Chapter Text
“Yeah yeah, I know, I know”
Sero rubbed his eyes as he woke up to Kaminari talking on the phone with someone.
He and Denki had met when class started at the beginning of the year, and quickly became friends. Feelings had developed, as they so often do, and they started dating. Hence why Sero was waking up in the blonds room. Denki clearly hadn’t noticed Sero had woken up, as he kept talking with whoever was on the phone.
“No they haven’t let us know what we’ll be doing in the sports festival yet. Of course if I find out I’ll let you know. Oh stop worrying! Come on Shigaraki, I’ve been a villain this long, do you really think I’ll get caught?” Denki said and turned around to see Sero wide eyed and gaping.
“I’m going to have to call you back.” Kaminari said and hung up, “Morning Hanta! How long have you been up?”
Kaminari stepped towards the bed and Sero schooched closer to the wall, clutching the blanket.
“Ok, so roughly that long. Any use in pretending I was just joking?”
“Denki what’s going on?”
Kaminari took a deep breath. If he didn’t want Sero to turn him in to the pro heroes he’d need to handle this carefully. And besides he really did care about Sero, he didn’t want to hurt him more than he had too.
“Ok, so, um, I’m at UA as a spy for the League of Villains. Please don’t be too upset with me Hanta, I know this is big but-”
“Big? Denki this is insane! The League of Villains tried to kill us all!”
“I mean mostly we were just trying to kill All Might.” Kaminari muttered.
“That's not better! Denki the League of Villains is evil!”
“Sero I’m evil! Look I know this is confusing but you’re really important to me and I love you so um, just ask me anything! I’ll answer totally honestly!”
Sero just sat there for a minuit, he knew that he should go right to Aizawa or Principle Nezu and turn Kaminari in, that's what the other heroes would do. But Sero cared for Kaminari as well, and didn’t want him to go to prison.
“Fine, so when did you become a villain?”
“Right! Well, I was six or seven I think? My parents and I got caught up in the middle of some battle, and well, the heroes couldn’t save them from the falling debris. So then when I was alone and lost in the city the League found me and I stayed with them.”
“Oh man, Denki I’m so sorry!”
“Eh, it’s probably for the best. The League raised me and taught me how to fight with my quirk and became like my new family.” Denki said with a smile.
“So did they have you doing crimes and stuff?”
“Not when I was really little, but when I got older and stuff yeah.”
“Like what?”
“Uh, robbery, arson, vandalism, you know, the usual.” Denki shrugged.
“So have you ever,” Sero gulped, “killed anyone?”
Throughout the conversation Sero and Kaminari had moved to sit next to each other on the bed. Kaminari looked down and brushed some of his hair out of his face.
“Yeah, I have.”
“Do you feel bad? Like remorseful? Or did you like, like it?”
“Sero you don’t want me to answer that.” Kaminari looked up to meet his boyfriend's eyes.
“Heh, yeah you’re probably right. Ok, so what are you doing at UA?”
“Like I said, Shigaraki sent us to infiltrate UA to get information on All Might and the other heroes.”
“Wait,” Sero said and Denki knew he’d done something wrong, “you just said ‘Shigaraki sent us’! Is there another traitor?”
“Uhhh, no?”
“Denki you said you’d be honest!”
“Yeah but that’s not my secret to tell Hanta! Yes I'm not the only traitor, no I won’t tell you who else is.”
“I guess that’s fair. So what happens now?” Kaminari rested his head on Sero’s shoulder and sighed.
“I mean there's several options, you tell the heroes and police on me, and they’ll try to put me in jail. I call Shigaraki back and he’ll probably kill you, so not that one!” Denki quickly added seeing Sero start to panic, “Or, you don’t tell on me and I don’t tell on you and we try to go back to normal.”
“This is kinda a lot for having just woken up, can I have some time to think about it?” Sero asked.
“Yeah, yeah of course! If you could, can you let me know by the end of the day? I need to know if I should go into hiding or not.” Kaminari rose to his feet and held out his hand to pull Sero up with him. “Now come on, we have to get ready for school or Iida will have our heads!”
The two started going about their morning routines, almost as if everything was normal. Almost. There was a residual tension in the air from the mornings conversation, a fog that refused to dissipate. The two boys walked to UA in near silence. Luckily once they were surrounded by their classmates and friends they were able to put the morning behind them and classes proceeded as usual.
If any of their friend group found it unusual that Sero sat between Kirishima and Mina at lunch instead of Kaminari they didn’t make it known. Everytime Sero noticed Denki on his phone he started to panic. He trusted that his boyfriend wouldn’t hurt him, but he definitely didn’t trust any of the other villains, and thanks to his conversation with Denki now he didn’t trust any of his other classmates. Sero really didn’t like the idea that someone in his class was another traitor. If he hadn’t known his own boyfriend was a villain then he’d never be able to figure out who the other one was. What if it was another one of his friends? What if he was eating lunch with criminals? Sero was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice someone was approaching until they were right up to the table.
“Hello all!”
“Hey Iida!” Kirishima smilled with a wave, “What can we do for you?”
“Ah, well I heard about Kaminaris score on the recent math test and wanted to offer my services as a tutor!”
“Thanks Iida but I’m sure I’ll be fine.” Denki said, turning back to his lunch.
“Nonsense! As class representative it is my responsibility to ensure that all 1A students are performing at their best!” Iida grabbed Kaminari by the shoulders and practically hoisted him out of his chair.
“Now come! I know an empty classroom where we can study!” Iida put his hand on Kaminaris shoulder and started walking him out of the lunch room. Kaminari turned his head back at his friends and mouthed ‘help me’, the whole table burst out laughing.
***
When they got into the empty classroom Iida closed and locked the door.
“Ok, what did you do?”
“Why did you automatically assume I did something?” Kaminari asked, crossing his arms.
“Because you texted the chat saying that we had a big problem that we couldn’t tell the rest of the League about so I’m assuming you did something.”
Kaminaris defensive stance collapsed and he let out a defeated sigh, “It’s less that I did something and more that something happened. Sero overheard me on the phone with Shigaraki and now he knows I’m a villain.”
“What?! Denki what happened?”
“I thought he was asleep!”
“Why did you let him come to school? Why did you even let him leave your house? Denki you know the protocol for if anyone finds out about us!”
“Yeah but it’s Sero! I’m not going to hurt him and before you ask no you can’t hurt him either!”
“But what if he tells the pros?”
“Please, if he hasn’t already I doubt he will at all. In fact this all got me thinking, this would be the perfect time to try the plan!”
“Denki we’ve discussed the plan but Kurogiri said it would never work!”
“What plan?”
Both boys jumped at the sudden interruption but when they looked around they couldn’t see anyone.
“Oh my god Tooru you need to let us know when you’re in a room!” Iida exclaimed.
“Yeah! How did you even know to follow us in here” Kaminari asked.
“It’s a group chat dumbass I saw your message too!”
“Oh right.”
“Anyway what’s this plan you two were talking about?” Hagakure asked.
Iida sighed and slouched against the wall, gesturing to Kaminari to explain.
“A little while into the school year Iida and I realized that we liked a lot of our classmates and didn’t really want to betray and fight them. Obviously though we didn’t want to ‘turn to the good side’ or whatever, so we came up with an idea! We’d get the rest of the class to become villains too! That way we could get the best of both worlds. But when we pitched the idea to Kurogiri he said it would never work and would probably just get us all caught.”
“And you didn’t tell the rest of us because?”
Kaminari shrugged, “It didn’t seem relevant once Kurogiri shot it down. But since now Sero knows anyway, this would be the perfect time to test the plan!”
They couldn’t see Hagakure cross her arms, but from her scoff they could tell she was skeptical.
“And you really think you could turn our goody two shoes classmates evil?” she asked.
“I think we could at least get a few of them,” Iida said from his spot on the wall, “obviously there’s some that I couldn’t see turning, like Midoryia and Kirishima, but I think with a little convincing some of the others could do it.”
“Humm, we might be able to get Kirishima if we got the rest of his friend group first.” Hagakure added.
“Wait, so does this mean you’re in?” Kaminari asked excitedly.
“Only if you two can convince Momo to go along with this hair brained scheme, then yes, I’m in.”
“Yes! This is going to be so awesome you guys!”
“But seriously, we’ll need an actual plan.”
“Oh yeah for sure,” Iida said, “I’ll give Momo a call after school today to fill her in, and then we can all start making a list of which students to try and turn and when.”
“Sweet, well, I’m gonna head back to the lunch room and act like I was there the whole time and pretend to be offended that people didn’t notice me.”
“Have fun Tooru!”
“Always do!” They watched as Tooru opened the door and slipped silently into the hall.
“Honestly someone needs to put a bell on her.” Iida said, reaching into his bag and tossed some notes onto the desk. “Here, just in case anyone asks what math I helped you with.”
“Oh right, thanks Tenya.”
“No problem. But Denki, I think we need a contingency plan just in case Sero calls the heroes.”
“I told you I don’t think he will.”
“I know, but we can’t be sure, and I’m not about to let you go to jail over this.” Iida crossed his arms.
“Aw you care!”
“Piff obviously, now, do you know when Sero is going to talk to you?”
“No.”
“Do you know where?”
“No.”
“So Sero’s going to get to pick where and when and you’re just going to go?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Denki this screams of an ambush!”
“What no… no I know, it's bad,” Kaminari flopped down at one of the desks, “but I’m sure it’ll be fine! If push comes to shove I can always fight my way out!”
“And what if they bring Eraserhead? Or Cement Toss? Or even All Might! You’re strong Denki, but not that strong! If the pros show up you have to run!”
“Fine, ok here’s what we’ll do, we get Tooru to follow Sero and me and if anything goes wrong she can call Kurogiri and he’ll warp me back to the League.”
Iida considered Denki’s plan for a moment, “Okay, that sounds good, you text Tooru and I’ll text Momo and let her know what's going on.”
Just as the two boys finished sending their texts the bell rang signalling the end of lunch. The pair could hear the hallway start to fill with students.
“Looks like it's time to go,” Kaminari shoved the notes into his bags, “thanks for the math help class rep!” he said with a wink.
“Of course, I’m happy I could help. But Denki, one last thing, be careful.”
“Don’t worry, I will.” Denki smiled and then the pair left the class room and entered the sea of students clogging the halls.
***
The second half of the day went without incident, Kaminari spent his time taking notes and sneaking glances at Sero. Denki was still a little worried about the prospect of being found out by the pro heroes, but mostly he was giddy. He had been pushing for this plan since him and Tenya had come up with it. None of them had expected to make genuine friends at UA. Obviously they hadn’t gotten along with everyone, Momo and Tooru nearly blew their cover the first week by plotting to kill Mineta a little too loudly. Luckily it was a sentiment shared by the other girls in the class, so no one thought anything of it.
Denki was shaken out of his thoughts when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey Denki, you zoned out again, the final bell just rang.” Sero said. Kaminari looked around and saw his classmates all packing up and heading home.
“Oh, ha whoops, sorry I totally didn’t notice!”
“That’s ok,” said Sero, “so um, do you want to walk home with me?” Sero was avoiding looking at Kaminari, and was fiddling with the buttons on his jacket. It was obvious the boy was nervous.
“Yeah! Are the others coming?”
“Oh, no, it’ll uh, just be us.” ‘this was it’, Kaminari thought, ‘he’s gonna tell me what decision he made!’
Sero and Kaminari left the class and Iida and Hagakure shared a brief look, and the invisible girl headed out the door.
They walked for a while in silence, heading into the woods outside UA where there weren’t any people around. Kaminari couldn’t decide if this was a good or bad sign. They kept going until Sero stopped at a clearing and sat down on a fallen log, gesturing for Kaminari to sit with him.
“Denki, I’ve been thinking about this all day, in fact it's all I could think about, I have no idea what Aizawa taught us today.”
“Neither do I, but then again I kinda never know what he’s talking about.” The two boys chuckled, which helped to ease away some of the tension that had built up.
“Anyway, I decided,” Sero took a deep breath, “I’m not going to turn you in. I don’t like what you’re doing, obviously, but I love you Denki and I don’t want you to go to prison.”
Kaminari’s eyes lit up and he launched himself at Sero with a hug.
“Hanta you’re the best! You won’t regret this!”
“Why do I somehow doubt that?” Sero said as he hugged Kaminari back and rested his head on top of Kaminaris shoulder. “But I do want you to be honest with me from now on, no more lying!”
“I can do that!”
“And I need to know who the other traitor is, it was driving me crazy today wondering which one of our classmates it is.”
“Oh, um,” Kaminari looked over to the trees where he knew Hagakure was hiding. “You know I can’t tell you that, it's not up to me. But,” Kaminari added, seeing Seros face fall, “I can talk to them and see if they’d be chill with telling you!”
“Are you sure you couldn’t just give me a little hint?”
“Nope! Sorry bud!”
“You are evil!” Sero said with a lopsided grin and playfully tackled Kaminari off the log onto the ground. The two boys' laughter rang out across the forest.