days.
"Sure," Hitoshi mutters and moves closer to Yamada.
Now this is always the tricky part—being in the kitchen means being in the presence of knives. Hitoshi needs to figure out what is expected of him and ideally stay out of Yamada's reach at the same time, which, given the size of the kitchen and the length of this arms—and the knife he's currently handling—is a no-go.
Alright, Hitoshi thinks and tries to stay calm. As long as it's not a stab wound, he can deal with it. There should still be a suture kit in his bag if he isn't mistaken, if they haven't taken it from him while he wasn't in his room and so it will be fine.
It wouldn't be the first time.
"Help me chop this up, mh?" Yamada asks and hands him the knife, handle first and for a moment, Hitoshi is completely frozen. "Hitoshi?"
"Yeah, sorry," he blurts out and takes the knife, careful not to touch Yamada as he quickly gauges how he might wants things chopped.
Thankfully he had already gotten started on it, so Hitoshi just has to follow what's already on the cutting board and he settles into an easy rhythm.
"You're good at this," Yamada remarks after a moment and Hitoshi hears the underlying accusation.
He should have stepped up and offered his help earlier. He was negligent in his repayment and he mentally crosses off another day.
Thirteen now in total, unluckiest number there is, and only nine left. At least he doesn't have to check out the area for a place to sleep anymore.
"Sorry," Hitoshi whispers and Yamada frowns at him.
"That's not something to be sorry for, kiddo. Do you like cooking?"
Hitoshi shrugs because if he says no then Yamada will call him ungrateful and lazy and if he says yes it will be his responsibility from now on.
He should say yes, he knows that, but he's tired. Tired of cooking for everyone and not being allowed to eat himself, tired of having the food he's not allowed to eat thrown into his face because he seasoned it wrong, tired of having the kitchen be his responsibility and coming back to it trashed.
It's selfish, he knows, but he can't help it.
He can never help it.
"If you do, feel free to help whenever, and if not, that's fine, too," Yamada says and suddenly, Hitoshi feels as if he has to carry the weight of the world on his shoulder.
"Sure," he tonelessly gives back and mentally rearranges his mornings, so he can be up early enough to make breakfast for the two of them.
He knows what's expected of him.
~*~*~
Hitoshi is trying to do his math homework but he's distracted by his calendar. Two more days. Two more days and then this brief stint of his life will be over—either because he needs a new home yet again or because Aizawa and Yamada decide this punishment-free environment is not suiting Hitoshi much.
It would fit, he bitterly thinks, because that last nasty bruise on his ribs he got from his previous foster father has just faded to nothingness and Hitoshi isn't used to seeing his skin unblemished anymore.
It's almost enough to upset him and not even all the scars are any help. He didn't remember that his skin is this pale and it doesn't sit right with him.
Maybe Aizawa and Yamada will change it soon enough.
And soon enough might be sooner than he thinks because someone knocks at his door and Hitoshi freezes right up.
"Hitoshi, is it alright if we come in for a second?" Yamada's voice rings out and Hitoshi breaks out into cold sweat.
This is not good. This is never good, but especially not if both of them want to come in.
Hitoshi mentally curses himself because he should have known better than to jinx himself like that but now there's nothing to be done about it. He almost hopes they are here to hurt him—if they are here to kick him out prematurely, then he's fucked.
He never got around to looking for a suitable place for the night to hunker down in and now it's going to bite him in the ass because it's Sunday and his caseworker is not going to pick up the phone.
Hitoshi doesn't call out to them, but he forces himself to get up and open the door for them, silently wondering why they didn't just barge in anyway and hoping to spare his homework any blood splatters should they lay in on him immediately.
He would hate to have to redo all of his work.
But Aizawa and Yamada just stand there, clearly waiting for Hitoshi to invite them in and fuck, he hates those types, though he should have guessed.
They are teachers, so of course they would want to make him learn something from this, probably have him list off all his infractions and then have him decide a suitable punishment for him, as if that absolves them of any of the guilt.
Hitoshi has been through this before—it's always somehow worse when they make him choose.
He nods inside the room, unable to find his voice in anticipation of what's to come and they stride right in and then gingerly sit themselves down on the bed, which leaves Hitoshi with the option to remain standing, which could be considered defiant, or sit down on his chair, which could be considered presumptuous.
So many fucking choices, so many fucking ways to get it all wrong and Hitoshi is tired, so he simply drops down on the floor.
The bed is too crowded already and he doesn't really want to bring himself into swinging distance and if he sits down at his chair, his homework might yet get wrecked, so this third option it is.
It makes Aizawa and Yamada frown, but they don’t immediately say something, which makes Hitoshi tense.
The ones to bottle it up are always worst, because when they do finally explode it's out of nowhere and so fucking violent it barely leaves him breathing and he already knows that these two pack a punch, being pros and all.
If they truly are the bottling up types then his life is over.
"Hitoshi, we wanted to talk to you," Aizawa starts and immediately Hitoshi's shoulders go up to his ears.
This is bad. This is always bad.
"It's been almost two weeks since you came here—"
Eleven days. It's been eleven days, but who's counting, right. Ha.
"—and we just wanted to know how you feel. You've barely talked to us so we wanted to check in. See if there is anything concerning, or something that's bothering you. Something we should do differently. You've barely been out of your room."
He's been out enough to get three days off his stay here and in all honesty, that's more than enough for him.
Plus, he's been out to help make food every goddamn day, so he doesn't really see what else they might want.
"Are you counting down to something?" Yamada suddenly asks, his gaze on Hitoshi's calendar. "What happens on Friday?"
"Nothing anymore," Hitoshi answers because he knows better than to ignore a direct question and Yamada squints at the calendar some more.
"You marked off Wednesday too and Tuesday. Are you—adjusting down? What for?"
He looks at the calendar too and feels the itch to get his pen and circle today in bright red, because seeing it always helps him accept it but he doesn’t dare move.
"It's today. Should have marked today," he mutters and wonders how the rest of the day will play out.
If he gets beaten black and blue or if he will simply be kicked out and if so, if he'll have enough time to shove his school work into his bag.
"What is today?" Aizawa asks him, gaze fixed on Hitoshi instead of at the calendar and Hitoshi slings his arms around his legs, tries to offer up as little surface as he can.
"It's done. My stint here is over. Today is the day you kick me out or you hurt me," he finally says when Aizawa simply continues to stare at him and Yamada sucks in a surprised breath.
"You think we're going to hurt you? That we're going to kick you out?" he almost yells out and suddenly a new fear manifests because he hadn't ever considered Yamada's quirk in this.
"You gave us sixteen days?" Aizawa almost quietly asks and if Hitoshi didn't know better he'd say he looks devastated. "That's all we got?"
"Even with eleven you held out the longest," he simply says and then when he can't stand that look on Aizawa's face he adds "It's me. I'm—wrong. Always have been. Eleven days is a good run but I'm like poison. I build up and build up and then everything is just dead. You're right to kick me out."
He's been through so many families, so many foster parents, so many group homes and it's always the same, always. And he's the one constant, he's always there so it has to be him. It's why he didn't want to come here in the first place, why he fought Aizawa so damn much in the beginning—this is exactly the outcome he didn't want.
Another family poisoned. Another home ruined. Another chance wasted.
It's always the same with him.
He flinches, badly, when Aizawa suddenly gets up and storms out of the room, leaving Hitoshi alone with Yamada who stares after Aizawa, clearly confused by his actions.
"Shou?" he calls out and is met with a quiet "Be right back," from somewhere deeper into the apartment and Hitoshi turns wary eyes on Yamada.
"If it helps, I'm sorry," he weakly offers and Yamada's eyes snap back to him. "I didn't mean to. I know why you'll have to—hurt me, kick me out, whatever. It's just—sorry I made you do that."
"You didn't do anything, kiddo," Yamada chokes out and he wrings his hands in his lap. "We are not going to do any of that, I can promise you that, it's just—sixteen days? You didn't give us more credit?"
"Nine's been the max," Hitoshi mutters into his knees. "I figured you'd be more resilient, so—sixteen."
"What made you adjust down?" Aizawa asks from the doorway and Hitoshi flinches again, but he's unable to look at him.
"You got angry about the cat cuddling me. I took its attention away, it liked me better, and then you gave me an order? Or a threat? Anyway, I fucked that up too, probably, so I counted down two days."
"And the other day?"
"The first day I helped in the kitchen. You figured out I was good at cooking and I hadn't yet offered to pay you back by helping. Minus one day," Hitoshi almost mechanically says, laying his faults out in the open and Yamada frowns.
"Is that why you're helping every day now? Because you think you have to pay us back?"
"I have to be useful. You're putting up with me, allowing me to poison everything, the least I can do is help."
"What would you need to adjust your estimate upwards?" Aizawa asks and that question makes Hitoshi freeze because adjusting upwards has never happened.
He doesn't know how to account for that.
"Doesn't really matter anyway," Aizawa grumbles and holds out a piece of paper to Hitoshi. "I marked the day we're going to kick you out. You don't have to adjust, I decided on it for you," he says and Yamada sucks in a breath.
"Aizawa Shouta!" he shouts out, clearly angry with Aizawa who only smiles at him.
Hitoshi takes the paper with shaking hands and forces himself to look, to see the damning, red X hastily marked over a date and when he processes that, he blinks owlishly at it.
"That's in one hundred and twenty years," he finally says and Aizawa nods, while Yamada's mouth falls open.
"Yeah, it is. That is the day we kick you out."
"You'll be long dead by then," Hitoshi weakly says, because what the hell is going on here and Aizawa grins.
"You'll be, too. Think it's a good time to kick you out?"
"I don't understand," Hitoshi whispers because he doesn't, because this isn't real, no one wants to be around him for a month, let alone that amount of time.
"That's fine," Aizawa says and sits himself down on the floor as well. "Just trust that we have no intention of kicking you out before that. Or hurting you, for that matter."
"He's right," Yamada says and slides down to the floor as well. "We took you in to make sure something like that never happened to you again."
"That was before you knew."
"Knew what, kid?"
"How—wrong I am, how bad. I'm—I messed up, enough to be worthy of cutting time off, so why—"
"We don't think you did something wrong. Here, let me get this," Aizawa says and briefly gets up to get Hitoshi's calendar and a red marker. "You adjusted accordingly to what you thought. Let me adjust accordingly to what I think," he says and points to Hitoshi's first marked date. "That's the baseline?"
"Yeah."
"Twenty days plus for getting Firefly to like you," he says and flips the page to mark the new date. "Three extra because he finally behaves like a cat and cuddles up to someone."
Yamada lets him mark that date, too, before he takes the calendar and the pen from Aizawa.
"One day extra for every meal you helped cook," he easily says and briefly counts down the meals before he adjusts the red X again. "Thirty bonus points for making Shou eat something green," he then adds with a grin and again, a new X appears.
"Ten for staying on top of your homework," Aizawa adds and Yamada marks that down, too.
"An extra month for being you," Yamada mutters and moves the pen again.
It seems as if they are going to keep going but Hitoshi can't take it, he doesn't understand.
"So if I keep all of that up, I get to stay?" he weakly asks, because he can continue to cook meals.
If he helps for all three every day, he can probably outbalance every day he has to take off and then maybe—
"You get to stay, period," Aizawa seriously says and then points at the printed paper. "This is your real end date. This one here—" he points to Hitoshi's calendar "—is faulty and wrong and is not to be taken into consideration."
"But—I'm not good!" Hitoshi chokes out. "I fuck up, I disappoint, I incite anger. There is no way that is the end date."
"It is now, because none of what you said is true, kiddo. You are good. You haven't fucked up, you haven't disappointed us, you didn't make us angry."
"But you're here, to talk, so I must have fucked up, I must have disappointed you somehow, I wasn't good enough!"
"We're here to talk to you because we're worried. And we're not worried for ourselves, or because of you, but for you. You keep to yourself, you don't speak, you barely act as if you're living here and yeah, we get it now, but we didn't before."
"Hitoshi, we're not testing you. We're not deliberately setting you up. We're not judging. What you said, for the days you took off? None of that happened like you said. We're not angry that you didn't help with meal prep earlier, Hizashi was just happy to learn something new about you. I wasn't angry about the cat, I was genuinely relieved that he seems to have found a person he trusts now, that he can trust at all now. When I told you to keep your door open it wasn't a powerplay, or whatever you think, I just thought you having the cat to cuddle at night would make you happy. That's all."
"I don't have to keep my door open at night?" Hitoshi whispers and Aizawa frowns at him.
"Is that a source of stress for you?"
Understatement of the year, Hitoshi desperately thinks because it's not as if he slept two consecutive hours with the door open yet.
"You don't have to keep the door open," Yamada immediately says and Aizawa frowns.
"But you like having Firefly with you?"
"I do," Hitoshi admits because some nights, his weight on Hitoshi is the only reason he doesn't have a full on panic attack and if he has to give that up again, even in favour of having the door closed—
"We can install a cat door," Aizawa says and looks at Yamada.
"Oooooh, what a good idea! Sure, we'll go shopping tomorrow."
"A cat door?"
"We'll just cut a space out, here," Aizawa says and points at the door, "and put a little cat door in. So you can close your door and Firefly can still come in. How does that sound?"
"As if you're saying you're going to destroy your apartment for—me?" Hitoshi weakly says and Aizawa huffs.
"It's hardly destroying anything if it helps you," he rebukes and Hitoshi shakes his head.
"I don't—You're supposed to throw me out. You're supposed to hurt me. My time is up, I don't understand!"
"Hitoshi," Aizawa says, very seriously and Hitoshi's gaze immediately snaps to him. "We're not going to do that. Any of that. And your time is not up. Your time here has barely started. You're stuck with us for as long as you want, or until one hundred twenty years are up. That's just how this goes. I marked it bright red. You saw. So that's the time-line we're going to stick to."
"We want you here, Hitoshi. We don't want to kick you out or hurt you. We want to learn about you and your hobbies and what makes you happy and how we can help you feel safe. We're not here to hurt you, kiddo. I know that it must be hard to believe after everything you clearly already went through but you have to trust us, at least a little bit. Let us show you that we want you here."
Hitoshi blinks and processes and goes over the moments that cost him days over and over again, and—maybe they are right. Aizawa hadn't looked angry. Yamada hadn't given any indication that he was disappointed.
They might be right. They might also be lying to Hitoshi.
It happened before and it could always happen again but then again—Aizawa printed out that calendar page for a reason, and he made it as ridiculous as possible so there was no fucking way any of them would still be alive by that point and if he was being honest about that—
"A cat door might be nice," Hitoshi carefully says because it would help.
It would help him to be able to close his door at night and still have Firefly there. It would help him to see if they were true to their word. It would help him to know they weren't just making empty promises.
"Alright. Shopping tomorrow it is," Yamada excitedly says and Aizawa nods in approval.
"Good. Everything else will come. For now, we're going to make it to Friday and then Saturday and then next week and you'll still be here and we'll work on the rest, okay?" he quietly offers and Hitoshi looks towards his calendar.
It would be nice, to make it to Friday, he thinks.
"Maybe—maybe I can count the days after Friday?" he mutters, more to himself than them, really, but Yamada lights up at the idea.
"We're going to get a board for the living-room," he immediately decides. "We're going to mark the shit out of that one. How many days even are one hundred twenty years?"
"We're going to need more than one board for that," Aizawa says just as Hitoshi says "43.800" and Yamada hums.
"Maybe we can start over every year and count the years separately," he muses and Hitoshi's head is spinning because it really sounds like something he wants to do.
As if he wants to have to count for years to come.
"Sounds like a plan," Aizawa agrees and then carefully pats Hitoshi's knee. "Get ready to count, kid."
It sounds like a threat and a promise and a dare all in one and it might just be the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to him.
Hitoshi can't trust it, not yet, but he thinks he'd like to try.
And with them, he feels like he might be able to.