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As expected, moving to the hero course meant a lot of things changed for Shinsou. While several of his classes stayed the same, there was now the addition of school sanctioned beating the holy hell out of his new classmates—which proved tricky for him; they all knew full well how his quirk worked, and he was having to get creative with tricking them into answering, so his hand to hand was having to improve quickly enough to stop someone from breaking something he needed—there was the new dorm, which was technically identical to the old dorm, with the addition of a lot more colourful characters than there had ever been in gen studies.
In the first week alone, the fire alarm was triggered four times—shockingly, only once by Bakugou, an army of rabbits had invaded at Koda’s request, the power had gone out six times, three all out brawls had occurred and for the life of him he still couldn’t figure out who was dating who but had been told by the pink girl that he should care for reasons unknown.
Something that hadn’t changed, sadly, was his inability to get a good night’s sleep.
It’s not like he thought moving into the hero course was going to solve all of his problems in life; let alone his insomnia. But maybe part of him had hoped that with one major life hurdle overcome, he might be able to catch a few more hours sleep here and there.
No dice.
Lying in bed staring blankly at the roof of his room in the Class A dorm was exactly as maddening as lying in bed staring blankly at the roof of his room in the Class C dorm.
He’d decided after the third night he’d been living in the dorm that staying in his room during these episodes of a complete failure on the part of his brain to do its fucking job was just not happening—somehow having to be anywhere near his bed just made the whole thing more frustrating.
He trudged downstairs in an old worn out t-shirt and his cat pyjama pants to the common area.
The common area in this dorm looked infinitely more lived in than the one in his last dorm—there were baked goods left on the counter under a dome apparently made by Sato and were a free for all, homework left strewn over tables, jackets and sneakers everywhere, non-standard issue blankets hanging over the back of the couches.
It looked like people lived here; it felt…warmer.
Warmer, however, did not fix his inability to sleep.
So instead he decides to keep himself busy for a while. He does all of his homework for the next week, washes all of the dishes left by Bakugou’s cooking adventures (Shinsou had been told that apparently, for all Bakugou’s many, many flaws as a person, his cooking was fantastic but precious few were ever allowed any), tidies up the common area and ends up lying on a couch staring at the roof instead.
Great. Awesome. Because this was so much better.
And then someone almost tripped coming off the elevator to the upper floors.
“Shit!”
Shinsou peeks around the back of the couch to watch Kaminari Denki attempt to stumble through the extremely badly lit kitchen and start rummaging through the cupboards. It was far from the weirdest thing that’d happened in this dorm, but it was definitely odd enough to warrant some scepticism.
“Looking for something?”
Kaminari screamed.
Well. Maybe shrieked was a better word.
The two lock eyes and spend a solid ten seconds just staring in a loop of exhausted confusion.
Kaminari is the one who breaks it.
“What the hell are you doing up so late? I mean I know why I’m up so late, but why the heck are you? You scared the crap outta me, if I’d had a heart attack I’d probably take down the power of the whole campus and then you’d all be screwed.” He rushed out—seemingly taking one whole breath and just going for it.
Shinsou blinked.
“No offense, but I’m not the one rummaging through the cupboards at two am. What are you looking for?”
Kaminari bit his lip, looked like he couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to say anything, before blurting out; “Tokoyami keeps these really nice, fancy cookies somewhere in the kitchen and I had a craving so I figured I’d just sneak down real quick—,”
“And steal his food?”
He frowned. “Well when you put it like that it sounds kinda bad.”
“Might be ‘cause you’re kinda stealing his food.”
The frown intensified. “Well whataya you know anyway. You’re lying on the couch at two am scaring the pants off people.” He promptly went back to his rummaging, and Shinsou returned to staring at the ceiling.
Soon after he heard a disappointed grumble Shinsou could only take to mean that the mission to find the cookies had been a failure, and pattering footsteps going back towards the elevator.
It’s another week before Shinsou encounters Kaminari on another of his night time wanders.
In the meantime, he’s unwittingly scared the crap out of Kirishima, Midoriya, Jirou, all of whom had just wanted a drink of water, and gotten into an uncomfortable silent staring contest with Tokoyami.
He stared into the void, the void stared back. And then took a cookie from the hidden stash Kaminari had failed to find and gone back to bed.
But after an otherwise uneventful evening, once more, Kaminari stumbles out of the elevator and into the common area—Shinsou peers over the back of the couch at him as he once again begins to rummage through the cupboards—presumably in search of the illustrious cookie stash.
“You’re not even close.”
Once again, Kaminari jumps out of his skin with a squawk. “Jesus, you really just lurk around like a creep waiting to scare the crap outta me, don’t you? Or is it everyone? I better not be the only one, ‘cause I’m feeling really personally attacked.”
“I assure you, you’re not the only person I’ve…startled.”
“Hmph. Good.” He pauses, a look of dawning realisation on the blonde boy’s face. “Wait—you said—do you know where the cookies are?”
Whoops.
Shinsou blinks at him. “In the interest of not getting on the bad side of someone capable of levelling an entire city on a whim, no. I have no idea where the cookies that are definitely not in that cabinet are.”
Kaminari frowns and begins searching another cabinet—which also doesn’t have the cookies in it, but Shinsou doesn’t have the heart or the will to get into a feud with Tokoyami to tell him.
At first, it had totally been a novelty having someone new in the class. There had been two general reactions to the whole thing.
The first was to close ranks—Class A had been together through so much over the course of their first year at UA, that letting someone else in seemed wrong on a level unfathomably by those outside their circle.
The second was that it was kind of neat—Kaminari, like any reasonable person, fell into the latter category.
After all, for all that Shinsou was kinda grouchy and withdrawn, they lived with Bakugou and Tokoyami. He was not and would never be the most difficult person in the dorm to get along with. And Kaminari liked to think that as far as anyone in the dorm was concerned, he got along with Shinsou pretty well.
Not super well, obviously, they were far from best bro’s. But well enough to be concerned when he stumbled upon an odd pattern of events.
The first couple of times Kaminari had wandered downstairs in search of a drink or snacks in the dead of night—it was usually snacks—he hadn’t really thought anything of Shinsou being in the common area. Occasionally, he ran into plenty of people in the halls or the commons at weird hours of the night.
But Shinsou was down there a lot. He was beginning to think no one had assigned him a dorm room, and he just lived there now. He decided it was something that needed to be put to the test. The idea was admittedly kind of dumb—which Kaminari specialised in—but perhaps dumb enough to work.
So he started making a habit of coming downstairs during the night under the pre-tense of getting snacks. Which wasn’t much of a pre-tense because, well, he did want snacks. He always wanted snacks.
He wouldn’t say he was surprised to find that every night that week, Shinsou was down in the common area—reading or on his phone or playing video games—but he was a little bit worried. Someone had to be, and it seemed all the responsible people in the dorm went to bed at too reasonable a time of night to be clued in.
Finally, after six days in a row of this—of Shinsou watching him over the back of the sofa, quirking a single judgemental eyebrow as he continued seeking the almost mythic cookies Tokoyami had hidden—Kaminari decided it might be time to pluck up some courage and ask him about it.
Not that Kaminari had ever been particularly good at the whole courage thing—but he was working on it!
After a good ten minutes of rummaging through one of the top cupboards (why would the cookies be in the top cupboard? Tokoyami was tiny), he wandered over to the couch, bag of pretzels in hand (whose pretzels? He didn’t really know) and flopped down beside the transfer student—subsequently scaring the hell out of him.
Kaminari felt momentarily smug.
“See? It’s way less fun when you’re the one being terrified, isn’t it?” He chirped, grinning ear to ear at him in smug satisfaction.
Shinsou was clinging to his DS like it was a life preserver in stormy seas. “Shut up—you never come over here, why would you? Normally you just rummage around the complete wrong part of the kitchen and then leave.”
He blinked at him blankly for a moment. “So wait, you do know where the cookies are?”
“I know nothing. Why do you have pretzels? What do you want? I’m not saying anything about the cookies.” Which, in hindsight, was a smart idea because Tokoyami was, aside from being short, a terrifying force of nature. Like a tsunami.
“You do so, I have pretzels because I’m hungry and I wanted to ask you something.”
It was Shinsou’s turn to blink blankly at him—though something about Shinsou’s face always made him look really unimpressed with everyone, even when he wasn’t trying. “Well. I’m waiting.”
“Why are you always down here at night? Like always. I’ve been checking—I don’t think you’ve slept in your room since last Wednesday.”
Shinsou stared at him like he was astounded Kaminari had paid enough attention to anything to know that. “Why does it matter?”
His face twisted into a frown that was more of a pout. “Duh. Because we’re classmates—we have to live together for the next two years, and we’re gonna see each other every day and then someday we’ll be heroes and Japan isn’t that big, y’know? It’s impossible to avoid each other! Basically forever. So I thought it’d be worth asking.”
The boy next to him stayed quiet for a moment—the only real sound in the room being the soft, cheerful music coming from the game console in his hands. “—I don’t sleep well. Insomnia, I guess. Mind quirks aren’t great for functional brain chemistry—who knew.” He stated it simply and matter of factually. Like this should be obvious.
In a way, Kaminari supposed it was. Shinsou always looked like he was in need of a good night’s sleep—and quirk side effects definitely weren’t unknown in the Class A dorm.
“Huh. So why aren’t you in your room?”
His face twisted into a scowl—a terrifying expression on Shinsou. “It’s frustrating. Sitting there on my bed or looking at it—like someone putting your favourite food on a plate in front of you and you’re not allowed to eat it. Drives me up the wall. So I come down here. It’s quiet.”
“And there’s no bed taunting you?” Kaminari snorted good naturedly. Shinsou’s face relaxed into something that might have almost been a smile. “Right! Then there’s only one thing to do! Since we’re gonna be stuck with each other basically forever.”
“And what would that be?”
“I’m gonna stay up with you! Duh!” He exclaimed excitedly, immediately realising people were trying to sleep. Whoops. His bad.
“Why the hell would you do that?” Shinsou asked, looking more puzzled than ever.
“Because you need company? And not being able to sleep sounds like literally the worst thing ever? C’mon, humour me. What are you playing?” He asked, settling in to get comfortable with his bag of pretzels, tucking his feet underneath him.
For a second, Kaminari was sure Shinsou looked embarrassed. “…Animal Crossing.”
Huh. Not quite what he’d expected but alright. “You mean the game where you have the little village with the animals?”
“Yes.”
“Somehow I took you for more of a Pokemon guy. Like you’d have a whole team of Espeon’s or something.” He paused for a second, stuffing another handful of pretzels into his mouth. “Can I see? I’ve never played.”
A moment of silence passed between the two before Shinsou shifted slightly to show him the screen.
“Alright so, this is Rosie, she’s my favourite—,”
Shinsou didn’t really expect Kaminari to stay awake very long—the thought itself was nice enough, but Kaminari looked like the sort of person who needed twelve hours of sleep and three cups of coffee to function every day.
Which was to say, about half an hour after he declared he would stay up to keep Shinsou company, Kaminari fell asleep slumped over himself on the couch. He didn’t want to wake the guy, lest he try and be stubborn about the whole thing, so instead Shinsou settled for very gently pushing him over so he’d lie down at the least.
Then he went back to his game. His flowers weren’t going to crosspollinate themselves after all. None of this was particularly surprising. What was surprising was the fact that Kaminari came back the next night.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I told you dude! I’m keeping you company! Being out here all night must be super boring, and totally lonely—and a little spooky.” Kaminari said, like all of this should have been obvious to him. “But you seem like the kinda guy who likes spooky. Anyway, boring and lonely! So I’m here!”
Shinsou didn’t want to point out that he’d spent most of his time thus far in the Class A dorm both bored and lonely, because it might make Kaminari pout. And insist on keeping him company anymore.
“Besides, I brought my DS with me so I’m gonna show you my favourite game. Y’know, ‘cause you showed me yours.”
Shinsou gave him a sceptical look, but after a moment sighed in reluctant acceptance. “Alright fine.”
Kaminari seemed positively delighted, and set about making himself comfortable like a cat on the cushion next to Shinsou.
So they spend approximately an hour and a half playing Pokemon--or rather, Kaminari plays and Shinsou watches and pretends not to find the little critters charming.
Somewhere along the way, he reluctantly realises he finds Kaminari maybe a little charming too--and isn't that an alarming thought?
His DS ends up sitting in his lap at a funny angle, still turned on and playing soft adventuring music at him while Kaminari's head lulls to the side, his eyes shut. It's with a sigh that Shinsou gently nudges him over to sleep on the couch again--he drags the throw draped over the back of the couch down and very carefully tucks his stubborn, if somewhat ridiculous companion in.
From that point it just becomes routine.
Shinsou doesn't ask him for company, but all the same every night around midnight--when most of the stragglers have finally made their way to their own rooms--Kaminari stumbles out of the elevator with a pillow, a game and a dumb smile on his face.
And every night he ends up falling asleep on the couch, despite Shinsou's best efforts to get him to spend a night in his own damn room.
"But then you'd be down here by yourself!" Kaminari says this like the idea is something of the utmost tragedy.
Shinsou is never sure how to feel about that.
"I'm gonna do it this time! I'll stay up until you fall asleep." Kaminari says, all too sure of himself like he has been every night before this one.
"I'll believe it when I see it. Did you finish the English homework?"
A look of fear crosses his face, and he laughs nervously. "We had English homework?"
Shinsou gently bullies him into doing most of the homework before he ends up dozing off--this time on Shinsou. He wants to be mad, but there's something so obnoxiously earnest about the whole thing. So this time he doesn't move him, just brushes a stray lock of hair out of his eyes and continues fiddling around with his phone for a while.
He’s not sure when he realised that maybe the two of them were friends—after all, during more reasonable hours Kaminari was, for whatever reason, friends with Bakugou and his motley crew, while Shinsou had been promptly adopted by Midoriya and his friends upon joining the class. Other than the odd team exercise assigned by Aizawa, or a polite exchange while walking to class by themselves, they didn’t say much of anything until it was late, Shinsou was tired and grumpy about not sleeping, and Kaminari decided this was unacceptable.
But for whatever reason, it did occur to him at some point that they might actually be friends. Not classmates or passing acquaintances (unless Kaminari was prone to sacrificing all hope of a good night’s sleep for anyone he met, which the guy was nice, but maybe not that nice), but good friends.
Friends were a relatively new concept—he’d spent the better part of his first term at UA too bitter and stuck in his own head to realise anyone was trying to be his friend, and every moment after that too busy to really invest in close friendships.
He still kind of misses some of his gen studies class though—they might not have been the most exciting people, but they were on his side long before anyone else was. But now he was here, and by god, he was going to be bombarded with friendships on all sides whether he wanted it or not.
Shinsou thinks the thing that really tips him off about the whole friend thing is the fact that for the first time in his life, he doesn’t dread the idea of the night. In fact when he comes back from his classes every day (being in his dream hero course doesn’t make having to take math and English any less tedious), Shinsou finds himself baffled and really sort of looking forward to hanging out with Kaminari later on.
“You alright dude? You’ve been spacy.” Shinsou jolted back to reality—reality where Kaminari was blinking at him all wide eyed like he was worried he might drop dead or something. “I mean you’re always a little spacy, or maybe not spacy, but like…off somewhere else sometimes. But this seemed different I guess.” The blonde frowned. “Or maybe not. I dunno. You okay?”
“That…was the most long winded and roundabout way you could have possibly asked if I’m alright.” He drawled.
“You didn’t answer the question though!”
“I’m fine. I just…was thinking, that’s all.”
“About?”
“Things!”
A grin appeared on Kaminari’s face. “Someone’s defensive—what is it? A crush? If it is you’re totally obligated to tell me, friend privileges and all that.”
Huh. “I do not have a crush, you’re just ridiculous.”
“But if you did I’d be the first to know right?”
Shinsou resisted the urge to roll his eyes, even good naturedly. “Yeah. If I did you’d be the first person to know. Now that we’ve settled the matter of my non-existent crush and the order by which I have to inform people of it, weren’t you gonna show me that new game you got?”
He blinked. “Oh! Right! Yeah, sorry, I almost forgot!”
It was almost three when he finally dozed off this time, if nothing else, Kaminari was getting better at staying up to keep him company—though it did sort of make Shinsou worry. At some point he was going to have to start being a good friend and make him get enough sleep for once, rather than relishing in having company in the middle of the night—when any sane human should have been asleep anyway.
But with Kaminari half slumped against him, dozing and snoring lightly, at the moment it’s a bit too endearing to give up. He pulls down the throw that hangs over the back of the couch (it’s stupidly nice and luxurious which means either Yaoyorozu purchased it not knowing that a cheap blanket would have sufficed, or Todoroki was trying to spite his father by spending a lot of money on things again) and tugs it over the boy.
Which would have been fine—it would have. He was just being a not shitty friend and making sure Kaminari actually got a little bit of sleep despite his insistence upon staying up with him. But the moment he does it, the universe decides to taunt him and remind him that he is not allowed to have nice things.
Kaminari, now wrapped snugly in the overpriced blanket, goes from leaning haphazardly against Shinsou’s shoulder to slumping against his side, leaving his head pillowed on Shinsou’s right thigh, a dopey, still asleep smile on his face as he clearly made himself quite comfortable. He looked warm, snug and very content with the world.
Shinsou, conversely, felt a lot like someone had dumped ice water on his head.
He might be in trouble here.
By the time Kaminari woke up a little before six, he had managed to further shift to not be sleeping on Shinsou’s thigh (thank god), and Shinsou (who had been lightly dozing for a while) was all too happy to gently, but aggressively, herd him back up to his bed to sleep for another hour before everyone had to get up to get ready for the day, and there was inevitably some kind of yelling or squabble over something.
It was always something in this dorm.
Meanwhile Shinsou tried not to put too much stock into whatever nonsense had happened the night before.
It was fine, completely innocent. He wasn’t a complete idiot, nor was he completely socially inept—just…a little rusty sometimes—this didn’t mean anything. It meant, exactly as Kaminari had said, that they were friends. Maybe even good friends. But it didn’t have to mean anything beyond that; the easy, trusting way Kaminari had just dozed off against him, had curled up against his warmth in the blanket Shinsou had wrapped fondly around his shoulders.
Oh God, he had it bad.
Shinsou briefly considers confiding in Midoriya (decides against it because kind though the boy might be, crushes and talking to them has never been his strong point), then quickly runs through every other member of their little friend group (Iida is too logical and faces things too head on, Todoroki has less social skills than he does, Tsuyu is blunt to the point of brutalising someone and Uraraka is friends with Mina, who is friends with Kaminari), before deciding to just shut up and keep his head down.
He’s always been pretty good at that much at least.
As long as he didn’t act any different, then it shouldn’t really matter, should it?
Of course, that all sort of rested on the idea that Shinsou could behave like a normal human being once he realised what, precisely, was going on—which was giving him way too much credit. Because about three nights later, he was once again faced with the dilemma of Kaminari dozing on his shoulder, his hair falling in his face looking tragically adorable. Like a puppy or something.
Really, he does it without thinking—which is to say he doesn’t realise what he’s done until it’s about three seconds too late to do anything about it and he is left with the mortifying knowledge that he just tucked this ridiculous boy in, brushed his hair aside and out of his face, and kissed his forehead.
His only saving grace at the moment is that Kaminari seems to still be asleep and totally, blissfully unaware that anything happened.
He decides to sink into the couch cushions and try to disappear. Maybe he can brainwash the whole dorm into forgetting he ever existed.
The real problem, which he managed to be completely, totally, blissfully ignorant of until the next evening, was that Kaminari had been a little less asleep than he thought he was.
“You’re staring. Why are you staring?” Shinsou asked, quirking a single brow at his companion. “Do I look more zombie-like than usual?”
Kaminari blinked at him a few times, like he’d been startled. “What? Huh? No. You don’t look that zombie-like to begin with. Well except for that one time when I ran into you like first thing in the morning in the hallway and your hair was somehow sticking up even more than it does normally and I’m pretty sure you just hadn’t slept that whole week—but I mean most of the class looks kinda zombie-ish first thing in the morning. Except Momo, she always looks like she’s about to go out to some fancy tea place y’know? What’s up with that?”
It was Shinsou’s turn to blink stupidly at him. “Did you breathe at all just now?”
“Not really, and now I’m suffering.” He wheezed. Still, after a moment he went quiet (never a good sign unless he was asleep), staring down at his hands in his lap. “You kissed me.” He finally blurts out, and exactly three things happen;
- Shinsou’s brain completely freezes.
- His hands also freeze while holding his DS.
- His little avatar on Animal Crossing subsequently is stung by many, many bees.
Somehow that feels like the most cosmically right thing to happen.
“I, uh, what?”
“You kissed me. Last night. On the forehead.” Kaminari says, like he isn’t sure if either of them are super clear on the happenings from last night.
Which Shinsou was kind of hoping that Kaminari, at least, was not super clear on the happenings from last night. But the universe didn't like him that much. So he ends up staring blankly at Kaminari, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.
“You should do it again. Right now.”
“I...what?”
As someone with a psychic quirk, generally speaking, his brain was his best weapon. At present though it was about as useful as Bakugou at diplomatic negotiations. Screeching to a confused, highly emotional halt with no idea of what to say that wasn’t going to end with something going horribly, horribly wrong.
“You should do it again. Kiss me, I mean. Maybe not on my forehead.” Kaminari says, eyes planted firmly anywhere but on Shinsou. “You like me, right? I mean I think you do. It’s kinda hard to tell, you’ve got a neutral expression that would make a lesser man cry so I’m not totally sure. Like wow there’s definitely a little resting bitch face happening—which I don’t mind! It just doesn’t always make you the easiest to read! But I don’t think you would’ve let me stick around at night if you didn’t at least kinda like me so I thought maybe--,”
When their lips touch, there’s a mild static shock—Shinsou shouldn’t be surprised—but he doesn’t pull back. There was no conscious thought deciding he was going to do it so much as an overwhelming sense of fondness and a set of potentially horrible instincts.
Kaminari squeaks like a startled puppy, eyes wide open for a moment. The whole thing would be kind of funny if Shinsou wasn’t so stupidly invested in this not going badly. As far as kisses go, it wasn’t the most exciting, more a press of their lips together—incredibly still, like neither of them wanted to startle the other away. But when he leans back, more nervous than he’s ever been in his life (or, well, on par with when they were telling him whether or not he’d be transferring), Kaminari is beaming from ear to ear.
He thinks he found something brighter than the sun.
Shinsou gnaws on his bottom lip for a moment, not sure what to say—for someone who’s quirk relied on talking, he wasn’t actually very good at it--before a wry smile crosses his face. “You should kiss me again.”
Kaminari basically pounces on him and they almost go tumbling off the couch. Shinsou can’t say that he minds at all.