Denki tried to convince his friend group to attend Hitoshi's party the next weekend, but they all declined, whining about how his party wasn't any fun, so they didn't want to attend Hitoshi's, either. Denki knew they didn't have 'fun' at his party because there was nothing that happened to make fun of Denki for, and that seemed to be their main form of entertainment. Denki was starting to see this and distance himself from them; it was happening naturally just from how much he really enjoyed spending time with his other, newer friends, but he was also consciously widening the distance between himself and his previous friends. Still, he wanted what was best for Hitoshi, so he had to do something to make his party a hit. It might hurt his feelings that he invited the whole class and only Denki would show up.
Great minds think alike, so Neito was also up to his own antics for making Hitoshi's birthday party the best one ever.
"This is everyone!" Hitoshi declared to his foster parents as Neito and Denki arrived.
He knew that all of the other kids threw away their invitations at school, not even bothering to take them home to their parents or even think about it when he handed them out. It didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. Partly, because he was used to being the outcast because of his quirk, but mostly because his soulmate and best friend would be there. Neito's party consisted of only the three of them, and it was so fun, so Hitoshi did not have any regrets or hesitations about it only being the three of them for his party as well.
He did feel a little bad that his foster parents went all out for this, and only two guests showed up for all of the hard work they did. It was bittersweet; he never had a birthday party before because he never had anyone to invite that he knew for sure would show up. Plus, previous foster parents seemed to always be short on cash and couldn't actually get any party supplies anyway, even if they wanted to throw a party for Hitoshi, which also wasn't always the case. His current foster parents weren't rich by any means, but they were savvy savers and would spend the money when it mattered, like for throwing their new foster son a birthday party for his 13th birthday.
When a knock came at the door, Hitoshi turned, confused. Did someone from school actually keep the invitation and decide to show up?
"Happy birthday, Hitoshi!" multiple voices blasted as soon as Hitoshi opened the door, followed by confetti poppers going off and sprinkling the doorway with colorful paper and glitter.
On his doorstep stood Momo, Kyoka, Ochako, Izuku, Tenya, and Minoru, arms overflowing with presents and bright smiles on all of their faces.
Hitoshi turned to face his soulmate, who looked just as surprised as he felt, so his eyes shifted over to Denki who was sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck and looking anywhere but at him.
Hitoshi pulled Denki into a quick hug, whispering a thanks in his ear, before he turned and greeted his impromptu party guests with a smile. They all immediately noticed the change in Hitoshi from the shy, soft-spoken boy on Unit Beta to this warmer, laidback, confident boy, so they also felt better and less anxious about crashing his birthday party.
Momo was hesitant when Denki called her out of the blue, asking if she knew anyone else from Unit Beta who was there when Hitoshi was there and if they would want to be surprise guests for Hitoshi's birthday party the next weekend. Momo was hesitant, but Denki is persuasive, so she gathered up all of the kids that were there, including Izuku, Tenya, and Minoru, who only arrived a few days before Hitoshi and Neito were discharged. Denki insisted that the more people she could round up, the better, and she took her task seriously.
Hitoshi's foster parents, Hamabi Genori and Hamabi Hanisu, about fainted when they realized that the Yaoyorozu family was included in the mixture of kids at their front door. They about had heart attacks when Momo's father exchanged numbers—personal numbers—with them in case anything was to come up during the party that would need his attention. Then they found out that Pro Hero Ingenium's little brother was in attendance, and they had to go collect themselves in the kitchen and have a quick and quiet discussion about where Hitoshi had gathered such friends.
The kids all gathered in the living room, pushing furniture out of the way so they could sit in a circle on the floor. All at once, presents upon presents were being shoved in Hitoshi's direction. After opening a few amazing gifts in a row, he started to tear up. He paused and took some deep breaths, and his friends started asking if he was okay. His friends. His friends. Hitoshi had friends.
"I hope I didn't cross a line—" Denki whispered to him but was cut off when Hitoshi pulled him into a tight, quick hug.
"Thanks so, so much, Denks. I owe you one," Hitoshi assured.
The truth was, he had never had so many nice things, and the idea of these gifts being for him, and him alone without the expectation to share with other kids, was overwhelming.
Hitoshi wiped at his eyes and addressed the group, feeling safe among these kids who had all shared their feelings and emotions and stories with one another while in the mental hospital. It was a completely different feeling being surrounded by these kids than the ones at school. He felt warm and trusted that anything he said would be listened to and taken seriously. No one would talk about him behind his back, call him a crybaby for whining, or spread rumors about him. He was truly in a safe space surrounded by these people, and he couldn't have wished for a better group to celebrate his birthday with.
"Did Neito ever tell you about when I wore long sleeves every day?" Hitoshi asked the group.
Hitoshi almost teared up again when everyone made a conscious effort to verbally answer his question before he had a chance to rephrase. Honestly, before everyone was already answering, he didn't even think about the fact that he had asked a question. It was a non-issue around Denki and Neito, and he was around at least one of them for the majority of his days, so there was never the pressing need to rephrase questions into statements instead to make sure that he didn't make someone uncomfortable and to protect himself from being ignored if they decided answering wasn't worth the risk of potentially being caught under his quirk. He had never felt so trusted before.
"A lot of people get weird around me when they figure out my quirk. Neito, though, tried to copy it and try it for himself, so I started dressing in long sleeve shirts with high necks to try to limit any skin available for him to touch," Hitoshi explained.
"He got really good at dodging, too," Neito huffed dramatically, pulling out a laugh from the group, but Neito was just as entranced as everyone else.
He knew the story from his point of view, but never talked it over with his soulmate before. He just remembered being kind of hurt that Hitoshi never seemed to trust him, even after he stated that he would not touch him during the heat wave. It never really made sense why he trusted him so easily and quickly after they found out they were soulmates when he wasn't trusted at all before that.
"A heat wave happened, and the school's electricity cut out for a week. They relaxed the dress code, but still required attendance," Hitoshi informed.
Hitoshi dared a glance in Neito's direction, knowing that this would be new information to him as well.
"Being in foster care, I only got a certain allowance every few months for clothing, and I used it all on long sleeves and pants to try to cover as much skin as possible. There was nothing left over to buy any relaxed clothes for myself, even after Neito promised that he wouldn't try to copy my quirk during the outage," Hitoshi murmured, embarrassed about his situation despite knowing that it was completely out of his control.
"I'm so sorry," Neito whispered, taking Hitoshi's hand in his own as tears pooled in his eyes. "I didn't mean—"
"I know I didn't show it, but you were my favorite classmate, Neito," Hitoshi admitted, sending a bright, wide smile in Neito's direction. "Everyone else treated me like a threat, and you treated me like a challenge instead. You never flinched away when I spoke, and even tried to get me to answer you or ask questions. It scared me at first, because I didn't know what your end game was. I thought you might have been trying to get me in trouble."
"I would never…" Neito whispered, eyes desperately seeking Hitoshi's to make sure that he understood that that was never his intention.
"I know that now. It didn't take me long to figure it out then, either. After being scared of you, I started being scared for you. If you had managed to touch me and copy my quirk, our classmates could have turned on you and started to treat you like an outcast like I had always been treated. It's one thing to know that you're capable of copying my quirk, but it would be too real for them to actually see it in action," Hitoshi explained.
Neito let out a self-depreciating laugh before disclosing, "I'm the new outcast anyway. I didn't want to tell you because it's really not a big deal, but I guess you deserve to know. They see me as your soulmate and think I might be storing your quirk or something—who knows how they think, honestly. They won't answer me or talk to me but being seen as a potential villain is way better than being seen as useless, so it really doesn't bother me."
"Why would they see you as useless?" Denki questioned softly, not wanting to disrupt the delicate mood, but also wanting answers.
"My quirk," Neito explained, turning toward Denki to find him paying rapt attention to him and Hitoshi. "They say that it's like I'm quirkless if I don't have anyone around to steal a quirk from, and they're right."
"I am quirkless," Izuku supplied, with a shrug and a carefree smile. "And I still want to be a hero someday."
"My quirk makes me sick," Ochako supplied. "Everyone thinks it's so cool that I can basically fly, but it isn't so cool anymore when I vomit all over them."
The group laughed, and others started chiming in, trying to show that no one's quirk is perfect and brightening the mood of the group.
"My quirk is very strange—a weird genetic mishmash of my parents' quirks gone wrong," Minoru said. "It gets joked about often, even by adults, because of the shape and because they're sticky. I didn't really understand their jokes at first, and sometimes I still don't. The least it could do is not make my head bleed when I use it, but no!" Minoru complained loudly with a large, rueful smile on his face as he rolled his eyes. "Can't be that easy!"
"My quirk is just like my whole family's, so I'm scared I'm never going to live up to what they have already done, let alone surpass them like they expect me to," Tenya admitted. "How am I ever supposed to live up to let alone surpass, Ingenium?"
"My quirk is too strong for me to handle, and I'm scared that I'll never be strong enough to withstand it," Denki admitted. "You've never seen it before, but if I go too high with the voltage, my brain short-circuits and I'm basically useless until my brain's electrical signals can get back to normal. I could be a huge liability as a hero if I can't get this under control. I could electrocute other heroes by mistake, or even become a hostage if a villain gets to me while I'm out of commission. I don't know how I'd ever come back from that if it happened."
The group sat in thoughtful silence for a moment, and Denki was relieved. That proved that they were taking his fears seriously. Previously, his friends from school might have 'consoled' him by telling him that he would never make it as a Pro Hero anyway, so that it was nothing that he had to worry about. This group of friends sat in quiet solidarity with Denki as they considered his words and really understood just how bad that situation would really be for him, imagining themselves in his shoes and what it might feel like to mess up and cost the heroes a mission, and maybe even put more lives in danger, doing more harm than providing actual help to the situation.
Hitoshi's foster father appeared around the corner from the kitchen, prompting the kids to hurry to the cake before the candles melted all the way down. Everyone stood up and rushed to the kitchen, making sure to pull Denki along physically as well as pulling him mentally from the fears and doubts that he had just been sharing with the group. Denki was grateful. Hitoshi and Neito were grateful as well that they could count on others to be there for Denki and take him seriously. They could let their guard down for once and not have to constantly monitor what was being said and done like when Denki's school friends were around.
"Okay! Time to sing!" Hamabi Genori prompted, taking a deep breath to start, once all of the kids were in the kitchen, standing around the table that had a cake with 13 candles flickering atop it.
"Wait! No!" Hitoshi quickly cut him off before he could start. He hesitated, reaching for an excuse, but remembered that everyone in attendance was already aware of Denki's schizophrenia diagnosis, so he went with the truth. "Denki doesn't do well with singing voices. They tend to overlap in his head and can disorient him. So, no singing, okay?"
"Hitoshi, I'm fine! I—" Denki started but was cut off by Hitoshi shaking his head adamantly.
"My day won't be perfect if I can't be your hero in this way," Hitoshi insisted, knowing that phrasing it that way would make Denki give in instantly, and it did.
Hitoshi was learning more and more about Denki all of the time, and he felt that he had a good understanding of Denki's inner thought process, even where he struggled before. Denki would not want to be a burden in any way, especially not on Hitoshi's birthday. But, if Hitoshi insisted that letting him take care of Denki in this small way would make him feel heroic, Denki would give in easily. They all wanted to be heroes and they all knew that feeling of something going really well in training, like the week before when they had all pinned their tails perfectly on the donkey poster at Denki's party, or when Neito smiled nonstop the day after Hitoshi would sing his alert song because he felt heroic and helpful to his soulmate who had turned to him for comfort after having a nightmare. Hitoshi phrased it in such a way that Denki could feel like he was giving a missing piece to Hitoshi's perfect day by allowing him to be heroic, and he knew he would not be able to refuse or even fight him on it.
Just like he predicted, Denki gave him a small, appreciative smile and nodded his affirmation. Smiles were shared all around the table; no one was upset about the singing being skipped and no one made it awkward, which was quickly becoming one of Hitoshi's favorite things about having a friend group full of previous psychiatric inpatients.
With Hamabi Genori's blessing, they all took their plates of cake and ice cream back into the living room to continue talking in a circle. The Hamabis took turns walking past the entranceway to keep supervising the group, but they also made sure not to hover, wanting to give Hitoshi his own space to spend time with his friends. The more they saw of the group having fun and Hitoshi genuinely smiling and laughing, the less they popped in to supervise and the more they popped their head around the corner just to catch the smile that was frequent on Hitoshi's face.
"So…" Neito drawled, a smile growing on his face. "I was your favorite classmate, huh?"
"Too bad Denki takes that spot, now," Hitoshi teased, causing Neito to pout playfully, bumping his own shoulder into Hitoshi's with an eyeroll. The soulmates didn't miss the blush that quickly took over Denki's cheeks at the comment, though, and they shared their own charged glance when Denki wasn't looking.
"How about a game?" Denki suggested, shaking his thoughts away and trying to cool down his cheeks at being declared Hitoshi's favorite anything.
"Truth or dare?" Momo offered, smiling when everyone readily agreed.
"Izuku, truth or dare?" Momo started off, causing Izuku to look up at her with wide green eyes, surprised that he was chosen to go first.
Izuku quickly swallowed his bite of ice cream before responding, "truth."
"What's the hardest part about being quirkless?" Momo asked.
The group sucked in a breath collectively. Momo really was going straight into the heavy stuff, wasn't she? But Izuku didn't look phased in the least, humming as he held his chin in thought.
"Probably that my friends are growing apart. They are so busy with their quirks and learning what they can do with them and how far they can take them that they're kind of leaving me behind," Izuku admitted. "My best friend, Kacchan… he has an amazing quirk. I can't tell if we're not close anymore because I can't keep up with him, or if I didn't try hard enough to spend more time with him because deep down inside, I'm actually jealous, and maybe he picked up on that. Even if I had a small quirk, at least it would be something that I could count on, but I have nothing."
Denki knew that he felt pretty bad for Izuku. It was one thing to have little control over your powerful quirk and another thing entirely to not have a quirk at all. Even as young as he was, he knew all about quirk discrimination and how it made the quirkless people's lives so much harder than it had to be. Even if you were born with a small-time quirk, like the ability to change the size of your ears or something, that would open up many doors for you that would be closed to quirkless people. Even jobs that didn't require the use of a quirk would still hire someone with a quirk over someone without. He knew that right now in Izuku's life, the hardest part was losing his friendship, and while that was terrible, he hoped that it never got worse. He hoped that Izuku got into the best high school, and never got jumped or mugged because he was quirkless and landed a good job well-suited for him despite not having a quirk.
Izuku looked up to see sad eyes from all around looking at him, so to move on from his sad, pitiful story, he moved the game along. "Hitoshi, truth or dare?"
"Truth," Hitoshi answered easily, willing to give Izuku the out he was looking for.
"What is the hardest part about being in foster care?" Izuku asked, truly curious as he had never met anyone in foster care before.
"My quirk," Hitoshi answered automatically before pausing to collect his thoughts to explain his answer. "My current foster parents are great, really," Hitoshi said, a smile growing on his face as he thought about how kind they have been to him. "And the ones before were okay, too."
"Just okay?" Tenya asked. The group gave Hitoshi their undivided attention.
"They didn't go out of their way for me like the Hamabis do. I'm sure if we had a power outage, they would be willing to buy me some lighter clothing without having to wait for the seasonal clothing allotment to kick in. But they weren't abusive or anything. They weren't scared of me, I don't think, because they never put the muzzle on me," Hitoshi divulged.
"Muzzle?" Izuku repeated in horror, regretting asking such a loaded question in the first place.
"Yeah," Hitoshi sneered at the idea. "The placement agency always makes sure that my new foster families have a muzzle for me and that they know how to put it on. For safety, they say, even though I've never done anything to… warrant it, you know."
"Does it hurt?" Minoru asked. "To have the muzzle on?"
"Not if you don't struggle," Hitoshi answered with a shrug.
"I want to try it on!" Kyoka declared.
"Kyoka—" Momo started to scold, but Hitoshi interrupted her by shrugging and calling for his foster parents.
The Hamabis huddled in the doorway after hastily wiping their traitorous tears away, trying to act like they weren't listening in to Hitoshi's experiences. Truthfully, he had never really opened up to them about his previous experiences, and it was probably because he was afraid of giving them any new ideas once they had heard a little of his past with other foster families.
When he asked them for his muzzle, they faltered, and Hitoshi's heart squeezed in his chest because he assumed that they did not trust him with the muzzle that they might need to use some day. He was about to promise that he wouldn't break it or anything when they admitted that they had gotten rid of it.
"You—what?" Hitoshi asked, unable to comprehend what exactly they were saying.
"The first day you arrived here, when your caseworker showed us how to put the muzzle on… your face just went blank, and you stayed that way all day until it was time to go to sleep, barely muttering answers to our questions and not asking any questions of your own. We became foster parents to help kids like you, not to put you through more trauma. After waking up to the sound of you screaming in the middle of the night, we threw it away," his foster mother, Hanisu, explained matter-of-factly like it wasn't a huge deal.
And to them, it wasn't a huge deal. To Hitoshi, it was everything.
"What if you need it someday?" Hitoshi asked in a whisper.
"We won't need it," Hamabi Hanisu answered before Hitoshi could rephrase his question into a statement out of reflex. "We pass people on the street and talk to people every day who might have quirks like yours without fear. You're not evil just because you have a powerful quirk."
"We're your foster parents, not your puppet masters. Our job is to protect you and help you grow in the place of your birth parents, not to control you and traumatize you further. Besides, we trust you," his foster father, Genori, stated, pulling his wife into his side to form a united front so that Hitoshi knew he was speaking for both of them.
"But… why?" Hitoshi asked, tears gathering in his eyes at this new feeling bubbling in his chest.
"Look around you, Hitoshi," Hanisu said. "All of your friends trust you. Your best friend trusts you. Your soulmate trusts you. We haven't known you for very long, but the way you treat other people and the way they respond to you shows that you are a good friend and a good person."
When the tears overflowed Hitoshi's eyes, and he let out a sob, the group immediately closed around him, holding him tightly and grounding him. His foster parents took their leave, giving Hitoshi's friends the space they needed to help Hitoshi through his feelings. At that point, they knew that Hitoshi just needed time and there was nothing else they could say. They would just have to show him, over and over again, that they had meant every word, and eventually, they knew that Hitoshi would grow to trust them.
"Woah, wait. What's wrong, Toshi?" Denki demanded, holding Hitoshi's face and forcing him to look at him directly.
Denki had noticed Hitoshi's breathing quickening instead of slowing down, and his happy tears started to turn into panic tears.
"I—" Hitoshi started, but stopped, his breath catching in his throat. He tried again, "If I get moved again, my caseworker will think that I stole the muzzle and that my foster parents are covering for me. I'll be in so much trouble."
"I don't think they'd let that happen," Ochako reassured, thinking back to how kind and caring his foster parents seemed.
Denki and Neito shared a glance, knowing that reassurances wouldn't get Hitoshi out of this mindset, but at a complete loss of what to do except help him work through his feelings on the matter.
"Well, I could always just make you one," Momo suggested light-heartedly. "It'll be a good challenge for my quirk!"
That caught Hitoshi's attention, and he focused in on what Momo was suggesting.
"You would do that for me?" Hitoshi asked, touched by how far his new friends would go for him.
"It will be good practice," Momo repeated, trying to avoid another round of tears. She tossed her cell phone his way, "find a similar model, I'll research it, and I'll see what I can do."
At that, Kyoka stood up from the circle and left toward the kitchen, only to come back with the remaining cake. She plopped back down next to Momo and shoved the cake in her direction.
"Eat up!" she commanded with a smirk. She was truly excited. She loved to see Momo's quirk in action.
Hitoshi passed the phone back to Momo with the correct model on the screen, and Momo dug into both the research and the cake while the game continued. If Hitoshi's foster parents had peeked in again to see Yaoyorozu's daughter scrolling intently on her phone as she shoveled cake into her mouth as Denki demonstrated his electric quirk on one of Minoru's purple, sticky balls to see what would happen on a dare, they didn't say anything.
Sooner rather than later, much to the delighted surprise of the group, Momo was handing a prototype of the muzzle over to Hitoshi. Hitoshi inspected it thoroughly before looking around the room. It looked right, but he wouldn't be able to tell for sure until he made sure it felt right. So, with a shrug, he slapped it onto his face and started strapping it on, adjusting the individual mechanisms for customization as he went. He gave it a wiggle against his face to test the fit and gave all of his wide-eyed friends a thumbs up.
After a pause, when Hitoshi had started to wonder if everyone was okay, Denki finally spoke up to relieve the awkward silence.
"I want to try!" Denki declared, jumping to his feet, and raising his hand like he was waiting to be called on.
Before Hitoshi could take it off to hand it over to Denki, Momo was already handing yet another one over. To the astonishment of the group, she started handing them out to everyone.
"I never saw your quirk in action before," Neito muttered in amazement, leaning forward to receive a muzzle as she passed one his way. "It's amazing."
Neito didn't even try to make physical contact to copy her quirk. Ultimately, he didn't have the knowledge necessary to make something with it, even if he could copy it, and he didn't have the time to research something so thoroughly while there at the party. Neito planned on talking to Momo before the party was over, though, and asking where she started with her quirk to see if he could pull off the same thing in the future, if she was willing to let him have a go at it. It would probably be one of the hardest physical quirks that he would ever get the chance of attempting to master, and he wanted to try so bad. Just not right here in front of everyone just in case he failed the first few (thousand) times.
"A compliment from Neito? Is it my birthday, too?" Momo teased, smiling good-naturedly at Neito, who sneered back playfully in return.
If Hitoshi's foster parents poked their heads in to see a bunch of kids sitting around in a circle, taking turns helping strap each other into muzzles, they did not say anything.
"Okay, yeah, this sucks," Kyoka exclaimed, being the first one to take hers off.
Ochako let out a sigh of relief, quickly following her lead. "I'm glad I'm not the only one. It's pretty claustrophobic."
Hitoshi shrugged to express his agreement while simultaneously giving off a what-can-you-do vibe. He knew just how claustrophobic it could be. Truthfully, he either panics or shuts down when someone puts the muzzle on him, but there was something liberating about putting it on himself and knowing that he could simply take it off and speak up whenever he wanted. He actually didn't mind it like that; it was almost sort of comforting having that kind of control over something that he had never had control over previously.
Denki tried speaking, but it came out a muffled mess. He ripped the muzzle off and rubbed at his cheeks and nose.
"Ouch," he complained sadly.
Hitoshi took his muzzle off, then, actually grateful to have one in his possession in case his caseworker was to show up unexpectedly to move him to a new foster home. He was safe. He was okay.
"It doesn't hurt if you don't fight against it or try to talk," Hitoshi supplied.
What he thought was a helpful tip made everyone's eyes linger on him just a little too long with just a little too much empathy showing through. Hitoshi let out a shaky breath and refocused; now was not the time to get choked up at the unlimited understanding his friends consistently showed him.
Neito and Denki were spending the night, but everyone else was going home. Before Momo left, she handed Hitoshi another muzzle. He gave her a confused look because he—and everyone else at the party—already had one, but she just pushed it further into his hands when he gave her a questioning look, and she was gone before he could question her verbally.
Denki was timing himself to see how quickly he could put the mask in place, demanding Hitoshi check to make sure that the straps and measurements were done correctly. Hitoshi laughingly agreed. It was just like Denki to find the best in every situation and lift spirits, even in this one.
As Denki struggled with the adjustments, Hitoshi looked over the muzzle. It looked the same, but it felt different somehow. Maybe the weight? Or the shape?
Curious, Hitoshi started strapping it on. It felt like a regular muzzle, so he wasn't sure what made him think it was different.
Mumbled murmuring came from Denki who was excitedly jumping up and down and pointing to the muzzle on his face, trying to get Hitoshi's attention to come check it. Hitoshi did a diligent job, checking every strap, and making a few adjustments where they were needed, but overall, Denki did an excellent job, and he was learning quickly.
"Do you feel the adjustments I made? Do you feel the difference?" Hitoshi asked. "That's what it should feel like every time."
Denki nodded, fingers already fumbling at the straps to reset and try again. As he pulled the mask from his face he turned to Hitoshi and his smile suddenly dropped.
"What?" Hitoshi asked, extremely concerned. Looking over at Neito, he wore the same stricken expression, making Hitoshi's heartrate spike. What was wrong?
"How are you talking with that muzzle on?" Denki asked, taking a step closer to get a better look.
Hitoshi's hands automatically went to his face, and after a thoughtful moment, it finally clicked. Neito and Denki quickly crowded Hitoshi to see, demanding him to keep talking, and singing Momo's praises at her ingenuity.
"This will keep you safe," Neito said, wonderment clearly in his eyes, so thankful that Momo gave such a wonderful gift to Hitoshi.
Hitoshi's own eyes were watering and overflowing, amazed that Momo trusted his character so much to give him something that would trick the foster system into sending him into foster homes without the protection they thought a muzzle would offer.
That thought also made him pause. Now was the perfect time to try a theory he had had since he was first placed in foster care.
He switched out the muzzles for one that actually worked and strapped it on quickly and correctly. He opened his mouth and fought against the panic rising in his throat at the edges pressing sharply into his cheeks and the bridge of his nose at the restricted movement. This is okay. This is fine. I can take it off whenever I want. I am in control.
Hitoshi mumbled through the muzzle, and the question was indecipherable.
What he had said, though, was "do geniuses say 'what'?"
"What?" Denki asked automatically.
Denki's gaze unfocused and he was under Hitoshi's quirk, quick, seamless, and easy. Hitoshi immediately dropped control and started undoing the straps keeping the muzzle firmly against his head. He was trying to go too fast and not taking his time, and he started hyperventilating when it wouldn't come off, so Denki and Neito both stepped in and had it off of his face in seconds.
Hitoshi looked frantically between the two.
"Do you know what this means?" he asked, looking down at the muzzle still in Neito's hands.
"You're safe, even with the muzzle on, as long as you can get someone to respond," Denki whispered, eyes sparkling with so much happiness at the discovery that you would have thought it affected him directly.
"You can never tell anyone," Neito spoke aloud as he realized. "We can never tell anyone."
Hitoshi was completely mesmerized by how instead of them thinking that no one was safe from Hitoshi's quirk, that they focused on how Hitoshi was safer by being able to rely on his quirk, even when muzzled. He was amazed that how, even now, they were planning on keeping this secret of his because they were concerned with his safety, and not concerned at all, or even considering that Hitoshi could use this to his advantage and hurt someone someday.
When Hitoshi lied down between his friends that night to go to sleep, he cried. That was not exactly rare, but what was rare and special about it, was that they were big, fat, grateful, happy tears.
A/N: Okay! I'm curious! How did each of you find me and this story? Did you come across a different story of mine first or did you find this one by browsing? Did someone recommend it to you? Did you see one of my TikTok videos or comments and rushed over because someone did a good job hyping me up? Let me know!