Chapter Text
Sometimes Bakugou can feel when he’s about to pass out.
After the hellish ordeal that was exam week, in which he’d hung out with the floor three times in the span of five days and successfully given his friends heart attacks every time. So he was very familiar with the process by now.
He’ll start feeling warm and dizzy, his vision will tunnel and he’ll wake up on the floor a few seconds later, blinking up at his worried classmates.
Thankfully it never took him long to recover, he couldn’t handle everyone looking at him with pity and worry. Sure he would pass out occasionally, but it was just the consequence of being so much stronger than all of those extras.
He could still kick their asses without blinking, even in the stupor of hypotension.
The class had gotten used to it by now. After the first few times, Kirishima, Deku or Kaminari would follow Bakugou with their eyes like a hawk, waiting for him to drop.
But by now they trusted him to let them know when he started to feel faint. Sometimes he’d just tap on his desk twice and quietly slide to the ground until the feeling passed or he’d lean heavily on Kirishima when his legs started to feel shaky, knowing that the taller boy would be prepared to catch him if necessary.
One time Bakugou doesn’t even get to feel any of the warning symptoms.
He was sitting in art class, listening to Midnight ramble about something he wasn’t too eager to pay attention to. He’d made decent progress on his portfolio, having managed to rope even Kaminari into a photoshoot, much to his delight.
They’d shot the pictures in the dark, Kaminari lighting up with crackles of electricity that framed his face in a way that Bakugou could only describe as stunning. He’d completely filled his SD card with shot after shot of Kaminari, sometimes hanging him a chain to run his electricity through or even going as far to find a metal frame for Kaminari to hold in front of his face.
Eventually, Kaminari had pushed himself a little too far and short-circuited. At that point the photoshoot had been wrapped up and Bakugou sat with Kaminari, keeping him company and talking in a low voice until the younger boy came back to himself.
Kaminari never remembered what happened when he short-circuited so the few minutes Bakugou had spent with his head on Kaminari’s shoulder was a secret only he would have to keep.
Bakugou had gotten some truly spectacular pictures from that shoot and spending a few hours editing them for his portfolio was just a bonus.
Midnight cheered when he showed her the final pieces.
He was her protege, or as she would say, he “had an artist’s eye”.
Eventually, Midnight let the class dissolve into the usual chaos that occurred when they worked on art. For their portfolios, she had given them free reign of mediums so almost everyone was doing something different.
Bakugou had caught a few glimpses of Jirou’s illustrations, or Sero’s comic, even Todoroki’s calligraphy.
Obviously, none of it was as good as the pieces of photography that he was putting together, but there was at least some talent going around the rest of the class.
“Bakugou!”
His head snapped up at the sound of his name being called.
Usually he would have ignored such a thing, but that was Kaminari’s voice and if anything was fact, it was that Kaminari had Bakugou’s poor little heart in a vice grip.
He had to consciously remind himself to scowl. “What do you want, dunce face?”
“Can you show me the pictures you took of me? Jirou wants to see!”
Bakugou fought the wave of jealousy that smacked into him at full force as he saw Kaminari leaning over Ashido’s desk with Jirou next to him, twirling one of her earjacks on his finger. He didn’t have a crush, Kaminari wasn’t his property, so why did it make him feel so sick to see the scene in front of him?
And he certainly wasn’t jealous, so why did it feel like there were pop rocks in his heart? His own explosions popping off behind his sternum as he tried to tear his eyes away from Kaminari, who should be his, being so casually affectionate with someone else.
Jirou was easily the girl in 1-A that Kaminari was the closest with, even taking into account the fact that he was in a friend group with Ashido. It made sense, if anyone was dating in their class and Bakugou didn’t know about it, it would definitely be Kaminari and Jirou.
Of course Jirou would want to see the pictures Bakugou took of her boyfriend. Of course Kaminari had been so comfortable being affectionate with Bakugou when he was already in a relationship. Bakugou was an idiot.
A stupid lovesick idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.
Scowl more genuine now, he dug around in his bag for the few printed out shots he had of Kaminari.
Grabbing the familiar folder, Bakugou held it firm in his fingers, biting his tongue as he went to stand. He’d just hand the folder to Kaminari and go back to ignoring him for the rest of the period. He’d done it before, he could do it again.
Only, he didn’t get that far.
He stood up, his chair scraping loudly on the floor as he did so, and all of a sudden he was blinking at the legs of a desk, lying on his side.
As his vision came into focus he could see that most of the desks in front of him were still occupied. The few nearest to him had been pulled away though.
He could identify the familiar pattern of Sero’s white converse that the tape user had scrawled all over with a sharpie hovering a few metres away, but everyone else he could see seemed to be wearing the normal uniform shoes, thus making them unidentifiable.
“Hey, his eyes are open!” someone said far too loudly for Bakugou’s liking.
“Bakugou? Can you hear me?”
He grunted in an affirmative before finding the ability to speak. “I’m alright.”
“Bro, you went down so hard!” Bakugou could finally place that voice, recognising the enthusiasm as only something that could come from Kaminari.
“I’m good, now you can all go away,” Bakugou huffed as he sat up, ignoring the clamour of a few people trying to get him to stay down. He felt fine, they were just making a big deal.
He leant over to grab the folder from where it lay discarded on the floor and handed it to Kaminari. “Here, nerd.”
Kaminari gave him a weird smile as he took the folder.
Something about it made Bakugou’s chest hurt. Kaminari always lit up when he smiled, but there was something wrong with that one, like it didn’t go beyond the tilt of Kaminari’s lips. There was no crinkle next to his eye or a sparkle in it, or even the tinkering sound of his light laughter.
Bakugou quickly retracted his hand after Kaminari took the folder, far too eager to break eye contact as he picked himself up off of the floor.
There were a few half-hearted reassurances he directed towards everyone who tried to help him stand, but mostly he just shrugged them off with a snap and bared his teeth.
After he was sitting back at his desk, scribbling away in his notebook, the class didn’t take too long to recover from the event before the chatter and chaos resumed.
Bakugou just chewed on the end of his pencil and tried not to look over at whatever Kaminari was doing with Jirou when his laughter pierced the air. He wished he could make Kaminari smile like that, but all he seemed capable of doing was making Kaminari smile in such an uncharacteristic way that it made his stomach drop to his feet.
Being sixteen and in love with Kaminari Denki was proving to be a very difficult way to spend his time.
He’d savour those times they spent together doing the photoshoot, knowing fully well that they would never recur.