Katsuki Bakugo hadn’t expected fatherhood to show up in a goddamn laundry basket.

He was twenty-one—young, reckless, with the number five hero ranking burning on his back like a brand and his whole damn future laid out in explosive bursts of ambition. He was living in a cramped two-bedroom apartment with Deku and Icy-Hot, barely managing sleep between patrols and late-night missions. They were still figuring out how to be heroes—and then the basket showed up at the door.

A blanket. A folded note. A newborn with his eyes.

Bakugo remembered just standing there in the hallway, arms slack at his sides, as Deku gasped and scrambled forward and Todoroki calmly called an ambulance just in case. The kid didn’t cry much. Just stared up at him with big, unfocused eyes and a frown like the world already pissed him off.

He’d read the note later, shaking. “I can’t do this,” it said. “But he’s yours.”

And somehow—somehow—they’d made it work. The three of them. Bakugo with his short temper and caffeine shakes, Deku with his notebooks and gentle hands, Todoroki with his quiet routines and weird dad jokes. They took turns with diapers. Todoroki learned how to bottle-feed. Deku cried when the boy said his first word, which wasn’t even a real word—it was a noise, but they all heard it. And when they moved into a real house years later, big enough for all of them and quiet enough for the boy’s sensory needs, none of them questioned that they were in it for the long haul.

The boy was fourteen now. Fourteen and too damn smart for his own good. Autistic, anxious, and dealing with a mind that worked different from other kids’. School was hell. Big crowds were worse. The world was too loud, too fast, too much.

So right now, Bakugo was watching him from the kitchen doorway. The boy was curled up on the couch, knees hugged to his chest, headphones over his ears. He was flipping slowly through a thick Greek mythology lexicon that Deku had ordered him after a hyperfixation kicked in hard two months ago. His thumb traced the underlined words, his lips moving faintly as he read.

Bakugo didn’t say anything.

He didn’t need to. The boy didn’t always do well with conversation out of nowhere—it startled him, sometimes knocked him off center. Better to ease into it.

Bakugo walked in slow, grabbed the throw blanket off the back of the couch, and draped it gently over his son’s legs. The boy flinched at first—then glanced up, pulled his headphones down a little.

“You warm enough?” Bakugo asked, voice low.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“You eat lunch?”

He shook his head without looking up. “Not hungry.”

Bakugo sighed through his nose. “You gotta eat something, dumbass.”

“I said I’m not hungry,” he muttered, pulling the blanket tighter.

Bakugo didn’t snap. Not today. Not when the boy had that slightly-glassy look in his eyes that meant he was dissociating a bit, using the book to stay grounded. Some days were just harder.

From behind, he heard footsteps. Todoroki, walking in with a water bottle in one hand and a heat pack in the other. Without a word, he set both on the coffee table. Deku poked his head in from the hallway, gave the boy a small smile.

The boy glanced up at them all, fidgeted with the edge of the blanket, then whispered, “Thanks.”

Bakugo dropped onto the other side of the couch and gave him a gentle nudge with his elbow. “You’re doin’ good, kid.”

It wasn’t always perfect. Some nights were panic attacks. Some days, meltdowns. Some weeks, long silences. But they were still here. Still doing it.

Bakugo never expected to have a family. But somehow, this loud, weird, messy group of people—the nerd, the half-and-half bastard, and this brilliant boy he’d been trusted to raise—they were his.