Chapter Text
In the span of ten months, Shouta has grown attached to the child he and Hizashi had agreed to care for. He knows Hizashi is dying to get the adoption forms out and give Katsumi the choice of becoming their daughter legally, but Shouta is the one holding things back. They’ve gone through a lot of trouble to keep their relationship unknown from both the press and the villains they fight and adopting a child of any age or situation would put that child at risk. He promised Katsumi they’d keep her safe and that includes not doing anything that will draw too much attention to her. It‘s becoming a flimsy argument though. There’s been no sign that the organization that trained her is interested in retrieving the girl and no sign they’re going to find any living family members. It’s dead end after dead end and Shouta is beginning to think her past is just one giant dead end.
Nezu has already suggested alternative living arrangements for Katsumi once she gets through the Entrance Exam, but Hizashi and Shouta shut that down without hesitation. They’d promised her she had a place in their home as long as she needed it and they intended to keep that promise. Shouta knows how bad it would be for her emotional state if that happened too. He can tell she’ll revert to the wary, quiet kid who wasn’t sure how to buy sheets she actually liked if that happened. It’s taken ten months for her to get comfortable enough with them to initiate any physical contact and to start trusting them to have her best interests at heart.
“I don’t like the uniform,” The child in question walks out of her room declaring her dissatisfaction in the grey school uniform of UA. She’s got her arms crossed and she’s glaring at Shouta like he personally chose the uniform just to make her angry.
“It’s the standard UA girls’ uniform,” He huddles deeper into his sleeping bag, hoping she’ll let it go quickly.
“Why? Skirts aren’t a good clothing choice for fighting,” She flashes her teeth at him in dissatisfaction and her green eyes narrow.
“You’ll have a different uniform for classes involving anything physical,” Shouta reminds her.
Long black hair falls around her face as she looks down on her uniform, “I look stupid.”
“No you don’t. You look like a UA student,” Shouta wishes Hizashi was home to handle the teenage girl clothing crisis. He thinks that’s what this is anyway.
“The skirt is too short,” She glares at him, “Why can’t I wear pants?”
“Girls’ are required to where a skirt. You can wear leggings under it if you’d be more comfortable,” Shouta privately does agree that the skirts could be longer considering how uncomfortable his female students have seemed in the past wearing them. They should at least have a choice of skirt length, but UA likes it’s traditions.
“I don’t own leggings,” She points out, “I have pants and I have shorts. I don’t own leggings.”
Shouta really wants to take a nap, but his foster child’s clothing crisis takes precedent, “We can go buy you some after the entrance exam tomorrow, can you survive until then?”
She nods once before looking at him sharply, “Are you going to take a nap?”
“Yes,” Shouta doesn’t bother trying to pretend otherwise. He’s in his sleeping bag for a reason.
She’s gone in the next second and Shouta takes that as a sign he can finally nap. He’s only got his eyes closed for a few seconds before he’s being crushed by the weight of his foster kid enforcing group nap time. Since she started seeking out physical contact, his days of napping without being bodily crushed by a small child soldier are long over. She insists on joining him for naps and it’s somewhere between adorable and sad because it’s very clear she’s touch starved and Shouta almost regrets he and Hizashi making a point not to unnecessarily touch her so as to avoid risking triggering any traumas they don’t know about. Turns out, Katsumi adores cuddling and hugs and any form of contact she can get, she pointedly seems to keep fingers on their pulses or puts her ear right above their hearts when she does things like this. Confirming they’re living. Whether that’s a trauma response or not is still unclear to Shouta.
He doesn’t complain about the slow suffocation. This is a sign of trust from her as much as it is her fullfilling an emotional need she has. If he complains, he knows it’ll be damaging in someway to her and while he won’t admit it, he enjoys having someone else other than the cats living with him that appreciates the joys of sleep. Of course Hizashi coming in an hour into the nap and taking pictures of him being crushed by a small fourteen year old and having a freak out over how adorable their foster daughter is ruins the effect just a little. He loves his husband, but Hizashi has never quite appreciated the importance of a good nap.
Katsumi is dead to the world even as Shouta cracks an eye open and starts trying to figure out how to extract himself from the nap pile that’s made up of him, Katsumi, and four cats. Hizashi is still taking pictures, “Sho, you’re going to wake her up!”
Shouta glares at the blonde halfheartedly, “Her ears are sensitive, she’ll wake up soon with all the noise you’re making anyway.”
About two seconds after he says this, the kid in question is waking up and launching herself at Hizashi in a violent hug that nearly knocks the man over. Hizashi looks ready to die of happiness the same way he does whenever she tries to break his ribs with her hugs. She lets him go after about three seconds and glares up at him, “Are you hurt? You don’t smell like blood.”
Hizashi gives her a huge smile, “Nope! No injuries, little listener! Today was slow.”
She narrows her eyes and nods once, “Good. You’d be mad if I had to kill someone.”
“What’s the rule, Katsumi?” Shouta sighs as he unzips himself from his sleeping bag.
“Killing isn’t allowed under any circumstances and prison isn’t worth it,” She sounds put out.
“Exactly,” Shouta is pretty sure she’s never going to agree with that, but so long as she doesn’t kill anyone, he’s willing to take what he can get.
Later that night, after he’s back from his patrol and he’s checked to make sure Katsumi is asleep, he ends up staring up at his darkened bedroom ceiling as Hizashi snores against his neck. Tomorrow his foster kid takes the UA entrance exam for the heroics course. Tomorrow, she’ll almost assuredly pass the entrance exam. Which means in a month, she’ll go from the online schooling she’s been doing to sitting in a classroom with nineteen other students. Shouta can feel anxiety curling in his gut just thinking about it.
He can think of a thousand ways it can go wrong. If she can’t handle that much activity around her, if it’s too overwhelming. If she doesn’t get along with the other students or if her past gets out to the press somehow. If she lashes out. There’s a thousand ways this could all go very wrong. What if being in the heroics course makes the organization she’d once worked for suddenly remember they’re missing child soldier? He’s going to go grey thinking about all the ways this could backfire spectacularly. Fuck. Maybe he should see if she’d rather take the business or art courses instead. Maybe becoming a hero will be further damaging than helpful for his foster child. Shouta isn’t one for panic, but he is gripped by the sudden urge to just keep her home where he knows nothing is going to overwhelm her and nothing is going to go wrong.
Shouta has to remind himself that she can handle it, and that if she didn’t want to do it, she’s grown comfortable enough voicing her opinions that he’s pretty sure she would have said something by now. He hopes anyway. And he goes she won’t murder another student. As long as she doesn’t do that, he’ll consider it a success.