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On the morning of his seventeenth birthday, Shouto wakes up to a mess of slick on his sheets.
It hurts like something clawing at his insides, burns deep and low in a way his quirk never has, and he curls around his pillow and tries his best not to sob about it. He’s got a lot of practice at not letting himself cry, and he used to take a pitiful sort of pride in it ever since the first time Endeavor looming over him when he was barely old enough to tie his own shoes didn’t have him bursting into tears, but—
It was never like this, before.
Because, sure, his body has never been a home, but it has never hurt without a reason either.
And when he was cold and alone in that big house, shivering despite his quirk, he could try to breathe and remind himself whose fault it was, and the urge to cry would fade away in favor of another kind of fire, and, at least for a while, Shouto convinced himself it kept him warm enough.
He’s burning up now, though. He’s burning up, and it hurts, and tears slip down his cheeks one after the other until he’s pressing his face into the pillow, shame clogging up his throat, whole body shaking with this new way to feel wrong, and—for once—he doesn’t have anyone to blame for it.
He’s an omega.
This is… just something to get used to.
Shouto considers this when he does make it out of bed, face blotchy in the bathroom mirror, looks at himself and tries to pick out what has changed, besides the flush on his skin and the puffiness under his eyes. He feels the same, as long as he manages to ignore the uncomfortable wetness between his thighs, the discomfort of having to quite literally peel his pajama pants off before he jumps in the shower and turns the water to the coldest setting.
After, Shouto skips breakfast and marches straight to Recovery Girl, his hair still damp down his back from the shower. She looks worried at first, but when Shouto refuses to budge she sighs and writes him a prescription, voice taking on a sort of grandmotherly concern when she presses the piece of paper into his hand and says the words only a temporary solution, you know.
So. Shouto will have to find an alpha. But that’s a problem for later.
…
They’re not heat suppressants, exactly. You don’t suppress your first heat. Your body would sooner tear itself apart. But they work, and the relief is so immediate and so sharp that it washes over him like summer rain, and Shouto barely glances at the tiny print at the end of the instruction leaflet listing the side effects.
He’s fine, for a few days, besides his quirk acting up here and there. But he can live with freezing a glass to the countertop every once in a while as long as it means he doesn’t have to think about the rest.
And then—
And then.
Of course it’s not that easy. Things never are, for him. But Shouto doesn’t exactly expect the consequences of his actions to catch up to him at two in the morning on a regular Friday after classes.
It feels like thirst, at first. Maybe a little itch in his throat. So Shouto goes down to the kitchen, busy filling himself a glass of water, and doesn’t notice any unforeseen company until after he’s slammed the empty glass on the counter, drops of water running down his neck and thirst very much unquenched.
“Easy there. You might wake someone up.”
Shouto’s a bit embarrassed at how high pitched the sound he lets out is. “Shinsou?” he says, a little fuzzy around the edges from more than just lack of sleep and a pesky little heat problem. Because Shinsou smells like—
“Rough heat?” Shinsou asks.
He wasn’t sleeping much either, judging from how dark the bags under his eyes are.
Shouto can barely swallow, for some reason. “Maybe?” he says. “Recovery Girl gave me something for it, but she said I should, um—that I should find an alpha.”
It’s almost funny how high Shinsou’s eyebrows shoot up considering the rest of his facial expression stays pretty much the same. “Oh,” he says, expression settling into something vaguely—concerned? Intrigued? Interested? Shouto can’t make sense of it. It’s too warm, and he’s tugging at the collar of his pajama top before he even realizes. “First heat?”
Shouto nods. “Late bloomer, I guess.”
Yeah, a good four years after the national average, actually.
Shinsou licks his teeth. Shouto doesn’t miss it, even under the dim kitchen light. And then he’s—
He’s pushing his chair back, leaving his mug ignored on the counter while he steps close and places a hand on Shouto’s forehead. Then—, “Fuck,” he says. “You’re burning up.”
Shouto blinks. Is he? He didn’t notice. He does notice Shinsou smells good, though. He notices, and then he’s baring his neck, and then he’s letting out yet another sound that he would normally be really embarrassed about, and then—
And then Shinsou says, “Don’t hate me, okay?” and his mouth slots over Shouto’s and he’s warmwarmwarm, but in a good way, opens up for Shinsou to push his tongue inside, and Shinsou doesn’t stop, instead he keeps kissing and kissing and kissing him until Shouto can’t take it anymore and has to catch his breath, a string of saliva still connecting their mouths when he musters up just enough strength to give Shinsou a little shove, more of a plea than anything.
“Oh,” Shouto says, because—it’s different, now. His body feels… different.
Shinsou looks a little too self-satisfied, though, he can’t help but notice. “Better?” he asks.
Shouto nods, eyebrows furrowing. “Why did that—I mean, is it an alpha thing?” he asks, wiping his mouth even while his cheeks prickle with warmth.
“Sometimes it helps,” Shinsou says with a little shrug. “Alpha saliva has been known to have calming properties in, uh, certain circumstances.”
“Certain circumstances?” Shouto repeats. “Circumstances like what?”
He doesn’t remember this in the textbooks, and Aizawa-sensei was so thorough with everything else Shouto could probably draw all the diagrams from memory, so.
Shinsou winces. “It’s kind of an old wives’ tale,” he admits, “but most mated omegas will tell you it works.”
And that’s—
“Mated?” Shouto repeats.
Shinsou has the decency to look a bit embarrassed himself, finally. “It’s a compatibility thing, I think?” he says. “And you smell really good right now, so I figured it couldn’t hurt if it might make you feel better. Just—wanted to take care of you. And I can take a punch, you know.”
Shouto laughs, can’t help it. And maybe he’s just grateful for the fact that it does work and he does feel better, but he blurts, “Can you help a little more?” and Shinsou’s eyes go a little wide before he leans back against the countertop like he’s trying to play it off, and—
“With your heat?” he asks.
Shouto nods. “Please?” he says. “You, uh, you smell good too.”
“Okay,” says Shinsou, nodding once. “Alright, sure, if you that’s what you need.”
…
The kissing helps. It helps a lot more than the pills. So Shouto stops taking them. Because, now, Shouto’s omega knows that he can just knock on Shinsou’s door if he needs comfort (if he needs relief too, but he’s been trying not to think about that yet, for his own good), and it’s all just—
Well. Warm. Warm and soft and just. Good. It’s good. Really, really good.
Even if, right now, Shouto’s purring in Shinsou’s lap, and Shinsou is scraping his teeth down Shouto’s neck, and he’s—
Not soft.
“Do you—do you, um need help with that?” Shouto asks, breath coming out in hitching gasps, too warm and not quite sure how to make it go away besides maybe asking Shinsou to touch him. To touch him for real, not just hands slipping underneath Shouto’s borrowed sweatshirt.
“Not if you don’t want to,” Shinsou says, and Shouto thinks that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
“Why wouldn’t I want to?” he asks. “You’re my alpha.”
And—
They haven’t talked about it, not really, not beyond the open implication, and Shouto knows that Shinsou will have to knot him through his heat one way or the other if they’re doing this together, but—well. This part feels different.
“Um,” he winces. “I mean—if you want to be?”
That’s when Shinsou—Hitoshi? Is he Hitoshi now, if he’s pushing Shouto to lie back on his unmade bed? Is that how it works?—kisses him, the pillow soft under Shouto as he carefully pushes him back, and Shouto thinks oh, this is nice.
(And then Hitoshi kisses a trail down Shouto’s stomach, tugging off his shorts when he makes it to the waistband, and all Shouto can think when he gets his mouth on him where Shouto is all wet and slick and swollen like he’s proving a point is oh god please don’t stop.)
…
“About my heat,” Shouto says.
Hitoshi arches an eyebrow at him. It’s another late night, but this time they’re both sharing the couch, pressed close together while Hitoshi keeps an arm around Shouto’s waist, palm resting under his shirt, skin on skin, and the thought of having his first heat isn’t nearly as terrifying as it would have been just a while ago.
“Yeah?” he says, pressing a quick kiss to the top of Shouto’s head. “What about it?”
Shouto bites at the inside of his cheek. “I’ve never had one before,” he says uselessly, because Hitoshi already knows that. “And—and I’m not sure how it might go.”
“We can figure it out, if you’re worried,” Hitoshi says. “Already told you I can take a punch.”
Which—
Is sweet, really, sweet and a lot more than Shouto thought he’d ever get to have, but that’s not it. Because Hitoshi doesn’t know yet. Because Shouto has always been too embarrassed to say this bit out loud, even with everything else that has already spilled out of him like tar, sticky and blackblackblack, aching even when it first crawled out.
“I just—,” says Shouto. “I’m not sure how I might get. Because of my dad.”
Hitoshi stills. “Because of your dad?”
“Mm,” says Shouto. “When he—back when I needed training but was still too young for it, sometimes, when I couldn’t get up anymore, he’d—he’d make me, and it was… I didn’t like it. I’ve been weird about alpha commands since.”
It can’t be more than a breath until Hitoshi speaks again, but the silence in between stretches out, slow and horrible, and Shouto has just enough time to think he hates me now, doesn’t he? the corners of his eyes stinging in that way that’s grown a little too familiar recently.
“He used an alpha command on you?” Hitoshi says. “While you were a fucking kid?”
Shouto shrugs. “He had a deadline,” he says. “His first three attempts failed.”
It comes out cold, and he doesn’t like the way it feels to say it out loud, but it’s the truth. Pro Hero Endeavor, Japan’s shining beacon of justice, never cared enough to be a father. Not only that, but, by the time Shouto came along, he might have shown more grace to beggars on the street, if only to save face.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Hitoshi says when he does speak. “It’s easy with my quirk, you know. I can make him jump off the ledge in some old, abandoned building, and no one would ever have to—”
“Hitoshi,” says Shouto. “It’s okay.”
“No,” Hitoshi says, pulling him in tighter, almost crushing him. “No, it’s not. You were a child, and he was an adult, he was a pro hero, and—and you probably grew up hating the sound of his footsteps when he came home, didn’t you?”
Shouto nods. Funny, how anyone could guess that about him if they bothered to string the words together. How most of Japan knows what Endeavor put his kids through, and the most he gets for it now is strangers spitting at him on the street when he passes them by, if that.
Wasn’t forgiveness supposed to be easier than this? Wasn’t he supposed to be kind enough for it? Wasn’t it supposed to settle under his tongue along with all the memories of the childhood he didn’t get to have so he could swallow it all in one go and be done with it?
Shouto wipes at his teary face. God, does this ever just. Stop? And if yes, can someone give him a timeframe? Because it’s frankly getting a little embarrassing.
Hitoshi doesn’t seem to think so, though, because suddenly he’s tugging at Shouto’s hand so he can kiss the inside of his wrist, right at his pulse point, and he says, “You’re the bravest person I know,” and when Shouto just sobs harder at it, he keeps talking anyway. “You are,” he insists. “Brave, and good, and so fucking sweet. Taste sweet too, it’s like you were made just so someone could take care of you.”
“Sap,” Shouto says wetly. “People won’t be scared of you anymore if they know you talk like that.”
Hitoshi nips at his earlobe. “Were you ever scared of me?”
Shouto shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Not really.”
“So it was pointless from the start, then,” Hitoshi says, nuzzling at his hair. Then, “Do you get this shampoo because it matches your scent or…?”
Shouto’s cheeks feel warm, for no reason at all. “I like strawberries,” he says defensively. “They smell nice.”
“Yeah,” Hitoshi says. “They do.”
…
Shouto doesn’t actually remember most of his first heat, but when the itch under his skin turns into more of sharp demand than a suggestion, Hitoshi takes care of it for him. He remembers that. Remembers the way Hitoshi whispers you’re doing so good for me, sweetheart into his skin, remembers how carefully he touches Shouto, like he’s worried about hurting him even with Shouto leaving scratches down his back, remembers the bottle of water Hitoshi presses to his lips after wiping the tears off Shouto’s cheeks because the ache inside him doesn’t care about dumb things like dehydration, but Hitoshi does.
It's nice, Shouto decides after, being taken care of.
And when the worst of his heat settles down, they’re still sharing a tiny bed, so Shouto presses close, and says, “So does that offer about getting rid of Endeavor for me still stand?”
Hitoshi laughs. “Sure,” he says, kissing the top of Shouto’s head. “Anything you want. Just gotta free up my weekend.”
Mm. Definitely nice.