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Denki’s never taken himself as the jealous type.
He understands that sometimes, other people, have things he doesn’t, and he accepts it. He doesn’t feel a pang of his chest or pain in his lungs when he sees someone else effortlessly claiming something that he couldn’t have.
In this case, someone.
It’s not like he’s unused to being inferior to others; his quirk isn’t the best for heroing with its drawback, and sometimes he just gets so jealous of Bakugou and Todoroki with their flashy quirks and fearless stances in battle.
He’s never been brave enough to walk up and take what he wants, the ruthless way Bakugou does it.
He doesn’t have the ‘manly personality’ that just radiates from Bakugou, because regardless of how much their whole class might deny it, due to his shitty and (quite literally) explosive personality, they respect and to some extent, idolize him.
Denki’s not the same.
He rarely wishes to be someone else, but in this instant, he prays to every deity that exists that he could be something, anything like Bakugou.
He watches as Kirishima throws his arm around Bakugou, the latter responding with a visible explosion but not brushing the arm away, and the pang is back all over again, an aching, throbbing pain that hurts way worse than any battle wound.
The sight of the two of them, arms around each other, even if Bakugou has a look of disgust on his face, settles into his mind and stays there.
(He’s too busy wallowing in self-pity to see the look that Kirishima sends from across the room)
--
Denki sighs into the cushion he’s holding to his chest; the common room’s always noisy, filled to the brim with people.
Normally, he’d be there, talking and laughing to one of his classmates; but right now, he’s not sure he can conjure up enough energy to do it.
His eyes drift to the clash of red and white, shouts and insults, and obnoxious laughter from both of them. His normally bright smile dampens.
“You look really stupid when you pout.”
Denki blinks once, then twice at the sudden insult, before hesitantly laughing, a noise that sounded fake even to him. Mina’s teasing face almost instantly morphs from joking to serious.
“Kami, what’s wrong?” She crosses the small distance they were apart in a flash, and suddenly he’s snuggled up to her, “I didn’t mean what I said, you know?”
“I-It’s not that,” Denki really hates himself for stuttering, but he can’t not.
Because all he could see and hear were the two from across the room.
“Fucking shitty hair!” Twin explosions echo through the room at a dangerously close proximity to Kirishima’s face. The redhead, of course, just laughs, a high-pitched snort that Bakugou seems to be disgusted by.
‘If that were me, I’d hug you and call your laugh cute,’ Denki wistfully gazes on, unaware of the hushed whispering going on between Mina and Hanta, who he still hasn’t noticed appearing.
A loud “It was just a hug!” sounds across the room, and the whole class turns and laughs at the sight of Kirishima chasing Bakugou across the common room, his arms outstretched and a gorgeous smile on his face.
Abruptly, Denki stands up, ignoring the lock of blond hair that had drifted somewhere over his left eye, and walks out.
He doesn’t see the worried looks Hanta and Mina send each other behind his back.
--
Hanta lounges on Mina’s bed, blankets hazardously half off the bed. Mina looks at him with a serious expression, and when he thinks back, he’s never seen Mina with an expression as serious as the one she has right now.
“So, I think Denki has a problem,” She starts off, direct and straight to the point.
Hants sits back and thinks for a few seconds before nodding in agreement, “He hasn’t shown up in our hangouts for a while.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s about?” Mina stands up, slamming her hands softly on the table, just loud enough to startle Hanta, who jumps a little from his position on the bed, “Because I think I know.”
“And I think the two of us need to talk to him about this, as soon as possible.”
--
Talking with his friends doesn’t solve his issue entirely, of course; he needs validation.
He wants Kirishima to like him back.
But of course, he never knows; for now, all he wants in life is for Kirishima to not have someone else.
As soon as the thought pops into his brain, he chastises himself mentally for how utterly selfish he sounds.
He never thought he was selfish before, either.
His thoughts lead him to the shared elevator, lead his hand to the number ‘four’ on the elevator buttons, and lead him to the door which he’s been standing silently in front of for the past five minutes.
Finally, after a deep inhale in and an exhale out, he raises his hand and presses his knuckles lightly on the wooden door.
It doesn’t make a sound.
With no response, he knocks again, and shouts, “Hey, Kirishima? Can I talk to you ‘bout something?”
A loud shout and explosions are what he gets, and suddenly he realizes…
‘Holy fuck I knocked on the wrong door!’ His face is morphing into an expression of panic, and he backs away from the door slowly, as if he could make a run for it, but suddenly the door slams open wide, and the ashy blond-haired boy who has been capturing Kirishima’s attention is standing there.
Bakugou’s body is covered with a light sheen of sweat, and if Denki weren’t so obsessed with Kirishima he might just think that the ashy blond is really fucking hot right now, but for now, the blond is glaring at him, and he’s too scared to glare back.
“H-Hey Bakugou! I just wanted to talk to Kiri, sorry if I disturbed y-” He cuts himself off mid-sentence when he sees Bakugou walk out into the shared space of the fourth floor, and it’s only now that he notices the clothing the other boy is in.
‘Jogging clothes? Could he be…”
Wordlessly, the boy heads towards the elevator. Denki stands there, speechless and unmoving until the other boy looks back, and with a slight tilt of his head, beckons him to join him.
‘Holy shit how does Kiri do this so effortlessly?’
Even standing next to Bakugou was tiring; they’re at least a foot apart, but Denki can feel the heat positively radiating off of his body.
“Shitty hair says you’ve been acting weird.”
He jumps a little at Bakugou’s abrupt statement. He doesn’t say it as a question; it’s as if he just wanted to say it. He opens his mouth to respond, but Bakugou glares and it’s enough to shut him up.
“He’s been complaining to me, you know. ‘Oh, my shitty Pikachu knock-off won’t talk to me!’ And he whines.” Bakugou takes in a deep breath, and Denki didn’t even know it was possible for someone to look this annoyed.
“What I’m saying is to fucking sort this shit out.”
The elevator door dings open at the ground floor, and Denki stands there for a solid minute, confused and slightly shocked.
--
Really, the blond has no idea why he was suddenly invited to Mina’s room; it’s not unusual for the three of them to hang out, especially with Bakugou and Kirishima being so...
“Kami, you all right?” Denki turns his head and nods, not an unusual response to a question that has been popping up more and more recently.
He knows that his friends know that something’s up; he rarely goes out for movies nights now, and he’s managed to dodge having one on one time with Kirishima for half a month.
‘It hurts less if you’re around the person less,’ online articles tell him, ‘avoid the person and see how you feel.’
He feels like shit.
“Kami, is this about Kirishima?”
When he hears the question, his face turns up so quickly he’s surprised he didn’t snap any bones in his neck. A blush of heat goes up his face, and he can feel it.
He hates the way Kirishima makes him feel.
“Yeah, but, well, aren’t he and Bakugou dating?” He looks down, but not down far enough to avoid seeing Mina’s expression fade into one of confusion, and Hanta’s shake of his head.
“Bakugou and Kiri? No offense, but they’re kinda obviously best bros right now,” Hanta pats him softly on the back. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“But they’re like, hugging and shit, and they’re just always together!” Denki exclaims, and both his friends seem a little shocked at his outburst, but then Mina bursts into giggles and both he and Hanta stare at her in confusion.
“You really are clueless, right? Katsuki has someone else in mind, and it’s definitely not Kirishima.”
Denki smiles hesitantly, a small one, but a genuine one regardless. The relief he feels washes over him like a zap of electricity, “So they aren’t together?”
When his two friends nod, he breaths out another sigh of relief, and his heart suddenly feels lighter, like someone’s just shifted a bag of weights away from it.
“Not that I know of anyway,” Mina pitches in, a calculating smirk on her face, “But this confirms what I’ve been thinking; you have a crush on Kiri, don’t you?”
And he feels it, the heat growing hotter, and he’s sure that his face positively resembles Kirishima’s hair at this point.
His two closest friends laugh at him, and for once in a long time, he laughs with them.
--
“I’m going to knock on the right door this time,” Denki says aloud, alone in the shared common area of the fourth floor. “I’m going to walk in there, and tell Kiri that he’s really hot and I like him in a totally not platonic way…”
“Kami?”
The blond freezes in place. A loud thump sounds, and he thinks it sounds a little like the sound of his heart falling out of his chest.
Eyes closed, he zaps himself lightly on the back of his hand, hoping, praying, that the pain will zap him out of whatever this nightmare is.
He opens his eyes and sees the plain wall of the fourth floor staring back at him.
‘Nope, nightmare not over yet.’
He recognizes the voice; he’d know it anywhere. It’s deep enough to drown in, which is something he really wants to do right at this moment.
His head turning slowly, he darts his eyes to see the shocked figure standing behind him, his red hair undone and a set of textbooks in a pile on the ground.
The rational part of his mind tells him that the textbooks are likely the reason for the loud sound earlier, but he feels a lot like he just overused his quirk; his mind is jumbled, and all his thoughts are going in circles and loops and…
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
Kirishima doesn’t look shocked or afraid or disgusted like he thought he might. Instead, he looks almost…
“I like you a lot too! And in a totally manly, not platonic way!”
‘Fuck’, is the only thought going through his mind when Kirishima closes the distance, and wraps him in a hug. He leans into it, missing the warmth that he’s been hiding from, too afraid, too envious, too jealous.
“Bakugou kept telling me to tell you, you know, but then I thought you might not, so…”
And Denki lets out a laugh, high-pitched and squeaky, and Kirishima laughs with him, still not releasing him from his hug.
“We’re idiots,” He laughs, and a new picture, one of Kirishima’s eyes closed in uncontrollable laughter as he keeps his arms wrapped around Denki, is painted in his head.
And suddenly, all the jealousy and regret and wanting to be Bakugou seems so stupid; can Bakugou get anything like this?
“You ignored me for like half a month, you know?” Kirishima interrupts their moment with a teasing question, the dazzling smile on his face almost too blinding for Denki to look at.
He turns and swats lightly at Kirishima, bubbles of happiness threatening to burst from his throat, “It was your fault anyway!”
A loud “What’s that supposed to mean!” precedes him being tackled to the floor, laughing uncontrollably as the redhead pokes at his sides.
He hopes they can stay together like that for a while.