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Kirishima stood staring at his home office, standing at the door, looking at the desk at the window, the curtains that he had chosen because he liked the way they coloured the morning light. The armchair that he had spent one too many nights falling asleep in whilst he tried to finish his reports. The rug that he’d spilled one too many cups of coffee on…
And — not for the first time — his heart hurt.
The feeling had been growing slowly. At first it was a passing daydream, wondering what it might be like for there to be someone else in that room. A teeny pair of feet in Crimson Riot socks. A bubbling tiny laugh in the early hours when the light from the sunrise hit a mobile just right.
After a few months it was all he could think about every time he passed the room.
A cradle where his desk should be.
A changing table tucked into a corner.
Shinsou sitting in the too comfortable chair with a tiny bundle in his arms, smiling with those perfect tired eyes that he had fallen so easily in love with.
It was such a silly thing to want. But…
“Ei?”
The voice startled him, making him whirl around, and sending yet another almost full mug of coffee shattering on the ground.
“You were really out of it.” Shinsou laughed, taking a step back from the shards of porcelain. “What are you thinking about?”
Nothing.
Everything.
“I should get a towel.”
“Ei.”
“It’s…”
Slim fingers reached out to tangle up with his, the wedding bands that they had chosen together catching the light of that soft morning sun and bringing with it a lump to his throat. They’d never talked about it. In all the years that they’d been dating there hadn’t been time to think about much other than the job that they had committed themselves so wholly to.
They graduated and immediately were thrust out into the world as pro heroes. Him in the day, running side by side with so many of his classmates in the effort to rebuild the communities that had been so badly damaged by the war that they all carried scars from. Shinsou at night, sneaking through the shadows as the best intelligence hero that the country had ever seen even before they’d completed their first year.
Any spare time was put into being together, building the house that he had come to love almost as much as the man he shared it with. Carving out a little life that they could call their own. There had been weddings and moving parties and ranking parties and through it all the question of what else there was for them was just slowly pushed to the back of his mind.
For the longest time he hadn’t even really wanted to be a parent. There was a lot about being a pro-hero that made it dangerous to have a family. He’d seen it too many times, a villain seeing an opportunity to make a hero suffer and taking it without second thought. Bringing a kid into a world where they would be so vulnerable just because of who their parents were… It almost felt selfish.
But the older they got, the more settled their lives became. The more he was forced to wonder…
Shinsou squeezed his hand, pulling him once again back to himself. “Eijirou?”
They had never talked about it. There never seemed to be a good time. But perhaps…
“I think… I think I want a baby?”
“Oh.”
It wasn’t the response that he’d expected. The puzzled blink, the slight loosening of the hand that was holding his. The flash of pain that it was impossible for Shinsou to hide from the one person in the world who knew him best as it passed behind his eyes.
“It’s fine.” He hurried, leaning in to kiss his husband on the cheek, putting on a smile and shrugging as though that would put things back to the way they were before he’d said those stupid six words. “Just a passing thought. It doesn’t matter. Let me clean this up before it stains.”
“No Ei, wait.” Shinsou tugged him back, that slightly strained tone still in his voice. “I don’t. Shit. Where has this come from?”
Kirishima frowned. “I… my head?”
“No, idiot.” Shinsou managed to grin, shaking his head and rolling his eyes despite the rigidity that had taken root in his shoulders. “I mean, how long have you been thinking about this without telling me?”
“Uh… I don’t know.” Kirishima scratched the back of his head with a hardened finger, trying to put a time on it and finding the answer near impossible to grasp. “A while, I guess? Maybe a year?”
“A year.”
The astounded, near scolding tone was enough to make him shuffle, eyes down at the ground. “I didn’t want to, you know. Bother you with it or…”
“Eijirou Kirishima.” There was that laugh again, lacing through the tension. The squeeze of his hand that brought his eyes back up. “I am your husband. Bothering me with things is in the job description.”
“I know but—”
“But—” An alarm beeped somewhere in another room, and Hitoshi swore under his breath. “I need to report in from last night and something tells me that Aizawa won’t appreciate me being late. But… I want to talk about this, Ei. Alright? I just… I’m going to need a bit of time to digest, that’s all. And then I want to talk, because if this matters to you then it matters to me, too.”
“O-okay.”
He found himself tugged into another kiss and then Shinsou was running down the stairs to the office that he had set up for himself in the corner of their living space. Shutting off the alarm and almost immediately joining a call that — if Kirishima had to guess — would take a good few hours to complete.
With the smallest smile, a bubbling of hope in his chest that things might go well for him after all, he turned back to look into the office. Seeing again in his mind’s eye the cradle that he could build in the corner of the room. The little shelf of hero books and the shimmering ghost of Shinsou sitting in the too comfortable chair with a little bundle in his hands.
In those few moments the weight had lifted from his chest, even as he grabbed a towel from the hamper and daubed the spilled coffee off of the floor.
There was a chance, the smallest chance, that Shinsou would want what he wanted. That they could start a whole new chapter of their lives. If the answer was no, he could live with that. He loved his husband enough to want to be with him over anything else. But… that glimmer of hope was there. and that was enough to have him humming all the way to the shower.
~*~
As soon as he heard the water start to run, Shinsou blurted the words that had been on the edge of his tongue, disturbing whatever it was that Aizawa had been saying in the seconds before he stopped listening.
“Eijirou asked me to have a baby.”
On the other end of the call Aizawa stopped, blinking a few times whilst he adjusted to the change in conversation. “He asked you to what?”
“It was just so out of the blue!” Shinsou groaned. “One minute he was just standing spacing out staring into the office like he does sometimes, and the next he just came out with it.”
“And you said?”
“Well I panicked is what I did, and then he saw that I’d panicked and—”
“Hitoshi.”
“I’m rambling.”
“You are.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be silly. Whilst I might not still be your mentor, I am technically your superior, and this is part of what I’m here for. What I don’t understand is why you have decided to speak to me now about this issue in particular, when we were supposed to be discussing your mission — which is something that we have limited time to debrief on .”
“Well I don’t…” Shinsou looked down at his hands, picking a little at the skin around his thumb, trying not to feel like a scolded child. “I don’t really have anyone else to call.”
“Right.”
“I can—”
“No,” Aizawa sighed, rubbing the space where his eye used to be. A tick that Shinsou had come to recognise as an emotional response, even though his old mentor had grown very good at hiding them. “No, I’m glad that you came to me and I am sure that we can make up the time we’ll lose here tonight. What do you think you want to do?”
He wished that he knew.
There were so many things about Kirishima that he loved. Things that he knew would make his husband an excellent dad. He was compassionate and gentle and goofy with more capacity for love than just about anyone he’d ever known. He would be lying if he said that he hadn’t thought about it, but the thoughts he’d had had never been what he might call… good. At least when it came to his part in the whole affair.
“Hitoshi?”
“I don’t want to hurt him by saying no…”
“But?”
“But… I didn’t exactly get a good head start on being a parent. What with… everything.”
“Hitoshi. You know that you don’t need to have good parents to be a good parent. They are entirely separate things.”
“Yeah,” He knew that his voice was bitter, but there wasn’t much that he could do to stop it. “But having some might be a start.”
“Might it?”
“Well I just…” he snapped his lips close with a huff. “I have no point of reference. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Yes you would.”
Shinsou huffed out a short laugh. “How are you so calm about this?”
“Possibly because I am long past the stage when my spouse tells me out of the blue that I might become a parent.”
“This. It’s just—”
“If you know what not to do, from experience or otherwise, then I am sure you can work out what to do. You’re a smart man, Hitoshi. Being a hero has prepared you for the very worst of the world, and that gives you more insight than you might realise on the best of it.”
“But…” He tried to articulate the thousands of fears that had risen up in him the moment that Kirishima had uttered those words. The memories of a childhood that he had worked so hard to forget, moving from house to house with no certainty about where he would go next, or how long he would stay. The pity and fear from other kids around him when his quirk came in. The places where nobody wanted him at all. There was just so much that could go wrong, and he knew that better than so many other people. “What if…”
“What I can tell you,” Aizawa sighed. “Is that if being a parent is anything like being a teacher it is the hardest thing that you will ever do.” That face that was so often painted with a mask of impassive fatigue broke into the smallest smile. “And one of the most rewarding.”
“And… if I fuck it up?”
“You will. There isn’t a parent on this planet who hasn’t fucked up at least a few times. But that’s also part of the process. And having a husband who adores you and is prepared to work with you through it will certainly help.”
“Says the man who wasn’t a parent.”
“And yet had so many problem children to my name. Now. I believe we should go back to this report for now. Talk to Kirishima, I am certain that between you you’ll find a solution that will work for you both.”
“Yeah. Yeah you’re right. Thanks, Sensei.”
He managed to keep his focus for the rest of the call, even leaning into the kiss that Kirishima pressed to his cheek with a mouthed ‘see you later’ as he made his way out to work.
It wasn’t until later, when he flopped down onto his side of the huge bed, breathing in the smell of Kirishima’s cologne, that the reality of what his husband asked of him really started to set in.
They were heroes.
They had built their whole life around being that and almost nothing else.
How on earth would they cope if everything suddenly changed?
Did he even want it to change at all?
~*~
All through the day Kirishima found himself distracted. He was slower on the field, sloppy enough in a standard arrest to almost put the villain straight through a wall rather than just holding him against it to apply the neutralising cuffs.
So bad was it that by the time he made it back to the agency office he found Fatgum already sitting at his desk, waiting for him.
“Alright kid, what happened?”
“Happened?”
“I’ve known you for nearly a decade, Eijirou. I know when something’s happened.”
It was impossible not to cave under that stare, and Kirishima flushed.
“I just uh. I blurted something out this morning to Hitoshi that I’m not sure that I should have. And at first it felt great to have it out in the open because I’ve been thinking about it for a really long time but…”
“But now you’re not sure if you made a mistake.”
“How—”
“I have been around a little while. And I know a thing or two about how you think.”
“Right.”
“So. What did you blurt?”
He flushed, looking down at his feet. “That I wanted a baby.”
“Well,” There was a smile in Fatgum’s voice that he didn’t work to disguise. “We have quirk users that can do that for you, but you’d need to take some time out of the field and there would be paperwork and—”
“No!” He frantically waved his hands to stop that train of thought before it went too far. He wanted a child but he didn’t think he wanted to do it like that. “I don’t want to have a baby… at least I don’t think I do. Unless Hitoshi wants to be pregnant I guess but I can’t imagine he would because he’d have to give up coffee and… well… I do want a kid. With ‘Toshi. I just. I don’t know if he does and I probably shouldn’t have just said it out of the blue when…”
“Go home.”
“Huh?”
“Go home, and talk to your husband.”
“But I have—”
“Reports can wait. I might not have ever been lucky enough to be a dad, but. Well I understand it, I suppose. In my own way. Go and talk to him. Properly. You can deal with everything else tomorrow.”
“Alright!” Kirishima leapt to his feet, beaming and snatching up his coat, giving Fat a friendly slap on the shoulder as he half ran past him to the door. “You’re the best.”
“And you’re lucky that I’ve just eaten,” Fat chuckled, rubbing his arm a little where he’d hit. “Crazy kid.”
Kirishima ran almost all the way home, heart thumping in his chest from far more than the exercise when he burst through the door, calling out for Shinsou the second that he was out of his shoes.
His husband appeared around the corner, bleary eyed and blinking, hair mussed up from what Kirishima suddenly realised was probably an afternoon nap. “What? Where’s the fire?”
“Oh shit. No fire, no disaster. I just. I was excited to see you.”
“O-kay.”
He swept forwards, pulling Shinsou into his arms and pressing a kiss to the top of his head, breathing him in and finding more comfort than he liked to admit in the simplicity of that embrace. The solid reminder that whatever else happened, they were together.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “About this morning.”
Shinsou leaned back to look up at him, sleep still in his eyes, frowning a little. “Why?”
“Well I just blurted it at you and then left and—”
“And that’s okay.”
“It… is?”
“Look.” Shinsou took his hands, fingers trembling a little when he squeezed. “Does it scare the hell out of me? Yeah. Was it maybe not the best way to start a conversation this big? Also yeah. But… I meant what I said this morning. If it matters to you, Ei, then it matters to me. So I want to talk about it, even if I don’t know what my answer is going to be yet.”
“How was I so lucky to get a husband as wonderful as you?”
“I don’t know, but this wonderful husband hasn’t been awake very long and is very hungry, so maybe we can talk over dinner?”
“Sure. I’ll—”
“If you’re going to suggest that you burn something that would have otherwise been edible,” Shinsou laughed. “Then please don’t. You have many skills, Ei. But cooking isn’t one of them. I think, given the situation, we can order something.”
“Can it be chicken?”
“If you want, yes. We can order chicken.”
Again Kirishima tugged Shinsou to him, lifting him into a kiss that after a moment was returned with every bit of passion that he gave. “You remain the best husband in the whole world.”
“I know.”
“I’ll order so you can make coffee?”
“That sounds good to me.”
~*~
They moved through their usual routine a little more quietly than normal whilst waiting for dinner to arrive. Shinsou made his coffee, then a sweet hot chocolate for Kirishima that he would always enjoy even though he never asked for it.
He put away dishes whilst listening to Kirishima talk about little things in his day, laughing at one of the many ridiculous things he said, humming along with his thoughts somewhere else entirely.
It was like he was in a kind of stasis, waiting for something to jumpstart him again so that he could properly exist in the world.
Waiting for the conversation that he was slowly starting to dread.
What if — after all of it — he couldn’t be a parent? What if they tried and he was no good and they were stuck in a life that it turned out they didn’t want.
What if that was the thing, after everything that they’d gone through together, that finally made Kirishima turn around and leave him?
The thought made his chest clench, hot tears welling in his eyes that he had to sniff away before they were noticed. The best thing he could do was be honest, that was what Aizawa had told him, and if they were as strong a couple as he hoped they were, then things would work out. One way or the other.
Finally the doorbell rang, and the smell of heavily fried foods wafted into the kitchen.
It was time.
“So,” he sighed as he slid onto the low cushion, folding his legs under the table close enough to Kirishima that their knees would brush together. A tiny comfort grounding him when everything else felt like it was spinning out of control. “Would you start at the beginning for me?”
“The beginning of…”
“Of wanting a baby.”
“Right.”
He watched the lump in Kirishima’s throat bob. Nervous. Maybe it was good that they were both on the back foot. It would make it easier to puzzle through it together, rather than trying to keep up with the bulldozer that Kirishima could sometimes be.
“I don’t really know when it started.” Kirishima hummed, scratching at his neck. “I just, I think about us, and I think about us being a family and… I want that.”
“Okay.”
“But… I don’t want it if you don’t. It’s not a deal breaker and I won’t—”
“Ei.”
“I’m serious . I know that things for you haven’t been great and I don’t want to push something on you when you don’t have the same kind of support, and if it would make—”
“Eijirou!” Shinsou laughed. “Will you let me answer that first thought before you spiral into talking yourself out of it?”
“O-okay.”
It was his turn to be as open as his husband was.
“I will admit that I’m scared,” he said, taking a shuddering breath, pressing his knee a little closer to Kirishima. “You’re right that I don’t have the kind of support network that you do. That the closest thing I have to a family — outside of your moms — that I could go to for advice and life lessons and whatever else… is Sensei Aizawa. And… I would be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified that I would be a terrible parent.”
“For what it’s worth,” Kirishima squeezed his hand. “I think you’d be an amazing dad.”
“Well you’re not exactly my harshest critic, Ei.”
“It’s not manly to take someone else’s job.” Kirishima winked at him, that broad boyish smile splitting his face. “And I would have to deprive you of your favourite pastime to do it.”
“Well.” Shinsou found himself laughing too. “I guess you’re not wrong there. But it doesn’t stop me worrying.”
“What about?”
“Everything? Having a baby would mean changing absolutely everything in our lives, Ei. Even if we discount the fact that it would take a hell of a lot of work for one of us to even get pregnant. We’d need to book the right quirk doctors and we’d have to arrange for—”
“No.”
“No?” Again it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under him. Was Kirishima… changing his mind?
“I… I don’t mean no no. I’m not against the idea of figuring out a pregnancy and having a baby that was really ours, if you wanted that. I just. I would prefer to adopt. I think.”
Shinsou found tears pricking his eyes. A welling of something that he couldn’t name in his chest at those simple words.
“You… would?”
“When I think about what you went through as a kid,” Kirishima hummed, picking a little as his chicken whilst he searched for the right thing to say. “It makes me pretty mad. Mad in a way that it’s probably not great for a hero to be. And… I sometimes think about what I could do to make sure that nobody ever has to go through that again.”
“Eijirou…”
“We can’t make life better for every kid out there, I know that. For one we’d need a bigger house and I really like this one. But. We could do it for one, right?”
The next word was cut out of Shinsou’s throat by a choked out sob. The tears that he had been fighting back welling in his eyes.
“Oh!” Kirishima’s face fell. “Oh no, you hate it. Well we can look at doctors if you—”
“I don’t hate it you big idiot,” Shinsou sniffed. “I love it.”
The grin returned in an instant “And I love you.”
“So… okay.” Shinsou tried to sniff back the tears, wiping his eyes and nodding. It seemed so obvious, when Kirishima said it like that. Of course that was what they were supposed to do. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“You really think we can do this, Ei? Think we can put being heroes to one side a bit, and be parents . Cause… if we start this process, if we take someone in… we can’t send them away again. I… I can’t do that.”
“Yeah.” Kirishima nodded. “We’re heroes. We save people every day. How hard can it be to save one little kid? You just gotta love them, right? That doesn’t sound hard.”
“I’ll remind you of that when we’re up with a baby at two in the morning.”
“Pfft,” Kirishima waved the thought away. “You don’t sleep anyway. I’ll take the days, you take the nights. Piece of cake.”
Shinsou laughed, Kirishima’s easy confidence almost contagious. “You really are so sure about this.”
“I know you,” Kirishima shrugged. “I know how good you are. How strong. I don’t see why I would have any reason to doubt.”
Shinsou took up another piece of chicken to distract from the tears that he was still trying to stop from falling. His whole life he had dreamed of being so lucky to have a man like Kirishima. And there he was, living in a kind of perfect bubble that his past self would never have believed possible.
A home and a family that maybe, just maybe, they could share with someone else.
“So…” Kirishima shuffled a little in his seat, the smile falling a little. “If you want to do this. Maybe it’s best to get started? It can take a long time, I know so… I guess we should start contacting agencies in the morning.”
“Yeah,” he managed to nod, his heart twisting in his chest. “I have a list.”
“You… do?”
“Of the ones I was in…”
“Oh.”
“Maybe we can start with those?”
“Yeah. That sounds great to me.”
“Great.”
With a smile Kirishima leaned across the table to steal a kiss from his lips, heedless of the bite of food that was still in his mouth. Pressing their foreheads together with a contented sigh.
“This is going to be great.”
~*~
Kirishima looked at the list of adoption agencies that Shinsou had provided him. There were a surprising number of places where a child could be abandoned, and even more that would allow them to be sent back out to families who would — theoretically — care for them. It was overwhelming enough that he had to call in backup. Someone to help him go through the horribly large lists of children who needed a home.
“This had better be fucking important.” His backup arrived on time, with a scowl. “You know that it’s date night tonight.”
“Yeah bro,” Kirishima beckoned Bakugou into his office with a smile. “I know. But… I really need a second opinion on an important thing.”
“Yes, your last fight was sloppy and you need to get your shit together before you end up hauled in front of the damn commission for being reckless.”
“Wow, thanks,” Kirishima laughed, rolling his eyes. “So glad to have your opinion on that. But I mean with these .”
He pushed the paperwork towards his old friend, nodding at the seat in front of him and hoping that he would get the message. After a moment, and a long glare, Bakugou relented and sat down.
“What the fuck am I looking at here, Ei?”
“Adoption listings.”
His eyes widened, almost all of the frustration draining from his face, replaced with a grin.
“No shit?”
“No shit. We’re uh… Hitoshi and I have decided to have a kid. Or. To get a kid, anyway. Buy a kid? I don’t know how this works.”
“Damn. Big step.”
“Yeah.”
“You freaking out yet?”
“Yes.”
“He freaking out yet?”
“More than me.”
“Yeah that checks.” Bakugou pulled the sheets towards him, expression suddenly serious as he looked over the options that Kirishima had begun to highlight. “You’re going for a baby? Like, fresh and squishy, cries and shits and nothing else baby.”
“We… I think so. I’ve always figured that’s the best way to start.”
“Yeah but they’re harder to get,” Bakugou huffed, still staring down at the lists. “Lots of people want babies, not many who’re prepared to take on a kid that has a shitty attitude from a shittier start.”
Kirishima’s chest twisted a little. If there were a lot of people in the running it would make it more likely that they would lose out on a child they’d set their hearts on. That would be hard… maybe harder for Shinsou than him.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“And that’s why you brought in the brains of the operation.” Bakugou grabbed a pen from the desk and started to make some notes by the side of the first list. “You got any thoughts on what you want? Boy? Girl? Neither? Mutant?”
“We don’t mind. Pretty much the only requirement is that the kid needs a home.”
“Well… we have to narrow this down somehow or you’re going to spend the next ten years meeting kids with no progress on actually getting one. What don’t you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look here. These kids have a family contact order, so even if you do the whole hog and adopt them their birth parents have to be involved. Even if they suck.”
“Oh… No I…” He considered it, but eventually shook his head. “That might make it harder for us all to adjust.”
“Right. We’ll cross them off for now, and we just keep narrowing down till you have a list that’s small enough to start meeting them. Right?”
“Right. Thanks, bro. For coming to help, I mean.”
“Yeah, well. Not every day your best damn friend decides to tell you that he’s going to be a dad. Wouldn’t have missed it.”
He sat with Bakugou whilst the sky darkened, slimming down the list as best as they could on the basis of the things that he and Shinsou had discussed. There were some questions that he had to take home with him, but by the time they were heading for the agency door he had narrowed down to ten names. Shinsou would have done the same separately at home and then…
Then they could meet the ones they both selected.
It felt like it was happening so fast from there.
The crossover of names gave them six children to meet, and by the following afternoon they had appointments booked in with agencies and viewing sessions to see the children at a distance before any kind of first meeting. That was the safest way, they were told, to make sure there wasn’t any kind of contact attachment before things were certain.
Kirishima held fast to Shinsou’s hand whilst they walked through to the viewing room, feeling his husband shaking at his side, memories that he could only begin to imagine making him seek comfort in that solid grip that Kirishima was all too happy to give.
“Wait Ei,” Shinsou stopped, looking through the small window of a room as they passed. A little girl with inky hair sitting alone on the floor with a set of blocks in her hands. “What… why is she alone? Aren’t the rest of the kids in the playroom for visits?”
“Oh uh,” the agent shuffled. “She’s… not good with other children.”
Shinsou’s voice gained a low growl, those words hitting him more than the agent realised. “What do you mean not good?”
“She’s…” The agent was looking anywhere other than at their eyes, shifting from foot to foot, his fingers gripping the clipboard in his hands a little too tightly. “Her mother left her here about a year ago. After a villain attack. The child… well…”
“They believe she’ll be a villain.”
“Given her parentage…”
“I’d like to change our appointment.” Kirishima felt the words blurt out of him, looking slowly down at Shinsou, a check that his husband immediately acknowledged with a nod. “Can we meet her? Instead of the rest.”
“But… she doesn’t meet your specifications… and…”
Shinsou turned to look back through the window at the girl, and something tugged at Kirishima’s chest when he saw the expression in his husband’s eyes.
“Yes. I think she does.”
~*~
The agency resisted letting them meet the girl for an almost admirable length of time, but saying no to two heroes turned out to be more than they could manage, and after an hour or so of paperwork Shinsou was back outside that door, watching the girl through the window with his heart thudding in his ears.
Her eyes were as solid black as her hair, pointed teeth that reminded him so much of Kirishima’s. When she blinked up at the window — as though she could sense that someone was there even though they’d been assured she couldn’t see them — it was with a sliding additional set of eyelids. The cocking of her little head with a puzzled look spreading on her face.
“You sure you’re ready for this?” Kirishima whispered at his side. “She’s a bit older than…”
“She’s all alone, Ei.” He managed. “Nobody will ever come for her given what they all think. They didn’t even give her a name. ”
“Alright then. Let’s go meet our girl.”
He pushed the door open with shaking fingers, crouching down the moment that those bright black eyes turned up to meet his.
“Hi.”
Behind them the agent cleared his throat, still shuffling. Awkward.
“She doesn’t speak.”
“That’s okay.” Shinsou hummed, not looking away. “She doesn’t need to speak.”
He felt Kirishima move in behind him, sitting against a wall. Enough of a distance away that she wouldn’t feel crowded by them, turning back to the agent as soon as he was down.
“You can go now.”
“The safety risk is—”
“We are both seasoned pros,” Shinsou snapped, the attitude of the entire place starting to needle him. “I think we can handle any potential danger from a little girl who hasn’t even come into her quirk yet.”
“As you would have it, Sir. I’ll be in my office down the hall if you need anything. There is an emergency bell if—”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Shinsou only relaxed when the door clicked closed, shaking his head before finding a smile for the girl who was still observing him with her head cocking from side to side. Thinking. Taking in so much more than it seemed anyone was giving her credit for.
“You know more than they think, don’t you little one,” he sighed, settling down onto the ground in front of her. “My name’s Hitoshi. This is Eijirou.”
Another blink, the focus unwavering.
“Can you show me what you’re doing with the blocks?”
She stacked them up in front of her, taking care to ensure that they were perfectly aligned. A little wall that she beamed at as soon as it was complete. Looking up at them, one after the other, uncertain but so brave. Shinsou swallowed back the lump in his throat, returning her smile.
“That’s very nice,” Kirishima hummed. “Do you mind if we stay with you for a little while today?”
The girl blinked at him, then shook her head, the smile returning to her mouth giving them both a view of those incredible teeth. The crinkling of her nose up towards her eyes when she took one of the blocks from her wall and held it out for Kirishima to take.
Shinsou could see the glistening of tears in Kirishima’s eyes, the way that he softened all over when she crawled closer to make it easier for him to take the block.
He had never believed that he would want to be a parent.
But sitting on the floor of that bland, horrible room, looking at a girl who had never even been given a name, he suddenly couldn’t imagine a world where he would be anything else.
~*~
It took more months than either of them would have wanted to complete the paperwork to bring the girl home.
Whilst Shinsou worked on the legal side of things, Kirishima ripped out his office to turn it into the perfect room for their new arrival. Not quite the nursery that he had imagined, but a bedroom for a sweet, quiet girl who had felt like a part of their family from the first moment that they had seen her.
They hadn’t managed to get her speaking in the time that they had spent with her — the afternoon and evening visits to the little room where she was kept away from the other children no matter how much they protested — but she smiled and crawled to them when they entered after the first few visits. Pointing to things that she liked, and even once settling her head against Kirishima’s thigh to fall slowly to sleep.
In what little spare time he had Shinsou had started learning some basic signs, just in case, and through a series of experiments Kirishima had managed to find out her favourite colours and foods from having her choose things that she wanted to play with and eat, at least whilst they were around.
It wasn’t much, and when the day finally came to bring her home neither of them really felt prepared, but they were determined not to delay things any longer, so that was going to have to be enough. The festive holidays had begun for them both, and they were lucky that both of their hero agencies were prepared to extend some additional leave so that they could settle their new arrival. Find a new routine that worked for the family that they had decided to build.
On Christmas Eve they were going to adopt a child, and it felt like the most perfect gift that either of them could have asked for.
“There’s just one more thing,” the agent said, looking over the folders on his desk for the fifth time, checking and rechecking as though afraid that something would go wrong and the child would end up their problem again. “We do still need to complete some paperwork to give her a name.”
“Yua,” Shinsou said, not missing a beat. They hadn’t discussed it much, but from the way Kirishima smiled he knew that he’d chosen right. “Yua Kirishima.”
“An interesting choice, but one that is now yours to make. Sign here.”
They signed as snow began to fall outside the window, Yua’s little case of belongings already at their sides.
From the moment the day was settled on they had told her. Asking if she would like to leave the room she lived in, rather than telling her it would be so. Asking if she wanted to go home with them to stay for a little while. Because it had to be her decision, as much as it was theirs. When she nodded it was like the final piece of the puzzle slid into place.
She was waiting for them when they arrived at the room. Boots on tiny feet, a coat that was two sizes too big for her swamping her tiny form.
“She has refused to wear anything else all day,” the agent sighed. “I don’t know why but—”
“It’s because she knew that we were coming,” Shinsou said, reaching down and feeling his heart swell when she ran straight into his arms. “She knew that she was going home.”
Kirishima leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, ruffling Yua’s hair with a smile that melted Shinsou’s heart. Dispelling any fear that he had ever had that they wouldn’t be able to do it.
They carried her out arm in arm, talking to her every step of the way, explaining everything that was going to happen from there as best they could.
The road ahead was going to be long, and it was certain that it wasn’t going to be easy. But when they heard the tiny laugh of their new daughter as she ran into her brand new room, it was clear that it was the best decision they had ever made.