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It isn’t even that late, but the atmosphere in the dorms would say otherwise.
The common room seems to shift into an entirely different realm at night time, the vibrant greens and creams and friendly conversation lost to the navy sky, to the moonlight that travels along the floorboards as if it were liquid.
Denki’s slippers are fluffy, his pyjama shirt loose and thin. He’s never really been that paranoid, but in vulnerable moments such as these, when he’s all on his own at night in a silently buzzing building, stupid little what ifs always manage to worm their way into his head.
Now, with no one occupying the space, each step Denki takes seems to finalise his own disappearance. Half of his torso has already been bleached by the light outside, never mind the way that his feet almost glide along the floorboards as though his movements are a part of the night’s routine as well. It had seemed a whole lot less empty and uninviting when the room had been filled with lethargic classmates only a few hours ago.
It’s almost unnerving- but Denki makes sure not to show it, even if there’s no one around to tease him.
Despite his laid back movements, when he reaches the kitchen he practically dashes behind the counter, quickly flicking on the lights to bask a small quarter of the common room in cheap gold. He exhales a breath of relief, but even that is stuttered, half held back. For a moment, he thinks, drumming his fingers along the kitchen bench as he takes his time deciding on what exactly he’d wandered down here for in the first place. He eyes the basket of fruit sitting on the end of the counter. Figuring why not, he grabs a mandarin from the pile, making his way over to the couches where the kitchen light only whispers.
“What the fuck.”
Nothing really happened to him, not physically - but when the voice reaches Denki’s ears, it feels like a ton of bricks had just been dropped over his head, and the only thing he can do is straighten his back in hopes he stays upright. His surprise isn't masked well by his high pitched outburst. The sound is strikingly dissimilar to the deep voice that had come from only a few feet away.
It takes a second for him to connect the voice to the person, and his vision to make out the image of Bakugou, sitting on the couch, legs crossed and a mug cradled in his lap, piece by fuzzy asymmetrical piece. Denki feels his face lift into a smile.
“Kacchan! Why’re you up?”
Bakugou doesn’t respond, and when he doesn’t, it feels a little worse than walking the empty halls had.
Even with the dim lighting, Denki can tell that Bakugou is post workout - or post-whatever the hell the blonde does that brings him to be sitting on the couch sipping away at a hot drink and pretending that he isn’t covered in dirt and sweat and who knows what else after lights out.
When talking to Bakugou, usually Denki would have a set of cards to pull in his head each time the other says something predictable, something he can simply mock and be done with, but with this-- with being given nothing to start with, he’d be lying if he said that words come easily.
“So- where’s Midoriya?” He questions, because after everything that Denki’s seen of Bakugou for the past couple years, of course that would be the first thing to pop into his head when he’s up late, tired and covered in dirt.
“Fuck off.” Is his only response- grunted out like it’s painful.
Denki doesn’t.
He can’t remember the last time that he’s taken any of Bakugou’s orders seriously (outside of hero training) in the first place, so why should now, when he’s genuinely curious as to why the blonde is down here despite the hour, be any different?
“Ohhh- so he’s in Mr. Aizawa’s office.” Denki says, nodding to himself as if he’s genuinely figured it all out.
Bakugou glares up at him just as Denki jabs his thumb into the center of his mandarin; the juice rolls down his wrist, but the stare he’s given somehow makes itself more prominent.
At least from where Denki is standing, Bakugou’s arms look heavy, like they’re weighing him down simply by hanging from his shoulders.
He’s the last person that Denki would expect to see in this state at this time of night, it’s never been a secret just how early Bakugou likes to pass out each night. But here he is - hands shaking as if he'd just run a marathon; and as weird as the thought is, if it turned out to be true, Denki’s not sure he would even be surprised.
Bakugou is still looking at him, face tightening up in annoyance- confusion? - the longer the quiet stretches on.
Even as Denki hovers by the couch with his thumb still jammed inside the mandarin, he’s thinking about taking himself back to his room, peeling the fruit and eating it and maybe accidentally spilling some juice on his bed in solitude; but the longer he stands there, the harder something persistently kicks at his heels, nagging him to throw himself down onto the couch next to Bakugou until he finds himself doing just that.
Bakugou Katsuki doesn’t like to be seen like this, hates it even. It doesn’t take a genius to tell.
Instead of Bakugou ordering him to like he usually would, Denki looks away in his own time, mirroring the others sitting position and crossing his legs beneath him, taking in the mysterious dirt on his face, or maybe it’s smoke? He doesn’t know why Bakugou hasn’t already given up and gone up to his room-- but he does know that each second that ticks by, the longer that Bakugou does stay, it’s hard not to see it as a small victory.
Somehow, imagining he’s just come back from running a marathon at around one on a school night isn’t very hard to believe, even though seeing Bakugou like this-- this quiet, this heavy and lethargic and utterly worn-- has never been something he’s even considered a possibility.
Still, he’s not an asshole, and compared to others in their class, Denki could say with confidence that he’s pretty fluent in Bakugou speak. So as his gaze wanders to the mug held in Bakugou’s lap, he tries to sway the awkward silence from becoming too unbearable.
“What’re you drinking? Can I have some?-”
“Make your own.”
Denki doesn’t even really want the mug as he reaches for it. Maybe it’d been reflex, trying to get on Bakugou’s nerves-- but every other time he’s done so, it’s never been to prove something to himself. He doesn’t have a reason to be the one that’s uncomfortable, his throat tightening up as the tea hits his lips. It had been his choice to stay, to sit on the other end of the sofa without a goal in mind whatsoever.
And maybe Denki doesn’t have an excuse to feel uncomfortable, but Bakugou surely does.
-
They worry in their own way, Denki knows this, almost the entire class does.
It’s in the way that they visit in rounds each time Denki's quirk messes with his head, their voices of comfort (sometimes teasing), ringing loud in his ears. Denki would speak in nods, or grunts, or anything that his vocal cords would allow him to, but they stayed and responded like they understood.
Everyone knows that quirks have their own side effects. Denki's makes his brain vanish for a good second or two and come back like a wailing kid lost in the grocery store. Kirishima is still wary when it comes to touching people with his quirk active. Ashido accidentally melted her desk that one time.
And Bakugou's palms are covered in an explosive. Dripping with it.
They all deal with the drawbacks in their own way.
So when Bakugou had fallen to the ground with a thud earlier that day during training, everyone had been alarmed, even Denki.
His own hands had still been buzzing with electricity, frozen in the air where his fingertips had brushed Bakugou’s shoulder. A smile still planted on his face from where he looked down on the boy, the feeling of power still nudging his side. Bakugou didn't look up at him, and Denki was not the winner.
Denki's not great at science, though he definitely should be, considering his quirk.
He probably didn't understand it as well as someone like Midoriya would have when Aizawa made an attempt at an explanation to him after class. Something to do with being exposed to nitroglycerine most of the time, how it wasn't his fault, how it's just simple chemistry. But Denki gets it, he thinks. He's known it's dangerous to borrow one of Bakugou's pencils or touch anything of his for quite some time, though not for this reason exactly. His tongue felt heavy.
Bakugou’s hand had raised back up and smacked down on the ground after a few seconds of lying still, his nails digging into the dirt, trying desperately to dig up worms and grass and anything to stabilise himself. His mouth had stretched like wire.
Denki knows they care, he does. Kirishima does, Midoriya does.
But still, the class barely lifted their eyes as Bakugou stood, fingers twitching. He glared down at the ground as if he’d just been taught to hate for the first time in his life and was figuring out where to put it all. He put it in his smack of Denki’s hand insistently reaching for him, in his downcast eyes and red cheeks and the steam pouring out of his ears as he recoiled.
Denki is more than familiar with embarrassing himself. He’s heard all kinds of laughter surrounding his quirk; his hair; his intelligence; his unrequited flirting and attempt at friendship; in all kinds of contexts.
He doesn’t think it’s the same for Bakugou.
He’s greeted with ‘ welcome back ’s, and the hands of his friends lingering on his own when Denki learns to put his arms by his sides and croak out responses again. He’s left with snacks from vending machines and stickers all over his arms for his hard work during training, and if he’s being honest, it’s clear that Bakugou has never earned anything like that with the way that he still treats some of their classmates.
When something like this happens to Bakugou, when everyone sees it and watches him as he begrudgingly leaves to the Recovery Girl’s office, they forget everything from all those times that they’d had to comfort their own friends, and react with curiosity instead.
Bakugou was gone by the time Denki and a few others had made it out of class to visit.
He'd tried to wash down the guilt with a mouthful of water.
-
So maybe that’s why Denki takes Bakugou’s tea, because he’s still trying to wash it down, maybe receive some answers to questions he knows he wouldn’t dare ask if he stays down here with him. Maybe Bakugou will understand.
Bakugou gives him nothing, and to top it off, the tea tastes like shit.
Denki is pretty sure the other stole it from Yaoyorozu’s collection, because he can recall drinking some at her house during those monthly study sessions with the class, holding his breath as he politely shoves a handful of biscuits into his mouth to help it go down and hopes he doesn’t make the same mistake next time. He always does.
He doesn’t bother with the theatrics for Bakugou.
“This tea tastes like shit. You sure you haven’t burned off your taste buds by now?”
“Why’d you fucking take it then?!”
Denki angles his head to the side. “How else was I supposed to find out?”
Bakugou scoffs.
It feels awkward adding the last bit onto the end, and he’s not sure why he does, even as the words leave his mouth and he lowers his gaze to the fruit in his hands.
“Nah, I just didn’t know what else to say. Or do.”
"You could start by leaving."
He tries, Denki gives him that. He just smiles in response.
Bakugou taps the side of his mug with his fingernails, confusion, maybe frustration- in the varying rhythm and speed. It sounds like muted windchimes, like the birds from just that morning if they hadn’t had anything to say. Denki looks up to see Bakugou’s spaced out face zoned in on his hands, almost admiring the craftsmanship that it takes to peel a mandarin.
He takes a breath and looks Denki in the eye.
“You dont need to fucking pretend.” Bakugou says, “I never- I never even asked you to ignore it, I never asked you to walk on fucking eggshells just because of something that I fucked up. It’s not your problem so don’t try to treat it like it is.”
To say Denki is caught off guard would be an understatement, he doesn’t know what to say. He almost wishes he had a script, because the situation is so foreign to him and so uncomfortable and the lingering aftertaste of the green tea at the back of his throat feels like it’s growing a forest, moss between his teeth and over his tongue.
If Kirishima were here, there’s no doubt in his mind he’d know exactly what to say. Hell, even Bakugou could comfort himself better than Denki, and more than half the time he's the only one causing his problems in the first place. The reason he’d passed out in the first place was because of overworking himself, so how’d he get away with doing it again?
When he speaks, the fact that there are dark hand prints on Bakugou’s pants from hands that drip a literal explosive, poison substance, does not leave his mind. He focuses on that instead of the strange, forced vulnerability that hit him like a bus, and the fact that Bakugou had been the one to instigate it.
“I'm not treating it like it’s my problem—“ He’d said it so fast, so sure of himself, he hardly even thinks over his next words. “Dude, if you want me to go back up to my room and forget this then, gladly, I will, but-“ He sighs, clearing his throat. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk instead of sitting all alone in the common room in the middle of the night.\”
“We are sitting in the common room in the middle of the night, dumbass.”
The corners of Denki’s mouth lift up into an amused smile. “Yeah- but we’re not alone.”
Bakugou rolls his eyes. “Shut up.”
The next pause is loud, and Denki knows that Bakugou’s probably still trying to figure out the situation they’re in, analyse it until it fits his narrative that Denki only wants something from him. In a way, he does.
When Bakugou looks back down at the mug and places it aside, again, it could only be reflex when Denki leans further into his space.
Bakugou isn’t some wild feral animal, as much as he’d seem to want people to believe, he’s just-- here.
His hair is tousled and flatter than usual from being washed recently; his skin is bruised and when he frowns it looks like his face has been shaped by a five year old with play-dough and access to a knife. His nose is crooked and his breath is unsteady, and when Denki tackles him for the sole purpose of cradling his hand like a butterfly, there’s no logical reason for the middle of his palm to be so soft, so warm from the ghost of the mug that had been there only seconds before.
“Why’re you holding my hand?” Bakugou mumbles. He says it like it’s a statement rather than any form of curiosity.
Denki’s response is the first thing that comes to mind, the truth. “Because I don’t know what to say?”
Bakugou huffs. “Yeah- fuck off. I can’t tell if it’s cause you’re pitying me or because you’re just a freak sits with people who don’t like them in the middle of the night-”
“Oh definitely the second one.” Denki interrupts, a finger of his free hand raised in the air.
Bakugou looks at him out of the corner of his eye. He huffs out a laugh.
It doesn’t even last a second, but their hands have been held in the same way with a different sort of grip for a lot longer.
It’s then that he realises he still hasn’t even peeled off a single slice of his mandarin. The juice that had rolled down his wrist some time ago is dry, sticky with unresponsiveness. He only pulls back his hand to peel off a slice, hesitant to let go but eager to move onto something else, anything else. Denki holds the golden slice of citrus in the air between them as an offering, and he doesn’t even know if Bakugou likes mandarins, doesn’t know if he cares.
When Bakugou takes it with a mild look of disgust, Denki doesn’t say anything. He holds his tongue with what little bit of control he has left for the day - but the desire to interject or tease is persistent.
"It's warm. You're disgusting."
Denki smiles. "Oh."
He knows that tomorrow morning, Bakugou’s going to greet him with a grunt at best and make fun of him in training, but maybe that makes it a little better. Maybe that makes it worth something.
If they taste two different slices from the same fruit in the same moment, maybe the next time that one of them falters, they’ll remember this and step forward.
“You better not run your dumb mouth later.”
Denki laughs, realising he might just like citrus a lot more than he had prior to tonight. “Like I'd want to brag about this.”