Chapter Text
Matsuda sits on the side of the road, his back pressed against the barrier to the bike lane he’s taking up and definitely dirtying his white gym shirt, which would be fine if he was going home to shower, like he had planned to. Instead, though, he lets the sweat on his back absorb the dirt and whatever other grime might be on the traffic barrier, the only sense of relief he feels being the wind from the cars speeding by. It’s early, the sun still creeping into the sky, and he figures people are heading to their morning shifts like he’s supposed to be getting ready for right now.
He tucks his phone, which has rang three times so far with no answer, between his shoulder and his ear and uses his now-free hand to wipe the drying tears from his cheeks. His other hand is currently occupied with the entire reason he stopped his bike: a small black kitten with what he thinks is a broken leg. He isn’t the one who hit it, thankfully. The person ahead of him on their bike — now long gone — had, and he wouldn’t have known the cat was there at all if he hadn’t watched them stop, decide it apparently wasn’t that big of a deal, get back on their bike, and drive away.
Whatever. He doesn’t have time to be mad about that, because just when he thinks the phone is about to go to voicemail, it picks up.
“Who is this?”
“Aizawa! It’s Matsuda. I need your help with something,” Matsuda explains, speaking quickly before Aizawa can interrupt.
Aizawa groans, voice irritated. “It’s six in the morning. What could you possibly need help with?”
“There’s— a hurt cat. I was biking home from the gym and I found it. I think its leg is broken. And my house is a mile away still, and the closest vet clinic is like, too far to bike…” Matsuda sighs, his hand gently stroking the cat’s cheek to comfort the poor thing.
Silence for a few moments, and then a scoff of almost disbelief. “You called me at six in the morning over a cat? How did you even get my cell?”
“Ide gave it to me a while ago. Please, will you come pick me up and take it to the vet with me? I’ll pay you. I can’t just leave it here,” Matsuda pleads, the kitten looking up at him when it hears the slight whine in his voice.
More silence, and then rustling. “Fine. Send me your location.” He almost sounds relieved, if Matsuda didn’t know any better.
Matsuda does know better, though, especially about making assumptions about Aizawa, because it seems with him he’s wrong every time. After sending off his location, he lifts the kitten by its scruff, thinking it’s young enough that that’ll probably be okay, and it lets out a cry when it’s set on his lap but relaxes soon after.
“Shh,” Matsuda whispers, unsure how to comfort the little thing. “Aizawa is gonna be here soon, and we’ll help you. I won’t let him be mean. He’s just stubborn. But it’s okay…”
Matsuda is still mumbling nothings to the kitten when Aizawa pulls over on the side of the road, stepping out of his car looking exhausted. He goes to apologize, but Aizawa interrupts before he can speak. “I’ll get your bike in the trunk, just get in the car with the cat.”
He does as he’s told. The kitten doesn’t take too well to being picked up, but seems to tolerate it, maybe only because it’s in pain. Matsuda doesn’t say a word when Aizawa sits in the driver’s seat beside him, or when he starts to drive.
Aizawa is the one to break the silence. “Why me?”
Glancing over at him, not having expected the words, Matsuda tilts his head. “I don’t know. You’re just the first one who came to mind. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Though I really don’t understand why I’d come to mind first.” Matsuda gives him a small shrug, knowing he won’t see it.
They don’t speak the rest of the car ride. Aizawa doesn’t say anything, and Matsuda doesn’t want to upset him by breaking the silence.
Aizawa — to Matsuda’s surprise — cracks a small grin at him when they enter the brightly-lit clinic. “Is this how you spend your time when you aren’t working? Rescuing stray animals?”
“Hey, this is a first,” Matsuda replies, shaking his head as he walks up to the front desk.
“I— we found this cat,” he tells the woman at the desk, who seems startled, like she didn’t hear them walk in. “I think its leg is broken.”
He explains the whole situation in a rambly sort of way to the unamused woman at the desk, who tells him simply, “I need a name for the paperwork.”
“Oh! Um.” Matsuda looks up at Aizawa, and then back down at the scruffy little black cat and its blank expression as it looks up at him. “...Cake.”
Before the worker can reply, Aizawa looks at him with a bamboozled expression, eyebrows furrowed and mouth slightly agape. “What?”
Matsuda laughs softly, turning to show the cat to Aizawa without moving it in a way that’ll hurt it. “Because it looks like Ryuzaki?”
Aizawa blinks at him, and then brushes past him to speak to the worker himself. “Put it under Aizawa Shuichi.”
Oh. Okay, yeah, that makes sense in retrospect, but it had seriously seemed like she wanted the cat’s name. What a way to embarrass himself again.
He doesn’t have much time to muse over that, however, because Aizawa is nudging his side before long, waiting for him to hand the cat over so a different worker can put it in a crate. He sets it gently into the crate himself, not wanting to risk hurting it by handing it to someone else, and hastily goes through the rest of the actions in a blur until they step outside again. To Matsuda’s annoyance, it’s started to rain.
“Sorry for embarrassing you in there,” Matsuda starts, but he gets quickly cut off.
“It’s fine. Were you paying attention to what she said?”
Matsuda blinks and then shakes his head.
Aizawa takes in a sharp breath, gets in the car, and doesn’t speak again until Matsuda is in too. “We can pick the cat up after work. They’re going to vaccinate it and all, as well. I already paid for it.”
Matsuda widens his eyes when he hears this. “What? I’ll pay you back when we get to— I mean, you’re bringing me to my place, right? I need to shower.”
“Yeah, I am, but you don’t have to pay me back,” Aizawa replies, which Matsuda waves off immediately.
“Of course I’m gonna pay you back. You wouldn’t even be doing this right now if it weren’t for me.”
Aizawa’s voice is firm now. “You’re not paying me back.”
Matsuda laughs in surprise at the sudden shift in attitude, but he gives him a small nod. “Geez, Aizawa. You really are stubborn.”
Aizawa lets out a low hum, but he doesn’t argue.
When they arrive at Matsuda’s little one-bedroom apartment, the rain still pouring overhead, graying the sunrise, Matsuda doesn’t expect Aizawa to even turn off the car before dropping him off, much less get out. “What are you doing?” he asks, voice hesitant and a little confused. “I can get my bike out of the trunk by myself, you don’t have to get out and get yourself wet.”
Aizawa raises an eyebrow at him as Matsuda opens the trunk, his eyes set on Matsuda’s sheepish grin. “I’m not going to leave you here to bike to work in the rain when we have to go to the same place. And there’s no point in you biking to work, considering I’ll be taking you back home after the vet anyway.”
Widening his eyes, Matsuda nods, shutting the trunk again and waving for Matsuda to follow him into his apartment. “Uh, sorry if it’s messy. I wasn’t expecting this. Obviously.”
“It’s fine. I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
“Hey!”
Matsuda tries to be very quick in the shower, not wanting to waste too much of Aizawa’s time. He makes it in record time, probably, and only after drying himself off does he realize he forgot to bring clothes into the bathroom with him. Of course. He never has to bring clothes in the bathroom, because it’s not like he usually has someone over when he’s showering, and it just… didn’t cross his mind.
He wraps the towel around his waist — it’s not long enough to cover his chest, too, but he can’t bring himself to care — and cracks the bathroom door, peeking his head into his bedroom. Aizawa is sitting on his bed, reading this stupid gossip magazine Matsuda had picked up at the grocery store, and it’s such a silly sight that Matsuda almost doesn’t want to interrupt him. “Uh, Aizawa, I forgot to grab clothes…”
Aizawa jumps when he hears this, his head darting up to look at Matsuda, eyes flicking from his face, to his body, and back to his face as he nods, dropping the magazine. He quickly leaves the room, shutting the bedroom door behind him. Matsuda can’t help but to laugh to himself at it.
He doesn’t even think about his top surgery scars until he’s getting dressed in the mirror and comes to the realization that Aizawa saw them. There’s no way he didn’t. Ugh. Well, Matsuda won’t bring it up unless Aizawa does, probably.
When he finishes getting dressed, he opens his bedroom door, sheepishly smiling at Aizawa, who’s leaning against his small dining room table. “Hi. I’m dressed. Sorry about that.” He leaves the door open when he walks back into his room to brush his still wet hair, hoping Aizawa gets the memo that he’s allowed back in. Aizawa follows him in not long after, sitting back in his spot on Matsuda’s bed, and Matsuda watches through the mirror as he carefully places the magazine back onto the nightstand.
“I don’t mean to sound invasive,” Aizawa starts, the words more tentative than Matsuda has ever heard from him. “But… are you trans?”
“Yeah,” Matsuda confirms, finishing brushing his hair and moving to sit next to Aizawa on the bed. “I hope that isn’t an issue.”
“No! No, I don’t have a problem with it, one of my best friends is… the same…”
“I know.”
Aizawa’s eyes widen at this, surprise clear on his face. “You do? About Ide?”
Matsuda can’t stop a grin from creeping onto his face. “Oh, man, did he never tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“This was a while ago. Like… during the Kira case. One of the times we were listening in on Light and Takada, I don’t know where you were — bathroom, maybe — but it was just me and Ide paying attention. He stood up to grab something and his pant leg got caught on his chair, and his packer fell through his pant leg, somehow, and he yelled at me like it was my fault!”
Aizawa snickers at this, a hand coming up to rest on his chin. “Did you tell him?”
“About me being trans?” Matsuda nods. “Of course I did. He said he wasn’t surprised.”
“That sounds like Ide, alright.”
Once they’re back in the car, finally heading to work, Matsuda has a million questions for him. “Who’s gonna keep the cat?”
“You, obviously. You’re the one who found it.”
Matsuda hums. “Yeah, but you paid for the vet, so it’s yours, too. We can have joint custody… sorry, is that disrespectful?”
Aizawa chuckles, shaking his head, eyes still on the road. “It’s fine. You can call it whatever you want, but that cat is staying at your house.”
“Aww, but I bet your kids would love to meet it.”
“I would rather take them to your place to see the cat than have it at mine.”
Matsuda feels himself smile at this. “You can! I know I only met them a few times, but you guys are welcome over whenever.”
“...I’ll think about it.”
“Anyway,” Matsuda continues, excitement flurrying through his mind, “since we’re going to be coparenting this cat and all, we should get some stuff for it before we pick it up. Like food.”
Matsuda, admittedly, goes a little overboard at the pet store later that day. First, he has a long, long conversation with a young, tired employee about the differences between wet food and dry food, and the pros and cons of each. He decides to get both, just in case. After Matsuda asks a different employee for litter opinions, not wanting to take up too much time from one, Aizawa seems an equal part annoyed and amused at all of his questions.
“You know you’re paying, right?” Aizawa asks, giving Matsuda an uncertain look when he picks out yet another cat toy.
“I know,” Matsuda replies, leaning down to look at the bottom row of toys. “Aizawa, look! This one is a strawberry! That’s perfect for him. Maybe he’s Ryuzaki reincarnated.”
“If it was Ryuzaki reincarnated, I don’t think it’d let you pick it up,” Aizawa points out, a bemused smile forming on his face. “Besides, do you even know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“No. But who knows. Nobody ever asked to pick Ryuzaki up. Maybe he would’ve said yes,” Matsuda argues, setting the plush strawberry in the cart that Aizawa somehow ended up being the one to push.
“I highly doubt that he would.”
“You’re no fun, Aizawa,” Matsuda teases, leaning against the cart. “You’re going to be a terrible influence on Cake.”
“Are you seriously calling it that?” Aizawa asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Yup. The name’s already set-in-stone. No going back.”
When they finally get to checkout, Aizawa tells Matsuda to load the bags into the cart after all the items are scanned. He does so without thinking about it, and when he looks back up, he realizes he’s been tricked — all the items are paid for already.
“Aizawa,” Matsuda groans, leaning slightly against his friend’s side. “I was gonna pay.”
“Hm?” Aizawa looks down at Matsuda in faux-confusion. “I told you I would.”
“Liar.”
“Aizawa?” the young woman at the desk of what Matsuda thought was a veterinarian’s office, but is actually an animal care sanctuary — he does not know the difference — calls out. The both of them head up to the front, collecting Cake in the little crate they put it in, and Matsuda gives the employee a million thanks. “His leg wasn’t fractured, but the skin was broken enough to need stitches. Here’s a cone, which you only need to use if he tries to bite the stitches, and all the information is on these papers.”
Matsuda nods, taking the papers and cone since Aizawa is holding the crate, and he looks up at Aizawa. “See, I told you he was a boy.”
Aizawa shushes him, and he can’t help but giggle.
“Thank you so much,” Matsuda tells him on the drive back to his apartment, watching Aizawa’s face as he drives. He’s always liked how Aizawa looks, but he especially does now, his stubbly facial hair and the gray that’s been creeping its way into his hair for a while now fit him so well.
“It’s fine,” Aizawa replies dismissively, glancing over for just a moment to look at the cat on Matsuda’s lap, still a little high from anesthesia, curled up against Matsuda’s tummy. “You’re lucky I like you.”
Matsuda feels himself light up at this, jumping a little in his seat, much to Cake’s dismay. “Do you really?”
“Shut up,” Aizawa grumbles. “You make it sound weird.”
Matsuda laughs to himself, feeling a blush creep onto his face. “Well, I like you too.”
“Cut it out, Matsuda,” Aizawa groans, and Matsuda just laughs again.
“It’s true, though! If we’re going to be coparenting, you should at least know how I feel.”
“You make it sound like you’re in love with me.”
Matsuda looks down at Cake now, scratching its little head between its ears. “What if… I mean, what would you say? If I was.”
“…this is not a car conversation,” Aizawa says simply, and that is the end of that.
Matsuda doesn’t know how he would bring it up, anyway. Maybe I do have a weird half-crush on you that I don’t know how to process? Maybe I’ve been a little bit in love with you for a while now? Maybe that’s why you’re the one I called? Aizawa didn’t reject him, technically. That could be a good thing. Realistically, though, he knows he probably has no chance. He’s always been too stupid, too slow, too… everything, for Aizawa, and at the same time not enough. He’s lucky Aizawa is even treating him like a friend. That isn’t something he wants to risk.
So he doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t mention it when Aizawa invites himself inside when they get to Matsuda’s, or when Aizawa sets up all of the things they bought while Matsuda sits on the kitchen floor, playing with Cake and a little mouse toy. And he doesn’t mention it when Aizawa joins him on the floor, petting Cake so gently, like he’s scared to hurt him.
The second Aizawa gets his hand on Cake, the cat is nuzzling against his hand and crawling up onto his lap, purring louder than it has so far. “Aizawa, he loves you,” Matsuda says with a grin, overjoyed at this revelation.
Aizawa smiles down at the cat, and glances up at Matsuda when he speaks, a soft smile still on his face.
Jesus, Matsuda thinks, Aizawa, I love you.