The cat was meowing, loudly.

Shouta sat up in bed, looked around. One of his cats was sleeping soundly, soft on the opposing pillow. At least that makes one of us.

There was too much sleep in his eyes to rub away, so he blinked in the darkness and swung his legs over the side of the bed, eyes meeting the red glare of the alarm clock.

3:45 a.m

Fuck.

A knock. The cat meowed louder.

Shouta got up, bones creaking at the movement, looking at the kitten one more time before silently making his way across the house.

The lights were off so he switched them on, illuminating the living room and revealing the fluffy source of the noise.

"What are you yelling about? Hm?" He asked fondly, bending down to pet the head of the animal sitting in front of the door.

Another knock. The call yowled again.

A visitor at this time was strange, so Aizawa readied his quirk, squared his shoulders.

The third knock sounded quick, frantic.

He pulled the door open.

Aizawa keeps meaning to stop accidentally adopting kids.

But Shinsou Hitoshi is at his door at an ungodly hour, muzzled and pleading, eyes looking at him with more admiration than he deserved.

𝘍𝘶𝘤𝘬, 𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯.

After the initial shock, Aizawa felt anger, rage, because who could do this to a child?

"What did they do to you?"

He reached forward to touch Hitoshi's face and the kid flinched back, violently, the muzzle pulled at his cheeks.

Aizawa breathed in through his nose, trying to fall back into that teacher mindset which allowed him to handle anything, allowed him to stare danger in the eye without sweating.

Moving to the side, stretched his arm out and beckoned the kid inside. Better to be safe on his property then out wandering the streets, unable to use his quirk to protect himself.

Hitoshi sat on the couch, warily eyeing the curious cat as it sniffed him. That God awful muzzle stood stark against his flushed cheeks.

Calming his breathing was easier said than done, his hands shook with adrenaline when he grabbed a first aid kit, fumbled around for rubbing alcohol because he went through that shit too quickly

"Alright," he announced as he re-entered the room with his cargo. The kid still flinched. "I'm going to try and get that thing off of you, hm? How does that sound?"

Shinsou didn't respond, just stared ahead with a blank sort of resignation. Aizawa got to work.

The muzzle was black, much like the mask Hitoshi had been eyeing for his hero costume. It held his jaw shut by digging into his cheeks and underneath his chin, a square shape indented into the central mouth area suggested that it contained some kind of bit inside, intended to hold the tongue down. The contraption was complete with leather straps, two on each side, wrapping around the head and coming together at the back, held together by what looked to be a fingerprint sensor.

Bastards.

Meticulous. Aizawa cut through the straps behind Shinsou's head with the blade from his hero costume, a few lilac hairs came with it as he peeled it away. The kid whimpered, in pain or fear, and so Aizawa used his other hand to cup his opposing cheek, a tactic to soothe and still, as he crudely moved his knife back and forth.

The muzzle still stuck to the skin when the straps came loose. Shinsou must have tried to pry it off with his own two hands. Aizawa banished the thoughts for a moment, they'd only serve to make him angrier, and, judging by the way the kid was looking at him, he didn't want to make the mistake of having the kid believe that that anger was, in any way, directed at him. Instead it was directed at the world, at the elitism surrounding quirks, at the full grown adults who took the law into their own hands, unable to distinguish a villain from a child coping with how they were born.

A small cotton swab, drizzled in alcohol. Aizawa would need to clean the blood away, bit by bit, as he peeled the mask from Shinsou. It was dug into his skin, fossilised by blood and tangled in hair he'd only just started sprouting on his cheeks.

"Well, kid, this is gonna hurt. Though I guessed you already inferred that," the light tone fell flat. Shinsous' eyes were watering again. Comfort had never been Aizawa's strong suit, even as a hero.

Peel, swab, peel, swab.

The cut wasn't too deep, but definitely needed cleaning. He allowed his mindset to slip from Shouta Aizawa to Eraserhead, focusing on what the injuries were and how to treat them.

Shinsou whimpered and cried; tried to stifle them.

Aizawa continued working until, finally, the mask came free. He tossed it across the room, taking a split second to assess Shinsous face before his arms were full. The teenager shot forward, buried his face in Aizawa's pyjama shirt and smeared blood across the chest. He sobbed.

Aizawa closed his eyes, took a deep breath, before bringing his arms up and returning the embrace.

End