Chapter Text
Shouta wasn’t sure why villains’ go-to strategy to incapacitate the great Eraserhead was to use heat-inducers—especially when his inner omega was the most dangerous when thrown into the hormonal firestorm that was his heat. Swooning omegas begging for knots only existed in fiction.
Humiliation, the logical part of his mind answered his own question. Fucking an omega hero against his will, what power-tripping nobody wouldn’t want a taste of that?
A stupid one, Shouta thought, kneeing a lackey in the stomach and using his capture weapon to whip him across the room. Unease slid down his back, the growing chill even harder to ignore the more his skin began to warm. None of these villains were particularly competent, but there were so many of them.
Shouta specialized in stealthy hit-and-runs. Facing a hoard of villains all aiming to press him down and force his legs spread was not something he could handle long-term.
Escape, Shouta immediately decided, prioritizing his own health over the last bit of intel he needed to take down this goddamn trafficking ring. While the knife-sharp edge of his instincts gave him a faster reaction time, the buzzing in his head and the sweat trailing down his neck reflected his waning judgement.
Trying to put enough space between him and the hoard was easier said than done, though. At least a few of this bastards seemed to have brains. They peeled off from the pack and began blocking all escape routes, and the sheer volume of villains was enough that even with their loss Shouta was having trouble keeping away.
A hand grabbed his leg and yanked him from his perch atop some warehouse containers. He went crashing down to the floor, knocking crates of syringes and frothing villains alike, and barely had time to breathe before a larger hand was grabbing him by the throat and pinning him down.
“You’ve been a troublesome little bitch, ain’t ya, Eraserhead?” one of the ring’s higher-ranked commanders bore down on him with his rancid alpha stink. Shouta, whose hate for alpha scents was legendary, snarled back in warning.
He’d been in a steady relationship for more than a decade: a somewhat sappy high school romance with a beta whose scent never failed to soothe his fraying nerves. He was mated. He was a mother. Yet dealing with alpha shitheads invading his space threw his psyche right back to before he had Hizashi, Hitoshi, the pain of missed opportunities and chances lost.
His growing panic threatened to overwhelm him completely. No, he couldn’t let this damn heat cloud his judgement, not when there were at least three avenues he could think of to get his way out of this mess—
Blood dripped down the man's hand and onto Shouta's throat.
Shouta barely registered the sudden, slackened grip on his neck before the screams started. Blood splattered the floor, wall, crates as entire swathes of villains were sliced into pieces. The alpha who’d pinned him down was screaming hysterically, his arm cut off below the elbow and his legs cut off above the knee. It was as if a great laser had sliced through the warehouse several times, cutting everyone but Shouta in its bloody, unrelenting path.
Shouta threw the disembodied hand off of his neck and scrambled to his knees. The thing mutilating the members of the Rising Tiger trafficking ring was some kind of purple ring of mist, and while Shouta should probably try to stop the blatant murder happening in front of him, he was too busy trying to wrangle his inner omega down so he could think.
“We did what you wanted!” one of the remaining living members was shrieking at the mist. “We planted the evidence on those social workers, fooled the rest of those squealing pigs—but that bitch over there's been on our ass for weeks! Getting our payback's got nothing to do with you! Heroes are just—"
“No,” the mist said, and Shouta was cognizant enough to realize the mist wasn’t just a quirk. It was the man himself. The villain that had apparently orchestrated the cover-up Shouta and a team of investigators had been chasing for the last two months. “Not this one.”
The mist man’s arm shot out, melting into the same purple mist curling around Shouta’s legs. It formed a portal that swallowed up the man’s head.
In a split second, the portal snapped shut and the man’s decapitated body slumped over in a pool of blood.
Shouta froze when the man turned to face him, only indicated by the glowing yellow eyes illuminating what must have been the mist man’s face. All other features were obscured completely.
Shouta’s gaze flickered to the exit behind the man. He had no desire to figure out what his apparent savior meant by ‘not this one;’ not when the exact danger of his quirk lay strewn about in red puddles around him. The man stepped closer. His wing-tipped shoes and neatly tailored suit—both worth more than a month of Shouta’s wages—were splattered with blood, and Shouta steeled himself.
The man’s portals were lightning fast. Shouta just had to be faster in canceling out his quirk. The trickiest part would be keeping line-of-sight when he ran past him towards the door. Any break in his vision and the man would just warp him right back to where he’d started.
The man was only a few meters away when Shouta decided to make his move.
Nothing happened.
Pure, unadulterated panic gripped Shouta’s heart when he saw his traitorous arms simply tremble instead of snapping out his capture weapon as intended. His mind raced faster than his body: why weren’t his limbs obeying him? Was there someone else here with a paralyzing quirk? Why were his instincts suddenly docile and quiet when every other time in his life an alpha coming close would send them haywire?
And this new villain was an alpha. It had been hard to suss out beneath that mist, like trying to pick out a scent through heavy fog, but this close? This close, Shouta could smell him.
His mind was still panicking.
Move, he screamed at his legs. Move, dammit! Hizashi and Toshi—they’re waiting for you at home, you have to get up! Toshi’s only nine, he’s too damn young to lose his mother, so move!
It wasn’t until the mist man reached out and cupped his cheek that his body finally snapped his brain out of its thought spiral.
There was a hand beneath that fog. A physical body. Of course there was a physical body. Mist couldn’t produce the same pheromones as a human body can, and Shouta had already figured out the villain was an alpha a breath ago—
“Shouta,” the mist man said, and Shouta’s body trembled.
Because no matter what Shouta’s logical mind was screaming at him; no matter what his eyes were seeing or his brain was processing; no matter the impossible circumstances given the mist, the quirk, the fact that he died more than a decade ago—
There was only ever one alpha Shouta’s instincts had ever accepted. It had recognized him instantly even when Shouta himself did not.
“Oboro?” Shouta whispered, losing the last of his rationality and tilting into the mist man’s embrace.
Despite the chill of mist rolling across his skin, the alpha’s broad chest beneath his cheek held a hint of warmth. He felt more than saw the man—Oboro? It couldn’t be Oboro, Oboro was dead—carefully pick him up in his arms and tuck Shouta’s bloodstained head beneath his chin. Felt the world go sideways in a stomach-lurching fit of vertigo, until they were in a dimly lit bedroom Shouta’s greater brain registered as some sort of safe house.
It was the last rational thought he had in a while, especially when Oboro—not, it wasn’t him—unbuttoned his waistcoat and dress shirt and the dizzyingly familiar scent of ozone washed over Shouta. He couldn’t help the sob that slipped from his throat, the grief bubbling to the surface. He never thought he’d breathe in that scent ever again.
Not even Oboro’s childhood belongings in his home retained his scent after thirteen years sitting stale like a mausoleum, and it was one thing he knew he missed far more than Hizashi did by the nature of their dynamics. Not that Hizashi didn’t miss Oboro too. God, of course he did—he’d loved Oboro so much, yet he wasn’t allowed to openly grieve for him like Shouta had.
An omega mourning over his alpha was expected and tragic; a beta doing so was a little less acceptable. A little too 'improper.' Shouta didn’t give a shit, but Hizashi’s always toed the line of appeasing the public while maintaining his morality. It was painful to see, because for all his high school insecurities, Hizashi never pushed Oboro away whenever the alpha circled back for him with his radiant, sunshine smile.
So yes, Hizashi missed Oboro wholeheartedly, pure and without instinctual interference in a way only a beta could.
But Shouta’s inner omega missed Oboro on an entirely different level: visceral, profane, and out of his super ego’s control. It was a balancing act every day, wrestling between his disaster omega instincts and his level-headed higher brain functions.
It just so happened that today—today, the heat blazing under his skin tilted the scales in his instincts’ favor.
When the villain pressed him into the bed, those alien-looking yellow eyes glowing eerily in the dark room, Shouta didn’t fight back.
--
(Oboro never saw Hizashi as competition for Shouta’s heart.
Not because he thought his win was a sure thing, but because Hizashi belonged to him too. Despite Shouta being the socially inept one and Hizashi the social butterfly, this was one thing the omega actually understood better than Hizashi did.
“His insecurity’s getting in the way,” Shouta muttered once, leaning into Oboro’s side and resting his head on the alpha’s shoulder. “He’s so afraid of losing me, he doesn’t realize he’s afraid of losing you too.”
Because it was in the moments Hizashi relaxed completely—like they were first-years again, before the whispers and gossip wondering when Oboro would finally ask Shouta out began wearing on the beta’s self-esteem—when his love shown the brightest. He’d drape his arms around Shouta’s shoulders while exchanging jokes with Oboro, both their laughs as infectious as they were endearing. He’d press kisses to Shouta’s hair and cheek but shied away from the omega’s mouth, like he wasn’t allowed.
“C'mere, songbird,” Oboro would intervene, because Oboro had absolutely no shame and was perfectly happy kissing them both.
He’d cup Hizashi’s cheek with a hand—his signature move, made all the better by the fact that he was so much bigger than both of them—and press his lips to Hizashi’s with a smile. The beta would kiss back with all the frustration of not allowing himself to kiss Shouta, his precious best friend from middle school whom he refused to lose no matter what. He'd slowly ease back into the simple joy of kissing Oboro though, melting in the alpha’s arms until his affection for the boy bled through.
Oboro would turn and kiss Shouta next. He'd always start with Hizashi’s kiss, the one he would have given Shouta if he’d just do it; then ease back into his own, more aggressive style once done. Oboro was adoringly gentle with Hizashi but far rougher with Shouta. It was what Shouta’s inner omega needed, especially when no other alpha was allowed anywhere close. Like he was testing Oboro over and over again to prove himself worthy of Shouta’s regard.
They’d never really moved past making out before that disastrous day the three of them suddenly became two. Oboro had let them go at their own pace, and why shouldn’t he? Hizashi needed to ease into his own self-confidence; Shouta needed to better accept his own body’s wants and desires.
“There’s no rush, y’know?” the alpha had laughed when Shouta snapped at him one day, wondering why the hell he didn’t just push like all other alphas did. “You and me and Zashi, we’re all gonna be together for a long, long time. So I don’t mind going slow. I know I’ve got a reputation for recklessness, but I can be patient too, y’know! Ah, but don’t keep me waiting too long,” Oboro winked, and Shouta elbowed him lightly in the gut. The alpha wheezed but didn’t drop his smile. “I’m an alpha with alpha needs, and the two of you are gorgeous.”
“Sweet talker,” Shouta elbowed him again but didn’t fight when Oboro wrapped an arm around his waist and tugged him into his side. He’d been doing that more lately: touching and scent-marking and glancing at Shouta from the edge of his eye in desire.
It gave Shouta goosebumps, but not in fear. In anticipation.
Until suddenly, he was gone.)
--
Shouta would never know what it’d be like, fulfilling that yearning desire. Not with Oboro, at least.
It started with Hizashi finally giving Shouta kisses himself without Oboro as a willing intermediary, months after their grief began scabbing over and Shouta stopped self-destructing enough to stay still.
Hizashi was as sweet on Shouta as Oboro had been on Hizashi. He was a safe harbor in the raging storm that were Shouta’s instincts, someone whom the omega trusted his life and body implicitly. He was calm and reliable and oh-so-loving whenever he and Shouta drove up to the Yamada’s holiday cabin for Shouta’s annual heat.
Oboro was none of those things, and yet he was still somehow exactly what Shouta needed. The cool mist curling between them did nothing to quell the sheer searing heat of Oboro on top of him, inside him, arms caging Shouta in as he fucked him into the mattress hard enough for the frame to shake.
Shouta should have been scared out of his mind. Oboro had pressed him face-down into the bedsheets and yanked down his pants just enough to give him access. A few short probes of his fingers later and suddenly the alpha was pushing in raw and wholly unprepared.
He should be scared, but he wasn’t.
It didn’t hurt nearly as much as it should have, not with the induced heat running through his veins and his inner omega completely pliant beneath the only alpha they’d ever acknowledged as theirs. Not even the somewhat sickening disconnect of Shouta’s mind and instincts—his brain hadn’t yet ruled out the presence of a quirk, though no illusory quirk had ever broken through his instincts like this before—could stop him from keening for Oboro to fuck him harder. To really pin him down, hard enough he couldn’t even squirm; to bite down on his shoulder hard enough to bleed, because despite the faint urge to ask the alpha to bite over Hizashi’s mating mark, Shouta wasn’t that far gone just yet, so he had something of this bizarre encounter to remember him by.
To finally knot him the way Oboro’s gaze had promised he would so, so many years ago.
Fingers dug into the flesh of Shouta’s sharp hips. The heavy breath and tickling roll of mist ghosted his nape. The possessive curve of the alpha’s free hand tucked under his shirt and splayed across the bare skin of his sternum. It was all so wrong but it felt so right. His inner omega was ecstatic in a way it had never been before, and the betrayal of it all had tears stinging at the corners of Shouta’s eyes.
Shouta had never been knotted before, having only gone to bed with Hizashi. He’d never wanted to be knotted since, not after Oboro’s death, but between the alpha’s unmistakable scent and his own body’s insistence that This is Oboro, it’s Oboro fucking you through your heat like you’d always wanted, Oboro is here, their alpha is here, he had half a mind to beg for it.
“Shouta,” Oboro groaned, forehead pressing into the omega’s back as his thrusts began to stagger off-rhythm, so close to coming Shouta could practically taste it. His voice was all wrong, too deep compared to the cheerful tenor of a younger Oboro’s voice, but still—still, his instincts sang. “Shou, god—look at you, you’re gorgeous—”
“Oboro,” Shouta panted into the bedsheets, twisting a little as he tried desperately not to beg. But some sick trick via quirk or not, he was too deep into it to risk ‘Oboro’ coming without knotting him completely. His inner omega would go into a panicked frenzy if that happened. “’Boro please.”
“S'alright, Shouta.” Oboro’s hand holding him up pressed them closer, Shouta’s back to Oboro’s cold-but-not-cold front. “I promise, I will take care of you.”
Shouta barely registered the strange change in speech pattern before the alpha was manhandling him into a position that had his logical mind recoiling in humiliation. Chest to the bed, legs tucked beneath him, ass raised: a classic presenting position not even Hizashi got to put Shouta into without a decent fight. But letting Oboro use the new position to snap his hips forward finally gave Shouta what he’d been aching for since breathing in his familiar scent. Purple mist spilled onto the bed and curled around the two of them when Oboro shuddered with orgasm.
The knot stretching him open was both completely foreign and blindingly right—not because he was an omega and naturally craved knots, his sex life until now was perfectly fine thank you—but because it was Oboro. Who was an alpha.
Who Shouta had always expected to knot him one day.
The current satisfaction of finally getting what he thought he'd never have had him trembling like a leaf. Oboro—or whoever was masquerading as him, Shouta reminded himself—noticed immediately and gently maneuvered them onto their sides to wait out the tie.
He didn’t fight when the alpha palmed Shouta’s neglected cock and began stroking it with easy, loose movements. He didn’t fight when he felt lips kissing his shoulder, jaw, cheek; when Oboro’s hand twisted around the head of his cock in a way that had always made Shouta see stars. He certainly didn't fight when he finally came and felt Oboro’s breath hitch as his insides clenched in time with his climax.
“It’s alright, kitten,” Oboro’s voice washed over him. It made Shouta cry harder, because Hizashi may love using all manner of generic endearments—sweetheart, love, darling—but Oboro was the only one shameless enough to use specific pet names. Songbird for Hizashi, kitten for Shouta. Would an imposter even know to include such a detail? Or was the quirk pulling from Shouta’s own memories, torturing him with everything he’d given up on? “It’s alright, Shouta, you’re safe here. I promise you.”
It was foolish of him to relax at those words, but Shouta was exhausted from a day of physical and emotional turmoil.
His heats often lasted for four days total, and if he was going to be spending those four days right here in this bed with this purple mist villain… well. He may as well fall into instincts’ insistence that this was Oboro.
Short of the heroes locating him in the interim, it was all that he could do.
--
Eraserhead was found four days after the failed infiltration operation at the Rising Tiger’s warehouse headquarters resulted in his disappearance. He stood in front of his apartment in his freshly laundered hero costume sans capture weapon, his skin and hair scrubbed clean and stubble shaven clean off.
Hizashi, who’d reviewed the information on the case with Tsukauchi and knew full well what kind of drug Shouta had been injected with, flung his arms around his mate.
“Shouta, oh my god, you’re alive, you’re alive—” Because that had been his greatest fear, that they’d eventually come across the omega’s battered and violated body floating somewhere in the bay. While he would have preferred Shouta returned to their family unharmed, he’d take Shouta in any way as long as he came home alive. Torture and rape and beatings can be healed from; death could not. “The police—no, first we should take you to the hospital—”
“Hizashi,” Shouta’s grip on his forearm was tight.
“I know we’re not going to find DNA,” Hizashi said hotly. Cleaned clothes and scrubbed body—that was evidence of an intelligent perp and one of the hallmarks of a difficult sexual assault case. He wasn’t stupid.
An ambush and forcible injection of a heat inducer could only mean one thing, even if the remaining details of the crime scene puzzled everyone involved. How did they corner Eraserhead? Was there a traitor amongst the heroes? The warehouse had been painted with blood, the bodies of the Rising Tiger members strewn about in pieces like the climax of a macabre horror show—signs of infighting? A rival gang?
No footprints, blood trail, receipts or any other sign of Shouta being taken to a second location—the presence of a teleporter?
Hizashi said, “But I don’t care about that, I care about any injuries you’ve sustained—”
“Hizashi,” Shouta repeated, both hands grabbing onto the beta’s arm. Hizashi’s mouth clicked shut. The expression Shouta’s face had Hizashi’s heart dropping like a rock into his stomach. He hadn’t seen that mix of despair and fear in more than a decade. The only subject that would ever bring Shouta so low was—“It was Oboro.”
“What,” Hizashi whispered, then rushed to catch his mate when Shouta's knees buckled.
“It was—Oboro was—” Shouta sobbed into Hizashi’s chest. The beta curled an arm around him protectively and guided them inside and away from the eyes of passersby. Not into their apartment just yet, not when Shouta would likely panic further at the idea of their son seeing him in this state. Hitoshi was smarter than his own good and remarkably mature for his age, but he was only nine.
He was a nine-year old who’d spent the last few days terrified out of his mind that his mother would not be coming home; he was a nine-year old that needed to see Shouta alive and okay, not weeping inconsolably in Hizashi’s arms.
“Okay,” Hizashi said, heart in his throat. He cradled his mate to his chest. “You’re okay, Shou. You’re safe.”
Later, after Shouta was driven to the police station to give his report at his own insistence—“Before I can forget, Hizashi, there’s a possibility of a quirk messing with my mind”—and then to the hero’s ward of the local hospital to have a rape kit run and a check-up done, Tsukauchi took Hizashi aside with his lips set in a grim line.
“It’s like we thought: no evidence of trace DNA left behind on or inside of him,” the officer said in a clinical tone, like they weren’t talking about Hizashi’s mate and the horrors he must have endured the last few days. “The good news is, he isn’t seriously injured otherwise. In cases like these, omegas can sometimes break their own bones trying to escape, and that can do way more harm than good in the long run.”
“Are you implying something, officer?” Hizashi narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t in the mood to entertain strangers’ judgmental conclusions, especially not over how hard Shouta should or shouldn’t have fought. “He’s alive and able to give you a statement.”
The other beta raised his hands in apology. “Of course, Eraserhead coming back alive is better than we could have hoped for. But Yamada, it wasn’t the Rising Tigers that did this. The case—the case is being given to another team to be worked on because of that.”
“What,” Hizashi whirled on him.
“Neither you nor Eraser will be allowed to continue investigating—”
“Some bastard raped my mate and you—”
“—due to a conflict of interest—”
Hizashi slammed his fist against the wall. The detective snapped his mouth shut.
“Tsukauchi, I’m not just angry at what he did to Shouta. I’m angry because he fucked with Shouta’s head. He used our alpha against him, and any bastard low enough to drag Oboro’s memory through the mud deserves to be eviscerated and left to die,” Hizashi forced through clenched teeth. He didn’t want a police officer of all people to see him undone, but he needed to impress upon him how important this was. “You are not stopping me from tracking him down. Not in a case an important as this.”
Tsukauchi was silent for a long moment. Finally, he sighed and laced his fingers in front of him in weary resignation.
“There is one more way we can try and identify him,” Tsukauchi said, looking down at the floor and not at Hizashi’s face. It took the beta only two beats to realize what the detective was getting at. He felt his own face drain of color. “But that’s a decision—it’s something you and Eraserhead have to discuss together. I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be for the two of you, but it’s—it’s something I have to bring up as an option.”
“Is that what you want us to do,” Hizashi said. Because induced or not, heats were the only times an omega could conceive. Shouta only took birth control the month before his planned heats so—
“No,” Tsukauchi said softly at first. Then, with more conviction: “No, it's your decision. Whatever you choose, we’ll be able to test the DNA eventually. The only difference is time. For whatever it’s worth to you, I don’t think this villain is going to come back for Aizawa. He wouldn’t have returned him at all if that was the case, so... so you have time.”
It wasn’t worth a lot, but neither Tsukauchi nor Hizashi were naïve enough to think so.
Raging against the unfair nature of the world was something Hizashi had outgrown when he was seventeen. The world wasn’t fair. He’d watched the flames spewing out of the crematorium for hours and hours, until Oboro’s body was nothing but dust in an urn set carefully amongst the others at the Shirakumo family grave. Shouta had been physically incapable of attending: his instincts were so unable to cope with what was happening that facing Oboro’s death shut him right down. Nemuri and Tensei had their hands full trying to keep the omega from spiraling further.
So it was Hizashi who stood witness for the both of them at Oboro’s funeral. Not because his heart was less broken than Shouta’s—damn their classmates for implying so, damn them for underestimating a beta’s capacity for love—but because Oboro had been his alpha too.
Oboro would never laugh at Hizashi’s jokes again. He’d never cup Hizashi’s cheek and whisper “Songbird” into his ear ever again, and this was something Hizashi had come to accept years and years ago so—
Using Oboro’s memory against Shouta was unforgiveable. When Hizashi got his hands on the monster who did this to his mate, there would be nothing left to throw into Tartarus after exacting his revenge.
--
“I can’t,” Shouta said hoarsely, curled into a ball on the hospital bed and looking blankly past the blacked-out windows. His voice sounded far, far away. “I can’t. My instincts won’t let me.”
“Shou…” Hizashi squeezed the omega’s hand.
“I know it’s not his,” Shouta said, eyes still vacant. He was shaking—not in fear, but in frustration. Hizashi recognized the way Shouta dealt with complicated and conflicting emotions; the omega had been doing so for years, even before they’d met in middle school. Most omegas came to terms with their own instincts quickly after they presented. Shouta never did. Every day was a battle between instinct and logic, and while Shouta had learned to manage the conflict to function in everyday life, it had never gone away. “I know, but my instincts—the chance it is his too strong. I can’t—if it’s his, I can’t.”
From everything Shouta had described, their villain was nothing like Oboro: a man made of purple mist and eerie yellow eyes, with a sort of teleportation quirk capable of cleaving a man in two. A man with a deep voice and overly formal speech pattern, dressed in a suit their Oboro would have died rather than squeeze himself into. A man who, despite the facts laid out before them, Shouta’s traitorous omega instincts insisted was Oboro with every fiber of their being.
The idea of Shouta letting that man’s child grow inside of him had Hizashi sick to his stomach. But the idea of forcing an unwilling Shouta to abort it—abort it so Tsukauchi could test its DNA as soon as possible, as if the fetus was nothing more than evidence—had Hizashi feeling even sicker.
Shouta had never wanted kids. Hitoshi had also been a heat-induced accident, one Hizashi was grateful thousands of times over because his son was an absolute treasure. But if Shouta had chosen to abort him instead, Hizashi would have understood. His love for children did not supersede Shouta’s unwillingness to give up his body for such a long period of time.
And it certainly didn’t supersede his love for his mate—the only one he had left alive, never to be taken for granted ever again.
Choosing to keep the child when every inch of his logical mind was screaming at him to abort it must be far more painful for Shouta than Hizashi. The trembling fear and frustration of his mate’s shivering made that clear.
“Sorry,” the omega whispered under his breath. He ducked his head so his hair hid his face. “I’m sorry, ‘Zashi, I’m sorry I can’t—"
“Shouta,” Hizashi said, squeezing his hand tighter. “Oh darling, you don’t have to feel ashamed.”
Shouta’s shivering increased.
“I love you,” Hizashi released his hand so he could pull Shouta to his chest. He buried his nose into the omega’s locks and forced his own trembling heart to calm. “I love you no matter what. You think a little thing like this’ll bother me? I love kids. Kids are great, I’d look after a dozen kids as long as they’re yours. I just want you to be happy, sweetheart. I don’t care if they’re not mine. Hell, Hitoshi barely takes after me as it is. He’s like a mini-you, no Yamada genes at all, and I love him to bits anyway.”
“Hitoshi’s definitely yours,” Shouta snorted, voice still shaky but a little lighter than before. Hizashi internally cheered. “No matter how you spin it, asexual reproduction just isn’t possible.”
“Darn, and here I hoped I’d get to spoil a bunch of Shouta clones for the rest of my life.”
“Hizashi,” Shouta said, curling closer into the beta’s embrace. Hizashi’s voice stuttered in his chest. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? I don’t want—it’s not fair to you, and it wouldn’t be fair for the child if—”
“Life isn’t fair, kitten,” Hizashi said softly, feeling Shouta freeze a little at the long-forgotten nickname. Oboro had loved his animal-specific pet names. “And they’ll be yours. No matter what, they’ll be yours, Shouta.”
And Hizashi would love anyone with a piece of Shouta inside of them.
--
Shouta’s greater concern should be with Hitoshi, not Hizashi.
Hizashi was an adult with a mature outlook and healthy communication skills. Hitoshi was a nine-year old only child who’d never had to share his parents’ attention with anyone other than their cats his entire life.
The boy had been very quiet when, a week after Shouta returned home and when Hitoshi stopped constantly gluing himself to his mother’s side every waking moment, Hizashi sat him down at the kitchen table alone.
Shouta’s omega presence was still too volatile to discuss the matter without betraying his distress. Hitoshi needed confidence and stability, and Hizashi’s mild beta presence made him the perfect shield between their son’s wellbeing and Shouta’s.
“Will… will Mom still have time to train me to be a hero?” was all Hitoshi said, picking at his shirt and squeezing their fattest cat in his arms. Hizashi’s heart broke just a little at the resignation in his voice.
Hitoshi may be an only child, but both Hizashi and Shouta were workaholics who spent less time home than their son would have liked. Hitoshi had been looking forward to Shouta taking patrols off to start learning basic self-defense (marketed to him as 'hero training' because all nine-year olds wanted to be heroes.)
Hitoshi thinking they’d give up his training instead of their work hours for the new baby was heartbreaking.
“Of course he will, Mini Mic,” Hizashi said, leaning forward and ruffling Hitoshi’s wild purple hair. The boy made a scrunched-up, unimpressed face, the same kind of expression Shouta wore when he smelled something foul. “The first few months’ll be hard, and he may be out of commission for a while. But Shouta’s not going to give your time up for the baby’s. He can afford to take more patrols off, y’know—you think I can’t feed you guys and cats with my three jobs alone?”
“So you’re going to take less time off?” Hitoshi said, zeroing in on Hizashi’s admission. It startled him. Hitoshi had always preferred Shouta’s company over Hizashi’s, but he should have expected his son to worry about the time he'd have with his father too.
“I’ll take time off patrol too,” Hizashi said gently. Too gently, what with the way Hitoshi’s face flushed and he glanced away at the wall in embarrassment. “And if worse comes to worse, you can sit with me at the radio booth if your mother needs time to himself, ya dig? We won’t love you any less, Toshi. You won’t be able to get rid of us that easily.”
“Dad,” Hitoshi whined when Hizashi gave into impulse and yanked his chair forward to give the boy a full-body hug. Hitoshi squirmed in an ineffective attempt to escape his father’s mortifying display of affection. Just like his mother, this one. “Leggo, I’m not a baby!”
“You’re always gonna be my baby,” Hizashi squished him harder. Hitoshi let out a little squawk of indignation. “You can be sixty with grandkids of your own, and you’ll still be my purpley baby boy.”
“Stooooop!”
Even if Hitoshi took after Shouta in both appearance and personality, his quirk gave away Hizashi’s own genetic influence through his voice. Which begged the question of the new child’s possible quirk. Hizashi wasn’t sure what reality he preferred: if they inherited Erasure without any influence from their father’s genes; if they possessed some kind of teleportation quirk, putting the final nail in the coffin that was the villain’s identity; or, as impossible as it was, if their quirk had something to do with clouds.
Neither he nor Shouta had discussed how they’d present the newest addition of their family to the world. The easiest solution would be to pass it off as his own. It wasn’t anyone else’s business what had happened to Shouta, after all.
Taking Hitoshi into account too, it was perhaps the kindest option.
--
Erasure, Hizashi begged the gods late at night, fresh awake from a nightmare featuring Shouta’s lifeless eyes staring up at him from the bottom of a lake. The omega himself just grunted when Hizashi had turned and clutched him tightly in reassurance that his mate was alive. He was home. Whatever the future held, at least Shouta was still here by his side and not burning to ashes in a crematorium.
Not again.
Please, let them have Erasure. It’ll make things so much easier, give our family some peace. It’s the least the universe could do.
But, as Hizashi had long figured out, the world wasn’t fair. And it certainly wasn’t willing to let them off easy.
--
“Whoever this guy is, he’s like a ghost,” Nemuri said, flipping through the files she’d snuck out of the office and spread onto Hizashi’s radio station table.
Being a twilight hero made Midnight less of a stickler for rules than the beacons of virtue like All Might. That, and it would put Tsukauchi into a significantly worse position if Hizashi tried hacking into the investigation’s files another way.
She continued, “There isn’t a record of anyone with the sort of portal quirk Shouta described. There’s little to no evidence he was there at all—not even the Rising Tiger members we captured are willing to corroborate Shouta’s account. Either because they have no idea what we’re talking about, or whoever this is has scared them too shitless to talk.”
Nemuri tapped her bottom lip, eyes dark. She’d been a little less agreeable over Shouta’s decision to keep the baby—so disagreeable she and Shouta had gotten into an hour-long screaming match culminating in Nemuri breaking down into tears over Oboro’s scrapbook and fleeing into the night.
Harsh words had been said, and neither had apologized to the other. Hizashi wished he could act angry on Shouta’s account, but the selfish part of himself was guiltily grateful Nemuri had the freedom to say everything he wasn’t allowed to.
(“Oboro is dead! He’s dead, and if you’re not going to accept that and treat the child as they are, then you have no business bringing it into the world in the first place!” Nemuri had shouted, moments before Shouta had punched her across the face. The alpha woman hadn’t been able to retaliate in kind, not with Shouta being six months pregnant—but she didn’t need her fists when she had her words.)
“The Rising Tigers had injected Shouta with the heat inducer,” Nemuri continued, flipping to the toxicology report they’d run on Shouta the moment he’d been wrestled into a hospital bed. “So it was the traffickers who’d intended to… take advantage of him. Looking at the scene we found, our villain killed them all before they could act, and then took Shouta for himself.” She tapped her lip again. “Why would he even bother? Why would a rival ring care about an omega some lower-ranked Rising Tiger goons were tormenting, to the point where he’d slaughter them all?”
“You think the villain stepped in specifically because it was Shouta,” Hizashi said.
“They sacrificed whatever business connection they had with the Rising Tigers just for him,” Nemuri said. “And if he knew of Shouta and wanted him beforehand… it’s possible he would have known his past with Oboro.”
Hizashi’s knuckles bled white with how hard he was clenching his hands.
“So it was opportunistic,” he said, carefully controlling the anger in his voice. “He’d been keeping an eye on Shouta for a while, and when he saw the chance to use his knowledge of us to his advantage, he took it.”
“Him giving Shouta back without harming or killing him is both for and against the theory,” Nemuri said. She shuffled more papers. “He wouldn’t kill him if he had some kind of stalker-love delusion, but why wouldn’t he just keep Shouta forever? Why give him back?”
That was an easy question. “Because whatever quirk he was using to convince Shouta he was Oboro wouldn’t have worked forever. He obviously wanted Shouta pliant. Once it wore off, Shou would fight tooth and nail to free himself and god knows how much damage he could do if that happened.”
“Hmm,” Nemuri shut the folder and leaned back, eyes closed. There were circles under her eyes—for all her casual posturing, their friend was running herself ragged to chase down Shouta’s misty captor. “So our Eraser’s caught the eye of a stalker from some powerful organization, huh?
Hizashi blinked. “What makes you say that?”
A pause.
Nemuri finally opened her eyes and looked across the table at Hizashi. Her entire countenance reeked with weariness. “All investigation into this guy’s affiliation is being caught up in bureaucratic red tape, Hizashi. Even Tsukauchi himself is acting tight-lipped regarding whoever's pulling this villain's strings.” Hizashi opened his mouth, but Nemuri continued, “Do you remember what I said about the Rising Tigers members we caught and interrogated about the guy? Two of them were found dead in their cells the next morning. They’d taken their own lives, Hizashi. Whoever we’re dealing with is above our paygrade. Hell, he’s probably above Tsukauchi’s paygrade.”
She finally sat forward and placed her hand over Hizashi’s. In a soft, guilty voice, she said, “I’m sorry, ‘Zashi. Tsukauchi’s bosses are already calling for us to file the case away now that Shouta’s back. It’s bullshit, but whatever’s rotten here is too much for us right now. I’ll keep digging on my own time, but Hizashi please. Please take care of yourself. You’ve got Shouta and Hitoshi and the baby on the way to worry about; don’t go looking down a rabbit hole that’ll kill you when your family needs you the most.”
“It can kill you too,” Hizashi argued back. “I don’t—we can’t lose you too, Nemuri. I know Shouta’s mad at you, but you don’t need to put your neck on the line just to make it up to him.”
Nemuri threw her head back and laughed. “I’m not investigating for Shouta! You think I’m not used to his little tantrums by now? Please!” Her expression sobered. “No, Hizashi, I’m doing this for Oboro. He was my friend, too. And you know me—I’m careful and subtle when I want to be. I know when to push my luck and when to back off. I’m not looking to get myself silenced either, not when I’ve still got so much youthful vigor to give to the world.”
She gathered the folders and slid them back into her purse with a wink. “So let Big Sis Nemuri take care of this for now, okay?”
--
Shouta didn’t react much when word of the investigation closing reached his ears a few weeks later. Then again, he’d never really been interested in figuring out what villain had succeeded in masquerading as their alpha during his omega instincts’ most vulnerable time.
“If Oboro’s alive,” Shouta whispered to him in the dark at night, when the two of them drifted between the sleeping world and the awake. “If he’s alive, then what happened to him? What did they do to him?”
“Nothing,” Hizashi whispered back. “Oboro’s dead, Shou.”
“Are you sure?” Shouta said. “Are you really sure?”
If he wasn’t, he would have contacted the Shirakumos for a copy of Oboro’s death certificate. He would have looked into the logistics of Oboro’s death, from his body being recovered beneath the rubble to his transport to the morgue for autopsy.
But Hizashi wasn’t going to dredge up even more painful memories than he had to, not when the easiest solution lay in investigating the imposter instead.
Because if Oboro wasn’t dead, then what Shouta had said was right: what the hell had they put him through, to turn their alpha into that?