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It’s unusual for Jirou to look excited. She’s usually a reserved girl, so when Kaminari sees her rushing down the hallway with Yaoyorozu, trying to catch up to him before he enters the classroom, it’s a little weird.
Nearly skidding into him, she grabbed onto his arm for support. “Dude, dude, you need to see this!” She stage-whispered, beckoning Yaoyorozu closer to where they were standing outside the 1-A door.
Kaminari raised an eyebrow at her out-of-the-ordinary demeanour. “Okay… what- ”
“Shh.” She cut him off before grabbing a flustered Yaoyorozu’s hand. Upon removing her hand, Kaminari could see the skin on Yaoyorozu’s hand had gone a deep indigo colour, blotching in some places where it remained normally pigmented.
“Hey, what the hell?” Kaminari jumped to check Yaoyorozu’s hand. The girl herself didn’t comment, and she didn’t look his way either. “Did you just bruise her hand?”
Jirou whacked him lightly on the arm. “No, dumbass!” She said, and she waved her own hand in his face. On Jirou’s palm there were patches of a sparkling gold colour, matching the similar pattern on Yaoyorozu’s hand. Seeing this, Jirou’s excitement and Yaoyorozu’s embarrassment clicked into place for Kaminari, and he gasped out loud.
“Is this!? Is that- “ He asked, swivelling his head to look between them in shock.
“Yes!” Jirou was still stage-whispering, probably to contain how happy she really was if the look she had on her face was anything to go by. “It’s a soulmark!”
Yaoyorozu stopped fiddling with the cuff of her blazer and finally spoke. “Kyouka and I were on an outing yesterday afternoon, and some incidental contact led to this realisation. We discovered they last about ten minutes before disappearing.” She explained, with a matching fond look directed at Jirou.
“Aaah! That’s so exciting!” Kaminari grabbed at Jirou’s hand to look at the marks again, but she swiped it away. Nevertheless he continued, “You two are the first people in the class to get soulmarks, right?”
Yaoyorozu hummed in thought. “I believe Tsuyu-chan actually has a mark too, but she says she doesn’t know who it belongs to. Other than that, I think so.”
After a brief pause, Jirou turned to Kaminari with a grin. “But, hey, look what I can do now!” Before her soulmate could protest, she reached up to trace a heart shape on Yaoyorozu’s cheek, which left a dark purple outline. Flashing Kaminari a rare smile, she dashed into the classroom followed by a stunned Yaoyorozu.
Kaminari paced in slowly behind them, letting them take the attention of the girls who were waiting for them inside the classroom. It really was an event, he thought, since not many people get to receive their mark in high school, let alone so early on.
It was more common to get a mark in university, as it’s there that more complex relationships develop into becoming soulmates. Soulmarks started appearing not long after Quirks appeared, and it didn’t take long for people to figure what they were because they usually appeared on people who already would describe themselves as soulmates anyway. Soulmarks could be anything; when they first appeared, they were usually simple words or symbols. But some people were lucky to get cool ones like whole pictures, initials, or ones like Jirou’s and Yaomomo’s.
Nobody knew the science behind it, and the whole phenomenon was a lot more mysterious than Quirks, too. But since soulmarks only appeared once you made a deep connection with someone, most people accepted them in stride. At least they still had some control over their fate. Kaminari had read some pre-quirk novels and stuff that had ideas of ‘the One’ and such in the romantic subplots, and he thought it was weird to have some overlooking force decide who was going to be the person you connect with most. Doesn’t that defeat the point of having someone you can call your soulmate if you don’t get a say in who it is? What if something bad happened to them early in life? Would that overlooking power decide that because of chance, you don’t deserve to make new connections, to make another soulmate? Kaminari didn’t think people must’ve had soulmates in pre-quirk times, if that’s what they thought it meant.
A muffled groan from behind the front desk got everyone’s attention. The class hurried to their desks and were all in their seats before Aizawa-sensei had even stepped out of his sleeping bag.
“Good morning class. If you remembered what I said last Friday, today you’ll being doing progress reviews…”
-
On the following Thursday, Kaminari was staring at the maths worksheet in front of him, wholeheartedly regretting his wise decision to daydream during Ectoplasm-sensei’s lesson. He looked up across the kotatsu to give Todoroki, who was supposed to be helping him, a hopeless look.
“I’m taking it you haven’t made it past the second question?”
Kaminari groaned and dropped his head onto the table-top. “No,” he whined, “the inverse ones are messing with me again.”
As little as he did it, Kaminari found studying in Todoroki’s room always turned out to be more productive than when he was in his own room, or even in the school library or Yaomomo’s tutoring sessions. Maybe it was the plainness and lack of distractions, or the whole ‘zen’ thing Todoroki was going for with his interior design, or maybe it was the fact that idle conversation with the boy across from him meant that there wasn’t any choking silence.
Without looking up from his phone, Todoroki hummed and gestured for Kaminari to slide his worksheet over.
“It’s not a square root,” he resolved after looking it over, “it’s the root of the trial variable. But you got the relativity right in rearranging it. If you can find the amount of times the event happens, then that’s the number you want. You do know what you’re doing, you just need to recognise the variables you need from the question.”
Kaminari made another high-pitched whine. “I guess I just have dumb bitch syndrome.” He said, dragging the paper back.
Todoroki shook his head and let out a small laugh because even though he himself had a more deadpan humour, he still found Kaminari’s nonsensical jokes funny.
“Work through it then,” he nudged Kaminari’s leg under the blanket of the kotatsu, “you’ve got more problems to do.”
UWUtsushimi: so what ur saying is
UWUtsushimi: u wet the bed. at age sixteen (16)
Bakugou: I do NOT.
UWUtsushimi: but thats what u said tho
Bakugou: IT’S SWEAT. BECAUSE OF MY QUIRK YOU DUMB BITCH.
Gale: I have to admit Bakugou, that’s what I was thinking too when you said that you had to regularly wash your sheets
Bakugou: YALL’RE JUST IDIOTS THEN.
Nearly threw hands with a 5 year old: yall’re
UWUtsushimi: yall’re
Bakugou: shut
Nearly threw hands with a 5 year old: I think you might want to tell some of the guys that’s why you do laundry so often though. Because,
UWUtsushimi: oh my GOD
Gale: I am interested though on how it actually works? Does your body just get rid of the explosive fuel stuff overnight or
Bakugou: HALF N HALF I WILL END YOU.
Bakugou: The nitroglycerin in my sweat will oxidise too much if I’m not using it, and then spontaneity of combustion decreases so my body always makes the sweat on my skin at optimal combustion. Because of that I sweat in my sleep and through my fucking sheets all the time.
UWUtsushimi: woah nerd
Bakugou: the FUCK did you just call me?
Gale: So during the day you’re constantly exploding things?
Nearly threw hands with a 5 year old: pretty much
Gale: So why only now are you saying its an issue?
Bakugou: hmm. Gee I wonder. Imagine if you had explosive sweat, and you have the ability so ignite said sweat, and your wholeass bed is drenched in it. What could possibly be the danger in that???
Gale: you don’t have enough control over your quirk to not explode when you’re sleeping?
Bakugou: of course I fucking do.
Gale: then??
Bakugou: ,,
Bakugou: since Kamino I sometimes wake up at fucking 3am or some ungodly hour
UWUtsushimi: deep
Gale: !! If you ever wake up and are feeling bad you can talk to us! At times like that it’s great knowing you have people there supporting you!!
Bakugou: shut the fuck up I don’t need your fucking support
Nearly threw hands with a 5 year old: you say that but last week at 1:32am you were on this very gc saying how you feel socially inadequate compared to your peers and you feel like you’re unable to tell your friends how much you care about them
Bakugou: I said no such fucking thing
Nearly threw hands with a 5 year old: but that’s what you were trying to say
Bakugou: I WILL FUCKING COME UP THERE AND MURDER YOU
Nearly threw hands with a 5 year old: fantastic, Kaminari’s here and you can tell him how much you value him as a friend
UWUtsushimi: (✧ω✧)
Gale: Camie that’s terrifying
Bakugou: SHUT
Nearly threw hands with a 5 year old: nvm I can tell him on your behalf
Bakugou: FUCK OFF
In the four hours Kaminari has been in his room, Todoroki has seen him migrate from the kotatsu, to the balcony (despite the late October chill), to his futon, and eventually back to across from him. Or that’s where he thought he was, because when Todoroki looked up from his phone, he wasn’t there.
“You’re in a group chat with Bakugou?”
Todoroki startled, and tilted his head back to see Kaminari leaning over his shoulder.
“How long have you been there?” He bristled.
Kaminari tried to grab his phone but only laughed when Todoroki swiped it out of his reach. “Enough to see that your name is ‘nearly threw hands with a 5 year old’ and there’s a story there – don’t think I’m not getting that out of you – and that you’re talking about me. Which I’m flattered about, by the way.” He said smugly.
“Don’t get too full of yourself,” Todoroki said as he showed Kaminari the few messages from before, “It’s part of Bakugou’s humbling process.”
“Humbling process,” Kaminari echoed, “is that what we’re calling it when we put Bakugou on blast now?” He moved to sit next to Todoroki so he could see the messages more easily.
“Who’re the other two? They’re not in our class, are they?” He asked after reading.
“Well ‘Gale’ is Yoarashi Inasa, from the license exam? That’s his hero name. The other one is Utsushimi Camie, and you didn’t actually meet her necessarily, but they were both taking the remedial lessons with me and Bakugou. Utsushimi kind of forced us into this but here we are, I guess.”
“Huh. He’s really talkative to you guys, isn’t he?”
Todoroki hummed in thought. “Is he not usually? He seems like he’s got a lot to say.”
“Well, like, you know what I mean though, right?” Kaminari gestured while he spoke, nearly hitting Todoroki in the face.
Todoroki gently pushed the hand that was paused in the air in front of him down onto the table-top. “Not really. Are you going to make a start on literature or call it a day?”
Kaminari let out a long, pained groan. “I mean I don’t want to, but I’d better, otherwise I won’t pass…”
Todoroki nodded in agreement and got up to get the material from his bag, then sat himself back down under the warm kotatsu next to Kaminari so the two could set in for another four hours of often-distracted studying.
-
On the weekend of the cultural festival, most of the class was getting antsy. Todoroki himself was rather unbothered since he just had to do a flashy trick with Sero in the middle. However, he was pretty sure Jirou was going to vibrate out of her seat when he came across her earlier in the common room, and from what he saw, Tokoyami wasn’t doing much better.
It was only five minutes now until the band was due to go on stage, and Kirishima had Sero and himself waiting up on the catwalk above the crowd for cues. Todoroki was glad his role in the performance was so minimal – remedial lessons with Gang Orca ran later than usual yesterday, and he must’ve done something to his ankle because he found it was a pain to be standing for too long. Though he was still looking forward to watching the performance; he hadn’t had the chance to listen to the band beforehand and he had only seen bits of the dance from what Midoriya had shown him. Bakugou had said to him on their way back to UA yesterday that the band was ‘not completely shit’ so he’s got that shining commendation to go on.
He was pulled out of his train of thought by Sero pulling on his arm. “Oh! It’s starting, I can hear the amps!”
The audience didn’t quieten down until the curtains were pulled back to reveal class 1-A’s band poised and ready to go. Naturally, the performance started with Bakugou yelling something unintelligible from where Todoroki was standing and proceeding to light the stage up with an explosion. The crowd burst into cheers at the pyrotechnics and from that moment everything was rolling on adrenaline. Well, it seemed that way for Sero and Kirishima at least; Todoroki remained just as level-headed as he always was. Okay, maybe just as he like to think he always was.
Leaning on the rail of the catwalk, he observed the performance. He thought the shirts emblazoned with ‘1-A’ were kind of tacky, but Yaoyorozu seemed proud of them so he kept quiet.
Even a brief glance at the band would be telling of who the really skilled musicians were - Jirou and Bakugou clearly held themselves more confidently with their instruments compared to the other three. Regardless, Todoroki couldn’t help but look at the way Kaminari played, he was commanding his own space on the stage and he certainly matched the energy of Bakugou, even-
“Hey ice-man! Stop ogling, our cue is soon!”
Todoroki snapped attention to his immediate surroundings again. He started a reply to Sero but was cut off by Kirirshima.
“Go, Seroroki!”
Todoroki raised an eyebrow at the impromptu portmanteau and sent a wave of ice flying out through the auditorium, along with Sero’s tape. Still looking out onto the stage, he caught Kaminari’s eye after he finished the intense guitar part. The other boy looked straight back, giving him a grin that outshone the stage lights.
-
Up until now, soulmates weren’t ever a concern for Todoroki. His father taught him that they’d be a distraction, that he’d never have time for them, that they could be a liability. Up until now he had agreed with his father to an extent. He likely wouldn’t have time for a special person, but he secretly was excited for the day when or if he got a soulmark.
He woke up the Sunday morning after the cultural festival and dragged himself into the small bathroom of his dorm. Looking in the mirror, his eyes widened when he saw the watercolour artwork on his left upper-arm. The soulmark, he assumed, was larger than most and was a bright warm-toned mass of colour that painted a picture with artistic detail he hadn’t seen before on any soulmark.
Up until now he thought the day he got his soulmark would be bittersweet. But looking in the mirror at the bright yellow-orange explosion tattooed on his skin, he realised it was a lot, lot worse.
-
The mid-December cold hadn’t made it to snow yet, but Kaminari still had hope. Musutafu had snow in December a few years ago and this year it was getting really cold, so maybe the picture-perfect Christmas would be complete. In the last week, he and Mina had worn the class reps down until they agreed to a class effort in decorating the common room and organising Christmas festivities for the time before the break. As soon as they agreed, Mina was already writing names for a secret Santa and Kirishima started drawing up ideas for how they’d decorate the space.
“Iida, you gotta move it a little to the left!”
Kaminari looked over from where he was putting hooks on the wall by the laundry room to where Uraraka had floated Midoriya, Iida and Todoroki up so they could decorate the towering twelve-foot Christmas tree in the center of the common room. When Iida had told him and Mina he ‘had it sorted’, Kaminari didn’t think he was going to bring in a tree that nearly touched the roof! Especially since Iida, like many others in their class, hadn’t really celebrated Christmas before.
The common room was bustling with activity, with only a few people opting to stay in their dorms. Hagakure’s bluetooth speaker was playing Christmas songs (they were all in English, but hey), Yaomomo was using her quirk to create ropes and ropes of Christmas lights to go on the tree and around the room, and Satou and Asui were making something that smelt like cinnamon in the kitchen.
Kaminari was happily swaying to the beat of the song playing as he taped up decorations when a tap on his shoulder startled him.
“Ah- sorry!” Yaoyorozu stood back sheepishly. “I just wanted to say congratulations!”
Kaminari stared at her blankly for more than a few seconds.
“For…what?” he asked cautiously.
Doubt flickered across Yaoyorozu’s face before she spoke again. “For getting your soulmark! Was I not supposed to know? I’m so sorry- Kyouka had seen it briefly and she told me-“
Kaminari stopped staring dumbfoundedly once it registered in his head what she was actually saying.
“I got- wait, what?!” Kaminari frantically checked all unclothed areas of skin and when he couldn’t see it, attempted to take off his shirt right there in the common room before a hand stopped him.
“It’s on your back,” Yaoyorozu said placatingly, “had you really not noticed?”
“No!” Kaminari breathed out, kinda stressed. He had his soulmark?? Since when? “Where, what, when did she see it? What’s it of? Is it words? Is it in cursive English like Tetsutetsu’s because I’d hate to not be able to read my own soulmark-”
“I can take a picture of it for you, if you’d like?” The girl opposite him interrupted. While he was low-key freaking out, Kaminari could tell Yaomomo was definitely starting to find his predicament amusing.
He awkwardly held his shirt up a little and hoped nobody in the common room was paying attention while Yaomomo took the photo with her phone, because it probably looked really weird.
“Oh, it’s just a star.” He will admit he deflated a little when she showed him the picture. You couldn’t blame him for wanting something flashy, right?
““It’s not just a star it’s your soulmark! Here.” She held out her hand and Kaminari saw the tell-tale sparks of her quirk.
“What are you- ”
“Shh,” she cut him off, “be patient.”
He watched, wide-eyed, as a 3D replica of his soulmark grew from her wrist.
Yaoyorozu excitedly presented him with the silver, glitter-dusted star – swirling patterns and all. “Now it’s a tree-topper! I hadn’t made one yet and this gave me inspiration!”
He turned the star over in his hands, and little specks of glitter covered his hands. “Woah! Hey, that’s pretty cool, thanks!”
“You’re very welcome! Now at least you can see the design, it’s very creative isn’t it?”
Kaminari nodded, still paying more attention to the star in his hands rather than what Yaomomo was saying.
“It makes me wonder what links it to your soulmate. Is it metaphorical? Is it something they’ve created? Or maybe it’s an existing design… hmm, that would bring in some ethical issues if I just recreated it without authorisation, oh dear, if I infringed an artwork’s copyright, I couldn’t forgive myself…”
When Kaminari looked up, he saw Yaomomo babbling away, kind of like how Midoriya does when he talks about quirks, but she was talking about… copyright? He didn’t get to dwell on it any longer because Jirou appeared in front of them with a Look on her face.
“God damnit, Kaminari, you broke her.”
Kaminari started to protest but she kept speaking before he could get a word in.
“Anyway, Uraraka and her boys need your help, they want to see what the lights on the tree look like.” She said, looking over to where Midoriya was floating about four feet off the ground, putting up decorations. “Oh and you can give them that, too.” She added, gesturing to the tree-topper with an ear jack.
Kaminari gave her a mock salute. “On It!” He waved to Yaomomo and gave a “thanks again!” before heading over to the so called ‘dekusquad’.
Once he got there, Uraraka gave him the end of the string of lights (which hadn’t yet received a power plug, Yaomomo was still making those since they were more difficult than simple wiring) and he set about gaging the amp capacity of the wire.
“Hey Kaminari-kun, is that the tree-topper?” Midoriya asked, now on the ground, pointing at the star.
Kaminari didn’t take his concentration off the wire and nodded. “Uh-huh”
“Cool!” Midoriya picked the star up from beside him and looked over it briefly before chucking it up to Todoroki, who was floating by the top of the tree. Kaminari risked a glance upwards, and he saw Todoroki catch the star with a hand that wasn’t holding the top branches of the tree. He was nearly upside down, and he had his socked feet pretty much touching the ceiling.
As he looked back down to focus on the lights, he noticed again the black arm band Todoroki has had around his left arm for the last month or so. He hadn’t really given an official reason for why he had it, but since his arm worked perfectly fine, Kaminari guessed there was something under it he didn’t want to show to everybody, like Midoriya. He and many others in the class would be lying if they said they’d never thought that it might be a soulmark, but now after what just happened, he wondered if maybe it was more likely than they thought. But then again it would have to be a pretty big soulmark, so maybe not. He could be hopeful though, couldn’t he?
Kaminari looked up again, following his train of thought, and saw Todoroki still adjusting the star. He had his feet completely on the ceiling now, and a mix of Uraraka’s quirk and being upside down made his shirt float out of place from where it should’ve been. Kaminari stared at that space for a little longer than what should be acceptable as a bro, and when he made eye contact with the boy himself, he was too stunned to even look away.
“ari-kun. Kaminari-kun! KAMINARI!”
It was only after Midoriya’s third shout that he realised with a start that he must’ve accidentally overloaded the wire, because now there were a couple of lights that had caught fire. Todoroki himself only noticed it then too, and he made quick work of using his quirk to put it out.
Iida let out a shaky breath and Uraraka tried and failed to keep her laughter hidden behind her hand.
“How about,” Iida started, getting himself together, “we wait until Yaoyorozu-san finishes the cable?”
Kaminari stood up abruptly and threw the wires down. “Yup! Cool! Sounds great, super sorry Iida, won’t happen again, bye!” He agreed quickly and immediately left to help Shouji and Sero string up more decorations on the wall by the laundry room.
-
It takes eight minutes for Kaminari to forget what Iida said.
Todoroki knew this because it was now eight minutes later, and he was currently doing one of those dancing trends with Sero while making the lights on the wall flash. He thinks they were pretending to have a rave? Is that what it was called? Poor Shouji had to work around them, reaching up high to string up the multi-coloured lights that Yaoyorozu made.
Kaminari had the dumb smile on his face. Not the one when he short-circuited, but the shameless grin that he had whenever he was doing something stupid (which was most of the time, to be honest.)
He would never admit it to anyone else, let alone himself but Todoroki was kind of disappointed when his realised his soulmate must be Bakugou. Besides the obvious reason of who the hell would want Bakugou to be their soulmate? Todoroki hoped his soulmate would be someone he actually liked being around, someone like Kaminari. But when his soulmark was a literal explosion, there wasn’t much room for doubt on who it belonged to.
Distantly, Todoroki wondered if Iida or Midoriya had noticed the flashing lights. It was pretty much classroom protocol at this point to make sure no combination of Sero, Kirishima, Kaminari or Mina was alone for more than ten minutes, so something was bound to go wrong.
(He was right.)
They made eye contact again. Across the room, Kaminari paused his dancing and Todoroki, even though he was on the ground and leaning against a wall, felt like he was still affected by Uraraka’s quirk.
The lights caught fire again. Shouji noticed it first and shouted out as he tried to stop the fire from travelling down the wire and into the laundry room.
Kaminari freaked out again. He dropped the naked end of the wire and joined Shoji and Sero in trying to stop the spread of flames, but it looked like it was going to be a futile effort.
Todoroki swiftly jumped the couch in his way, figuring he’d be the only one able to put it out at this stage, and even though it wasn’t his fault, he apologised to Iida in his head.
The situation became a lot more serious than a few scorch marks when he recalled from the back of his mind that he saw Bakugou walk through the common room earlier to drop off his sheets in the laundry before heading back to his room.
He got three seconds to realise what that meant before the fire leaked into the laundry room and the force of an explosion rocked through the common room, blasting the door frame apart and sending splinters and shrapnel from broken washing machines out towards him and the other three like projectiles.
Todoroki shielded his eyes, ignoring the sting on his arm where a piece of metal must’ve cut him, and instinctively sent out a small wave of ice along the walls to put out the remaining fire. The noise of the reactions of everyone else in the room were muted and he stood still, stunned, staring into the space ahead of him as he processed what had just happened. Surprisingly, it looked like nobody was any more than shocked from the explosion, apart from the four of them that were closest. Tsuyu and Satou were the first to rush over and see what happened, checking the minor cuts and such on Sero and Shouji. Kaminari ignored his own dirty, bleeding face and asked him if he was okay, wiping soot of his face with his sweatshirt sleeve and apologising over and over. Todoroki looked down from staring ahead and met Kaminari’s eyes again for the third time in the last twenty minutes, but this time it was less awkward. He looked up at the torn-apart doorframe again and then back at Kaminari, who was taking off the black band that covered his soulmark to see the gash on his arm. When he saw what was underneath, they both paused.
“Ah.” He said plainly.
So his soulmate wasn’t Bakugou after all.