Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Shoto Todoroki went into labor during homeroom. At least, that was when he first noticed something was wrong.

The first contraction came while Aizawa was taking attendance, his voice flat and rough with sleep at the front of the room. Shoto had been sitting perfectly still at his desk, one hand resting over the worksheet in front of him, the other hidden beneath the edge of his blazer.

Then his stomach tightened. Not a kick. Not the usual slow, rolling shift that had become familiar over the last few months. This was different. Deeper. Lower. It began in his back, a dull ache that wrapped around his sides and pulled tight across the heavy curve of his stomach until he had to stop breathing for a second.

Shoto lowered his eyes to his desk. He did not move.

Across the room, Kaminari was half-asleep. Midoriya was writing something in the margin of his notebook with the same frantic intensity he brought to combat analysis. Bakugo looked openly offended by the fact that morning existed. Iida sat straight-backed, already prepared to answer a question no one had asked yet.

No one looked at Shoto. Good.

He waited until the sensation passed, then took a careful breath through his nose. It was probably nothing. It had to be nothing.

His body had been uncomfortable for weeks. His back hurt constantly now. His hips ached when he stood for too long. His stomach sat heavy and low beneath his uniform shirts no matter how carefully he layered them. He had learned how to move without drawing attention, how to sit with his knees slightly apart, how to keep his blazer buttoned at just the right angle. He had learned what parts of himself to hide.

This was just another thing to hide. Eight minutes later, it happened again. By lunch, he knew the timing. By the end of classes, he had stopped pretending it was nothing. By the time he reached the dorms, Shoto was walking slowly enough that he had to tell Uraraka he had a headache when she asked if he was okay.

She believed him.

Now, ten hours later, Shoto was alone in his room with the lights turned low and his phone on the floor beside him. His uniform jacket was draped over the back of his desk chair. His tie had been loosened hours ago, then abandoned completely. His white shirt clung damply to his back, wrinkled from the number of times he had leaned over the side of his bed and tried to breathe through the pain.

He had folded a towel on the floor because the internet had said labor could get messy. He had filled a water bottle. He had searched symptoms. He had searched stages of labor. He had searched how long first labor lasts and immediately regretted it.

The answers were not helpful. Some said hours. Some said more than a day. Some said every labor was different, which Shoto thought was an incredibly inefficient way to explain something so serious. His contraction tracker said he had been having contractions for ten hours. Ten hours sounded like a long time. Ten hours sounded like he should be close. Ten hours sounded like enough.

He knelt on the towel, one hand braced on the side of his bed and the other cupped under the hard, low weight of his stomach. Another contraction tightened through him, slow and grinding. It pulled at his lower back first, then spread forward until his whole body seemed to lock around it.

Shoto bowed his head. He breathed through his nose because the articles said to breathe. He kept his mouth shut because the walls were thin.

When the contraction reached its peak, pressure pushed downward, heavy and frightening, but not in the way he expected. It did not feel like his body was taking over. It did not feel like the clear, undeniable urge he had read about. It felt like being crushed from the inside by something that was not ready to move. The pressure remained after the contraction faded.

Shoto stayed still, one hand pressed to the floor and the other supporting the underside of his stomach. His breathing was uneven now. Too loud in the quiet room. He listened to his own body as if it might explain itself if he paid close enough attention.

The baby shifted low. His stomach tightened again, not fully a contraction yet, but enough to make his pulse jump. He thought maybe this was it. Maybe his body had finally decided to move forward. Maybe the baby was starting to come.

He looked toward the mirror mounted on the inside of his closet door. The thought came to him with awful practicality. He should check. If the baby was starting to come, he needed to know. He pushed himself upright on shaking legs and crossed the room. The mirror reflected him back in pieces: pale face, damp hair, loosened uniform, one hand pressed protectively under the heavy curve of his stomach.

He looked terrible. He looked pregnant. He looked like someone who had waited too long to ask for help.

Shoto lowered himself carefully to the floor in front of the mirror. The movement pulled a low, uncomfortable sound out of him before he could stop it. His knees spread on either side of the folded towel, and for a moment he just sat there, breathing hard, staring at his own reflection with a kind of distant disbelief.

This was not how this was supposed to happen. He did not actually know how it was supposed to happen, but he was fairly certain it was not supposed to involve him sitting alone on his dorm room floor, trying to use a closet mirror to determine whether he was close to delivering a baby.

Another contraction began.

Shoto braced one hand behind him and gripped the towel with the other. The pain tightened low and hard, deep in his pelvis, and the pressure made his breath catch. Maybe he was supposed to push now. Maybe the urge did not always feel the way the internet described it. Maybe he had misunderstood. Maybe waiting was wasting time he did not have.

He drew in a shaky breath, tucked his chin, and tried. The effort felt wrong immediately. His body did not open around it. Nothing shifted. Nothing descended. The pressure became sharper, meaner, but not productive. It was like trying to force a locked door with his shoulder while the hinges refused to move.

Shoto pushed harder anyway. For three seconds. Five.

Then he stopped with a gasp, his whole body trembling from the effort. Nothing had happened. He could see that. More than that, he could feel it. There was no change, no movement, no crowning, no sudden relief or progress. Just pain, pressure, and a frightening amount of exhaustion for such a short attempt.

His face burned. Humiliation rose before fear, which was ridiculous, because there was no one there to see him. Still, Shoto turned his head away from the mirror. He had thought, for one moment, that maybe the baby was coming.

They were not. His hand shook as he reached for his phone. The screen lit up too brightly, and he blinked against it, trying to steady his breathing while another dull ache gathered in his lower back. He opened the search bar. His thumb hovered, then typed slowly.

Should I push if I don’t feel the urge during labor?

The results loaded. Shoto read the first one twice. Then the second. Then a medical article with bullet points that made his stomach sink.

Do not push before the body is ready unless instructed by a medical professional.

Pushing too early can cause swelling.

It can make labor longer.

It can exhaust you before the baby is low enough.

Wait for the urge to push.

Call your doctor.

Go to the hospital.

Shoto stared at the words until they blurred. He was not supposed to push. His body had told him that. He had simply ignored it because he wanted the baby out faster, because he wanted proof that something was happening, because he wanted time. Time to hold them. Time to look at their face. Time to whisper an apology while they were still his.

He set the phone down beside him and lowered both hands to his stomach. The baby shifted faintly beneath his palms, small and tired and still hidden inside him.

Shoto’s throat tightened. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. His reflection looked back at him from the mirror, pale and frightened and alone. “I thought you were ready.” The baby moved again, not a kick this time, but a slow press against his hand. Shoto bent forward as much as his stomach allowed, closing around them.

“Okay,” he breathed. “I won’t force it.”

Another contraction began to build.

He closed his eyes and held still, letting it come. But underneath the pain, panic kept crawling up his spine. Because if he was not ready to push yet, then he was not nearly as close as he had thought. And if he was not close, then he had a new problem. He still had to go to Endeavor’s agency. His phone lit up again on the floor.

Work Study — Endeavor Agency

The reminder sat there, cold and practical. Shoto stared at it. For a moment, he could not make sense of it. It felt absurd. Like an assignment notification appearing during a natural disaster. Then his mind did what it always did when he was frightened. It became quiet. He had to be at the agency.

If he did not go, someone would ask why. If someone asked why, he would have to lie better than he currently had the energy to lie. If he stayed in his room and the baby did not come soon, someone might check on him. Midoriya might. Iida might. Aizawa definitely would if Shoto missed work study without notice. There were too many people here who cared enough to become dangerous.

At Endeavor’s agency, no one would care in the same way.

People would be busy. Efficient. Professional. His father’s employees had mastered the art of not looking directly at uncomfortable things. They would see Shoto Todoroki arrive pale and quiet, and they would assume whatever they always assumed.

That he was tired. That he was disciplined. That he was his father’s son.

Another contraction tightened through him, and Shoto leaned forward with a sharp inhale, gripping the towel until his knuckles whitened. It was stronger than the last one, low and relentless, but still not enough. Still not productive. Still no urge to push.

His eyes stung with frustration. Ten hours, and his body had accomplished nothing visible. The baby was taking their time. That was all. Maybe this was normal. Maybe labor took longer than he thought. Maybe he could go to the agency, get through whatever his father had planned, come back, and then the baby would be ready. Maybe by then the urge would come. Maybe by then he would know what to do.

The thoughts were unreasonable. Shoto recognized that. He also chose them anyway. He waited for the contraction to release before he moved. Then he pushed himself upright slowly, one hand pressed under his stomach as if he could support the baby’s weight from the outside. His legs trembled when he stood.

That concerned him. He ignored it.

He crossed the room to his dresser and pulled out a clean undershirt, then a loose sweater he had started wearing beneath his uniform jacket because it hid more than the school shirt did. Changing took longer than it should have. Twice, he had to stop and lean against the dresser, breathing through another tightening wave while sweat gathered at his temples.

By the time he finished, he looked almost normal. Not well. But normal enough. He checked himself in the mirror with the detached focus of someone assessing battle damage.

His face was pale. His hair was damp. His eyes were too bright. His uniform hid the shape of him if he stood carefully and kept his jacket open just enough. His stomach still showed, but only if someone knew to look.

No one knew to look. Shoto picked up his phone. For several seconds, he stared at his contacts.

Aizawa.

Midoriya.

The baby’s father.

His thumb hovered over that name the longest. He had not updated him in six months. Not since that last conversation, when the baby’s father had made it painfully clear what he wanted Shoto to do. He had not been cruel. That might have been easier. He had only been distant, tense, and practical, speaking in careful phrases about their futures and what made sense.

Shoto had understood. Then he had gone back to his room, locked the door, and realized he could not do it. Now the baby’s father did not know Shoto had kept the baby. He did not know there was a baby moving under Shoto’s hand, low and restless and real. He did not know Shoto was in labor.

He imagined sending a message now.

I am in labor.

No. That was too much, too late, and too unfair. Shoto locked the phone again before he could change his mind and slid it back into his pocket.

“No one,” he said quietly. The baby shifted inside him, pressing low enough that Shoto had to close his eyes. His hand went to his stomach. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know.”

He did not know what the baby knew. He did not know if they could hear fear in his voice or feel the way his heart kept speeding up every time he looked toward the door. But he hoped they could hear this.

“I’m going to keep you with me as long as I can.” That was a promise. Maybe not a good one. Maybe not a promise he could keep. But it was the only one he had. Shoto took one more breath, then opened his bedroom door. The hallway outside was warm and bright and painfully ordinary.

From downstairs, he could hear voices. Sero laughing. Mina complaining about something. The distant clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Someone had turned the television on too loudly. Life was continuing around him with unbearable confidence.

Shoto stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Halfway to the stairs, another contraction seized him. He stopped immediately, one hand flattening against the wall. His other hand dropped to his stomach beneath his jacket.

The pain wrapped around him, low and relentless. For one terrifying second, he thought he might make a sound. His mouth parted. His shoulders hunched. Frost bloomed under his palm against the wall before he could stop it.

The contraction passed. Shoto stood there, breathing shallowly, staring at the thin white mark his quirk had left behind. He melted it with a touch of heat, but he kept walking. The baby was just taking their time. That was what he told himself as he reached the stairs. That was what he told himself as he passed the common room without going in.

That was what he told himself when Midoriya called his name from somewhere behind him, concerned and familiar, and Shoto forced himself not to turn around too quickly.

“Todoroki-kun? Are you heading out?” Shoto adjusted his bag over one shoulder. “Yes,” he said. His voice was even. “Work study.” Midoriya frowned. “Are you feeling okay? You look a little—”

“I’m fine.”

The answer came too fast. Midoriya’s frown deepened.

Shoto looked at him and felt a sudden, terrible urge to tell the truth. It rose in him like another contraction, painful and urgent. For a second, he imagined it. Midoriya’s eyes going wide. His voice cracking. His hands moving before his brain caught up. The chaos. The help.

The end of the secret. Shoto’s fingers curled against his stomach. The baby shifted once. He looked away.

“I’m just tired,” Shoto said. Midoriya hesitated. Then, because he was Midoriya, because he was kind in ways Shoto did not know how to survive, he softened.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Text us if you need anything?” Shoto nodded. He would not. “I will.” He left before Midoriya could look any closer.

Outside, the evening air hit his face cold enough to make him inhale sharply. The sky had gone dark, the city lights already flickering awake beyond U.A.’s gates. Shoto walked carefully, one step at a time, one hand hidden inside his coat and resting over the baby.

Another contraction started before he reached the path.

He did not stop this time. He slowed, lowered his head, and breathed through it as he kept moving toward his father’s agency, carrying his secret with him. He thought he had already been in labor for ten hours. He thought the baby was nearly here. He thought he only needed to hold himself together a little longer. He did not know his body was only beginning.

Shoto found out in a convenience store bathroom with one hand braced against the sink and the other curled so tightly around the pregnancy test that the plastic edge left a mark in his palm.

The fluorescent light above him buzzed faintly. Somewhere outside the locked door, a customer laughed too loudly near the drink coolers, and the sound scraped across Shoto’s nerves like metal. The bathroom smelled like cheap soap, disinfectant, and rainwater tracked in from the street. It was too small. Too bright. Too ordinary for something that had just rearranged the entire shape of his life.

Two lines.

He stared at them until they blurred. He had read the instructions three times. He had timed it exactly. He had followed every step with the kind of precise, detached focus he usually reserved for exams, combat drills, and situations in which panic would be inconvenient.

There was no room for misunderstanding. Shoto Todoroki was pregnant. The thought did not arrive all at once. It unfolded slowly, almost politely, as if giving him time to refuse it.

Pregnant.

He looked down at his stomach. It looked the same. Flat beneath his uniform shirt. Familiar. His body had not warned him in any obvious way. It had simply continued around him, quiet and traitorous, building a future he had not agreed to yet.

He placed the test on the edge of the sink. Then he picked it up again immediately, as if leaving it there made it less his. His phone was in his pocket. He knew who he had to tell first. That knowledge made his stomach twist harder than the nausea had.

For one second, he considered not doing it. He could walk out of the bathroom, throw the test into the trash, go back to the dorms, and pretend the afternoon had never happened. He could sleep. He could wake up tomorrow and buy another test. He could make the information more certain before he made it real.

But it was already real. And Inasa Yoarashi was involved. Shoto hated that. He hated that there was a part of this that touched Inasa at all.

Their last conversation had ended badly. Most of their recent conversations had. They had never been gentle with each other, not really. There had always been too much history caught between them, too much pride, too much old resentment wearing the shape of attraction. What happened between them had not been soft. It had not been romantic. It had been anger and heat and challenge and something neither of them had wanted to name afterward.

A mistake, Shoto had told himself. A mistake could be contained. A mistake could be regretted. A mistake was not supposed to leave two lines on a pregnancy test.

He unlocked his phone and stared at Inasa’s contact for several seconds before pressing call.  It rang once. Twice.

On the third ring, Inasa answered. “Todoroki?” His voice was too loud. It always was. Even through the phone, Inasa sounded like weather: forceful, impossible to ignore, rushing into places whether they were prepared for him or not. Shoto closed his eyes. “I need to speak with you.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Is this about—”

“Yes,” Shoto said before Inasa could finish. Inasa’s voice changed. It lost some of its volume. “Where are you?” Shoto looked at the stained tile floor beneath his shoes. “Near the station. There is a convenience store on the corner.”

“I know it.”

“Meet me outside.”

He ended the call before Inasa could ask another question.

Shoto stayed where he was. He carefully wrapped the pregnancy test in tissue, then another layer, then shoved it into his bag as if neatness could make the situation manageable. He washed his hands even though there was no reason to. He dried them thoroughly. He straightened his shirt. He checked his reflection. He looked normal. That felt offensive.

Outside, the rain had thinned to a mist. Cars moved through the street in long ribbons of reflected light. Shoto stood under the store awning with his arms folded, watching water drip steadily from the edge of the roof.

Inasa arrived eight minutes later, breathless despite the short distance. His hair was damp from the rain, his uniform collar crooked, his expression already too open. Shoto disliked that about him. Inasa felt everything on his face before he had decided what he thought.

“Todoroki,” Inasa said. “What happened?” Shoto’s mouth went dry. He had rehearsed three possible ways to say it. Directly. Clinically. With enough context to prevent a reaction he did not want. None of them came. So he chose the simplest one. “I’m pregnant.”

The rain made a soft pattering sound against the awning. Inasa stared at him. Shoto watched the meaning reach him. Confusion first. Then denial. Then recognition, sharp and ugly. His face went pale beneath the flush the rain and running had brought to his cheeks.

“What?”

“I’m pregnant,” Shoto repeated. Inasa took one step back. It was small. Almost nothing. Shoto noticed anyway. “That’s not—” Inasa stopped. He swallowed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Shoto looked at him. Inasa winced immediately, as if he heard his own stupidity a second too late. “I mean—no. I know how. I mean, how sure?”

“I took a test.”

“One test?”

“Yes.”

“That can be wrong.”

“It can,” Shoto said. “But I have been sick for two weeks. I am late. My chest hurts. I have been more tired than usual. I am fairly certain the test is accurate.” Inasa dragged a hand over his face. “No.”

Shoto’s spine stiffened. The word had not been directed at him, exactly. It sounded more like Inasa was rejecting the air, the rain, the entire shape of the conversation. Still, it landed between them with force.

“No?” Shoto repeated.

“I didn’t mean—” Inasa breathed out hard. “This can’t happen.”

“It already has.”

Inasa turned away, then turned back, restless and agitated. “We were angry.”

“Yes.”

“It was stupid.”

“Yes.”

“We weren’t thinking.”

“No.”

“You said it was a mistake.” Shoto’s fingers tightened around the strap of his bag. “It was.” Inasa looked at him as if that should solve something. “Then get rid of it.”

The words came too quickly. Not thoughtfully. Not gently. Not even with enough cruelty to feel intentional. They came out like an answer to a practical problem, simple and obvious, as if Shoto had presented him with a broken piece of equipment instead of a life-altering truth.

Shoto went very still. Inasa seemed to realize what he had said only after it was already there. His mouth opened slightly, but no apology came out. Shoto waited for one anyway. It did not arrive.

“Get rid of it,” Shoto said. 

Inasa’s hands curled at his sides. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it?”

“I mean—” Inasa looked around, as if the street might provide him with better words. “You don’t want this. I don’t want this. We don’t even—” He cut himself off, breathing hard. “We don’t even like each other most of the time.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It kind of is, Todoroki.”

“No,” Shoto said. His voice came out colder than he intended. “It is not.” Inasa flinched at the temperature in the air between them. Shoto had not realized frost had started to gather along the metal edge of the awning until he saw Inasa glance upward. He forced his quirk down. The ice receded, but the cold remained under his skin.

Inasa lowered his voice. “You know what I mean.”

“I know what you said.”

“I’m scared,” Inasa snapped. The honesty of it hit harder than the anger. Shoto looked at him. Inasa’s face twisted. He looked younger than he usually did. Less like the booming, relentless force who could fill an entire room with conviction and more like a boy standing in the rain with consequences he could not outrun.

“I’m scared,” Inasa repeated, quieter. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“You could have started with that.”

“I know.” Inasa pressed both hands against the back of his neck. “I know. I’m sorry.” Shoto absorbed the apology without softening. Inasa glanced down at Shoto’s stomach, then away immediately, as if the sight burned him.

That bothered Shoto more than he wanted it to. There was nothing to see. No change. No proof. But Inasa looked away like there was already something shameful there.

“You should see a doctor,” Inasa said.

“I will.”

“And then…” Inasa struggled again. “And then you can figure out how to end it.” Shoto’s expression emptied. Inasa stopped. “I did not say that was my decision.” Inasa stared at him. “You’re considering keeping it?”

“I do not know what I am considering.”

“How can you not know?”

The question came out too loud. A woman leaving the convenience store glanced toward them. Shoto stepped farther under the awning, turning his body slightly so his face was hidden from the street. Inasa followed, lowering his voice again, but his panic still pressed against every word.

“How can you not know?” he repeated. “This is huge.”

“I am aware.”

“You’re still in school.”

“I am aware.”

“You’re a hero student.”

“I am aware.”

“You’re trans. The press would—” Inasa stopped himself, but too late. Shoto’s throat tightened. The press would. His father would. His classmates would. The Hero Commission would. The world would.

Everyone would have something to say about his body, because everyone always had something to say about his body. What it meant. What it proved. What it was allowed to become. His father had wanted it to be a weapon. Reporters had wanted it to be a story. Doctors had wanted it to be a case file. Strangers had wanted it to be a debate.

Now Inasa was looking at him with fear in his eyes, already turning Shoto’s body into a disaster that needed to be fixed quickly.

“I know what I am,” Shoto said. Inasa’s face fell. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“It is what you said.”

“I’m trying to be realistic.”

“You are trying to make this disappear.”

“Yes,” Inasa said, and the bluntness of it made Shoto’s breath catch. Inasa’s eyes were bright now, furious and frightened. “Yes, I am. Because maybe it should. Maybe that’s the best thing. Maybe that’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Shoto looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded once. “Okay.” Inasa blinked. “Okay?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means okay.”

“Todoroki, don’t do that.”

Shoto adjusted the strap of his bag. His fingers were numb. His face was calm. He could feel the cold spreading through him, not from his quirk, but from something quieter and more complete.

“You said what you wanted,” Shoto said.

“I panicked.”

“Yes.”

“I shouldn’t have said it like that.”

“No.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you.” Shoto almost laughed. It would have sounded terrible, so he did not. “That does not make it painless.”

Inasa’s expression crumpled. For one second, Shoto almost felt sorry for him. Then he remembered the way Inasa had looked at his stomach. The way he had stepped back. The way he had said get rid of it like Shoto had brought him a problem that could be solved by removing it quickly enough. The sympathy went quiet.

“What do you want from me?” Inasa asked. It was not cruel this time. It was worse. It was helpless. Shoto did not have an answer.

He had called Inasa because it seemed correct. Because there were rules for situations like this, even if no one had taught them to him directly. Because Inasa was involved. Because not telling him would have felt dishonest. But standing there beneath the awning with rain dripping behind them and Inasa looking at him like he wanted to run, Shoto realized something important. Telling Inasa had not made the decision easier. It had only made Shoto more alone.

“I thought I should tell you,” Shoto said. Inasa swallowed. “And now?”

“Now I know.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I heard you.” Inasa stared at him. The rain tapped against the awning behind them. “Todoroki—”

“You were involved,” Shoto said evenly. “Now you are not.” Inasa’s face changed. “That’s not fair.”

“No,” Shoto said. “It is not.” The words sat there between them, heavier than an accusation. Inasa shook his head once, like he could dislodge them. “You can’t just decide that.”

“I can.”

“I have a right to know what you’re going to do.” Shoto looked at him. Something in Inasa seemed to understand the mistake before Shoto spoke. “No,” Shoto said quietly. “You had a chance to be someone I told.” Inasa went still. Shoto’s voice did not rise. It did not need to.

“You are not that person.”

The color drained from Inasa’s face. Neither of them spoke. The rain thickened again, soft but steady, turning the sidewalk dark. Shoto could feel the cold in his left hand and heat in his right, both quirks stirring beneath his skin like animals pacing in separate cages.

Finally, Inasa said, “So that’s it?” Shoto looked down the street. He thought about saying yes. He thought about saying no.

He thought about explaining that there had never truly been an it to begin with. There had been anger. There had been a mistake. There had been a moment neither of them had known how to carry afterward. Now there was a consequence Inasa had looked at and immediately tried to erase.

Shoto did not explain any of that. He only said, “Okay.” Inasa’s mouth parted. “Okay?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means okay.”

“Todoroki, please don’t leave it there.”

“I can.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“No.”

“What if you—” Inasa stopped, his eyes flicking once more toward Shoto’s stomach. Something inside Shoto closed. “If I continue this pregnancy,” Shoto said, and the words felt strange, too formal and too intimate at once, “you will not be involved.” Inasa looked like he had been struck.

Shoto continued before he could speak. “If I do not, you will not be involved in that either.”

“Todoroki—”

“I will not contact you for support. I will not ask you for anything. I will not give you updates. I will not explain my appointments. I will not tell you what I decide so you can feel better about what you said.” Inasa’s hands flexed at his sides.

“And if anyone asks,” Shoto said, quieter now, “I will not tell them it was you.” Inasa stared at him. 

There should have been relief. Maybe there was, buried somewhere beneath the shock and shame. Shoto hated that he noticed. He hated that he could see the part of Inasa that understood what he was being offered: protection from consequences. Distance from a situation he had already rejected. A clean exit from a child he did not want and a pregnancy he did not want to acknowledge.

But Shoto was not offering it for Inasa. He was offering it for himself. Because if people knew, they would ask questions. They would want names. They would want blame. They would turn a thing Shoto had not even decided yet into a scandal with Inasa’s face attached to it. His father would turn it into a battle. The press would turn it into proof. Strangers would turn it into spectacle.

Shoto could not bear the thought of his child, real or possible or not yet chosen, being introduced to the world through a story about hate and regret. So he would keep that part. He would keep the name. He would keep the ugliness out of reach.

Inasa’s voice came out rough. “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“You’d really never tell anyone?”

Shoto looked at him then. It was a mistake on Inasa’s part, asking with that expression. Not hope, exactly. Not relief, exactly. Something close enough to both. Shoto’s chest went cold.

“Yes,” he said. “I would.” Inasa swallowed. “Why?”

“Because this is mine now.”

The words surprised Shoto as much as they seemed to surprise Inasa. For one terrible second, his hand almost moved to his stomach again. He stopped it. Inasa saw anyway.

“Todoroki,” he said, softer now. Shoto stepped out from beneath the awning. Inasa reached after him but did not touch him. “Wait.” Shoto did not. He walked into the rain, slowly enough that Inasa could have followed. He did not.

That was what Shoto remembered most clearly afterward. Not the test. Not the two lines. Not even the words get rid of it, though they would return to him often enough in the weeks that followed. He remembered walking away with no answer given. He remembered Inasa standing under the awning, waiting for certainty Shoto no longer owed him. He remembered the sound of nothing behind him.

When Shoto reached the dorms, his hair was damp, his uniform collar wet, and his fingers numb around the strap of his bag. He entered through the side door to avoid the common room, went straight upstairs, and locked himself in the bathroom.

Only then did he take the test out again.

The tissue had gone soft around it. He peeled it away carefully and set the test on the closed toilet lid. Two lines. Still there. Shoto sat on the bathroom floor with his back against the tub. For several minutes, he did nothing except breathe. Then he pulled out his phone and searched.

Pregnancy options. Termination. Pregnancy in transgender men. Prenatal care. Adoption. Confidential medical appointment. How many weeks pregnant?

He opened one page, then another, then another, each one offering language that seemed too clean for the panic gathering under his ribs. Procedure. Medication. Counseling. Timeline. Risks. Support. Choice. Choice. Choice.

The word appeared everywhere. It should have helped. It did not. There were too many choices. Termination was an option. He made himself think the word clearly, without flinching. He would not be ashamed of considering it. It was his body. His future. His life. He was allowed to decide he could not do this.

Adoption was an option. He could carry the pregnancy and give the baby to someone else. Someone prepared. Someone stable. Someone whose family name did not come with fire and cameras and old violence stitched into every headline.

Keeping the baby was an option. The thought was so startling that he shut his eyes. Keeping the baby. His hand moved to his stomach before he could stop it. There was nothing there to feel. No movement. No proof. Just skin, muscle, breath, and the quiet terror of possibility.

He could tell Fuyumi.

She would cry. She would try not to, but she would. She would ask if he was safe. She would ask who knew. She would ask what he wanted, and that would be unbearable because Shoto did not know. She would ask who the father was. No.

He could tell Natsuo. Natsuo would become very still, then very angry, and then he would ask for a name in a voice that suggested he did not intend to send a letter. No.

He could tell his mother. The thought made Shoto’s throat ache. Rei would be gentle. That was the problem. Gentleness had a way of making him feel breakable. She would not demand the name. Not immediately. She would want to know whether Shoto had been hurt. And he had been. But not in a way he wanted to explain.

He could tell his father. No. That was also an option, technically. But not a safe one. Enji would demand a name. He would demand circumstances. He would turn fatherhood into territory. He would turn Shoto’s body into evidence. He would turn Inasa into an enemy, the pregnancy into a crisis, and the baby into another Todoroki problem requiring control.

No. No one would get the name. Not Fuyumi. Not Natsuo. Not his mother. Not his father. Not the press. Not the school.

Maybe someday, if there was a child old enough to ask, Shoto would decide what truth was kind and what truth was necessary. But not now. Now, the name stayed locked behind his teeth. He could tell no one. He could make an appointment alone. He could walk into a clinic, answer every question calmly, make the choice, leave, and never speak of it again. He could pretend he was relieved. He could pretend he did not wonder. He could pretend Inasa’s voice was not still in his head.

Get rid of it.

Shoto pressed his palm harder against his stomach. “I don’t know,” he whispered. The words sounded strange in his mouth.

He was used to not being asked what he wanted. He was used to deciding things after all the important choices had already been made around him. His father had decided what his body was for before Shoto was born. His family had been shaped around that decision. His training, his name, his scars, his quirk, his future—so many pieces of him had been claimed before he understood what it meant to belong to himself.

Now there was something inside him that no one had planned. Not his father. Not Inasa. Not even Shoto. And still, everyone would think they knew what he should do.

Get rid of it.

Hide it.

Keep it.

Explain it.

Regret it.

Fix it.

Choose.

Shoto leaned his head back against the bathtub and stared at the ceiling. He did not feel like a parent. He did not feel brave. He did not feel certain. He felt fifteen and soaked from the rain and very, very tired. He thought about Inasa stepping back. He thought about the absence of footsteps behind him. He thought about a future splitting open in front of him, not into one path, but into too many.

Maybe he would end the pregnancy. Maybe he would not. Maybe he would wake up tomorrow certain. Maybe he would wake up tomorrow even more afraid. But for the first time since seeing the test, Shoto understood one thing clearly.

He was not ready to let someone else’s certainty become his decision. Not again. Not about this. His phone buzzed in his hand. A message from Inasa lit the screen.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Please call me.

Shoto stared at it until the screen dimmed.

Another message appeared.

Just tell me what you’re going to do.

Then another.

I deserve to know.

Shoto looked at those words for a long time. Maybe Inasa believed that. Maybe there had been a moment, before the awning, before the step back, before get rid of it, when Shoto might have believed it too. Now that moment was gone. Shoto opened the thread. His thumb hovered over the keyboard. He considered writing a full answer. Something clear. Something final. Something cold enough to make Inasa understand.

Instead, he typed one word.

Okay.

He sent it.

Inasa replied almost immediately.

Okay what?

Shoto did not answer. He blocked the number before another message could come through. Then he set the phone down beside the pregnancy test and opened his notes app with shaking fingers. For a while, he could not type anything. Then, slowly, he wrote one sentence.

I need to know what I want before anyone else tells me what to do.

Below it, after a long pause, he added another.

No one needs to know who he is.

He stared at that sentence until his vision blurred. Then he deleted he and replaced it with they.

No one needs to know who they are.

That was better. Less specific. Less personal. Less like Inasa had any claim left in the sentence. Shoto placed the phone face down on the floor. The pregnancy test sat beside it, small and plastic and impossible.

He rested one hand lightly over his stomach. There was no answer there. No certainty. No sudden rush of love. No clear direction. Only his own breathing, shallow and uneven, and the quiet, terrifying knowledge that whatever happened next would have to come from him.

Shoto sat there on the cold bathroom floor until the rain dried in his hair, trying to imagine a future he had not chosen yet.

Shoto kept one hand low on his stomach beneath his coat.

It was not obvious. At least, he hoped it was not. His arm rested there as if he were simply standing at attention, fingers tucked neatly against the dark fabric, posture straight despite the ache settling deep in his back. Around him, sidekicks moved through the agency briefing room with practiced efficiency. Reports changed hands. Screens flickered with district maps and patrol routes. Someone was speaking about an increase in minor villain activity near the south district, but the words kept blurring together before they reached him.

Another contraction began quietly.

Shoto felt it first as pressure, a slow tightening low in his abdomen that made his fingers curl before he could stop them. His palm pressed more firmly against the curve hidden under his coat. He lowered his eyes to the floor and tried to breathe through his nose the way the articles had told him to do. In for four. Out for six.

That worked for approximately three seconds. The contraction strengthened, wrapping around his lower back and pulling forward until the room seemed to tilt slightly around him. He did not move. Moving would draw attention. Speaking would draw attention. Breathing too loudly would draw attention.

So Shoto stood there with one hand on his belly and the other clenched at his side, staring at the polished floor while his focus narrowed to the pain and the baby beneath his hand. They shifted faintly. Just a small, low movement against his palm, as if they were reminding him they were still there.

Shoto’s throat tightened. Please wait, he thought, though he did not know who he was asking. The baby. His body. The universe. Please just wait a little longer.

The voice at the front of the room faded. The maps blurred into blocks of color. Someone laughed softly near the door, and Shoto barely heard it. Heat gathered along his left side, not enough to flare, but enough to make the air around his sleeve shimmer. He forced it down. The contraction peaked.

Shoto forgot where he was for a second. He forgot the agency. The patrol. His father. He forgot the sidekicks and the schedule and the fact that he was standing in a room full of people who could ruin everything by looking too closely. There was only the pressure, his hand on his stomach, and the awful knowledge that he was nowhere near done.

“Shoto.” 

His name cut through the room. Shoto lifted his head too quickly. His father stood at the front, flames low around his jaw, eyes fixed on him with the sharp, assessing focus Shoto had spent his entire life learning not to fear.

“You’re with me,” Endeavor said. “South district sweep. We leave in five.” Shoto opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

The contraction loosened, but not completely. A strange pull remained low inside him, milder now, but deep enough to leave his knees feeling unreliable beneath him. Shoto shifted his weight and folded one arm lower across his abdomen, as if he could hold everything in place through pressure alone.

“I can’t,” he said.

Endeavor stared at him. “Excuse me?”

Shoto forced his voice to stay even. “I can’t go with you.”

A few sidekicks looked over. That was a mistake. He should have waited until they were alone. He should have said he felt ill. He should have said anything else. Anything that would not make this sound like defiance. 

Endeavor’s expression hardened immediately. “You are refusing an assignment?”

“No.”

“Then explain.” Shoto swallowed. His hand pressed more firmly against his stomach beneath his coat. “I need to speak to you privately.” Endeavor’s eyes narrowed. “Now?”

“Yes.” Shoto thought his father would refuse. Then Endeavor turned sharply toward the room. “Hold the briefing.”

He did not wait for anyone to answer. He strode into the hall, and Shoto followed, each step careful, measured, controlled. His lower back ached with every movement, and the pressure low in his body made walking feel strangely precarious, as if one wrong step might make the secret impossible to contain.

The hallway outside the briefing room was all glass and steel, polished until the lights reflected back too cleanly. Shoto stopped beside the wall because standing in the open suddenly felt impossible. Endeavor turned on him so quickly that the heat around him seemed to follow a second later.

“Well?” he demanded. “Speak.”

Shoto stood with his back near the wall, one hand still tucked low against his stomach beneath his coat. The hallway felt too bright. Too exposed. The polished glass reflected the two of them in long, distorted shapes, his father broad and burning, Shoto pale and still beside him. For a moment, all he could hear was the low murmur of sidekicks continuing the briefing behind the closed door and the unsteady rhythm of his own breathing.

Another small tightening moved through him. Not a full contraction. Not yet. A warning. A low, unpleasant pull that made his fingers press more firmly into the fabric over his abdomen before he could stop himself. Enji’s eyes dropped. Shoto saw the exact moment his father noticed.

At first, there was nothing. Only irritation, sharp and familiar, because Shoto had interrupted an assignment and pulled him into the hall without explanation. Then his gaze lingered on Shoto’s hand. On the way his arm curved too protectively over his middle. On the shape beneath the layers of uniform and coat that Shoto had spent months learning how to hide.

Understanding did not come all at once. It failed to form. Then it formed anyway. His father’s face changed. Not softly. Not with concern. There was no dawning fear, no instinctive step forward, no question of whether Shoto was in pain. His expression hardened first, as if the truth had offended him by existing. Then anger moved in behind it, hot and immediate.

“What,” Enji said slowly, “is going on?” Shoto’s mouth was dry. He had practiced a hundred versions of this conversation in his head, but none of them had started in a glass hallway at Endeavor’s agency while he was ten hours into labor and trying not to let his knees shake.

“I’m probably in labor.” The words landed between them and seemed to remain there. Endeavor stared at him. For one impossible second, Shoto wondered if he had said it too quietly. Then his father’s expression twisted, and Shoto knew he had heard every word.

“You are what?”

“Probably in labor,” Shoto repeated.

His voice stayed flat because if it did not, it would shake. He knew enough to know what was happening. Contractions. Pressure. Pain that came and went in waves. A heaviness low in his body that had not been there yesterday. He did not know how far along he was in the process. He did not know dilation or station or whether the baby was anywhere close to coming. He did not know if this would be over in an hour or if his body had only just begun.

But he knew this. He was in labor. Probably was only there because saying it with certainty felt too dangerous. Endeavor’s flames flared hard enough that heat rolled down the hallway. The glass beside them caught the orange reflection, turning the clean walls briefly molten.

“Labor,” he repeated. Shoto did not answer.

His father’s gaze dropped again, and this time there was no mistaking what he was seeing. The hidden curve beneath Shoto’s uniform. The way his hand hovered protectively at his side. The careful posture. The damp hair near his temples. The exhaustion he had been carrying all day and failing, finally, to disguise.

Enji’s jaw tightened. “How long have you known?” Shoto looked away. “That you were pregnant,” Enji snapped. “How long?”

“A while.”

“A while?”

Shoto’s fingers curled against his palm. “Yes.”

“How far along are you?”

“I don’t know.” The answer detonated something in Enji. “You don’t know?” His voice cracked through the hall, sharp enough that someone in the briefing room went silent behind the door. Shoto flinched despite himself. Enji saw it and looked angrier for it, as though Shoto’s fear was another accusation.

“You are telling me you are pregnant, you are possibly in labor, and you do not know how far along you are?”

“I know it’s late,” Shoto said. “Far. I don’t know exactly.”

“How could you not know exactly?” Shoto’s face went colder. “Because I did not want you to know.” Enji stepped closer. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I have.”

At first, all Shoto could hear was the pulse in his ears. Then Enji asked the question Shoto had known was coming and had still not prepared himself to hear.

“Who is the father?” Shoto’s stomach tightened again. Not a real contraction, he told himself. Not yet. Not strong enough. Not close enough. Very early. He could still think. He could still stand. He breathed through it silently.

Enji’s eyes sharpened. “Shoto.”

“He isn’t involved.” The answer made Enji go still. Then his rage found a new shape. “Who is he?” Shoto looked at him. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It matters if someone touched my son and left him like this.”

The words hit harder than Shoto expected. Something raw moved through him. Not because his father was right. Not because he wanted Enji’s protection. He did not want anything from Enji. He had built the entire secret around that fact.

But the anger in Enji’s voice almost sounded like concern. Shoto did not know what to do with concern when it came wrapped in fire.

“He is not involved,” Shoto repeated. “That is all.” Enji’s flames surged. Heat rolled down the hallway, sharp enough to make the glass beside them blur at the edges. “You do not get to decide that alone.”

“I already did.”

“You are a child.”

Shoto’s expression went blank. The hallway seemed to go colder around him, though he had not used his quirk. The words should not have hurt. They were true. He knew they were true. That was part of the problem. He was too young for this, too unprepared, too far along to keep pretending he had time, and still too proud to let his father see how badly he had miscalculated.

“I know,” he said.

That stopped Enji for half a second. Shoto hated that half second. He hated the way his father’s anger shifted, uncertain at the edges, as if Shoto had finally said something Enji could not immediately turn into an accusation.

“I know,” Shoto said again, quieter. “That is why I didn’t tell you.”

Enji’s mouth tightened. “You hid this from me.”

“Yes.”

“You hid this from everyone?”

Shoto did not answer. He did not need to. The silence was answer enough.

Enji stared at him, furious and disbelieving, as if the shape of the secret had only just become clear to him. Shoto had not hidden the pregnancy from his classmates because he distrusted them. He had not hidden it from his teachers because he thought they would hate him. He had not hidden it from his siblings because he believed they would turn away.

He had hidden it from everyone because telling anyone meant someone might tell Enji. Shoto had spent months deciding that anything was better than that. Enji seemed to understand it at the same time Shoto did.

His expression darkened. “You told no one,” he said. Shoto looked away. “Because of me?” The question came out low and dangerous, but there was something beneath it that Shoto did not want to identify. Shoto’s fingers curled against his palm. “I didn’t want you to know.”

Enji went very still. For one terrible moment, there was no sound except the muted noise of the agency behind the briefing room doors and Shoto’s careful breathing. Then Enji’s anger returned twice as hard, because that was what he did when something wounded him.

“Have you seen a doctor?” Shoto hesitated. The hesitation was enough. “Shoto.”

“Not recently.”

“Not recently?” Enji repeated, voice rising. Shoto kept his eyes on the floor. “I know.”

“You know?” Enji stepped closer, flames snapping brighter along his shoulders. “You know? You are standing in my agency telling me you may be in labor, you do not know how far along you are, you have not made arrangements, you have no doctor, no plan, no one prepared to help you, and the father is—”

“Not involved,” Shoto cut in. His voice was still quiet. It still stopped Enji cold.

The correction mattered more than it should have. The father was not a person Enji could hunt down and force into the shape of responsibility. He was not an answer. He was not a solution. He was only another part of the mess Shoto had decided to carry alone.

Enji’s jaw worked once. “You are protecting him.”

“No.”

“Then you are protecting yourself from telling me.” Shoto did not answer. Enji’s face hardened, rage and realization twisting together into something uglier than either one alone. “You let this go this far because you were afraid I would find out.”

Shoto’s back tightened. He braced one hand against the wall, fingers spread flat against the cold surface, and lowered his head as the pressure rolled through him again. It started low, a deep uncomfortable pull that wrapped around his abdomen and dragged into his spine. Still early. Still manageable. Not enough to make him cry out. Not enough to excuse the sudden heat in his face or the shame rising in his throat. That almost made it worse.

If it had been unbearable, there would have been no room left to feel anything else. Enji noticed the change in his posture. His anger did not disappear, but it faltered under the weight of something immediate. His eyes dropped to Shoto’s hand against the wall, then to the other hand hovering protectively near his stomach.

“How long has that been happening?” he demanded. Shoto breathed through the last of the tightening before he answered. “About ten hours.”

Enji stared at him. “Ten hours?”

“Since homeroom.”

“This morning?”

“Yes.”

“You have been in labor all day?”

“Probably.”

“Stop saying probably.”

“I don’t know the specifics.”

“You know enough.”

Shoto looked down at his stomach. “Yes.” Endeavor dragged a hand down his face, the flames at his beard flickering unevenly. It was the first uncontrolled movement he had made. “You went through classes like this.”

“Yes.”

“And came here.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Shoto did not answer immediately.

There were too many answers, and none of them sounded reasonable outside his own head. Because missing work study would draw attention. Because the baby was not coming yet. Because he had checked and nothing was happening. Because he had tried to push and his body had refused. Because he had told himself he could endure it a little longer. Because endurance was the only thing Enji Todoroki had ever taught him that Shoto still knew how to use.

Finally, he said, “I thought I had more time.” Endeavor’s face tightened again. “You thought you had more time.”

“Yes.”

“To do what?” Shoto’s hand curved more protectively over the baby. His voice thinned despite his efforts to keep it steady. “To hold them before someone takes them away.” Enji said nothing. Then his expression closed.

“You are in labor,” he said. “What you want is no longer the only concern.” Shoto’s hand tightened against the wall. “I know.”

And he did. That was what frightened him most.

For a while, Shoto had believed that if he ignored the problem long enough, it might go away.

That was not logical. He knew that. Problems did not disappear because someone refused to look at them. Injuries did not heal because he stopped checking the bruises. Fire did not stop burning because no one named the smoke. He had learned all of that early, in ways he did not like thinking about. Still, for the first few weeks after he found out, ignoring it had felt easier than making a decision. Easier than saying the words out loud. Easier than admitting that something inside him had changed permanently, even if no one else could see it yet.

So he carried on.

He went to class. He trained. He attended work study. He answered when teachers called on him and completed assignments on time. He ate what he could keep down and stood very still whenever nausea rose too quickly. He learned which foods made his stomach twist, which smells made his throat close, and which staircases he could use when he needed a few minutes alone before returning to everyone else with a blank face. He wore his uniform jacket closed more often. He took longer showers. He avoided looking too carefully at himself in the mirror.

If he did not look, he did not have to think. If he did not think, he did not have to choose. Then, one afternoon, something fluttered low in his stomach. Shoto froze with his hand halfway down the buttons of his school shirt.

It was not pain. It was not nausea. It was not the heavy cramping he had worried about in the beginning, back when every unfamiliar sensation sent him silently to the bathroom with his phone and a search history he deleted immediately after reading. This was lighter than that. Stranger. It felt like bubbles shifting under his skin, or the faint brush of fingertips from the inside. It was so small he almost convinced himself he had imagined it. 

He lowered his hand below his navel. Nothing happened. His room was quiet around him. Downstairs, someone laughed loudly enough for the sound to carry through the floor. A door opened and closed somewhere in the hall. The ordinary noise of the dorms continued as if Shoto had not just stopped breathing over a feeling no one else could see.

Then it happened again. A soft, impossible flicker. Shoto sat down on the edge of his bed. His heart was beating too fast by the time he reached for his phone. He stared at the search bar for several seconds, thumb hovering, because typing it made it more real. Eventually, he forced himself to enter the words.

bubbles in stomach pregnant

The answer appeared almost immediately. It could be gas. It could also be the baby beginning to move. Shoto stared at the screen for a long time.

The baby. Not the situation. Not the mistake. Not the problem he had been quietly carrying beneath layers of uniform and silence.

The baby.

The word settled differently now. It did not feel theoretical. It did not belong to a medical article or a panicked search result or the conversation he kept replaying with the baby’s father, the one where Shoto had said okay because it was easier than admitting he wanted something else. It was here. Inside him. Moving.

He did not know what to do with that. So he locked his phone, set it facedown on his bed, and did not search anything else for the rest of the night.

After that, he noticed it more.

During class, mostly. During quiet moments. When he sat too still for too long and the room settled around him. The movements were faint at first, easy enough to doubt if he wanted to. Little shifts. Tiny brushes. A feeling like something turning over in a place he had been trying not to acknowledge. Sometimes, when he rested a hand against his stomach beneath his desk, everything went still, and he would feel ridiculous for waiting. Other times, the flicker came again, so delicate it made his throat tighten.

He tried to dismiss it. He tried very hard. Then the baby kicked him during training.

It happened in the middle of a combat exercise, after Shoto had dodged one of Sero’s capture tapes and landed near the edge of the training field. Dust scuffed beneath his boots. The air smelled like sweat, scorched concrete, and Kaminari’s ozone-sharp electricity after he fired off too much power too quickly. Midoriya was muttering strategy under his breath somewhere to Shoto’s left. Iida was calling out corrections. Bakugo was yelling at everyone, which meant the exercise was proceeding as usual.

Shoto lifted one hand, preparing to send a line of ice across the ground. When something struck him from the inside. Hard. Not a flutter. Not bubbles. Not the uncertain little movements he could almost pretend were something else.

A kick.

His breath caught. The ice died beneath his palm before it formed. His hand went to his stomach so fast he did not think to stop himself. He pressed it low, just under the curve that had started to show only when he was undressed, and stood there in the middle of the training field as the whole world narrowed to that one point of contact.

For one breath, he forgot where he was. He forgot the exercise. He forgot the noise. He forgot that people were watching. He forgot that he was supposed to be careful, supposed to be hidden, supposed to treat this like a problem that could still be solved quietly.

There was only the solid, unmistakable kick beneath his hand. It happened again. Shoto smiled. It was small. Barely there. More surprise than happiness at first. But then the feeling widened before he could stop it, something warm and startled opening in his chest.

Bakugo noticed immediately, because of course he did. “The hell are you smiling about, Half-and-Half?” Shoto’s hand dropped from his stomach. The smile disappeared so quickly it almost hurt. “I remembered I have soba for dinner.”

Bakugo stared at him like Shoto had insulted his intelligence. “That’s the stupidest damn thing you’ve ever said.” Shoto looked back at him evenly. “It is good soba.”

“Focus, you freak.”

“I am focused.”

He was not. For the rest of training, Shoto moved carefully. Too carefully, probably, but no one seemed to notice beyond the usual complaints that he was being weird. His arm kept drifting too low whenever he thought no one was looking. His attention kept splitting between the exercise and the quiet place beneath his ribs where the baby had made themselves known with startling force.

They did not kick again. That almost made it worse. He wanted them to.

He spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for it, hating himself a little for waiting. Every pause in class, every quiet moment in the hallway, every time he sat down and felt his shirt pull differently over his stomach, he wondered if it would happen again. He wondered if the baby had known he was listening. He wondered if they had been startled by training or annoyed by Bakugo’s shouting or simply stretching in the dark because they were growing, because they were real, because they were not waiting for Shoto to decide whether he was ready.

That evening, he brought soba up to his room and locked the door. 

The dorm was loud below him, full of voices and footsteps and the distant clatter of dishes. Someone was arguing about laundry. Someone else had music playing too loudly. Shoto set the bowl on his desk, then changed out of his uniform with slow, careful movements. His body felt unfamiliar in the mirror. Not dramatically so. Not enough that anyone would know if they were not looking for it. But he knew.

His stomach was still small. That was what he told himself at first. It was only a slight curve, low and rounded, noticeable mostly when he stood sideways without a shirt. In uniform, it disappeared under layers. In sweaters, it became almost nothing. He could hide it. He had been hiding it. The shape was still small enough to pass as posture, fabric, maybe a full meal if anyone noticed at all.

But alone in his room, with the door locked and his shirt pushed up beneath his ribs, it looked different. It looked like evidence.

A thin, strange line had begun to appear down the center of his belly, darker than the surrounding skin, running from his navel toward the waistband of his pants. He had searched that too, privately, after seeing it for the first time in the bathroom mirror. Normal, apparently. Hormonal. Another thing his body had decided to do without asking him. His belly button looked different as well, shallower than it used to be, stretched strangely by the small swell underneath. It had not popped out, but it looked like it was considering it.

Shoto touched the line with two fingers. His belly moved. He went completely still. It was not huge. It was not dramatic. Just a quick jump beneath his skin, low and to the side, enough to make the small curve of his stomach twitch under his hand.

Shoto inhaled softly. “Oh.”

The baby kicked again. This time, he saw it. A tiny shift. A brief rise and fall. Something inside him pressing outward, visible for less than a second before disappearing again.

Shoto stared at his stomach. He forgot about the soba. He simply watched. His hand hovered over the place where the kick had been, afraid touching too quickly would make it stop. The baby moved again after a minute, lighter this time, more of a roll than a kick. Shoto lowered his palm carefully over the spot, warm on one side, cool on the other.

“Hello,” he said quietly. Nothing happened. He felt foolish immediately. After a pause, the baby kicked directly beneath his hand. Shoto’s breath caught. He looked toward the door, even though it was locked. Even though no one could hear him over the noise downstairs. Even though there was no reason to be afraid of speaking in his own room.

Still, his voice dropped softer. “Do you like my voice?”

The baby shifted again. Shoto did smile then. He could not help it. It was small and private and completely unguarded, the kind of expression he would have wiped away immediately if anyone had been there to see it. But no one was there. No one knew. For once, the secret felt less like a trap and more like a room with the door shut, a small space where he could be honest because there was no one to disappoint.

He picked up his chopsticks eventually, mostly because the soba existed and because he had used it as an excuse. He ate slowly, seated on the edge of his bed with his shirt still pushed up, watching his stomach between bites. The baby seemed to move more when he spoke. Not every time. Not in any pattern he could prove. But often enough that Shoto started testing it, his voice low and careful in the quiet room.

“I do have soba,” he said, because it was easier than saying anything important. A tiny kick answered him. Shoto looked down.

“It is good soba.” Another shift. “That is not an objective statement,” he murmured. “But I believe it is accurate.” The baby moved again, and the warmth in his chest became almost painful.

He did not know what he was going to do.

That truth remained. It did not vanish because the baby kicked. It did not become simple because he wanted it to. He still did not know if keeping them was possible. He did not know if giving them up would be kinder. He did not know whether wanting them was selfish, or whether giving them away because he was afraid would be worse. He did not know what kind of life he could offer a child when his own family still felt like a house built around old wounds.

He only knew one thing. He wanted to meet them. The knowledge came quietly at first. It did not feel like a decision. It felt like something already true rising to the surface.

He wanted to see their face. He wanted to know if they would have red hair or white hair or something that belonged to someone else entirely. He wanted to know if they would cry loudly or quietly. He wanted to know what their hands looked like. He wanted to hold them, even once, and say hello to the person who had been living beneath his ribs while he pretended they were only a problem to solve.

The baby kicked again, gentler this time, as if answering a question Shoto had not said out loud. He rested his palm over them.

“I don’t know what happens next,” he whispered. His throat tightened around the admission. He looked at the small curve of his stomach, the strange line down the center, the shallow dip of his navel, the place where the baby had moved beneath his skin. “But I want to meet you. Do you want to meet me too?”

The baby shifted under his hand, small and certain. Shoto sat there with his soba cooling beside him and his palm pressed to his belly, breathing carefully through the ache in his chest. And for the first time, he stopped wishing the problem would go away.

The emergency room was too bright. Shoto noticed that first. Not the pain. Not the pressure. Not his father’s hand hovering too close to his back without quite touching him. The lights. The polished floor. The sharp antiseptic smell. The constant movement of people who had places to be and patients to assess and no idea that the number two hero had just walked in with his pregnant teenage son wrapped in his coat.

Shoto stood beside Enji at the intake desk with his hands tucked beneath the heavy fabric, one palm resting low over his stomach. The tightening had faded again during the ride over, leaving only a dull ache in his lower back and a strange, unsettled awareness of his own body. He was not doubled over. He was not crying. He was not making any dramatic noises. He was, to anyone looking quickly, mostly fine.

Enji did not look fine.

“My son is in labor,” he said.

The nurse behind the desk looked up sharply. Her eyes moved from Enji’s face to Shoto’s, then lower, to the coat wrapped carefully around his body. She kept her expression professional, but Shoto saw the quick recalculation happen anyway. It was a small shift, but obvious enough to make his stomach tighten for reasons that had nothing to do with labor. He had gone from a person standing at the desk to a situation.

“All right,” she said, already reaching for a form. “How far along?”

“He doesn’t know,” Enji said. The nurse paused. Shoto looked down at the counter.

Enji’s jaw tightened. His voice stayed controlled, but only barely. “He has received zero prenatal care. He is experiencing contractions, pelvic pressure, and back pain. It began approximately ten hours ago. He needs immediate attention.”

Shoto’s eyes shifted toward him. Zero prenatal care. It sounded worse when his father said it like that. Clinical. Accusatory. True.

“I’m not sure they’re contractions,” Shoto said quietly.

Enji turned on him. “You are not qualified to decide that.”

“I said I’m not sure.”

“That does not improve the situation.”

Shoto pressed his lips together. He knew. Of course he knew. He had known since the dorms, maybe since homeroom, maybe since the first tightening wrapped around his back and made the classroom blur at the edges. He knew what the timing meant. He knew what the pressure meant. He knew the baby had dropped lower, and he knew his body was doing something too large and inevitable to dismiss.

But saying it out loud made it real in a way he was not ready for. The nurse looked between them once, then wisely chose not to enter that part of the conversation. “Any bleeding?” she asked.

“No,” Shoto said.

“Fluid leaking? Did your water break?”

“No.”

“Severe pain?” 

Shoto hesitated. It hurt. His lower back ached constantly now, and the contractions came in waves that made him want to close his eyes and stop pretending he was fine. The pressure was frightening. His legs still did not feel completely reliable beneath him.

Although, calling it severe sounded dramatic. Severe sounded like panic. Severe sounded like something he had not earned the right to claim when he could still stand.

“No,” he said finally. Enji looked at him as if this was somehow another offense. “He is underreporting,” Enji said. Shoto blinked. “I am not.”

“You hid an entire pregnancy.”

“That does not mean I am lying about pain.”

“It means your judgment is compromised.” Shoto stared at him. The nurse’s pen stopped moving for half a second. Then she said, very calmly, “Sir, I understand you’re concerned, but I need him to answer what he’s feeling right now.” Enji’s mouth tightened.

Shoto looked back at the nurse. Her voice was even. Not soft enough to feel pitying. Not sharp enough to feel like another accusation. For some reason, that made it harder to answer.

She glanced at his hand, where it had settled low over his stomach again. “Can you describe what you’re feeling?” Shoto swallowed. “A tightening,” he said carefully. “Low. It starts in my back and moves forward. Sometimes there’s pressure.”

“How often?”

“I don’t know exactly.” Enji made a sound under his breath. Shoto ignored him. “I timed it for a while,” he admitted. “Then I stopped.”

“About how close together?”

“Sometimes eight minutes. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.”

The nurse nodded, writing quickly. “And you said it started around ten hours ago?”

“Yes.”

“Have you felt the baby move today?” Shoto’s hand tightened over his stomach before he could stop it. “Yes.” The answer came too quickly. Too protective. The nurse’s expression softened by a fraction. “Good. Are they moving normally for you?”

Shoto looked down.

He did not know what normal was supposed to be anymore. The baby had moved through the day, but not in the sharp, familiar way that usually startled him during class or made his shirt twitch when he was alone in his room. He could feel them now, even as the nurse watched him. A slow roll pressed beneath his palm, low and heavy, as if the baby were turning in their sleep. It was movement. It was proof. It was enough to keep him from unraveling completely.

But it was not the same. “They’re moving,” he said. “That wasn’t what she asked,” Enji said. Shoto’s shoulders went rigid. The nurse looked at Enji again. This time, her calm had an edge. “I’ll ask follow-up questions as needed.” For one remarkable second, Endeavor actually fell silent.

The nurse turned back to Shoto. “Less than usual?”

Shoto’s throat tightened. He felt the baby roll again, small and slow beneath his hand. Not a kick. Not the firm, decisive little jolt he had come to recognize. Just a shifting pressure that made him want to fold around his stomach and shield them from the room.

“I can feel them roll,” he said quietly. “But they haven’t kicked much.”

Enji’s entire body seemed to tense beside him. The nurse did not let the moment become larger than it already was. She simply stood, picked up the form, and gestured toward the doors behind her . The nurse looked back at them, her pen still poised over the form.

“We’re going to take him back,” she said. “Dr. Kato is being paged, and someone from OB will come down to assess him. We’ll start with vitals, then we’ll likely do fetal monitoring, an ultrasound, and an exam to see whether labor is progressing.”

“Fetal monitoring?” Enji asked immediately. “Yes,” the nurse said. “We need to check the baby’s heart rate and see how they’re tolerating the contractions.” Shoto’s hand tightened beneath the coat. Fetal monitoring. The phrase settled somewhere under his ribs and made it harder to breathe. It was not a search result on his phone or a private fear in the dark of his room. It was not something he could fold away beneath his uniform and pretend no one else would ever touch. The baby had a heartbeat. Someone was going to listen for it. Someone else was going to know they were there.

Enji heard the small change in his breathing anyway. His head turned, eyes narrowing as they fixed on Shoto’s face. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Shoto.”

“I said nothing.”

The nurse stepped around from behind the desk before Enji could push further. “Can you walk, or would you prefer a wheelchair?”

“I can walk,” Shoto said at once. “He needs a wheelchair,” Enji said at the same time. Shoto looked at him. “I can walk.”

“You could barely stand at the agency.”

“I stood.”

“Barely.”

“I am not helpless.”

“You are in labor.”

“Barely.”

Enji’s eyes flashed. “That is not a meaningful distinction.”

“It is to me.” 

The nurse cleared her throat softly. Both of them stopped. “I’m going to bring a wheelchair,” she said in the calm, practiced tone of someone who had already decided this argument was not worth having in triage. “You can choose to walk later if OB clears it. For now, let’s make this easier and get you back quickly.”

Shoto did not want the wheelchair. He did not want to sit down in front of his father. He did not want to be pushed through the emergency room like something fragile, something obvious, something everyone could look at and understand before he had even understood it himself. But he also did not want to keep standing in the middle of the waiting area while strangers glanced over and then pretended not to.

So when the nurse brought the chair, Shoto sat. He did it carefully, one hand braced on the armrest and the other low beneath the coat, supporting the weight of his stomach as he lowered himself down. The movement pulled at his back, and his jaw tightened before he could stop it. Enji noticed. Shoto knew because the heat beside him flickered, controlled but present. He settled into the chair with his posture rigid and his eyes forward. Enji stepped behind him immediately.

Shoto looked up. “You do not have to push it.”

“I am aware.”

“You are doing it anyway.”

“Yes.”

Shoto stared at him for a moment. “That was not a question.”

“I did not answer it like one.”

The nurse wisely said nothing and began guiding them toward the double doors.

As they moved into the treatment area, another tightening passed through Shoto’s body. It was faint at first, more pressure than pain, a low pull that wrapped around his abdomen and settled into his back. Mild enough that he could hide it from the nurse. Mild enough that he could keep his face still and his breathing controlled.

Not mild enough to hide from Enji. His father’s hand tightened on the wheelchair handle.

“How bad?”

“It’s not.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is barely anything.”

“Then say that.”

Shoto closed his eyes briefly. “It is barely anything.” Enji went quiet behind him. There was only the sound of the chair wheels over the polished floor, the distant beeping of monitors, and Shoto’s careful breathing.

Enji spoke again, lower this time. “You should not know how to minimize pain this well.” Shoto opened his eyes. He did not look back. The words sat between them, heavy and too close to an apology to be safe. So Shoto said nothing. And, for once, Enji did not demand an answer.

Once the baby started to kick.Shoto found himself waiting for the baby to do it again. It was inconvenient.

He had gone months trying not to think about them too directly. He had treated the pregnancy like something that could stay quiet if he stayed quiet first, something he could hide beneath layers and discipline and the blank expression people expected from him. Then the baby had kicked him during training, solid and unmistakable, and all of Shoto’s careful distance had failed at once.

After that, he listened. During class, he kept one hand low beneath the desk when no one was looking, waiting for the faint shift of movement. During meals, he noticed the baby seemed more active when he drank something cold. At night, he lay on his back with his shirt pushed up and watched the small curve of his stomach, hoping for another little twitch beneath his skin. It did not happen every time. The baby was not predictable. Shoto found that both frustrating and strangely endearing.

The mall was not supposed to become a problem.

Class 1-A had gone together because Mina had declared that everyone needed normal teenage socialization, and Iida, after a long speech about responsible group conduct, had agreed that supervised leisure time was beneficial for morale. Shoto had come because everyone else was going, and refusing would have drawn more attention than quietly following along.

For most of the afternoon, he stayed with the group. He walked beside Midoriya and Uraraka while they looked at hero merchandise. He listened to Kaminari and Sero argue about snacks. He stood quietly while Yaoyorozu and Jirou discussed stationery with unexpected intensity. Bakugo complained the entire time and still somehow ended up carrying a shopping bag for Kirishima.

Then they passed the baby store. Shoto stopped walking. The display window was arranged in soft pastels and tiny, impossible clothes. Little socks shaped like animal paws sat beside folded blankets. A row of plush toys watched from a wooden shelf. There were miniature sweaters, patterned hats, pacifiers in neat packages, and onesies so small they looked more theoretical than practical.

No one else noticed him stop. That made the decision easier. Shoto waited until Mina dragged the others toward a clothing store across the hall, then stepped backward, turned, and entered the baby store alone.

The air inside smelled faintly of cotton, powder, and something sweet he could not name. The lighting was warm. The music was quiet. Everything looked soft enough to be safe, which made Shoto’s chest ache in a way he did not understand.

He told himself he was only looking. That was a lie almost immediately.

The first onesie set had little clouds and moons printed across pale fabric, with tiny folded cuffs and a matching cap that looked far too small to fit a real person. Shoto picked it up before he could think better of it. The second set had woodland animals on it: foxes, rabbits, and a small embroidered deer near the collar. He stood there holding both, thumb brushing over the seams, wondering whether the baby would be small enough for these sizes or too small or too big, whether anyone would let him dress them, whether he would have time.

He added both sets to the basket. He found the plush toys next.

There was a giraffe with soft brown spots and little fabric horns, its neck slightly crooked in a way that made it look curious. There was an elephant with floppy ears and stitched sleepy eyes, weighted just enough that it sat upright in his palm. There was a ladybug, round and bright, with tiny black spots and a smiling face. Shoto touched that one last, and the baby shifted low in his stomach.

He froze. The movement was faint. It could have been coincidence. He picked up the ladybug anyway.

After that, it became easier to pretend there was a system.

He found pacifiers next: one with a small green dinosaur printed on the front, one with a cow pattern in black and white, and one with a little red ladybug sitting near the handle. He stared at them for an embarrassingly long time. Then he took all three, because choosing felt impossible and because no one was there to tell him he was being unreasonable.

The blankets were worse.

He found one covered in bumblebees, soft yellow and cream with tiny stitched wings. Another had butterflies scattered across pale blue fabric, delicate and quiet. The third had ladybugs along the edges, little red shapes hidden among green leaves. Shoto held them against his arm, one at a time, testing the weight and texture with too much seriousness for someone who still did not know whether he was allowed to buy anything at all.

By the time he realized how much he had gathered, his basket was full. Panic came late.

Shoto looked toward the front of the store, then toward the open entrance, where people moved through the mall without looking in. Any of his classmates could pass by. Midoriya could notice him missing. Iida could start counting heads. Bakugo could appear out of nowhere and demand to know why Shoto was standing in a baby store with an entire basket of evidence.

He needed somewhere private.

The dressing rooms were small, meant for parents trying tiny outfits on children who could not possibly appreciate them. Shoto stepped inside one and locked the door behind him. The space was barely large enough for the little bench, the mirror, and the basket he set carefully on the floor. He sat down, lifted his feet onto the edge of the bench so they would not be visible under the door, and arranged the items in front of him with the concentration of someone preparing for an exam.

The two onesie sets went on the left. The plush toys went in the middle: giraffe, elephant, ladybug. The pacifiers were lined up below them: dinosaur, cow, ladybug. The blankets went last, folded as neatly as he could manage: bumblebees, butterflies, ladybugs.

Shoto looked at the little collection. Then he looked down at his stomach. He was not showing much yet. Not enough for anyone else to see beneath his clothes. But in the privacy of the dressing room, with his jacket open and one hand resting low over his abdomen, he could feel the difference. The small curve. The quiet weight. The baby, tucked away where no one knew to look.

“This is not a scientifically reliable method,” he said softly. The baby did not move. Shoto glanced at the door, then back at the items. His face felt warm. “But if there is something you want,” he continued, voice quieter, “you can kick.” Nothing. He waited. Still nothing.

Shoto picked up the giraffe first. It was soft against his palm, with stitched eyes and a little tail made of braided thread. He pressed it gently to his stomach, low enough that he felt ridiculous and careful at the same time.

“This is a giraffe,” he whispered. “They have long necks. I do not know if that matters to you.” The baby remained still. Shoto set the giraffe to the side.

Next came the elephant. He held it against his belly, smoothing one thumb over its ear. “This is an elephant. They are supposed to have good memories.” No response. He frowned slightly. “That may be a myth.” Still nothing.

He picked up the ladybug. It was rounder than the others, its red shell dotted with black spots, its little face stitched into a cheerful expression that felt almost aggressive in its sweetness. Shoto hesitated, then pressed it to his stomach.

“This is a ladybug,” he said. “People think they are lucky.” The baby kicked. Not hard. Not like training. But clear enough that Shoto felt it beneath the plush. He stared down at the ladybug. “Again?” he asked before he could stop himself. The baby shifted, small and definite.

Shoto’s mouth softened. “All right,” he whispered. “Ladybug.” He placed the ladybug plush into a separate pile beside his knee.

The pacifiers came next. He held up the dinosaur one first and studied it. “This one has a dinosaur. They are extinct.” No movement. He considered that. “That may not have been persuasive.” The cow pacifier earned nothing either, though Shoto dutifully pressed the package to his stomach and explained, “This is a cow. They are useful. And calm, I think.” Still nothing.

He held up the ladybug pacifier. “You may be biased,” Shoto told the baby. The baby kicked almost immediately. Shoto blinked. Then, despite himself, he smiled. “That was very decisive.” The ladybug pacifier went into the chosen pile.

By the time he reached the blankets, Shoto felt more invested than he was willing to admit. He pressed the bumblebee blanket to his stomach first. It was soft and warm, patterned with little bees and dotted flight trails. “Bumblebees,” he murmured. “They are important for pollination.” The baby rolled, but did not kick.

Shoto frowned down at his stomach. “Is that a maybe?” The baby did not clarify.  He tried the butterfly blanket next. The fabric was pale and delicate, covered in soft wings and tiny flowers. “Butterflies,” he said. “They change shape completely.” That one made his chest feel strange after he said it, so he stopped talking. The baby shifted once, slow and uncertain. Another maybe.

Finally, he picked up the ladybug blanket. It was cream-colored with small red ladybugs crawling along green leaves, cheerful without being too bright. Shoto pressed it carefully to his stomach.

“You like these,” he said. The baby kicked. Shoto closed his eyes. There it was again. That small answer. That tiny, impossible proof that someone was listening to him from the inside. “You really like ladybugs,” he whispered. The baby moved again, as if satisfied.

Shoto placed the ladybug blanket in the chosen pile with the plush and pacifier. He looked at the other items spread across the dressing room floor and felt a pang of guilt that was entirely unreasonable. He could not buy everything. He should not buy anything. But the little ladybug pile looked like a decision, and Shoto had so few of those that felt gentle.

He still bought more than he intended. The ladybug plush. The ladybug pacifier. The ladybug blanket. One of the onesie sets, the one with clouds and moons, because it felt quiet enough for a baby who had been living inside a secret. He hesitated over the butterfly blanket, then added it too, because the baby had moved for it and because Shoto understood changing shape without anyone knowing what it cost.

At the register, the cashier smiled as she scanned the items.

“These are sweet,” she said. “Someone’s having a baby?” Shoto’s fingers tightened around his wallet. “My sister,” he said. The lie came smoothly enough that he hated himself for it. The cashier nodded, still smiling. “How exciting. Does she know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Oh, those are fun.” She folded the blanket carefully into a bag. “People always guess anyway. My grandmother used to swear you could tell from the heartbeat. Fast means girl, slow means boy. Or the other way around. I can never remember.”

Shoto looked down at the counter. “I didn’t know that.”

“There are a million of those old wives’ tales,” she said cheerfully. “Carrying high or low, sweet cravings, salty cravings, whether the baby keeps you up at night. None of it is scientific, obviously, but people love guessing.”

Shoto thought about cold soba. About the baby moving when he spoke. About the way they had kicked for ladybugs and ignored the giraffe completely.

“What do ladybugs mean?” he asked.

The cashier laughed lightly. “Ladybugs? Luck, usually. Good fortune. That kind of thing.” Shoto looked at the bag as she handed it to him. “That makes sense,” he said softly. The cashier did not seem to hear the weight of it. She only smiled and gave him the receipt.

Shoto left the store with the small bag tucked close to his side, hidden beneath the sleeve of his coat. Across the mall, his classmates were still gathered near the clothing store, loud and bright and completely unaware that anything had changed.

No one noticed the bag. No one noticed his hand drifting briefly to his stomach. No one heard him whisper, barely loud enough for the baby to hear, “I got the ladybug.”

The automatic doors opened ahead of them, and the nurse led them deeper into the hospital, toward fluorescent lights, monitors, questions, and Dr. Kato. Behind Shoto, Enji pushed the wheelchair with both hands, furious and frightened and still holding every grudge he had walked in with.

But he did not leave.

And Shoto, who had spent months making sure his father would never find out, sat very still and let himself be taken somewhere someone else might finally know what to do. They took Shoto into a small curtained room that felt like it had been designed for emergencies, not secrets.

There was a narrow bed against the wall, a rolling stool, a cabinet full of supplies, and a monitor that had not yet been connected to anything. The curtain did not reach the floor. Shoto could see shoes passing beyond it, nurses moving from one patient to another, the shadowed blur of the emergency department continuing around him like his entire life had not just split open at an intake desk.

The nurse locked the wheelchair beside the bed. “All right, Shoto. I’m going to get your vitals first. Then we’ll have you change into a gown. Dr. Kato is on her way down from OB.” Shoto nodded. Enji did not. “How long until she arrives?”

“She’s coming as soon as she can.”

“That does not answer my question.”

“No,” the nurse said evenly. “It doesn’t. Because I don’t have an exact answer yet.” Shoto looked down at his hands.

He expected his father to argue. Part of him almost wanted him to, if only because anger was familiar. It would give him something else to focus on besides the fact that he was about to be examined by strangers with no medical history, no prenatal records, no idea how far along he was, and no answer prepared for the question of what he wanted.

Except Enji only inhaled sharply through his nose and forced himself silent. The nurse wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Shoto’s arm. Her hands were gentle and efficient. 

“Any allergies?”

“No.”

“Any medications?”

“No.”

“Any prenatal vitamins?” 

Shoto’s fingers curled slightly. “No.” Enji bit his tongue. The nurse did not react beyond typing it into the chart. “Any medical conditions we should know about?”

“No.”

Enji’s voice cut in. “He has had zero prenatal care.” Shoto closed his eyes. The words sounded worse each time Enji said them.  The nurse looked at Shoto, not Enji. “Is that correct?” Shoto opened his eyes again. “Yes.”

“Okay,” she said as if this was a fact they would work from instead of a crime she needed to solve. “We’ll take things one step at a time.”

Enji looked like he wanted to object to that too, as if one step at a time was not nearly enough steps, as if he would have preferred to seize the entire situation by the throat and force it into order.

The cuff tightened around Shoto’s arm.

He focused on the steady pressure, on the faint hum of the machine beside him, on the small, clinical sounds of the hospital gathering proof from his body. Blood pressure. Pulse. Temperature. Numbers that made everything seem measurable, as if his body were still something that could be understood just because a machine knew how to read it.

The nurse read the screen. “Blood pressure is a little elevated.” Enji’s eyes sharpened. “How elevated?”

“Not crisis elevated,” she said before he could build himself into another panic. “But we’ll monitor it.”

“He is stressed.”

“I noticed.”

Shoto almost looked up at that. The nurse checked his pulse, temperature, and oxygen, moving with efficient calm before she handed him a folded hospital gown and a pair of socks.

“I’ll step out for a minute so you can change,” she said. “Opening in the front for now, okay? OB will likely need to place monitors and examine you.” Shoto went still. Enji’s face changed at the same time. “I’ll wait outside,” Enji said immediately.

Shoto looked at him, surprised despite himself.

His father’s jaw was rigid, his expression still carved out of anger, but he had already turned his eyes deliberately toward the curtain instead of Shoto. It was such a small thing. A basic thing. Privacy. Still, Shoto did not know what to do with it.

The nurse slipped out first. Enji followed, stopping just outside the curtain. Shoto heard him plant himself there like a guard. Not leaving. Not truly giving space. But creating a boundary between Shoto and everyone else.

Shoto changed slowly.

His fingers felt clumsy on the buttons of his uniform. The fabric caught at his wrists. His shoes took too much effort. By the time he had stripped down and pulled on the gown, tying it awkwardly with shaking hands, he felt more exposed than he had before. The hospital gown was thin and unfamiliar against his bare skin, open in the front the way the nurse had instructed, leaving him naked underneath and painfully aware of how little separated his body from the room around him.

His stomach looked much larger once the coat and structured fabric were gone.

There was no clever layering now. No uniform jacket, no careful posture, no folded arms hiding the truth from anyone who might look too closely. Under the harsh hospital lighting, the curve of his belly was undeniable. 

Shoto stood beside the bed for a moment with one hand holding the gown closed and the other resting over his stomach, staring down as if he were seeing himself from the outside for the first time.

There was no hiding now. The baby shifted, slow and low beneath his palm.

Shoto’s breath caught. He placed both hands over his stomach, one higher and one lower, trying to cover as much of the baby as he could. It was not rational. He knew that. His hands could not protect them from monitors or exams or whatever came next. They could not make the room quieter or the lights softer. They could not explain to the baby why strangers were suddenly touching, listening, measuring, preparing.

Still, he held them there. “You’re all right,” he whispered. The baby rolled faintly beneath his hands. Shoto’s throat tightened. Were they scared?

The thought entered him so suddenly that it hurt. He had spent the entire day afraid of being found out, afraid of his father, afraid of the hospital, afraid of losing the baby before he had even met them. He had not let himself think about what the baby might feel. The pressure. The contractions. His panic. His body squeezing around them for hours while he tried to pretend nothing was happening.

They were being born. Maybe they did not know what that meant. Maybe they could not be scared the way he was scared. Shoto imagined the baby tucked inside him, listening to his heartbeat race, feeling the world tighten around them again and again, and his hands pressed more firmly over his belly.

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispered. They baby responded with another slow movement beneath his palm, tired and searching. Shoto swallowed hard. “I know,” he breathed. “I’m sorry.”

He finished changing because there was nothing else to do. Then he climbed onto the bed carefully, one hand braced on the mattress and the other never leaving his stomach. The paper beneath him crinkled loudly. He hated that sound. He hated the gown. He hated how cold the room felt against his bare legs and how vulnerable it was to sit there with nothing underneath but skin and fear.

He pulled the thin blanket over his lap as if it could restore some small piece of dignity. It did not. His back ached more now that he was sitting at an incline. The pressure had not intensified exactly, but it lingered, low and unsettled, a heaviness that made his body feel like it was waiting for something he could not stop.

Shoto kept both hands on his belly. The baby moved once beneath them. Slow. Small. Still there. He bent his head and whispered, too quietly for anyone beyond the curtain to hear, “I’m here.”

For a moment, he stayed like that, both palms spread over the curve of his stomach as if he could soothe the baby through skin and pressure alone. He did not know if they could hear him clearly. He did not know if the sound of his voice mattered, or if it was only the vibration of it, low and familiar, that made them shift beneath his hands. Still, he kept his voice soft.

“I’m here,” he said again. “You’re not alone.”

His throat tightened around the words because he wished someone had said them to him earlier. He wished he had believed them. He wished he had not spent ten hours convincing himself endurance was the same thing as safety.

The baby rolled faintly, and Shoto pressed one hand lower, following the movement with careful attention.

Then he lifted his head toward the curtain. “You can come in,” he said.

The curtain moved immediately.

Enji stepped inside, then stopped. His gaze dropped to Shoto’s body beneath the gown and blanket. Not in a way that felt invasive. Worse. In a way that looked like shock renewing itself all over again. As if the uniform, the coat, and the carefully arranged layers had allowed him one last shred of denial, and the hospital gown had taken it from him.

Shoto looked away. He knew what his father was seeing.

The blanket covered his lap, but it did not hide enough. The hospital gown was thin and open in the front, parted around the curve of his stomach because the nurse had said OB would need access for monitors and an exam. His belly sat heavy and round beneath the harsh room lights, too visible now to be explained away by posture or fabric. There were pale stretch marks along the lower curve, faint silver lines that caught the light when he moved. A darker line ran down the center of his abdomen toward the blanket, the same strange line he had first noticed months ago in the mirror. His navel, once flat and ordinary, had pushed outward slightly, stretched by the baby beneath his skin.

Shoto felt Enji looking at all of it. He felt it like heat. His hands shifted instinctively, covering what they could, but there was no hiding the truth now. Not from nurses. Not from doctors. Not from Enji. Not from himself.

Enji’s face hardened, but not quickly enough to hide the damage. “How long?” he asked again. Shoto closed his eyes. “I told you. I don’t know.”

“I am asking how long you have looked like this.”

Shoto’s mouth tightened. “That is not a useful question.”

“It is to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to understand how many times I looked at you and failed to see my own son was carrying a child.” Enji seemed to regret the words the moment they left him, but he did not take them back. He stood there with his hands curled at his sides, shoulders rigid, flames low and uneven around his face.

Shoto looked down at his stomach. “A few months,” he said. Enji’s jaw moved once. “A few months.”

“It was easier to hide before.” Shoto’s voice stayed quiet. “The bump was small. I wore layers. I kept my jacket closed. I stood carefully.”

“You stood carefully,” Enji repeated, as if the phrase had wounded him.

“Yes.”

“And no one noticed?”

Shoto’s hands settled more firmly over the baby. “People see what they expect to see.”

Enji’s eyes dropped again, briefly, to Shoto’s stomach. This time, Shoto did not move to cover himself more. He was too tired. Too exposed. Too far past the point where modesty could protect him from anything that mattered.

“The line is normal,” Shoto said, because the silence had become unbearable. “I searched it.” Enji looked at him. Shoto kept his gaze on his belly. “The stretch marks too. And the belly button. It happens.”

“You searched it.”

“Yes.”

“Instead of seeing a doctor.”

Shoto’s fingers curled lightly against the gown. “Yes.” Enji closed his eyes for half a second. When he opened them again, the anger was still there, but something else had settled underneath it. Something heavier. “You should not have had to learn this from a search engine,” he said. 

The curtain shifted before Shoto could answer, and the nurse returned with another nurse beside her. The second one wheeled in a small machine with straps and wires, followed by a portable ultrasound unit.

“We’re going to get you on the monitor,” the first nurse said. “This may take a little adjusting since we don’t know gestational age yet.” Enji straightened. “Can you tell if the baby is all right?”

“We’re going to check.”

“That was not what I asked.”

“It’s the answer I can give before we look.”

Shoto watched Enji’s hands curl once, then open. The second nurse smiled gently at Shoto. “I’m going to lift the blanket and place these around your belly, okay?”

Shoto nodded once. Enji turned his head away. Again, the small courtesy startled him. The nurse adjusted the gown and placed the cool disks against Shoto’s stomach.

The first touch made him tense. The second made him stare fixedly at the ceiling, jaw locked tight as he forced himself not to move away. The straps went around him, snug but not painful, one high and one lower, securing the monitors against the round curve of his belly. The pressure felt strange. As if the secret he had carried with both hands for months was now something the hospital could fasten into place and translate into sound.

The machine began to search. Static filled the room. A rush of sound. Then nothing. The nurse shifted the monitor. More static.

Enji went completely still. Shoto kept his eyes on the ceiling, but his hand curled into the blanket. His body knew fear before his mind could name it. For one terrible second, he thought of the baby moving less that day. The slow rolls instead of kicks. The long stretches of quiet between contractions. The way he had told himself it was enough because he could not survive thinking anything else.

The nurse adjusted the disk again, slower this time, angling it lower against his stomach. Finally, a fast rhythmic sound broke through. A galloping pulse, faint at first and then stronger as the nurse found the right angle.

Shoto stopped breathing. The baby’s heartbeat filled the small curtained room. It was the first time he had ever heard it. Not imagined it. Not read about it. Not felt movement and guessed at life in the abstract. Heard it.

His eyes burned before he understood why. His hands moved without permission, leaving the blanket and settling at the lower curve of his belly beneath the monitor strap. He did not touch the disks. He did not want to disturb anything. Instead, he placed his palms carefully below them, thumbs brushing slow, gentle circles over the stretched skin there.

The heartbeat continued. Fast and steady. Shoto listened as if the sound might disappear if he stopped paying attention.

“That’s them?” he asked quietly. The nurse’s face softened. “That’s them.” The nurse adjusted the monitor one more time, then glanced at the screen. “Very fast heartbeat,” she said gently. “That’s normal for a baby. They usually run much faster than ours.”

Shoto’s thumbs slowed against the lower curve of his belly.

Very fast.

For some reason, he thought of the cashier at the baby store. Her cheerful voice. Her folded blankets. Her old wives’ tales about heartbeats and cravings and carrying high or low. Fast means girl, she had said. Or maybe boy. She had laughed afterward because she could not remember, because it did not really matter, because for her it had only been a harmless guessing game at a register.

Shoto looked down at his stomach. He wondered. A boy. A girl. Maybe the baby would take after him. He had tried not to imagine too much. Imagining made the baby sharper in his mind. It gave them weight, details, a future. It made it harder to pretend he could hand them over and walk away untouched.

Now their heartbeat was filling the room, fast and stubborn and alive beneath the nurse’s monitor. His hands were on his belly. His thumbs began moving again, small circles over the place where the baby rested low inside him. It did not matter. The realization came quietly, but with certainty.

Boy or girl, loud or quiet, red hair or white hair or neither, it did not matter. The baby was his. That was the only thing his body seemed to understand. That was the only thing his heart could hold onto while the machine translated the baby into sound.

“Fast is good?” he asked. The nurse nodded. “Fast is normal. We’ll keep watching, but this is a strong heartbeat.” A strong heartbeat. Shoto closed his eyes.

His thumbs kept rubbing gently over his belly. He did not know whether he was soothing the baby or himself. Maybe both. The baby shifted faintly beneath his hands, and the monitor crackled for half a second before the heartbeat came back strong again.

Shoto’s mouth trembled. He liked it.

The realization struck him with embarrassing force. He liked hearing it. He liked the proof of them filling the room. He liked the tiny, rapid rhythm that belonged to someone he had not met yet and somehow already recognized. For months, the baby had existed in private movements and hidden touches, in late-night searches and whispered apologies, in kicks under his palm when no one else was allowed to know. Now their heartbeat was loud enough for someone else to hear.

Loud enough that Enji could hear it too. Shoto turned his head slightly before he could stop himself. His father stood near the curtain, too still for a man who usually took up every room by force. His arms hung at his sides. His flames had lowered to a restless burn around his jaw, uneven at the edges. He was staring at the monitor, but his eyes kept flicking back to Shoto’s hands on his stomach, to the way Shoto’s thumbs moved over the baby with open, unguarded tenderness.

Enji did not look angry. He looked nervous. The expression sat badly on his face, unfamiliar and stiff, like something he did not know how to wear. His mouth was tight. His brow had drawn down, not with accusation, but with a kind of alarm Shoto did not understand at first.

Then he did. Enji was watching him love the baby. Not theoretically. Not as a mistake. Not as a problem to solve, or a crisis to manage, or a consequence to be handled with doctors and paperwork and stern decisions.

He was watching Shoto lie in a hospital bed, naked beneath a gown, ten hours into labor, exhausted and frightened, rubbing his stomach with both thumbs because the baby’s heartbeat made his face soften.

He looked afraid of what that meant. Shoto looked back at the ceiling. The heartbeat kept going. Fast. Alive. His.

He pressed his hands a little more firmly beneath the strap. “Hi,” he whispered. The nurse pretended not to hear. Enji did hear. Shoto knew because the room grew warmer for half a second, then cooled again as his father forced his fire under control.

“Good,” Shoto whispered, barely audible beneath the steady gallop of the monitor.

The baby’s heartbeat filled the silence between them, quick and stubborn and impossible to ignore. Shoto closed his eyes and listened, his thumbs still moving in small, careful circles. His body loosened around something other than pain. He was still scared. He was still in labor. He still did not know what would happen when the baby was born.

But the heartbeat was there, strong and real, and Shoto found himself wanting the nurse to keep the monitor on forever.

Enji looked down at him. The anger did not disappear from his face. It was still there, stubborn and ugly and wounded. But the heartbeat struck something in him too. Shoto saw it in the way Enji’s shoulders went rigid, the way his gaze fixed on the monitor, the way his jaw worked once without sound.

The nurse watched the screen for another moment, one hand resting lightly near the monitor strap. “There we go,” she said. “Baby’s heart rate is present. That’s good. We’ll keep monitoring.”

Shoto held onto those words. Baby’s heart rate is present. That’s good.

The second nurse adjusted another strap lower around his stomach. “This one tracks contractions,” she explained. “Since you said things are irregular, and you’re not completely sure if this is labor, it may not show much yet. But it helps us see patterns.”

Shoto’s hand moved immediately. He did not mean for it to. His palm slipped beneath the edge of the blanket and settled low on his belly, careful not to disturb the straps. His thumb brushed over the stretched skin there in a slow, automatic circle.

He was in labor. He knew that. He knew it in the ache in his back, in the pressure sitting low inside him, in the way his body kept tightening around the baby and then slowly letting go. He knew it in the heaviness that had followed him from homeroom to the dorms, from the dorms to the agency, from the agency to this bed. He knew it in the strange, deep instinct that had been trying to warn him all day, even while he kept denying it.

He was in labor. He just was not ready. Not to say it plainly. Not to have doctors and nurses say it back to him. Not to hear people talk about progress, dilation, delivery, and risk as if the baby were already on their way into a world Shoto had not prepared for them.

“They’re not close together,” Shoto said, because that felt safer than the truth.

“That’s okay,” the nurse replied. “That may mean you’re very early. It could also be false labor, or something else causing the tightening. Dr. Kato will evaluate you when she gets here.” Shoto nodded, though his eyes stayed on the monitor and his hand stayed on his stomach.

False labor. Something else. He wanted to believe that. He wanted to believe his body had misunderstood itself, that there was still time, that the baby was not coming yet and this could all be slowed down, paused, handled later when he had become someone more prepared.

The baby shifted beneath his palm, slow and low, and another faint tightening gathered around them. Shoto rubbed his thumb over his belly again.

No.

This was labor. He was not ready, but his body had already begun. The heartbeat kept going. He wondered, suddenly and horribly, whether the baby had been hearing him all this time. His silence. His fear. His refusal to decide. The careful way he had avoided naming them as anything permanent. The late-night breathing when he lay awake with both hands on his stomach, pretending the future was still far away because he did not know how to survive it if it came closer.

The nurses stepped out again after promising Dr. Kato would be there shortly. Shoto stared at the monitor, his face empty, while the small galloping rhythm filled every space his denial used to occupy. Enji stood beside the bed, arms folded, eyes fixed on the strip of paper slowly printing from the machine.

Enji said, “You never heard that before. Have you?”

Shoto swallowed. “No.” The single word came out too thin. Enji looked at him. Shoto kept his gaze on the monitor. “I never went.”

“To a doctor.”

“No.”

Enji’s expression hardened all over again, anger rushing back into the space the heartbeat had briefly opened.

“Not once.”

Shoto did not answer.

“You never went once.”

“No.”

Enji turned away from him, dragging one hand down over his mouth. His flames flickered low around his jaw, dimmed by effort, hospital rules, and whatever restraint he was forcing onto himself. When he turned back, his voice was quiet in a way that felt more dangerous than shouting.

“That is unforgivable.” Shoto flinched. Enji saw it and looked angrier for having caused it. Shoto stared at the monitor until the numbers blurred. “I know.”

“You do not know.”

Shoto’s hand tightened over the blanket.

“You cannot possibly know,” Enji said. “Because if you understood what you risked, you would not be lying in an emergency room with no records, no doctor, no idea how far along you are, and no plan for what happens next.”

Shoto’s face went still. The heartbeat continued between them, fast and stubborn, as if the baby had decided to answer for them both.

Enji looked at the monitor again, then at Shoto’s stomach beneath the straps. His mouth tightened. The anger in his face did not disappear, but something colder joined it. Something practical. Decisive. Familiar in the worst possible way.

“This is exactly why adoption needs to be considered.” Shoto stopped moving. His thumb went still against his belly. The room seemed to narrow around the monitor’s sound. The heartbeat was still there. The baby was still there. Nothing had changed, and yet everything inside Shoto went cold. He turned his head slowly.

Enji did not look away. “You hid this for months. You have no medical history, no preparation, no support system arranged, and no realistic understanding of what caring for an infant requires.” Shoto’s voice was quiet. “Do not do that.”

“I am stating facts.”

“No.” Shoto’s fingers curled into the blanket. “You are deciding.”

Enji’s jaw tightened. “Someone has to.”

The words struck harder than shouting would have. Shoto looked back at the monitor because he could not look at his father and remain calm at the same time. The baby’s heartbeat kept filling the room, quick and alive, while his own chest felt too tight to hold air.

“I have not even met them,” he said. His voice almost broke on the last word. Enji’s expression shifted, but not enough. Not in time.

“Shoto—”

“I have not even held them.”

“This is not about punishing you.”

“It feels the same.”

Shoto kept one hand over his stomach, careful not to disturb the straps. Beneath the monitor, the baby shifted faintly, and the heartbeat crackled before the rhythm returned. He pressed his palm there, gentle and protective.

“I know I made mistakes,” he said. “I know I should have told someone. I know I should have gone to a doctor. I know all of it.” Enji said nothing.

Shoto’s eyes stayed on the machine. “But you do not get to stand here and make the first decision about them before they are even born.” The heartbeat kept going. Unaware of the argument forming around them.

Enji looked at Shoto for a long moment, his face tight with anger, fear, and something that looked too much like regret to be useful. Then he said, quieter, “You are still a child.”

Shoto’s hand curved more firmly over his belly. “I know.” The answer came out steady this time. “But they are mine.”

For Christmas, Shoto went home because Fuyumi asked him to. That was the only reason.

She had called three days before winter break and spoken in the careful, bright voice she used when she wanted something to feel less fragile than it was. She said it did not have to be a big thing. Just dinner. Just a few hours. Natsuo would be there. Their mother might be able to video call from the hospital if she was feeling well enough. Their father would try not to make it uncomfortable.

Shoto had not known what to say to that. His father trying had always been one of the more unsettling developments of the last few years. Still, Fuyumi sounded hopeful, and Shoto had never been very good at refusing her hope when she offered it to him like something breakable.

So he went.

The house was warm when he arrived. Too warm, maybe, or maybe that was just because he had started overheating more easily lately. Fuyumi had decorated the entryway with garland and small white lights. There was a wreath on the door, stockings hung with careful symmetry, and a small ceramic snowman sitting on the side table like it had been assigned to guard the house from becoming too miserable.

It was very Fuyumi. Shoto stood in the doorway for a moment with one hand hidden inside his coat pocket, fingers resting low against the small curve of his stomach. He was not showing much yet.

Not enough for anyone to notice, especially under the loose sweater he had chosen and the coat he did not remove right away. But he could feel the baby there. That had become the problem. Even when no one else could see them, Shoto could feel them. A quiet weight. A secret presence. A small life tucked behind his ribs and under his palm while everyone around him acted as if he had arrived alone.

Fuyumi appeared from the kitchen with flour on one sleeve and her hair clipped back messily from her face. “Shoto,” she said, smiling too quickly. “You came.”

“You invited me.”

“I know, but you still came.” That was how his family spoke now. In small, careful acknowledgments of things no one wanted to name.

Fuyumi hugged him before he could decide whether to step forward himself. Shoto went still at first, then slowly lifted one arm around her. She smelled like vanilla, laundry soap, and roasted vegetables. Her cheek pressed briefly against his shoulder.

“You’re cold,” she said.

“I walked from the station.”

“You should have called. Natsuo would have picked you up.”

“I’m fine.” She pulled back and looked at him. Shoto kept his face neutral. “Are you eating enough?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You look tired.”

“I’m always tired.”

Fuyumi’s mouth twitched. “That is unfortunately true.” From the living room, Natsuo called, “Is that the little prince?” Shoto looked past her. “Unfortunately.”

Natsuo appeared a moment later, taller than Shoto remembered even though that made no sense. He had a mug in one hand and a sweater with a badly embroidered reindeer on it. The reindeer looked distressed.

“You’re here,” Natsuo said.

“Yes.”

“Voluntarily?”

“Fuyumi asked.”

“Ah. The trap worked.”

Fuyumi swatted his arm. “It was not a trap.”

“It was strategic.”

“It was Christmas.”

“Same thing in this house.”

Shoto watched them bicker, and for a moment something inside him loosened. 

Natsuo would be a good uncle. The thought came unexpectedly, so clear it almost hurt. Not the kind of uncle who would know exactly what to do with a baby at first. He would probably hold them too stiffly and ask if their head was supposed to wobble like that. He would complain about diaper changes and then learn how to do them anyway. He would make faces behind Fuyumi’s back to make the baby laugh. He would buy them ugly socks and pretend they were ironic. He would be awkward and loud and defensive and present in the best way he could manage.

Fuyumi would be a wonderful aunt. That was easier to imagine and harder to survive. Fuyumi would know what size clothes to buy. She would remember appointments and birthdays and which blankets were softest after washing. She would make soup when the baby was sick and talk to them in that gentle teacher voice that made even difficult things feel manageable. She would cry the first time she held them. Shoto knew that with absolute certainty. She would cry and apologize for crying and then cry harder when the baby wrapped tiny fingers around one of hers.

For one dangerous second, Shoto wanted to tell her. The urge came so strongly that his hand tightened around his stomach inside his coat pocket. Fuyumi noticed the movement.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“I’m fine.”

Natsuo snorted. “He says that like it’s ever meant anything.” Shoto looked at him. “It means I am fine.”

“It means you’re either fine or bleeding internally.”

“I am not bleeding internally.”

“Well, good. Festive.”

Fuyumi sighed. “Natsuo.”

“What? I’m being welcoming.” Shoto should have smiled. He almost did. 

Then Endeavor entered the room. 

The atmosphere changed so subtly that someone outside the family might not have noticed. Fuyumi’s shoulders straightened. Natsuo’s mouth flattened. Shoto’s hand slipped from his stomach, slow and controlled, and settled at his side instead.

Enji Todoroki stood near the doorway in a dark sweater that looked too formal to be comfortable. His flames were low, contained around his jaw, more subdued than they usually were in public. He looked at all three of them like he was trying to enter a conversation he had missed by several years.

“Shoto,” he said.

“Father.”

Fuyumi’s smile came back too quickly. “Dinner is almost ready.” Enji nodded. “Good.”

The baby shifted faintly inside Shoto. Not a kick. Not enough to startle him. Just a small movement beneath the line of his waistband, as if they had heard the change in the room too. Shoto’s stomach went cold.

He looked at his family.

Fuyumi bustling too brightly toward the kitchen. Natsuo taking a long drink from his mug so he would not have to say whatever was on his face. Enji standing too still, the air around him warm and uneasy, trying to be smaller than he was and failing because some people could not make themselves less dangerous just by wanting to.

Shoto imagined a baby here. His baby. Small and soft and breakable in the middle of all this history. Passed from arm to arm beneath the weight of things no infant could understand. Fuyumi would love them. Natsuo would try. Maybe even his mother would smile at them through a hospital screen, voice soft with wonder.

But Enji would know. If Enji knew, everything would change. The baby would stop belonging to Shoto in the fragile, private way they did now. There would be plans. Decisions. Questions. Doctors. Hero Commission concerns. Family reputation. Responsibility. Corrective action disguised as help.

Shoto had seen how his father loved. Love did not make Enji gentle. Sometimes it only made him more certain he had the right to decide.

Dinner was awkward in the way Todoroki dinners were always awkward, except now Shoto had a secret pressing lightly against the inside of his body.

Fuyumi had made too much food. She always made too much food when she was nervous. Natsuo complimented the potatoes three times because he was trying to fill the silence with something safe. Enji asked Shoto about school. Shoto answered with short, factual sentences. No one mentioned Toya. No one mentioned old Christmases. No one mentioned their mother until Fuyumi carefully propped her tablet against the centerpiece and called the hospital.

Rei answered on the third ring. She looked tired, but happy to see them. Her hair was tucked behind one ear, and there was a folded blanket around her shoulders. When she smiled, something in Shoto’s chest ached.

“Merry Christmas,” she said softly. Fuyumi smiled so hard her eyes shone. “Merry Christmas, Mom.” Natsuo leaned into frame. “Hey.”

Enji sat straighter. Shoto went very still. His mother’s eyes found him through the screen.

“Shoto,” she said.

“Mother.”

“You look well.” He did not. Though she said it gently, Shoto understood that sometimes kindness was a choice to see what someone needed rather than what was actually there. “Thank you,” he said.

The baby moved. Shoto’s hand twitched toward his stomach under the table, but he stopped himself just in time. 

Rei would be a grandmother. The thought nearly undid him. Not now. Not in the way other people became grandmothers, standing in kitchens and knitting blankets and visiting nurseries with soft smiles. His mother was still healing in pieces. Still separated from them by hospital walls and years of damage. But Shoto could imagine her voice when she spoke to the baby. Quiet. Careful. Warm in a way that had nothing to do with fire.

He wondered if the baby would like her voice too. The thought scared him so badly that he stopped eating.

No one noticed at first. Then Enji looked at his plate. “Are you unwell?” Shoto picked up his chopsticks again. “No.”

“You stopped eating.”

“I am not hungry.” Natsuo looked up. “Since when?” Fuyumi frowned. “Shoto, did you eat earlier?”

“Yes.” That was a lie. The baby rolled faintly, and Shoto pressed his knee into the underside of the table to keep from touching his stomach. “I’m fine,” he said.

Everyone heard the end of that conversation in his voice.

Later, after dinner, Fuyumi handed him leftovers in containers stacked neatly inside a bag. Natsuo told him to text when he got back to the dorms. Enji stood in the entryway and watched like he wanted to say something and did not know which words would do the least damage.

Shoto put his coat on slowly. His father’s phone buzzed. Enji glanced at it. For half a second, his face changed. Not much. But enough. Shoto saw the name on the screen before Enji turned it away. Takami Keigo. Hawks.

Shoto had known for weeks.

It was difficult not to know things in his family once one learned how to observe silence. He had seen the two of them together after an agency meeting, standing too close near the side entrance while Hawks smiled up at Enji with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets. He had seen his father’s expression soften in a way that still made Shoto uncomfortable to remember. He had heard the lower tone Enji used on the phone when he thought no one was listening. It was strange. Not bad, exactly. Just strange.

Hawks had always seemed too bright for his father. Too sharp. Too quick to laugh at danger. And yet there was something different about Enji around him. Not gentle. Shoto was not sure his father knew how to be gentle without practice. But less severe. Quieter at the edges. Mellowed, maybe, if that word could be applied to a man who still walked like every room was a battlefield he had already won.

Shoto did not know what to do with the idea that someone could make his father less frightening. He did not trust it.

That night, back in his dorm room, Shoto locked the door and set the leftover containers on his desk. He did not turn on the main light. Only the small lamp beside his bed. The room filled with a soft amber glow, quiet enough that the day finally seemed to loosen its grip around his throat.

He changed out of his sweater and folded it carefully over the chair. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and lifted his shirt. His stomach was still small, but there. A secret curve beneath his palm. The baby shifted as soon as he touched them, and Shoto exhaled shakily.

“You were quiet today,” he whispered. The baby moved again. “I understand.”

He leaned back against the wall, one hand resting low on his belly and the other spread over the side where he had felt the most movement lately.

“That was Fuyumi,” he said after a while. “My sister. She would like you.” The baby did not kick, but Shoto kept talking anyway. “She would buy too many things. She would probably make lists. She would ask what you needed and then buy three versions in case one was better.”

His mouth softened. “She would be a good aunt.”

Saying it out loud hurt more than thinking it. He swallowed and looked toward the window, where the reflection of his small room stared back at him.

“Natsuo is loud,” Shoto continued. “But not in a bad way. He would pretend he did not know what to do with you. Then he would learn. He would probably complain the entire time.” A faint kick pressed against his palm. Shoto looked down.

“Yes,” he said softly. “He complains often.” The baby shifted again, and Shoto’s chest tightened. “My mother is named Rei,” he said. His voice went quieter. “She is in the hospital. She is kind. I think you would like her voice.”

For a moment, he could not continue.

The room felt very still around him. The lamp cast a soft glow over the wall, and downstairs, the dorms carried on without him. Someone laughed. Someone dropped something heavy enough to make another person shout. The sounds were distant, ordinary, and safe in a way Shoto did not quite know how to join.

He kept one hand low on his stomach and lifted the other to his face. His fingers stopped just beneath his left eye. “There is something you should know,” he whispered.

The baby shifted faintly beneath his palm, as if listening.

Shoto traced the edge of the scar with careful fingers. The skin there had been part of him for so long that he often forgot other people saw it first. The burn. The mark. The evidence of a moment everyone in his family remembered differently because none of them knew how to hold the whole truth without cutting themselves on it.

“My mother did this,” he said softly. The words sounded worse than the truth felt. He looked down quickly, as if the baby might somehow misunderstand him from inside his body.

“She hurt me,” he said, “but she was hurt too. That does not make it right. I know that. It does not mean it did not happen. But she was afraid, and sick, and trapped in a house where fear had nowhere else to go.” His throat tightened. “I do not want you to be afraid of it.”

He rubbed his thumb over his stomach in a slow circle. “The scar, I mean. If you see it one day. It is only skin. It does not hurt anymore.” That was mostly true. “It may look frightening,” he admitted. “But it is not dangerous. I am not dangerous.”

He stopped there. He wondered if that was a promise he had any right to make. He had fire in him. Ice in him. His father’s temper, his mother’s grief, all of his family’s broken pieces arranged beneath his skin like inheritance. He had spent most of his life afraid that being loved by a Todoroki meant being damaged by one.

But the baby moved under his hand, small and warm and real, and Shoto bent over them slightly. “I will not hurt you because I am hurting,” he whispered. “I will not make you responsible for fixing me.”

The words came out before he had time to decide if they were too much. Once they were spoken, he could not take them back. He looked at the small curve of his stomach, barely visible in the low light. This was the part he had not been able to explain to himself. Not logically. Not cleanly. Not in any way that would survive an adult asking him what his plan was.

He wanted a family. Not a perfect one. He did not know what that looked like. Not a normal one, because normal had always seemed like something other people understood without needing instructions. He wanted something quieter than that. Something honest.

He wanted to love the baby without conditions. Not because they were powerful. Not because they were useful. Not because they made the family look better or proved anything to anyone. He wanted to love them because they were there, because they existed, because they were his.

And he wanted them to love him back. The thought made his face burn with shame.

Was that selfish?

Was it selfish to bring a baby into the world because he wanted to know what unconditional love felt like? Was it selfish to imagine tiny hands reaching for him, a warm cheek against his chest, someone who would not look at his scar and see history first? Someone who might know him as home before they knew him as damaged?

Shoto closed his eyes. “I do not want to keep you because I am lonely,” he whispered. Shoto felt the baby’s little foot. “I don’t think that would be fair.” His voice grew thinner. “But I think about it sometimes. You and me. Being a family. A real one.”

The words hurt. He had a family already. Fuyumi, who tried so hard it sometimes broke his heart. Natsuo, who stayed angry because anger was easier than hope. His mother, who loved him and hurt him and had spent years trying to become someone who could face both truths. Even his father, trying now in ways Shoto did not trust yet.

But real family had always felt conditional in their house. Love came with damage. Attention came with expectations. Protection came too late. Apologies arrived after the scar had already formed.

Shoto pressed both hands to his stomach. “I would not ask you to earn anything,” he said. “You would not have to be good at anything. You would not have to make me proud. You would not have to be like me, or unlike me, or better than me.”

His mouth trembled. “You could just be.”

The baby kicked. Small, but firm. Shoto opened his eyes. Warmth spread through his chest so suddenly that it almost felt like pain. He smiled down at his stomach, helpless and afraid of how much he meant it.

“Okay,” he whispered. His thumbs moved slowly over the baby. “Then maybe that is what we will do. We will just be.” He leaned back against the wall and kept one hand over them, the other still near his scar.

“If you see it one day,” he said quietly, “you do not have to be afraid. I will tell you the truth when you are old enough. Not all of it at once. Not more than you can carry. But I will not lie to you.” The baby rolled beneath his hand, slow and certain.

Shoto swallowed.  “And I will not let anyone make you feel like you have to carry what happened before you were born.”

For a moment, that felt like something close to a plan. Maybe not enough. Maybe still selfish. But it was the first promise that did not feel like hiding. Then he thought of his father in the entryway. The phone lighting in his hand. Hawks’s name on the screen. The way Enji had turned slightly away, as if privacy were something he had only recently remembered other people could notice.

“And my father…” Shoto stopped. The baby waited inside him, warm and quiet. Shoto let out a slow breath. “I know he has a boyfriend,” he said. The sentence sounded absurd in the room. Shoto stared at his stomach.

“I have seen them together. It is strange. I think it may be Hawks. It is definitely Hawks. I do not know if I am supposed to know.” He felt the baby brush up against his womb, and he smiled.

“It is still strange,” he added. “But I think maybe Hawks has mellowed him out. A little.”

A very little. Not enough.

His hand stilled. “But not enough for you.” The words changed the room. Shoto looked down at the small curve beneath his palm. All the softness from the evening gathered there and sharpened into fear.

“If he found out about you,” Shoto whispered, “I don’t think I would get to see you.” The baby kicked once, small and sudden. Shoto’s breath caught. He spread both hands over his stomach. “I know.”

His voice thinned. “I know that sounds unreasonable. Maybe it is. Maybe Fuyumi would argue. Maybe Natsuo would yell. Maybe my mother would ask him not to. Maybe Hawks would say something irritating and useful.”

He closed his eyes. “But my father decides things. He always has. And people let him because he sounds certain.” His thumbs moved over the baby, slow and careful. “I’m not certain.”

That was the truth he had not said to anyone. He was not certain he could keep the baby. He was not certain he should. He was not certain what kind of life he could offer, or whether wanting them was enough to make any of this less selfish.

But he was certain of one thing. “I want to meet you,” he whispered. The baby moved beneath his hands. Shoto bent over them as much as he could, pressing his forehead close to the small rise of his belly.

“So I’m going to keep it a secret as long as I can,” he said. “Just a little longer. Until I know what to do.” 

Downstairs, someone laughed. Somewhere in the hall, a door shut. Life continued around him, loud and ordinary and unaware.

Shoto stayed in the lamplight with both hands on his stomach, talking softly to the baby about people who did not know they existed. And each time the baby moved, he grew more afraid. Because every kick made them harder to lose.

The heartbeat kept going. The curtain opened before Enji could say anything else.

Dr. Kato stepped inside with the same calm, measured focus she had carried into the room before, a tablet tucked under one arm and a stethoscope hanging loose around her neck. She looked first at Shoto, not Enji. Shoto noticed that immediately. Everyone noticed Endeavor first. Dr. Kato did not. Her eyes went to Shoto’s face, then the monitor, then the paper strip slowly feeding out beside the bed.

“All right,” she said. “I’m Dr. Kato. Obstetrics.” Shoto nodded once. Enji straightened beside the bed. “Enji Todoroki.”

“I know,” Dr. Kato said, not unkindly, but without giving the name any more room than it needed. She moved closer to the monitor and studied the tracing. “Baby’s heart rate looks reassuring right now. That is good.”

The word good should have helped. It did, a little. Shoto kept his hand still on top of the blanket.

Dr. Kato glanced at the contraction monitor, studying the paper strip as it fed slowly through the machine. The room was quiet except for the steady rush of the fetal heartbeat and the soft mechanical tick of the monitor marking each rise and fall.

She did not answer immediately. Her eyes moved across the strip with the practiced calm of someone reading a language Shoto could not understand. There were thin black lines, jagged peaks, shallow slopes, numbers that meant nothing to him except that one of them belonged to the baby and one of them belonged to his body.

Finally, Dr. Kato looked up.

“I’m seeing uterine irritability and some mild contractions,” she said. “They are not especially strong yet, and they are not perfectly regular, but given that this has been happening for about ten hours, that does line up with very early labor.”

Shoto’s hand tightened over his stomach. The words were calm. Clinical. Not frightening in themselves. But they still made something inside him drop. Very early labor. So it was real.

He had known that. He had known it in his back, in the pressure low in his pelvis, in the steady tightening that had followed him all day and made it harder to stand up straight. He had known it when he sat alone on the floor of his dorm room with his pants shoved down around his thighs, breathing too shallowly, trying to check if the baby was coming because he had been too scared to tell anyone. He had known it when another cramp wrapped around him and made his body feel unfamiliar, purposeful, like something inside him had started working without asking.

He had known it even when the nurses gave him other possibilities. False labor. Dehydration. Stress. Uterine irritability. Things that sounded less final. Things that let some desperate part of him pretend there was still time. But hearing Dr. Kato say it made his denial feel childish.

Enji’s eyes sharpened. “He is in labor?”

Dr. Kato looked from the monitor to Shoto. Her expression stayed composed, but not dismissive. “It looks like he is, yes. Early labor can be slow, especially with a first baby. The pattern is mild right now, but it is consistent with what he described.”

Shoto stared at the monitor. The baby’s heartbeat continued, fast and steady, filling the small space between them. It sounded too normal. Too alive. Too separate from the fear pressing against Shoto’s ribs.

Dr. Kato continued, “I still need to examine him before I can say how much progress he’s made. The monitor tells us he is contracting. It does not tell us whether his cervix is changing.”

Shoto’s stomach tightened again, not sharply this time, but with that same slow, squeezing pressure that started in his back and moved forward. His fingers curled into the blanket.

Dr. Kato noticed immediately. “Are you feeling that one?” Shoto nodded once. “All right,” she said. Her voice stayed even. “Try to breathe through it. You do not have to do anything else right now.”

Shoto inhaled through his nose because that was what people always told him to do. It did not make the sensation stop. It only gave him something to count. His abdomen went hard beneath his hand, the curve of it pulling tight around the monitor straps. The pressure pushed downward, dull and heavy, and for a moment he had to close his eyes.

When it passed, his stomach softened under his palm. Dr. Kato glanced at the monitor again. “That one showed up here. Mild on the monitor, but I know they can still feel intense, especially when you’ve been having them for hours.” Shoto swallowed, embarrassed by the relief he felt at being believed. Enji stepped closer to the foot of the bed. “He has had no prenatal care.”

Dr. Kato nodded. “The nurse told me.”

“None,” Enji pressed. “He has not seen a doctor at all.”

“I understand.”

“He does not know how far along he is.”

“I understand that too.”

“And he has made no decisions regarding the baby.”

Shoto went still. His thumb, which had been moving faintly over the lower curve of his belly, stopped. The heartbeat continued. Unbothered by the fact that Enji had turned the baby into a decision again.

Dr. Kato’s eyes moved briefly to Shoto. “Okay.”  The single word was careful. Not agreement. Not judgment. Just acknowledgment. Enji’s jaw tightened. “That needs to be addressed.”

“It will be,” Dr. Kato said evenly. “But right now, my first priority is assessing Shoto and the baby medically. We need to confirm gestational age as best we can, check the baby’s position, continue monitoring the heart rate, and examine him to see where he is in labor.”

“Examine me,” he repeated quietly.

Dr. Kato turned fully toward him. “Yes. I would need to do a cervical exam, if you consent. That means I would use two gloved fingers to check whether your cervix is dilated, how thin it feels, and whether the baby has moved down into the pelvis. It can be uncomfortable, especially during contractions, but it should not be done without your consent.”

Shoto’s mouth went dry. The explanation was worse because it was clear. It gave shape to something he had tried not to imagine. Enji’s gaze shifted to him, but he did not speak.

Dr. Kato continued gently, “We would also do an ultrasound. That can help us estimate the baby’s size, position, amniotic fluid level, placental location, and whether there are any urgent concerns. Since you have not had prenatal care, we would also need blood work and urine testing. We would check your blood type, your blood count, signs of infection, and some routine prenatal labs. Depending on how far along the baby appears to be, we may need pediatrics or neonatology involved as well.”

Shoto listened to the list and felt it stack on top of him.

Blood work. Ultrasound. Cervical exam. Gestational age. Neonatology.

The baby kicked faintly beneath the monitor strap, a small shifting pressure against his hand, and his throat tightened.

Dr. Kato’s voice softened slightly. “You are allowed to ask questions. You are allowed to say if you need a minute. But medically, yes, this does look like early labor, and because you have not had prenatal care, we need more information before we can safely make a plan.”

Shoto looked down at his stomach. The baby moved again, subtle but real, as if answering the sound of her own heartbeat.

His hand moved automatically, protective before he could think better of it. He did not know how far along he was. He did not know whether she was ready. He did not know what happened if she came tonight. He did not know if he was supposed to hold her, name her, give her away, keep her, apologize to her, or all of those things at once.

“All right,” he said. Dr. Kato watched him for a beat. “All right to the ultrasound and the exam?” Shoto hesitated.

His body had already been exposed enough today. His own clumsy attempt in the dorm room flashed through his mind with a hot pulse of shame. He had done it wrong. He knew that now. He had been scared and alone and trying to find an answer inside a body he barely understood. The baby’s heartbeat was still there. Fast and Steady.

“Yes,” he said, quieter. “The ultrasound and the exam.”

“Okay.” Dr. Kato nodded. “We will go step by step. If you need me to stop, you tell me. If you have a contraction during the exam, tell me that too.”

Enji exhaled through his nose, controlled but heavy. Dr. Kato glanced at him. “And while I understand you are concerned, I need Shoto to answer for himself whenever possible.”

Enji’s expression hardened. The old version of him might have filled the room with his anger. He might have argued that Shoto was a child, that he did not understand, that the situation was too serious for hesitation. Shoto could almost hear the shape of those words before they arrived.

But then Enji looked at him. Shoto was lying on the hospital bed with one hand over the baby, his face too pale under the fluorescent lights, the monitor straps stretched around the part of him he had hidden for months. Another tightening started low in his back, and Shoto’s fingers pressed into the blanket before he could stop them.

Enji’s jaw worked once. “Fine,” he said. Shoto did not look at him.

Dr. Kato gave a small nod, then turned toward the nurse. “Let’s keep him on continuous fetal monitoring for now. I want a set of vitals repeated, an IV placed if that hasn’t already been done, and labs drawn. Type and screen, CBC, CMP, urinalysis, infectious prenatal panel, and group B strep swab if we think he may be far enough along. We’ll get the ultrasound in here as soon as possible.”

The nurse nodded and moved efficiently toward the supply cart.

Shoto heard every word and understood only pieces of it. Continuous monitoring meant the heartbeat stayed. Labs meant needles. Ultrasound meant seeing the baby. Group B strep meant nothing to him, but Dr. Kato said it like it mattered, so it frightened him anyway.

Dr. Kato looked back at him. “For now, keep listening to your body. Tell us if the contractions get stronger, if you feel pressure like you need to push, if your water breaks, if you have bleeding, or if the baby’s movement changes.”

Shoto nodded. Another contraction began to climb through him. His stomach hardened beneath his palm. He kept his eyes on the monitor and listened to the heartbeat, trying to convince himself that early labor meant there was still time.

Time for the ultrasound. Time for answers. Time to become ready. But the machine kept printing its black lines onto the paper strip, and his body kept moving forward without waiting for him.

Enji’s jaw tightened, as if okay was not nearly severe enough for what he had just handed her. Then he said, “We will need to speak with a social worker.”

Shoto did not move. The words passed over him, landed somewhere near the monitor, and stayed there. A social worker. Adoption. Plans. Decisions.

The baby’s heartbeat kept rushing through the speaker, quick and steady, untouched by the sudden cold that moved through Shoto’s chest.

He understood what Enji was doing. His father was building a structure around the panic. Names, offices, hospital departments, procedures. If there was a social worker, then there was a process. If there was a process, then Enji could tell himself the situation was being handled. Contained. Directed toward an acceptable conclusion before Shoto had even been examined.

Shoto said nothing. His fingers rested over the curve of his stomach, but they had gone still again. He was afraid that if he moved, someone would take it as agreement. He was afraid that if he spoke, his voice would give away too much.

Dr. Kato did not miss the silence. Her gaze stayed on him for one quiet second before she turned back to Enji. 

“I can put you in touch with one,” she said. “A hospital social worker can explain resources, legal options, support services, and what the process would look like if Shoto wants to discuss adoption or placement.”

Enji’s expression shifted with the smallest flicker of approval, as if he had heard only the part that sounded useful. Dr. Kato continued before he could speak.

“But I want to be very clear,” she said. “Shoto is my patient. Any conversation about adoption, parenting, guardianship, or placement will happen with his involvement and consent. A social worker can explain options. They cannot make decisions for him.”

Enji’s face hardened. “He is a minor.”

“And still the patient,” Dr. Kato said evenly. The words settled into the room with a quiet firmness that made Shoto’s throat tighten. Enji stared at her.

Dr. Kato did not look away. “Because he is a minor, there may be legal steps and adult involvement required depending on what he chooses. I am not dismissing that. But medically and ethically, he needs to be spoken to directly. He needs to understand what is happening. He needs the opportunity to ask questions. And he cannot be treated as if he is only a problem being transferred between adults.”

Shoto’s eyes lowered. The baby shifted, small and faint under the tightness of the monitor strap.

Enji’s voice dropped. “I am trying to prevent further damage.”

“I understand that you are trying to respond to a crisis,” Dr. Kato said. “But right now, Shoto is in early labor. He has had no prenatal care, he does not know his gestational age, and we do not yet know the baby’s position or condition beyond the reassuring heart rate we are hearing at this moment. Those are the immediate concerns.”

“He has not made any arrangements,” Enji said. “No,” Dr. Kato agreed. “And he does not need to make every life-altering decision before I examine him.” Shoto’s breath caught before he could stop it. It was not loud. It was barely a sound at all.

But Dr. Kato heard it. Her expression softened when she looked back at him. “Shoto, a social worker can speak with you later, when you are medically stable and when you have enough information to understand your options. That conversation is not a punishment. It is not someone coming in to take over. It is support.”

Shoto forced himself to nod, though the movement felt small and mechanical. Support. The word sounded strange in the same room as his father.

Enji looked like he wanted to argue. He looked like he wanted to remind everyone that he had been the one to bring Shoto here, that he had been the one to inform the staff of what Shoto had hidden, that the situation was too serious for softness.

Dr. Kato had already turned slightly toward the nurse, signaling that the conversation had reached its limit. “We’ll address it,” she said. “After the medical assessment.” Enji did not answer immediately.

Shoto kept his eyes on the monitor. The heartbeat continued. For the first time since Dr. Kato had entered the room, the sound did not feel like evidence against him. It felt like something still here. Something still his, at least for the moment.

Dr. Kato had already turned slightly toward the nurse, signaling that the conversation had reached its limit.

“We’ll address it,” she said. “After the medical assessment.”

Enji did not answer immediately.

Shoto kept his eyes on the monitor.

The heartbeat continued, fast and steady, rushing through the speaker with a rhythm that did not belong to him and somehow still did. For the first time since Dr. Kato had entered the room, the sound did not feel like evidence against him. It felt like something still here.

Something still his, at least for the moment.

The nurse moved around the room with quiet efficiency, gathering gloves, lubricant, swabs, a blue disposable pad, and a folded sheet. Each item made the exam feel less theoretical. Shoto watched her set them on the tray beside the bed and tried not to let his breathing change.

Dr. Kato washed her hands and then turned back to him.

“Before I examine you, I need to ask you some questions,” she said. “Some of them are routine. Some may feel personal. You can answer as much as you can. If you don’t know, saying you don’t know is okay.” Shoto nodded. His throat felt too tight for anything else.

Dr. Kato pulled the stool closer but did not sit between his legs yet. She kept herself at his side, where he could see her face.

“When did the contractions start?”

Shoto swallowed. “This morning.”

“Around what time?”

He tried to count backward through the day, but the hours had blurred together into classes, hallways, bathroom stalls, and the long stretch of time on his dorm room floor.

“Maybe around seven,” he said. “A little before.”

Dr. Kato glanced at the wall clock. “So almost eleven hours now.” The number landed heavily. Almost eleven hours. He had been in labor for almost half a day and had spent most of it pretending he was not. “How close together are they?” Dr. Kato asked. “Were you able to time them at all?”

“No,” Shoto said. “Not really. They were not constant. Sometimes I could ignore them. Sometimes I couldn’t.”

“That fits with what we’re seeing,” she said. “Do they feel like they are getting stronger overall?”

Shoto hesitated. “Yes.”

“More pressure?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you feel them most?”

“My back,” he said, then after a moment added, “And low. Here.”

He touched the underside of his stomach, just above his pelvis.

Dr. Kato nodded. “Any bleeding?”

“No.”

“Any fluid leaking? A gush of fluid, or your underwear becoming wet and staying wet?”

Shoto’s face warmed. “No.”

“Have you felt the baby move today?”

“Yes.”

“Less than usual, more than usual, or about the same?”

Shoto looked down at his stomach. “I don’t know what usual is supposed to be.”

“That’s all right,” Dr. Kato said. “For you, compared to the last few weeks.” He thought about it. The strange, private nudges beneath his ribs. The rolling shifts at night. The way the baby sometimes pressed hard to one side, as if trying to make more room inside him.

“About the same,” he said quietly. “Maybe a little less while the contractions are happening.”

“That can happen. The heartbeat is reassuring right now, and we’ll keep monitoring.” She made a note, then looked back at him. “Do you have any idea how far along you might be? Even a rough estimate?” Shoto’s fingers tightened over the sheet. He had known that question was coming. It still made his stomach drop.

“I think…” He stopped. Enji’s attention sharpened beside him, and the weight of it nearly made the words disappear. Dr. Kato noticed. “A rough estimate is fine.” Shoto stared at the monitor instead of either of them. “About nine months.”

The room went very still. Not silent. The heartbeat was still there, rushing through the speaker, fast and steady and indifferent. But Enji stopped moving. Dr. Kato’s expression did not change dramatically, but something in her focus sharpened.

“Okay,” she said. “What makes you think nine months?”

Shoto swallowed. “Because of when it happened.”

Dr. Kato nodded once, careful and neutral. “All right. That is helpful. If you are close to term, that changes some of what we prepare for. The ultrasound can give us more information, but dates based on conception can still be useful.” Shoto nodded, though his face felt hot. Dr. Kato continued gently, “Do you know the date of your last period?”

Shoto froze. The question was ordinary. Medical. Expected. It still made his mind empty.

“No,” he said.

“All right. Do you have any estimate? Even a month?”

He stared at the blanket. He had not tracked it. He had tried not to think about it at all. There had been blood, and then there had not been. There had been nausea, exhaustion, a body that changed in quiet increments until denial became more difficult than fear.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Dr. Kato did not sigh. She did not look disappointed. “Okay. We’ll rely more on ultrasound and physical assessment, then. Have you had any fever? Vomiting? Severe headache? Changes in vision? Pain high in your abdomen?”

“No.”

“Any medical conditions I should know about? Heart problems, blood pressure problems, seizures, diabetes, asthma?”

“No.”

“Any surgeries?”

“No.”

“Any medications?”

“No.”

“Any allergies?”

“No.”

“Have you taken anything today? Pain medicine, herbs, supplements, alcohol, anything else?”

“No.”

Dr. Kato’s gaze remained steady, but her next question came more carefully.

“Was there any injury today? A fall? A hit to your abdomen? Anything that may have triggered the contractions?”

Shoto’s fingers tightened in the blanket. “No,” he said.

Enji shifted near the wall. Dr. Kato’s eyes flicked toward him once, then returned to Shoto. “Okay.”

A contraction began to gather before she could ask the next question. It started in his back, a slow tightening that spread forward and pulled his stomach hard beneath the monitor strap. Shoto’s fingers curled around the blanket. He tried to keep his face neutral, but the pressure dropped low and heavy enough to make his breath catch.

Dr. Kato noticed immediately. “Are you feeling that one?” Shoto nodded once. “All right,” she said. “You do not have to talk through it. Just breathe. In through your nose. Out slowly.”

Shoto inhaled because she told him to. It did not stop the contraction, but it gave him something to hold on to. The room narrowed down to the monitor, the firm curve of his stomach under his hand, and Dr. Kato’s voice staying level beside him.

“That’s it,” she said. “Let your shoulders drop. Do not hold your breath.” The contraction crested, deep and insistent, then began to loosen. His abdomen softened beneath his palm. He exhaled shakily. Dr. Kato glanced at the monitor. “That one showed up here. Mild on the monitor, but I know they can still feel intense, especially after almost eleven hours.”

Shoto swallowed, embarrassed by the relief he felt at being believed. Then another thought pushed forward, one he had been trying not to say. It had sat in his throat since the dorm room, cold and awful.

“I did something earlier,” he said.

Dr. Kato looked up from the chart. “What happened?”

Shoto’s mouth went dry. He could feel Enji looking at him. He could feel his father’s judgment like heat at the edge of the bed. He wanted to stop talking. He wanted to let the question disappear into the monitor noise and the crinkle of the paper beneath him. But Dr. Kato had asked what happened, not what was wrong with him.

“I thought…” His voice thinned. “I thought maybe the baby was coming.”

Dr. Kato waited. Shoto pressed his thumb hard into the blanket. “I was in my dorm room. Alone. The pressure was worse, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel. I tried to check if something was happening.” Enji inhaled sharply.

Dr. Kato turned her head at once. “Mr. Todoroki.” He closed his mouth, but the damage was already done. Shoto’s shoulders had gone rigid. Dr. Kato brought her attention back to him. “Shoto, keep going. You are not in trouble.” The words almost made it worse. His eyes burned. He blinked hard until the ceiling blurred and cleared again.

“I tried to push,” he admitted. Enji went completely still. Dr. Kato’s voice remained calm. “How many times?”

“Once,” Shoto said quickly. “Only once. It didn’t feel right. It hurt, and the pressure got worse, and I got scared.” His hand moved over his stomach, protective and ashamed all at once. “So I stopped,” he said. “I looked it up, and it said not to push unless a doctor tells you to. So I didn’t do it again.”

The contraction monitor scratched softly beside him. Shoto forced himself to look at Dr. Kato. “Did I hurt anything?” The question came out smaller than he meant it to. Dr. Kato’s face softened. “One push is very unlikely to have caused harm,” she said. “Especially if your cervix was not fully dilated and your body told you it did not feel right. The important thing is that you stopped.”

Shoto’s breath caught. “So it didn’t affect anything?”

“Based on what you’re telling me, probably not,” she said. “Pushing before full dilation can sometimes make the cervix swell, cause more pain, or make labor harder if someone continues doing it. But one brief attempt, followed by stopping, is not likely to have changed the course of labor. I’ll check your cervix in the exam, and that will give us more information.”

Shoto nodded, but the panic did not leave all at once. “What if I made it happen faster?”

“Labor was already happening,” Dr. Kato said gently. “You did not cause this by being scared and trying to understand what your body was doing.” His lips pressed together. Enji’s voice came low and controlled. “You attempted to deliver the baby alone?” Shoto flinched. The monitor strap shifted as his stomach tightened beneath it.

Dr. Kato’s eyes snapped toward Enji. “Stop.”

Enji’s jaw hardened. “I am asking what happened.”

“And I am telling you that the way you are asking is making him contract harder.” Shoto’s abdomen had gone solid under his palm. The contraction rose quickly, sharper than the last, wrapping around from his spine and pulling low through his pelvis. His knees tensed beneath the sheet.

Dr. Kato moved closer to his side. “Shoto, breathe. Do not push with this. Just let it pass.”

“I’m not,” he said, but his voice broke around the words.

“I know,” she said. “You’re doing well. Open your hands. Relax your jaw. In through your nose. Out slowly.”

The pressure pushed down in a way that frightened him now, because he knew what it could become. He kept thinking of the dorm room. The horrible confusion of his own body. The moment he had tried to bear down and immediately understood that something about it was wrong.

“I didn’t know,” he whispered. “I know,” Dr. Kato said again, firmly enough that he almost believed her. “That is why you are here now.”

Enji looked as if the words had struck him, but he said nothing.  Dr. Kato kept her focus on Shoto. “This contraction is peaking. You’re almost through it. Keep your shoulders down. Good. Again.” Shoto breathed because she told him to.

The baby’s heartbeat continued beside him, quick and steady, and he fixed on it until the pain finally began to loosen. His stomach softened by slow degrees.

Dr. Kato waited until his breathing steadied before she spoke again. “If you feel strong pressure like you need to push again, tell us right away. Do not try to hold it in silently, and do not push on your own. There is a difference between pressure and the urge to push, and we can help you figure out what you’re feeling.”

Shoto nodded shakily. “Okay.”

“And Shoto?” Dr. Kato said.

He looked at her. “You did the right thing by stopping and coming in.” His throat tightened so suddenly he could not answer. Enji stood at the side of the bed, silent now, his face unreadable. Dr. Kato gave Shoto a moment, then returned to the assessment in the same calm, practical voice as before.

“One more thing before the exam,” she said. “Are he and him your pronouns?” Shoto blinked. The question did not fit with the room. It was too small. Too considerate. Too unrelated to the monitor straps and the exam tray and Enji standing at the foot of the bed like a judge waiting for evidence.

Then he nodded. “Yes.”

“All right,” Dr. Kato said simply. “Thank you.” Something in Shoto’s chest loosened, not enough to make breathing easy, but enough that he noticed the difference.

Dr. Kato stood. “I’m going to examine you now, if you’re still consenting. The nurse will stay here with us. I’ll keep you covered as much as possible. I’ll tell you what I’m doing before I do it.”

Shoto nodded again. “Yes.”

“The exam will tell me whether your cervix is dilated, how thin it feels, and whether the baby has moved down into the pelvis,” Dr. Kato said. “Since you may be close to term and you’ve had pressure, this will help us know whether your body is still in early labor or whether things are progressing faster than the monitor suggests.”

Shoto nodded once more, although his hands had started to tremble against the sheet. The nurse helped him shift down on the bed. That was humiliating in a way Shoto had not prepared for. He had to bend his knees and let the sheet cover him from the waist down while his hospital gown bunched around his hips. The disposable pad crinkled beneath him. His thighs felt cold before the sheet was even lifted.

Enji took one automatic step forward. Dr. Kato looked up immediately. “You can stay by his shoulder or step outside. You do not need to stand where you can see the exam.” Enji stopped. His expression tightened, but he moved to Shoto’s side instead. Shoto did not look at him. Dr. Kato sat on the stool. “You’re going to feel my hand on your thigh first.”

Shoto’s whole body braced despite himself. A gloved hand touched his knee through the sheet, not invasive yet, just a warning. 

“Try to let your knees fall open,” she said. “I know that is easier said than done.”

Shoto tried. His body did not want to obey. Every instinct in him pulled inward, closed, protected. The baby’s heartbeat kept filling the room, and the monitor strap pressed around his stomach like a reminder that none of this could be hidden anymore.

“You’re very tense,” Dr. Kato said gently. “That’s understandable. Take a breath for me.” Shoto inhaled. His stomach tightened before he could finish. The contraction came faster this time, climbing hard through his back and wrapping low around his abdomen. His body went rigid, knees drawing inward by reflex.

Dr. Kato moved her hand away at once. “Contraction?” Shoto nodded sharply. “Okay. We’ll wait. I’m not examining you through that one.”

The pressure bore down, heavier than before. Not pushing, not exactly, but insistent enough that fear flashed hot through his chest. His hand flew to his stomach.

Enji’s voice cut in. “How much longer will this take?” Shoto flinched. The contraction spiked. Dr. Kato’s head lifted. Her voice remained controlled, but there was a sharper edge beneath it now. “It will take as long as it takes, Mr. Todoroki. Please get comfortable.”

Enji stared at her. “He is contracting,” she said. “Stress can make pain harder to manage and can make his body tense against the exam. If you stay in this room, you need to lower your voice and stop pressing the pace.” Enji’s mouth tightened.

Dr. Kato turned back to Shoto before he could answer. “Shoto, look at me if you can.” Shoto forced his eyes open. “That’s it,” she said. “Slow breath in. Now let it out. Don’t fight the contraction with your whole body. Let your shoulders drop. Unclench your hands.”

He had not realized he was gripping the blanket until she said it. The contraction rolled through him, deep and relentless, then finally began to loosen. His abdomen softened beneath the monitor. His legs trembled faintly under the sheet.

“There,” Dr. Kato said. “That one is passing.” Shoto exhaled shakily. The room felt too bright. Dr. Kato waited another few seconds. “Ready to try again?” He did not feel ready. But the baby’s heartbeat was still there, and the exam still needed to happen. “Yes,” he whispered.

“Okay. I’m going to use lubricant. You’ll feel pressure. Try to keep breathing.” The sheet lifted only enough for her to work beneath it. Shoto stared at the ceiling and tried to disappear from the waist down. The first touch made him tense so hard his hips shifted back against the bed.

“Pause,” Dr. Kato said at once. “You’re okay. I’m not going to force past your body. Take another breath.” Shoto obeyed because there was nothing else to do. In. Out.

The next pressure was worse. Not pain exactly, at first, but a deep, invasive discomfort that made his skin go cold. Then her fingers moved, and the pressure sharpened. His stomach pulled tight again, threatening another contraction before the last one had fully left him.

His breath hitched. “I know,” Dr. Kato said. “You’re doing well. I can feel the cervix. Almost done.” Shoto’s eyes burned. He hated that. He hated the tears more than the exam. He turned his face away, toward the monitor, toward the sound of the baby’s heart. Enji’s hand hovered near the bed rail, uncertain and useless.

Dr. Kato’s voice stayed low and steady. “Your cervix is soft and thinning. You are dilated to about two centimeters.” Shoto went still. Two. He did not know whether that was a lot. It sounded small. It sounded enormous. Dr. Kato continued, still examining. “You’re maybe fifty percent effaced. The baby is still relatively high. I don’t feel a bulging bag of waters. That is good.” Another contraction hit before she had withdrawn her hand.

This one was bad. Shoto made a small sound before he could stop himself, a tight, broken breath that did not become a word. His knees tried to close. His back arched slightly off the bed.

“I’m coming out,” Dr. Kato said immediately. “I’m done.” The pressure vanished, but the contraction did not. It kept going, squeezing hard enough that Shoto’s vision blurred at the edges. “Breathe,” Dr. Kato said. She stripped off her gloves and stood so he could see her again. “Shoto. In through your nose. Out slowly. Do not hold your breath.”

He tried, but the sound that left him was uneven. Enji stepped closer. “Shoto—”

Dr. Kato’s eyes snapped to him. “Not now.”

“I was only—”

“You are making him tense every time you speak,” she said, still quiet enough not to startle Shoto, but firm enough that the room seemed to stop around her. “If you cannot be calm, you need to wait outside.” Enji’s face darkened. “I am his father.”

“And right now, he is the one in labor.” Shoto’s hand clamped over his stomach as the contraction crested. Dr. Kato lowered her voice again. “Shoto, listen to the heartbeat. Match your breathing to something steady. In. Out. Good. Again.”

The heartbeat rushed on. He fixed on it because Dr. Kato had told him to, and because it was the only thing in the room that did not sound angry or afraid. The contraction eased slowly, leaving him damp with sweat at his hairline and hollowed out with exhaustion.

The nurse adjusted the sheet back over his knees, giving him some of his body back. Dr. Kato waited until his breathing steadied before she spoke again.

“You’re in early labor,” she said. “About two centimeters, partially effaced, with the baby still high. That means your body has started the process, but you are not close to delivery right this second.”

Shoto’s throat worked. “Not close,” he repeated. “Not right this second,” Dr. Kato said carefully. “Labor can change. Sometimes early labor lasts a long time, especially the first time. Sometimes it speeds up. Since you’ve already been contracting for almost eleven hours, we need to watch the pattern and see whether your cervix continues to change.”

He stared at her, trying to understand the shape of it. Dr. Kato’s expression softened. “You may still have many hours ahead of you.” The number did not exist yet in the room. No one could know exactly.

Shoto felt it somehow. In the low ache of his back. In the way his body kept tightening and releasing with patient, terrible persistence. In the exhaustion already settling into his bones when the real work had barely begun.

Many hours.

His hand moved over his stomach again. The baby shifted faintly beneath it.

Dr. Kato looked at the monitor. “The baby is tolerating the contractions well so far. That is reassuring. The next step is ultrasound, labs, and continued monitoring. We’ll also talk about pain management when you’re ready. You do not have to decide that right now.”

Enji stood silent beside the bed. Shoto was grateful for it. Dr. Kato glanced at him anyway. “And to be clear, what helps him now is calm. Not urgency. Not consequences. Calm.”

Enji’s jaw tightened. Then, after a long moment, he nodded once. Shoto closed his eyes. The heartbeat continued beside him, quick and steady, while his body began the long, slow work of bringing the baby into a world none of them had prepared for.

Dr. Kato looked at the monitor. “The baby is tolerating the contractions well so far. That is reassuring. The next step is ultrasound, labs, and continued monitoring. We’ll also talk about pain management when you’re ready. You do not have to decide that right now.”

Shoto stared at her. The words kept arranging themselves into a plan he had not agreed to yet. He understood what she was saying. He understood that she was trying to be careful, that she was giving him information instead of orders. It still felt like the walls of the room had moved closer while he was not looking. His hand shifted over his stomach. The baby moved faintly as if they had been tired by the contraction too. 

Shoto swallowed. “Can I go home?” The question came out quietly. Enji’s head turned sharply. “Shoto.” 

Dr. Kato lifted one hand without looking away from Shoto, stopping him before he could say anything else. “That is a fair question,” she said. Shoto kept his eyes on her face because looking at Enji would make the room tilt.

“I don’t mean forever,” he said, though he was not sure that was true. “Just… if it is early labor. If I’m only two centimeters. Can I go home and come back later?” Dr. Kato’s expression softened, but not in a way that promised him what he wanted.

“I’m going to give you the honest answer,” she said. “If you were an adult patient with regular prenatal care, a confirmed due date, reassuring labs, a normal ultrasound, a clear plan for returning, and no other concerns, sometimes early labor can be managed at home for a while.”

Shoto held very still. “But that is not your situation,” she continued gently. “You have had no prenatal care. We do not yet have a reliable gestational age. We do not know the baby’s size, position, placental location, or your lab results. You have been contracting for almost eleven hours, you have had increasing pressure, and you told me you already felt enough pressure earlier that you tried to push once.” Shoto looked down. Heat crept up his neck again.

Dr. Kato’s voice stayed calm. “I am not saying that to shame you. I am saying it because it matters medically. Right now, I do not think it would be safe for you or the baby to leave before we have more information.” The answer landed exactly where he had expected it to. It still hurt.

“So no,” Shoto said. “Not right now,” Dr. Kato said. “I would strongly recommend that you stay.” Enji’s voice came hard and immediate. “He is staying.” Shoto flinched. The monitor strap shifted as his abdomen tightened beneath it.

Dr. Kato turned her head. “Mr. Todoroki.” Enji’s jaw set. She did not raise her voice. She did not need to. “I just told him he needs calm.”

“He is asking to leave while in labor.”

“And I answered him,” Dr. Kato said. “He is allowed to ask.” Shoto’s contraction grew beneath his hand, slow but unmistakable. His fingers pressed into the curve of his stomach, and his breath thinned. Dr. Kato noticed immediately and turned back to him. “Contraction?” He nodded. “All right. Don’t argue with it. Breathe for me.” Shoto tried.

The pressure gathered low, wrapping around from his back and pulling downward in a way that made the question feel foolish now. Home was not a place he could return to and become unpregnant. Home was not a place where his body would stop because he asked it to. Home was a dorm room floor, a locked bathroom door, a search bar full of panic, and his own hand shaking as he tried to figure out if the baby was coming.

“Slow breath in,” Dr. Kato said. “Good. Now out.” He exhaled unevenly. The contraction tightened, peaked, and held. His eyes burned. “I don’t want to be here,” he whispered before he could stop himself. Dr. Kato’s face softened. “I know.”

The answer was almost worse because she did not argue with it. She did not tell him hospitals were safe. She did not tell him he should be grateful. She did not tell him he had made this necessary.

She only said, “I know.” Dr. Kato kept her voice low. “You can not want to be here and still need to be here. Both can be true.” The contraction began to ease. His stomach softened slowly beneath his palm, leaving him tired and shaky. Dr. Kato waited until his breathing steadied before she continued.

“My goal is not to trap you,” she said. “My goal is to make sure we do not miss something dangerous. Once we have the ultrasound, labs, and a better sense of whether your cervix is changing, we can talk again about what happens next. But for now, the safest place for you is here.”

Shoto stared at the blanket. It was not the answer he wanted, but it was an answer he could understand.

“Okay,” he said. The word scraped on the way out. Enji stood silent beside the bed, his expression tight and unreadable. Shoto could feel him there without looking. His father’s presence had weight. Heat. Expectation. Even when he said nothing, the room bent around him.

Shoto’s fingers moved faintly over his stomach again. “I want Natsuo,” he said. The words came out before he could decide whether they were allowed. Enji’s head turned toward him.

Shoto kept his eyes down, but now that he had said one name, the other followed with a quiet, helpless certainty. “And Fuyumi.” His voice sounded young. Not cold. Not controlled. Not like a hero student trying to answer efficiently under pressure. Just young.

Dr. Kato looked at him carefully. “Who are Natsuo and Fuyumi?”

“My older children,” Enji said automatically. Dr. Kato’s gaze shifted to him. Enji corrected himself, jaw tight. “His brother and sister.” Shoto’s hand curled into the sheet.

His brother and sister. Not decision-makers. Not solutions. Not professionals with forms and processes and legal language.

Natsuo, who would be furious enough for both of them and still know how to make Shoto drink water. Fuyumi, who would cry quietly and then start folding blankets because she needed her hands to be useful. People who would look at him and see him first, not the problem first. 

Dr. Kato nodded as if that answered something important. “Then they should be called,” she said. Enji’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Now?”

“Yes,” Dr. Kato said. “Now.” Shoto looked up. Dr. Kato’s expression stayed calm, but her voice had the same firm edge she used when she told Enji to stop speaking during a contraction.

“Labor is exhausting,” she said. “Physically and emotionally. He has already been contracting for almost eleven hours, and he is still in early labor. If things continue this way, he may be in for a long ride. He needs support.”

The words settled over Shoto slowly. Support. There it was again. A word that sounded almost foreign inside a Todoroki hospital room.

Enji’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “I am here.”

“I know,” Dr. Kato said. It was not cruel. She did not accuse him. She did not say he was not enough. She simply looked at the monitor, then at Shoto’s pale face, the sweat still drying near his hairline, the hand held protectively over the baby. Then she looked back at Enji. “But he asked for Natsuo and Fuyumi.”

Enji did not answer. Dr. Kato continued, “If you want to help him right now, call them. Tell them he is safe, he is being evaluated, the baby’s heartbeat is reassuring, and he is in early labor. Tell them to come calmly.”

Shoto’s breath caught on the word calmly.

Natsuo would not come calmly. Fuyumi would try to make him. Shoto could almost see it: Natsuo swearing into the phone, Fuyumi taking it from him, both of them already grabbing coats before Enji finished the sentence.

Enji looked at Shoto. This time, Shoto forced himself to meet his father’s eyes. It took effort. More than the contraction had, in a different way.

“I want them,” he said quietly. Enji’s expression changed. A tightening around the eyes. A brief, unreadable flicker, as if he had expected anger, denial, or silence, but not this simple request. He looked away. “Fine,” he said.

Dr. Kato did not move aside immediately. “Outside the room, please.”

Enji’s gaze snapped back to her. She remained perfectly composed. “He is about to have labs drawn and an ultrasound, and he needs a few minutes without additional stress. Step into the hall and make the call.”

Shoto thought Enji would refuse. The old tension filled the room. The kind that had lived in their house for years. The kind that made everyone measure their words before they spoke.

Then the fetal monitor picked up another tightening. A small one, not as sharp as the last, but enough for Shoto’s fingers to press into his stomach.

Dr. Kato’s eyes moved to the strip. Enji noticed too.He turned toward the door. “I will call them,” he said. Shoto did not thank him. He was afraid that if he opened his mouth, something else would come out instead.

Enji stepped into the hallway. The door shut softly behind him, cutting off some of the weight in the room. Shoto breathed in.

Dr. Kato said, “That was a good thing to ask for.” Shoto stared at the monitor. “I don’t know if they’ll come.”

“I think,” Dr. Kato said carefully, “that people who are wanted during labor usually try very hard to come.” The baby’s heartbeat kept moving through the room. Shoto’s hand shifted over his stomach again.

He tried to picture Natsuo’s face when he heard. Fuyumi’s hand over her mouth. The way everything would fracture open in another direction the moment they arrived. He was afraid of that too.

But beneath the fear, something else moved. Not comfort exactly. Not yet. But the possibility of not doing this with only Enji in the room. That possibility felt like its own kind of pain relief.

Enji stepped into the hallway because the doctor told him to. Not because he agreed. Not because he thought she understood the severity of what was happening. Because Shoto had asked for Natsuo and Fuyumi, and for once, Enji recognized that refusing would not make him stronger. It would only make the room colder.

The door closed behind him with a soft mechanical click. Enji stood in the hall without moving. The hospital corridor was too bright. Too clean. Too ordinary for the shape of the crisis unfolding behind him. Nurses moved past with carts. Someone laughed quietly near the station. A call light chimed from another room. Life continued around him with unbearable normalcy while his youngest child lay on a labor bed, two centimeters dilated, almost certainly full term, with a baby no one had known existed except Shoto.

Nine months.

Enji’s hand closed around his phone. Nine months of silence. Nine months of no doctor. No vitamins. No scans. No plan. No adult stepping in because no adult had known there was anything to step into. His son had hidden an entire pregnancy under uniforms and silence and that unreadable face Enji had spent years mistaking for defiance.

He was not angry. That was not the right word, though anger was the shape his body knew best. Anger was easy. Anger had clean edges. Anger knew what to do with its hands. This was something else. Terror, maybe. Shame. The sickening understanding that Shoto had been afraid enough, alone enough, or resigned enough to keep a baby inside him for nine months rather than come to his father.

Enji unlocked his phone and called Fuyumi first. She answered on the third ring, her voice warm and slightly distracted. “Dad?” Enji looked down the hall toward the closed door.

“Fuyumi,” he said. “Shoto is in the hospital.” The warmth vanished. “What?”

“He is stable,” Enji said quickly, because that was what Dr. Kato had told him to say. Safe. Being evaluated. Reassuring heartbeat. Calm. “He is being evaluated. The baby’s heartbeat is reassuring.” There was a silence so sudden and complete that Enji could hear the hospital intercom crackle overhead.

Then Fuyumi said, very softly, “The baby?” 

Enji closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Oh my god.”

“He is in early labor,” Enji said. The words felt impossible in his mouth. “He has been contracting for almost eleven hours. The doctor says he is not close to delivery right this second, but he may have many hours ahead of him.”

Fuyumi made a small sound. Not quite a sob. Not quite a breath. “Nine months?” she whispered. “That is his estimate.”

“Oh, Shoto.” Enji gripped the phone harder. There it was. The thing he had not known how to say. Not how could he? Not what was he thinking? Just his name, broken open with worry.

“He asked for you,” Enji said.

Fuyumi inhaled sharply. “He did?”

“And Natsuo.”

“I’m coming,” she said immediately. There was movement on her end now, drawers opening, something dropping, her breath uneven as she moved through her apartment. “I’m coming right now. Which hospital?”

Enji gave her the name. “Is he scared?” Fuyumi asked. Enji looked back at the door again. Shoto’s pale face appeared in his mind. His hand over his stomach. His voice when he asked to go home. His voice when he said he wanted them. “Yes,” Enji said.

Fuyumi went quiet. Then she said, “Don’t make it worse.” The words struck harder than they should have. Enji’s jaw tightened. “I am trying to handle this.”

“I know,” she said, and because she sounded like she meant it, the words hurt more. “But don’t handle him like a situation. He needs us.” Enji had no answer to that. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Fuyumi said.

The call ended.

Enji stood still for another second before calling Natsuo. It rang until voicemail. He called again. Voicemail. A third time. Voicemail. His grip on the phone tightened until the edge dug into his palm. “Natsuo,” he said under his breath, and called again. This time, the call was rejected almost immediately.

Enji closed his eyes. Of course Natsuo would ignore him. On any other day, Enji might have deserved it. On most days, he did. Natsuo had built his boundaries out of years Enji could not return to him. He had earned the right not to answer his father’s calls.

But Shoto was in the hospital. Shoto had asked for him. Enji called again. This time, Natsuo answered with a furious, “What?” Enji did not waste time. “Shoto is in the hospital.”

The anger vanished so quickly it left a hollow space behind it. “What?”

“He is safe,” Enji said, forcing the words into the order Dr. Kato had given him. “He is being evaluated. He is in early labor.” Natsuo said nothing. Enji heard him breathe once. Then, flatly, “Labor.”

“Yes.”

“As in having a baby.”

“Yes.”

Another silence. Then Natsuo’s voice changed. It went colder, more controlled, and somehow that was worse than yelling. “How long have you known?”

“I found out today.”

“Today.”

“Yes.”

“He’s been pregnant this whole time, and you found out today?”

Enji’s eyes closed again. “Yes.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“He asked for you,” Enji said. That stopped him. When Natsuo spoke again, the anger was still there, but something raw had broken through it. “He did?”

“Yes. You and Fuyumi.” Enji could hear movement on the other end now. A chair scraping. Footsteps. Keys being picked up too hard. “I’ll be there,” Natsuo said.

“Natsuo—”

“If you upset him before I get there, I swear to god—”

“He is contracting,” Enji interrupted, because the image of Shoto flinching under Dr. Kato’s reprimand still sat like a bruise in his chest. “The doctor said stress makes it worse.” Natsuo went silent. Enji swallowed. “I am aware.”

“Good. Stay aware,” Natsuo said, quieter but no less sharp.

The call ended.

Enji lowered the phone. Fuyumi was coming. Natsuo was coming. Shoto would have what he asked for. That should have helped. It did not. The panic did not retreat. It only changed direction.

Enji walked a few steps away from the room, toward the end of the hall where the windows overlooked the ambulance bay. He stood there under the fluorescent lights, staring down at the city beyond the glass, and called Hawks.

Hawks answered on the second ring. “Hey,” he said, voice warm in a way that immediately made Enji’s chest tighten. “You okay?”  Enji stared at his own reflection in the window. His face looked controlled. He did not feel controlled. “No,” he said. The answer came out too bluntly. 

Hawks went quiet. Not the professional quiet he used on comms. Not the amused silence he gave reporters when they asked something stupid. This was private silence. The kind that meant he had sat up straighter, that his wings had probably shifted behind him, that every part of him had focused on Enji’s voice.

“What happened?” Hawks asked. Enji closed his eyes. “Shoto is having a baby.” For one impossible second, there was no sound on the other end of the line. Then Hawks said, very carefully, “Okay.” Enji’s jaw tightened. “That is all anyone seems capable of saying.”

“Well,” Hawks said slowly, “I’m trying very hard not to say the wrong thing.”

“He is in labor.”

“Is he safe?”

“He is in the hospital,” Enji said. “The baby’s heartbeat is reassuring. He is two centimeters dilated. He has had no prenatal care. None. He believes he is about nine months along.”

Hawks exhaled softly. “Oh, Enji.” The use of his name broke through him in a way Endeavor never did. Enji pressed his free hand against his forehead. “He hid it for nine months,” he said. “Nine months. He is a child.”

“He’s your child,” Hawks said. “Yes,” Enji snapped, though Hawks had not argued. “My child. My son. He is lying in that room in labor because he was alone enough to hide an entire pregnancy from everyone.” The words struck something as they left him. Enji’s throat tightened around them. Hawks did not rush to fill the silence. He let Enji hear what he had just said.

“That’s the part that’s scaring you,” Hawks said quietly. Enji’s eyes opened. “What?”

“Not just the baby,” Hawks said. “Not just the labor. The fact that he didn’t come to you.”

Enji wanted to reject that. It would have been easier to stay with outrage, with logistics, with the neat horror of no prenatal care and no plan. But Hawks knew him too well now. Knew the difference between anger and fear before Enji did.

“He cannot have a baby,” Enji said. Hawks’ voice stayed gentle. “Enji.”

“He cannot,” Enji repeated, louder this time. “He is still in school. He is training. He is injured in ways he does not discuss. He does not have a home prepared. He does not have supplies. He does not have a plan. He asked to go home while in labor.”

“He’s scared.”

“So am I.”

The admission scraped out before he could stop it. Enji shut his eyes again. On the other end of the phone, Hawks breathed in.

“I know,” he said. “I know you are.” That was worse than being challenged. It made Enji’s composure feel unnecessary.

“He needs to give the baby up for adoption,” Enji said, as if saying it clearly enough would make it become the only responsible path. “That is the safest option. There are families prepared for this. Adults. People with rooms and schedules and stable lives. He cannot raise a child because he was frightened and hid the pregnancy until his body forced the truth out of him.”

Hawks let him talk. That was the strange mercy of him. He did not interrupt. He did not joke. He did not try to sand the panic down before Enji had shown all of it. He simply stayed on the line and let the spiral reveal itself.

“I am not trying to be cruel,” Enji said, voice lower now. “I am trying to prevent him from ruining his life.”

“I believe you,” Hawks said. Enji’s hand tightened around the phone. “But, Enji,” Hawks continued, “you are not going to help him through labor by trying to solve the next eighteen years in the hallway.” Enji said nothing.

“You’re jumping to the end because the middle is terrifying,” Hawks said. “Adoption, guardianship, school, training, scandal, supplies, what people will say, whether he can cope, whether you failed him. All of that is too much, so your brain is grabbing for the one decision that feels like it would make the rest stop.”

Enji stared at the glass. Below him, an ambulance pulled into the bay, lights flashing silently in the reflection.

“It would make some of it stop,” Enji said.

“For you,” Hawks answered. He did not back away. “Maybe adoption ends up being part of the conversation. Maybe it doesn’t. I’m not telling you what the answer is. I’m telling you that Shoto cannot be coached through a contraction by a man standing over him like a verdict.”

Enji flinched. Behind the closed hospital door, he could still see it: Shoto’s body tightening, the monitor strap shifting over his stomach, Dr. Kato turning on Enji with controlled fury because his voice had made Shoto tense.

“I upset him,” Enji said.

“Yes,” Hawks said. He softened immediately. “But you can do better on the next one.”

“The next what?”

“The next contraction,” Hawks said. “The next question. The next moment where he looks terrified and you want to turn that fear into an order because orders make sense to you.”

Enji closed his eyes. Hawks knew him too well. “Listen to me,” Hawks said. His voice changed slightly, losing the last of its teasing edges. “When you go back in there, your job is not to decide if he keeps the baby. Your job is not to make him understand consequences. Your job is not to interrogate him about how this happened or why he hid it.”

“He needs to understand—”

“Not during labor,” Hawks cut in, firm now. “Not while he is dilating. Not while a doctor is checking him. Not while he is trying to breathe through pain. You can be terrified later. You can be angry in my apartment. You can say every awful, panicked, protective thing to me. I’ll take it. But you cannot unload it on him.”

Enji’s breath caught. There was something intimate about the offer. Not romantic in the easy way people imagined romance. Not soft light and careless comfort. This was Hawks standing between Enji’s worst instincts and the child those instincts had already harmed once too often.

I’ll take it.

Enji bowed his head. “I don’t know how to stand there and do nothing.”

“You won’t be doing nothing,” Hawks said. “You’ll be regulating yourself so he doesn’t have to regulate you.” Enji went still. Hawks continued, gentler now. “That’s what he needs. He needs you to be the adult in the room without making him feel like a child who disappointed you. There’s a difference.”

Enji swallowed. The difference felt narrow and enormous. “What do I do?” he asked. Hawks did not laugh at him. That was why Enji loved him.

“Start simple,” Hawks said. “Keep your voice low. Keep your face neutral, even if your head is screaming. Stand where he can see you but not where you’re crowding him. If Dr. Kato is talking, you stop talking. If Shoto is contracting, you stop asking questions. If he asks for something reasonable, you help him get it.”

Enji listened. “If he says he’s scared, don’t correct him,” Hawks continued. “Don’t tell him he should have thought of that earlier. Don’t tell him he’ll be fine. Say, ‘I know.’ Or, ‘I’m here.’ Or, ‘Your sister and brother are coming.’ Give him facts that make the room feel steadier.”

Enji stared toward Shoto’s door. “I’m here,” he repeated, and the words sounded inadequate in his mouth.

“They’re not magic,” Hawks said. “They’re just less damaging than panic.” A rough breath escaped Enji before he could stop it. It was almost a laugh, but not quite. Hawks heard it anyway.

“There he is,” he murmured.

“This is not funny.”

“No,” Hawks said. “It’s not.” A beat passed. Then Hawks added, softer, “But you are going to be a grandpa.” Enji went rigid. “No.”

“Pretty sure that’s how babies work.”

“Hawks.”

“And before All Might, too.”

“It is not funny.”

“I mean, it’s a little funny.”

“It is not.”

“It’s also terrifying,” Hawks said. “It can be both.”

Enji looked at his reflection in the glass again. He looked older than he had that morning. Exhausted in a way no fight had ever made him. His hair was neat. His coat was expensive. His face was controlled. None of it made him feel prepared.

“A grandfather,” he said, as if the word belonged to another man. “Maybe,” Hawks said. “Maybe not in the way you pictured. Maybe not in a way anyone pictured. But there’s a baby in that room, and there’s your son in that room, and right now they’re both still here.”

Enji’s chest tightened. Still here. That was what the heartbeat had sounded like, even to him. Not a decision. Not an accusation. A presence. A life. Shoto’s baby. His grandchild. The thought was too large to hold, so Enji did what he had always done with things too large to hold. He tried to turn it into action.

“I should go back in.”

“Not if you’re going to say any of what you just said to me.” Enji’s jaw tightened. “I am not incompetent.”

“No,” Hawks said. “You’re panicking.” Enji said nothing. “And you called me because some part of you knew that.” The worst part was that it was true. Enji looked toward Shoto’s door again. “What if he asks me what I think?” he asked.

Hawks was quiet for a second. “Then you tell him the truth without making it a sentence he has to survive,” Hawks said. Enji frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means not, ‘You cannot keep this baby.’ Not, ‘You need to give it up.’ Not, ‘You ruined your life.’”

“I would not say that.”

“Enji.”

His mouth closed. Hawks’ voice softened again. “Say something like, ‘I am scared, and I do not know what the right answer is tonight. We will get through the medical part first.’ That’s honest. That doesn’t corner him.”

Enji absorbed that slowly. “I am scared,” he said, testing the words.

“Yeah.”

“I do not know what the right answer is tonight.”

“Good.”

“We will get through the medical part first.”

“There you go.”

Enji looked down at the phone in his hand. It should not have taken Hawks coaching him like a civilian learning how not to mishandle a rescue. But perhaps that was what this was. Not a battle. A rescue.

And Shoto was not an enemy to be subdued. Not a mistake to be corrected before it spread. He was a frightened boy in a hospital bed, in labor after almost eleven hours of pain, asking for his brother and sister because his father made the room harder to breathe in.

Enji’s throat tightened. “I made the room worse,” he said. “You did,” Hawks said honestly. Enji closed his eyes. “But you noticed,” Hawks added. “That matters. Now go make it a little less worse.”

Despite himself, Enji breathed out. A little less worse. That sounded possible. Not redemption. Not forgiveness. Not fatherhood repaired in one hospital hallway. Possible.

“Hawks,” he said.

“Yeah?”

There were too many things to say. Too many things that would sound too exposed under the fluorescent lights with nurses walking past and his son laboring behind a closed door.

So he said, “Thank you.” Hawks’ voice warmed. “Call me after Natsuo gets there. Or before, if you need me.”

“Natsuo threatened me.”

“Natsuo’s coping beautifully.”

“He threatened me.”

“He answered the phone, didn’t he?”

Enji pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are not helpful.”

“I am extremely helpful. I just also happen to be correct.”

For the first time since Shoto had looked at him and said I think about nine months, Enji felt something in his chest loosen by a fraction.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Okay,” Hawks replied. Then, more softly, “Enji?”

“Yes.”

“Breathe before you open the door.” Enji stopped with his hand already half-raised toward the handle. Hawks knew him too well. “Once,” Hawks said. “Slow. In and out. Then go in.”

Enji hated that the instruction helped. He inhaled slowly. Held it. Released it.

“Good,” Hawks said, like he could hear the difference. Enji looked at the closed hospital door. Through it, faint but steady, he could hear the monitor. The heartbeat continued.

“I will call you later,” Enji said.

“I’ll be here.”

Enji ended the call. For another moment, he stood in the hallway with the phone lowered in his hand. He was still afraid. He still believed adoption might be the best option. He still did not know how Shoto could possibly raise a child when he had hidden the pregnancy until labor forced the truth into the open.

But he also knew, because Hawks had made him say it plainly, that none of that belonged in the next contraction. Not the adoption. Not the consequences. Not the terror dressed up as certainty. So Enji breathed once more. Then he opened the door.