Archive of Our Own

.i. 

It’s a simple enough exercise, really: a hero versus villain fight, very reminiscent of the very first heroics lesson they’d had with All Might, what now feels like ages ago but was actually only a few months.

It was set up by Aizawa-sensei, though, rather than All Might, and that would be enough for Hanta to take it seriously even without the added threat of extra homework for everyone who ‘does not perform to expected standards’.

Aizawa hadn’t said what those standards were, of course, but seeing as it’s almost been ten minutes and Hanta has yet to see a single ‘villain’, they’re probably — and predictably — high.

“See anything?” he asks, keeping his voice low as they creep forward through the makeshift city’s streets.

Denki, his partner for the exercise, tweaks at the radio hooked to his belt — which Hanta knows he uses to try to pick up any frequency the villains might be using — and shakes his head. “Still nothing. Think we should head in?”

“Head in whe...” Hanta trails off as a larger structure comes into view, shoulders instantly tensing as he readies his quirk.

They’re facing what seems to be a fake shopping mall, and there is no way this isn’t where the villains are hiding — and keeping their unknown number of hostages.

Denki laughs and grins winningly, rolling back on his heels. His fingers crackle with a low voltage, and Hanta shakes his head fondly even as stress starts making knots in his stomach.

“Stop that,” Hanta says in a hiss, crouching down to keep out of sight of the large windows this fake mall sports. He’s not sure they haven’t been noticed yet, but it never hurts to be a little more cautious — especially since they don’t know who they’re facing.

“Killjoy,” Denki replies with a pout, but he obligingly smothers the sparks, crouching down next to Hanta.

They come to a stop by a stretch of wall between two large window panels — just large enough for the two of them to stand side by side, really — and Hanta dares to sneak a look inside.

It is expectedly deserted, but Hanta’s heart starts pounding as he realizes how artificial that deserted look feels.

Someone — or several someones — has definitely been there and cleaned up the place.

“Well?” Denki asks, nervously bouncing on his feet as Hanta straightens back against the wall. “What’d you see?”

“Not much,” Hanta admits. “But the villains are definitely around here somewhere.” He looks up. “Looks like this place at least has two floors — wanna start at the top or at the bottom?”

Denki’s face breaks into a grin and he wiggles his eyebrows. “Gonna carry me up if I say at the top?”

Hanta snorts out a laugh. “Not if you’re planning on throwing up on me again.”

“I was concussed! And that was one time!” Denki whines, his face red. “Just one time.”

“Once was enough,” Hanta replies solemnly, though he quickly smiles to show Denki he isn’t mad.

(Truly, his little nephews and nieces have done much worse to him, and his own tape residue isn’t always the… cleanest, but he’s definitely never telling Denki that. It’s so much more fun to tease him like this.)

“We could always split up?” Denki half-heartedly suggests, but Hanta just stares at him until Denki shakes his head and groans. “Yeah, you’re right, that’s dumb — that’s always how they get you in horror movies.”

“This isn’t a horror movie,” Hanta replies automatically.

“Hn.” Denki shrugs. “I don’t know — I wouldn’t fancy going up against those weird energy tentacle things Midoriya does now, they’re pretty horror movie-worthy.”

He pales almost on cue with Hanta. “You don’t think —”

“No, no way,” Hanta says at the same time. “They wouldn’t —”

They both pause and swear in unison, struck by the same realization that Aizawa absolutely would.

Denki whines. “Shit, we’re doomed.”

Hanta snorts and nudges him. “Hey, chin up, we only need to clear the hostages. We’ve got the element of surprise, and there’s two of us. We’ve got this!”

…

They do not, in fact, ‘got this’.

For one, they do not actually have the ‘element of surprise’.

For two, Midoriya’s hostage is Bakugou, who loudly objects to being rescued.

“This is payback for eating your sandwich, isn’t it?” Denki half-yells half-sobs as he jumps out of the way of one of Midoriya’s green lightning-powered kicks. “I said I was sorry!”

“Sorry would have been not eating it in the first place, you fucking dumbass!!” Bakugou swears, his palms sparking loudly behind the pillar he’s been tied to with heavy loops of a metallic chain. “Now stay still and let Deku fucking kick your ass so I can kick it next!”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Denki wails back, narrowly avoiding yet another kick.

“And you,” Bakugou hisses to Hanta, “fucking work faster.”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Hanta hisses back, because it’s not like trying to pick a lock Bakugou made slippery with nitroglycerin is an easy task — especially if he doesn’t want to accidentally spark an explosion.

“Well try fucking harder! Deku owes me a rematch!”

“Because god forbid you actually evacuate like a normal fucking person,” Hanta grumbles quietly, grunting in triumph as the lock finally clicks free.

Which is, of course, exactly when things go wrong — because the lock is connected to something else.

“Well, well, well, look what we have here!” White shines in Hanta’s vision just in time for him to duck, and Iida goes sailing past him, skittering to a stop next to Midoriya. “Looks like you’ve activated the next phase in our evil plan!” he shouts, striking a pause.

Beside him, Midoriya facepalms. “Iida. We’ve talked about this!” he hisses, and Denki lets out a nervous chuckle, backing up cautiously and throwing Hanta a confused look.

Hanta shrugs back. He has no idea what is going on either, but it can’t be good.

Luckily, Iida, who still seems to enjoy play acting as a villain a little too much, explains. “You see, heroes, my partner and I predicted that you would try to free this hostage —”

“I’ll show you a fucking hostage, Prep School Boy!” Bakugou seethes, throwing himself forward — and held back, just in time, by the tape Hanta throws around him.

“Which is why!” Iida continues as if the interruption had never happened, “this place is rigged to blow!” As if on cue, a large countdown appears on the wall in red blinking numbers that count down from five minutes.

“And we should care why?” Bakugou retorts, struggling against the tape — it’s more perfunctory than anything, thankfully, or Hanta doesn’t think it would have held. Clearly, Bakugou takes this threat as seriously as the exercise requires. “They rescued the ‘hostage’ already, what’s stopping us from just leaving?”

“Glad you asked, Kacchan,” Midoriya pipes in, the sunny grin on his face as out of place with the villain he’s supposed to be playing than Iida’s showmanship was. “Here’s why.”

The countdown disappears in the blink of an eye, replaced with a projection. It’s a video, Hanta realizes. Uraraka, tied in a fashion similar to how Bakugou had been.

Midoriya’s grin widens. “We never said there was only one hostage.” He raises his left hand and wiggles his fingers, unveiling a red click-on button. “You can still stop us though — I’ve got the detonator right here! Of course, you could also try to find her, but…” His eyes drift back to the wall, where the countdown has returned — only four minutes and twenty-seven seconds left now — and he shrugs. “You don’t have much time.”

Hanta grits his teeth. This is the real test, then.

“Bakugou,” he snaps out, not taking his eyes off the ‘villains’ and keeping Denèki in his peripheral vision. “Think you can go find Uraraka? You’re our best bet at getting her free,” he adds, bypassing the protests Bakugou had undoubtedly been about to make by giving him the challenge of a task he’s best-suited for.

Judging from the glare Bakugou sends him, he’s no fool to that tactic. “You better not fucking lose, you hear me?” he growls, and Hanta hides his laughter as he nods.

Bakugou turns to the villains and snarls out an, “I’ll be back” at Midoriya before taking off running — and before Hanta can stop him, Iida takes off after him.

Which leaves Hanta and Denki with Midoriya. Alone. Again.

Joy.

Behind them, the clock ticks down silently, and Hanta dives forward to meet Midoriya.

Luckily, he’s fought with Denki plenty of times. Well, Hanta’s fought with everyone in their class, but Denki is one of his more frequent partners. He’s grateful for this now, because Midoriya absolutely is a demon in a fight, and if he and Denki were one inch less coordinated, they’d be toast by now.

Hanta uses his tape as distractions for Denki to send out his electricity, and when Midoriya dodges, he swings around from the tape he’s hooked up to the exposed pipes on the ceiling to try to take a swipe at him and get that detonator free.

Midoriya laughs as he dodges out of the way — straight into Deku’s attack.

“Yes!” Denki shouts, pumping up his fist in the air — but their victory is short-lived, because Midoriya doesn’t stay down.

His green hair smokes a little and his costume is singed around the edges, but green lightning still crackles around his body as he runs up at them again.

Hanta isn’t proud of it, but he screeches a little as he jumps up on his tape and scrambles upward to get away.

Which is when he notices that Denki’s still on the ground, his face set in that determinate expression that says he’s about to do something stupidly heroic.

“Chargebolt, don’t —” he shouts out, but it’s too late to stop it. The space around his friend shines a brilliant white as electricity arcs away from him, and it strikes Midoriya who yelps and falls over.

It’s over almost as quickly as it came, with Midoriya downed on the ground and Denki still-standing but brain-dead for the time being, staring droopily into the distance.

“Shit,” Hanta swears, sliding down the tape hurriedly. He almost rushes over to Denki, but then he remembers Midoriya, and the exercise’s objective, and he rushes over toward him.

Just in time, too, because Midoriya’s starting to stir, moaning against the ground. 

Hanta bends down and tugs the detonator free from Midoriya’s tight grip, clenching it to his chest with relief — and shouting in triumph as the countdown suddenly stops.

“The exercise is over,” comes Aizawa-sensei’s dry, tired voice. “Please make your way to the exit — and to Recovery Girl’s office if you need it,” he adds, sounding even more done than before.

Hanta chuckles — and then swears again as Denki almost walks headfirst into a wall.

Sorry, Midoriya, he thinks guiltily at his downed classmate, but at least you’re not going anywhere right now.

Besides, knowing Iida, the class rep will be there soon, and he’ll help his friend off of the ground.

In the meantime, Hanta’s the only one around to make sure Denki doesn’t hurt himself worse by tripping up over his own feet.

“Knock, knock.”

Hanta blinks up from his Japanese handbook — which is currently looking closer to English, or maybe Greek, for all that he understands the assignment.

“Come in?”

His bedroom door slides open to reveal Denki, grinning down at him as he sheepishly rubs his neck.

Hanta grins back. “I see you’re feeling better!”

The tips of Denki’s ears go red. “Yeah. Erm, thanks for helping me out, by the way, when I went all —” he twirls his index by his temple and fakes a braindead expression before laughing, “ya' know.”

“Of course, bro,” Hanta replies, winking as he pulls on Eijirou’s cadence to say the word ‘bro’.

As expected, it breaks through Denki’s awkwardness and draws a laugh out of him.

“And, erm, I’m sorry,” Denki adds, shaking his head ruefully. “I shouldn’t have gone all out like that — you could have needed my help more, and Iida was still around —”

“It worked out fine,” Hanta interrupts, because those remarks are pretty much what Aizawa had told them, and while they’re true, it does nobody any good to rehash them over and over again. Better to simply take them under advisement and try to apply them. “We’ll just have to do better next time.”

“Still, I’m sorry. I know I’m not easy to be around when I go all dumb.”

Hanta freezes. “Is that what this is about? You frying your brain?”

Denki’s face is the picture of a deer caught in headlights, but he tentatively nods. “Well, yeah. I know you had to take care of me — ferry me back to Recovery Girl — and well, thank you, but also I’m sorry you had to do that. Again,” he adds after a short pause, wincing.

Hanta swallows. “You know I don’t mind, do you? No, no,” he says, straightening his back and looking Denki straight in the eyes when his friend tries to protest. “I mean it. I really don’t mind — you gave it your all and gave me our one shot at winning this. And you’re my friend, it’s never a chore to look after you.”

Denki’s eyes start to water and he sniffles.

“Dude, are you crying?”

“No.” Denki sniffles again. “I just… have allergies. Something stuck in my eye. Eyes.” Another sniffle, and then Denki shakes his head and opens his arms. “Oh, what the hell, get over here, dude, and give me a hug.”

Hanta chuckles but complies. Denki gives great hugs — even if he smells like ozone and is likely to leave you charged with enough static electricity that you’ll shock yourself on anything metallic for a good twenty minutes after it ends.

“You’re a great friend,” Denki says in a sniffle as he squeezes tightly.

“You too,” Hanta replies, squeezing back. 

It is true, after all.

.ii.

“Uggggh, Hanta, what did you get for question twelve?”

“Cosine of thirty-seven — wait, which question twelve?” Hanta replies, blinking up for his math worksheet.

Mina stares back at him, her dark yellow eyes wide with despair. “English,” she moans. “None of it makes sense — I don’t know how Mic expects us to make sense of any of it!”

That is indeed a very good question — the reason why Hanta’s put off English in favor of math so far, actually — and Hanta nods in support as he shuffles closer.

Mina had taken over most of his bed earlier, when she’d crashed into his bedroom hiding from someone — Iida, Hanta suspects, considering the enthusiastic shouting about responsibilities he’d heard a little while after Mina had trepidatiously made her way into his room — but she’d kindly left him the ground to sit on while they worked, as well as a pillow.

“... Maybe we can fake it?” he says, peering down at the worksheet. It looks as foreign as it had every other time Hanta’s attempted to look at it, and Mina groans loudly.

“Yeah,” Hanta replies with a wince, “that’s unlikely to work.”

“Ugh,” Hanta groans, letting himself fall backward onto his bed. “English is the worst.”

Mina chuckles but raises her fist, and Hanta knocks his against hers in a familiar show of solidarity.

“Think Bakugou’ll help us if we ask him?” he asks, staring up at the ceiling.

Mina snorts. “You mean after he yells at us for being pathetic excuses for students again?”

Hanta laughs. “He does yell a lot, doesn’t he?”

“I think he doesn’t want us to know he cares,” Mina replies conspiratorially, before devolving into giggles.

Bakugou is terrible at hiding that he cares — well, he is once you know him anyway, and by now, Hanta likes to think that they know him.

There is a trick to asking Bakugou to help you, or do you a favor. Denki’s the one who first took advantage of it, but Mina’s the one who really noticed.

It’s easy, really. All you need to do is struggle at something beside him — loud enough for him to notice — and imply he can’t help you.

Of course, that was at the beginning of the year: now, they can actually ask, and most of the time, Bakugou will help. After the appropriate amount of cursing their names and family lines, of course.

It isn’t, however, as much fun as the old ways, as Mina puts it, which is why they move to the common area.

“Think it’ll work?” Mina whispers.

“It always works,” Hanta whispers back, and together, they bite back a chuckle.

It’s easy to spread out their homework in front of them — about two seats away from where Bakugou’s reading what appears to be the math textbook (proving once again that Bakugou was an actual madman) — but unfortunately, the first person they attract is Yaoyoruzu.

“Do you… need any help?” She pops up behind them like a ghost and Hanta startles badly enough that he knocks his elbow against his pencil case and sends it flying all over the ground.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Yaoyoruzu’s eyes drop down and Hanta’s heart twists in his chest even as it struggles to regain its normal rhythm.

Beside him, clearly just as shaken, Mina laughs. “No worries, Momo!” It is an unspoken pact in their class to help their vice-class rep feel more confident about herself — which includes not freaking out too badly after she freaks you out.

“Yes, it’s really no trouble,” Hanta continues, his voice coming out muffled as he strains himself to gather all the pencils without getting down from the sofa.

(If anyone asks, he’ll say it’s because it’s a good way to exercise his flexibility, and not at all because he’s too lazy to get down.)

He’s so focused on trying to catch the last two — the most evasive ones, who rolled away when Hanta tried to grab them — that he misses most of what Mina and Yaoyoruzu talk about, only tuning back into when he triumphantly pulls himself back up, pencils clenched in his fist.

“— it’s super nice of you to offer,” Mina is saying, “but we kind of have another plan already?” Her eyes dart toward Bakugou sheepishly, and Yaoyoruzu’s grin widens with understanding.

“I see,” she says. Her eyes glimmer with mirth. “Well, good luck then, and try not to blow up too many cushions? We just got these.”

She winks at them and hurries out of the room.

Hanta waits until she’s out of sight to exhale in relief.

“Thank god,” he says.

“Hm-mh.” Mina nods, dark eyes wide with existential dread. “Did she do the whole —” she wiggles her fingers in front of her face “— to you too?”

Hanta nods solemnly. “I still have nightmares.”

He doesn’t actually have nightmares about Yaoyoruzu’s rigid studying method — well, not anymore. He’d had a couple not very restful nights around their last set of exams, and Yaoyoruzu’s flashcards had figured at least as much as Bakugou’s explosive temper.

With Yaoyoruzu gone, they return to their homework — him to math and Mina to English.

It takes two instances of loudly moaning about how impossible question thirty-eight is before Bakugou slams down his book on the table and stalks over.

(Joke’s on him — there is no question thirty-eight anyway.)

“What are you two chuckle-fucks yapping on about again?” Bakugou snarls, dragging a chair and plopping himself down in front of them.

His red eyes glare so strongly Hanta almost regrets their whole plan, but Mina forges onward fearlessly.

“English homework,” she whines, extending out her notebook. “It’s impossible!”

Bakugou snorts, leaning back in his chair. “Clearly not, since I’ve done it already — and why are you even doing this so late? It’s due tomorrow!”

Mina chuckles nervously. “I… got distracted?”

That’s all it takes for Bakugou to snarl again and pull the worksheet to himself — going into, as Denki calls it, teacher mode.

(Teacher mode Bakugou is scarier than most normal Bakugous, because he somehow seems to be able to emulate Aizawa-sensei’s ‘you can do better’ looks — just, with more explosions and less tired looks that make you feel guilty for causing trouble.)

Teacher mode has both he and Mina scrambling to take notes as Bakugou deconstructs Mic’s lesson in a way they understand — their teacher is good but sometimes he just moves across concepts a little too quickly for Hanta to follow. Like this, time just zooms by, and before Hanta knows it, he’s got three pages of tiny handwritten notes about the last five lessons.

He feels enlightened.

“Dude, you are good at this,” he says, whistling.

“Of course I am.” Bakugou bristles, because for all that he thinks himself the best, Bakugou is also the worst at actually accepting compliments.

He must also, somehow, have eyes on the back of his head because he turns to Mina so fast he gives Hanta whiplash.

“Stop that,” he snarls, glaring at her.

No, not at her — at her hands, where she’s been picking at the skin. It looks… painful, and Hanta swallows.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Bakugou snorts derisively. “Does it look okay?” 

“It’s fine,” Mina replies tersely. “I’m fine.” She tucks her hands under her thighs. “Don’t we have math to get to?”

As far as redirections go, it’s pretty poor — Mina’s definitely done better. Clearly, Hanta’s not alone in thinking so, because Bakugou snorts.

“If you need a break, take a break, Racoon Eyes. Homework’s not going anywhere.”

Bakugou means he isn’t going anywhere, and Hanta hides his smile before Bakugou can blow up at them for it.

He stretches back into the sofa instead, loudly cracking his back and heaving a sigh of relief. “Aw, that feels great — I definitely need a break.” He winks at Mina, who startles for a moment before grinning back.

Just in time for Bakugou to predictably start yelling at him for ruining his back and about his “fucking awful posture, Tape Face, if you sat straighter your back would hurt less!” too.

It’s easy, after that, to let Bakugou’s dulcet tones wash over him — easier still, to return Mina’s grateful look with another wink.

Besides, then they start on the rest of the homework, and they don’t really have time for Mina’s problem anymore.

Even if Hanta’s brain won’t let it rest.

(And even if Bakugou watches her like a hawk, ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness and force them into another break.

For someone who denies having friends so loudly and so often, the blond is actually rather good at it.)

When Mina knocks on his door later, Hanta’s not surprised. In fact, he’s almost expecting it, even if Mina’s knock is much more subdued than her usual enthusiastic banging.

“Come in!” he calls out — and blinks when Mina shuffles in wearing soft pink pajamas.

“Hm.” It suddenly occurs to Hanta that he’s also wearing his pajamas and he feels his cheeks heat up.

Even if it’s just Mina and they’ve seen each other wearing less than this after training.

“Sorry,” Mina replies, an uncharacteristic sheepish grin playing on her lips. “I can… come back?”

Hanta shakes his head. “No, no, no, it’s fine. You’re fine. Good.” He bites his cheek to stop talking and takes a deep breath. “Sorry, I meant that you can come in.”

Mina shuffles closer, coming to a stop in front of her bed.

It’s such a contrast with the way she’d practically booted him from his own bedroom earlier that Hanta can’t help but snort and pat the bed beside him.

Mina sits down gingerly, her left leg folded underneath her and the right one dangling over the edge of the bed.

“I wanted to say thanks. For earlier, I mean — for not pushing.”

She’s wringing her hands again, picking at the skin, and Hanta’s stomach twists. He puts his hands on hers and she stills.

“Oh,” she says, eyes going wide. Her shoulders deflate. “Shit, I was doing it again, wasn’t I?”

Hanta nods. He leans back but doesn’t let go of her hands just yet. “Is that okay?” he asks, looking down at their joined hands.

Mina’s eyes regain some of their usual sparkle as she snorts, a playful grin splayed across her lips. “Why, Hanta, are you asking if you can hold my hands?” She wiggles her eyebrows as she chortles a laugh.

Hanta’s cheeks burn. “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, you’re good.” She sighs. “I should probably explain, though, shouldn’t I?”

Hanta shrugs. “If you want to.” He’s curious, sure, and he’d like to know, but Mina doesn’t have to tell him anything if she doesn’t want to.

She huffs out a laugh. “It’s fine. I probably should have said something earlier anyway.” Her next breath, long and deep, shakes in her chest. “It’s my quirk.”

Unbidden, Hanta’s eyebrows shoot up on his forehead. “Your quirk?”

Mina shrugs. “Yeah.” She gently tugs her hands free and raises them up for Hanta to see. “I’m immune to my acid, really — I mean, duh, or I wouldn’t be here — but it still… affects me, I guess.” She grimaces. “Dries my skin out, and that hurts sometimes.” She flexes her fingers. “Like earlier.”

The skin of her hands does look dry. When she flexes her fingers, the skin on her knuckles look ready to split, and where she’d been picking it — her knuckles, but also around her nails — it looks red and inflamed.

Hanta winces. “That looks painful.”

“It is.” She snorts and puts her hands on her lap. “But I can deal with it. It’s just… Writing a lot quickly can make it worse. A little.”

“Oh. Do you need help?”

Mina’s eyebrows do a weird dance — not quite frowning, but almost — and she laughs, shaking her head. “No, I’m good. I have a cream I use when it gets bad. I’ll be all healed up soon.”

Hanta nods, biting his lip. He hesitates, not wanting to overstep, but… This is Mina. His friend, who is always so eager to help and cheer everyone up, and she’s hurting.

She’s hurting over something so small and so simple — something she simply cannot help — and…

Hanta’s training to be a hero. How could he call himself that if he doesn’t help his friend?

“You can use my notes,” he blurts out, dragging his eyes away from the cracked skin on her hands and up to her face. “For class, if it goes too fast or it starts hurting, I can lend you my notes.”

“Really?” Mina’s eyes widen in surprise, and Hanta nods resolutely.

“Yeah, of course.”

The hug she jumps at him for isn’t a surprise — neither is the happy squeal that almost deafens him — but it is nice nonetheless.

Yes, really nice.

.iii.

“Yo, bro, you in there?”

Hanta’s head jerks up in response to Eijirou’s enthusiastic greeting, and he inwardly bites back a sigh even as he grins back.

“Yeah! What do you need?”

Maybe he should invest in a sign, Hanta thinks idly as Eijirou walks in, sheepishly shutting the door behind him. Something that says ‘This is my bedroom, not the common room’ — but then that’d mean shutting his friends down when they might want help (granted, that is rarely the case), and Hanta can’t exactly do that.

Reluctantly, Hanta lets the idea float away and dissolve into the ether. It was a nice dream to have, at least.

“Sorry to bother you,” Eijirou says. He chuckles and runs a hand through his hair. It’s not quite as spiky as it usually is, but the gesture makes it look messier. “I just, erm…” He raises his hand and it’s only now that Hanta realizes he’s holding something.

It’s a small box, the shiny cardboard depicting a smiling woman’s face with shining red hair.

“Oh,” Hanta says.

Eijirou rubs his neck. “Yeah. You said you could help me with it next time I needed to do it? I usually go back home when I need to, but my parents are out of town this week, and they won’t let me back home on my own, and my hair really needs to be redone…”

Hanta would have said yes anyway, but Eijirou pouts down at him, red eyes blown wide. His lower lip trembles, just a little, and Hanta hates how good Eijirou is at making this… this face.

Hanta’s voice squeaks and he jerks his head away. “No need to look at me like that! I already said I’d help you!”

Eijirou just laughs back cheerfully, punching his fist up in the air. “Yes! You rock, bro! Come on, let’s go.” He freezes. “Unless you have something else to do?”

Hanta looks down at his phone. The screen’s locked, but he’d been playing some dumb game he doesn’t even remember the name of. Nice, but definitely something he can put off until later.

“I’m good,” he replies, standing up and cracking his back. “We can go now.”

Eijirou cheers. “Seriously, Hanta, you’re the best!” he continues, swinging his free arm around Hanta’s shoulders and pulling them away from Hanta’s bedroom and toward the bathroom. “This is so much easier with two people, you’ll see, I —”

“Is it supposed to look like that?” Hanta asks, poking down at the pale mixture they’ve poured into the bowl Eijirou had taken just for that purpose. It squishes a little, and a small bubble pops on the surface. “And smell this bad?”

Eijirou, the unhelpful bastard, just laughs. “Yeah, sorry, it’s the bleach. It’s pretty strong — but I need it because my hair’s so dark naturally.”

Hanta, who recalls (far too many) true crime documentaries where the culprit used bleach to erase the evidence, pokes the squishy substance dubiously.

“If you say so.” He takes the brush Eijirou had provided and dips it into the bowl. “Lengths first, right?”

“Yeah,” Eijirou replies. He starts to nod but aborts the gestures halfway though, for which Hanta is thankful — he’s just started grabbing part of Eijirou’s hair, and if his friend starts to move now, he’ll mess up for sure. “You don’t want to leave it on the roots as long, because it’s warmer there so the bleach acts a bit faster. Also less chance of my hair falling off that way,” he adds.

His tone is as tranquil as if he’d been talking about the weather, and Hanta chokes on bleach-smelling air.

“Don’t worry! You’re doing great already!” Eijirou cheers, sending him a thumbs-up over his shoulder.

“Right.” Hanta sweatdrops. “No pressure, huh? I just have to avoid making you lose all of your hair… Easy peasy.”

“You’ll be fine.” Eijirou laughs. “The most important part really is to not leave in for too long and to apply it evenly, and I know you can do that. You’re like, the most meticulous person I know here — except for Bakugou, but asking him for help with this is probably a bad idea.”

His tone says there’s a story there — and indeed, in the mirror, Eijirou’s sitting in front of, Eijirou’s reflection pouts.

“Told you he’d blow you up?” Hanta teases, dipping his brush into the mixture again and moving to a new section of hair.

Eijirou’s pout deepens. “I told him he’d be wearing gloves, because everyone wears gloves when they dye their hair if they don’t want to get dye everywhere, but he still said no.”

Struck by the sudden horror picture of Bakugou’s explosive sweat mixing with whatever chemicals are in Eijirou’s hair products, Hanta chuckles nervously. 

“Well, at least this way you get me?” He winks his most over-the-top flirtatious wink, and grins widely when Eijirou chortles a laugh.

“What?” Hanta continues, changing sections again. “You know I’m a catch.” He wiggles his eyebrows, laughing — and then swears when Eijirou bends over, cackling, making Hanta draw a large stripe of bleaching product all over the glove of his left hand.

“Shoot, sorry,” Eijirou says, straightening up almost instantly. His shoulders are still shaking with suppressed laughter though, and his eyes are looking suspiciously wet. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Hanta replies, biting back on the grin that threatens to split his face. “We should definitely keep going then. I’m almost done.”

Eijirou nods — and instantly apologizes for it. “Awesome.”

Hanta scraps up the last of the product to apply to Eijirou’s roots and, a few moments later, steps back to admire his work.

“You look like a porcupine,” he states, taking in the aluminum foil that makes Eijirou’s hair look like a demented Christmas tree.

Eijirou’s reflection blinks back at him, and Hanta’s cheeks turn red.

“Erm.” He clears his throat. “Thirty minutes, right?”

“Yup!” Eijirou confirms cheerfully. “Then I’m washing it and we can move on to the next step!”

The next step, which is applying the red Eijirou wants, leaves the bathroom looking like a murder scene, with Eijirou as its murder victim.

“Right,” Hanta states faintly, eyeing the drying red splatters across the mirror — Eijirou had tried to wipe them off, but instead they now looked like a vaguely bloody handprint, dragging down across the surface. “Maybe I should close the door.”

The last thing they need is for someone to come across this scene, panic and get Aizawa — which would happen, because their teacher somehow has a sixth sense that tells him when class 1A is up to something.

“Good idea! But erm, maybe let me do it,” Eijirou hastens to add when Hanta starts walking toward the door. “Your hands are still covered in dye.”

Hanta looks down and only narrowly resists the urge to facepalm. He is indeed still wearing the plastic gloves covered in Eijirou’s red dye, which has been steadily darkening from the bright red it had been at first to a color closer to that of dried blood.

“Yeah, that might be a better idea.” Hanta huffs out a tired laugh. “I’ll just start clearing up this mess then,” he says, motioning toward the bowls and mirror and — well, the entire room, basically.

Luckily, while it had started to dry, most of the dye is still fresh enough that the sponge gets rid of it easily, and with the two of them working in tandem, cleaning goes quickly.

The hardest part of it is actually resisting the urge to sneeze whenever Eijirou comes too close, the chemicals from the dye tickling Hanta’s nose.

“Why do you keep dyeing it?” Hanta asks after a bit, when it’s clear they’ve taken care of everything but the shower Eijirou still needs to use in… twelve minutes now. “I mean, I know it has to do with your Red Riot gig, but doing this all the time can’t be good for your hair. I’m sure there are other ways to do your hair  — Deku’s friend in support would love to find one, at least,” he adds, and his haunted shiver is echoed by Eijirou.

Hatsume Mei is as clever as she is insane, and the combination is perhaps the most frightening thing Hanta’s seen at UA.

Eijirou shrugs, absently reaching up for his hair before, it seems, belatedly realizing it’s still covered in dye. “I like it. It’s… soothing, I guess.” His lips quirk up into a softer smile than one of his usual grins, and he sits back on the stool he’d been using earlier. “Makes me feel braver.”

Hanta’s eyebrows shoot up in his forehead. “I think you’re plenty brave already, dude,” he says, because anyone who does half the things Eijirou has done is crazy ‘manly’, as Eijirou would say.

“Aw, thanks.” Eijirou’s cheeks color pink, but his shoulders droop. “I’m not though, not really — but I’m trying!” He perks up as he says it, his eyes gleaming with determination, and Hanta can’t resist sending him a thumbs up over his shoulder.

“Dude, I think we all are — but that’s why we’re here, at UA. We’re learning.”

“But my quirk —”

Hanta punches him gently in the shoulder, rolling his eyes when Eijirou rocks forward, his next words cut off by a yelp.

“Is super strong and ‘manly’, dude, seriously,” he says, cutting off Eijirou’s further attempts at protesting and ignoring the betrayed look he gets easily. He nudges Eijirou more gently. “Come on, you’re one of the few among us who got to go on a proper internship already, you’re definitely one of the best heroes in our class!”

Hanta means every word too. “You’re basically unbreakable, that’s super cool.” He shoots Eijirou another thumbs-up, and pretends not to hear the sniffle he gets in answer not the suspicious shine in Eijirou’s eyes.

“Dude~,” Eijirou says, his voice thick with emotions, “you really are the best friend ever.”

Hanta, his cheeks burning, is thankfully saved by the bell.

Literally, in this case, as the alarm he’d set on his phone starts loudly ringing, reminding Eijirou that he has a date with the shower. Again.

This time, Hanta is the one sitting on the stool while Eijirou is the one standing up, slowly drying out his hair.

Eijirou was right — it is kind of soothing. Eijirou’s hair, still wet from the shower, looks incredibly soft, and Hanta finds himself kind of jealous. His own hair doesn’t look half this good.

A thought strikes him, and he calls out, “Hey, do you think I should dye my hair?” 

Eijirou startles, dropping the hairdryer. He fumbles with it for a moment, swearing as he only just manages to catch it by the powering cord — and yelping, reflexively hardening his fingers, as the burning hot hair strikes his skin from a suddenly very short distance.

The hard plastic crunches under his fingers as the whooshing sound dies sound abruptly, and Eijirou whines. “Not again.”

Hanta blinks, taken aback for a moment before Eijirou’s forlorn face truly registers. 

Then, he starts cackling.

“It’s not funny,” Eijirou whines back, but try as he might to stare down desolately at his hairdryer, his lips still keep twitching up. “Stop laughing.”

Hanta does not stop laughing.

“S-Sorry,” he stutters out. His stomach hurts like he’s done a hundred situps and his cheeks ache, but he still can’t quite stop laughing.

Eijirou’s face as the plastic had crunched in his hand… That betrayed ‘Not again’? Hanta’s going to think about those for a long time.

Finally, though, Hanta does manage to calm down. “Is it okay?” he asks, nodding toward the hairdryer, still dangling from Eijirou’s grip and swaying gently in the air.

Eijirou pulls it up and grabs it properly, wincing as some of the black paint flakes off. “Maybe?” he says, and then exhales in relief when hot hair blows out of it when he turns it on.

Of course, the hairdryer is facing him right now, so his hair is flown backward, prompting another fit of laughter from Hanta’s lungs.

“Right, laugh it up, will you,” Eijirou grumbles, twisting the dryer to resume his previous work.

“I will, thank you,” Hanta retorts, nodding primly. His lips twitch again. “But really, do you think I should?”

Eijirou pauses to send him a surprised look. “Seriously?”

Hanta nods, sitting on his hands so he can stop fidgeting. He shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, why not? It looks fun.” He could use a little more confidence too, he doesn’t say, but somehow Eijirou seems to read it on his face anyway.

Eijirou grins — one of his wide, too-bright ones, that remind Hanta of the sun.

Faintly, Hanta thinks he should maybe regret this. He doesn’t, though — not even when Eijirou starts quizzing him about colors and what Hanta might like to play with.

Hanta just stares at Eijirou’s drying red hair, and at the glossy box they’d thrown away earlier — which still half peaks out of the garbage can — and doesn’t tell him he already knows what he wants.

When Hanta walks into the kitchen, Eijirou by his side, everyone falls silent.

“What the fuck,” Midoriya says, his voice so quiet it’s barely a whisper. His green eyes are wide, and, while further away, Bakugou chokes on his water before struggling to catch his breath and bat away Iida’s sudden concern.

Todoroki only stares for a moment, unblinking, before humming to himself and typing down something on the phone Hanta hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding.

(Not that Hanta cares to think in any more depth about what Todoroki might be up to, because he, like everyone else in this class, has sadly learned that this way laid madness.)

Eijirou just laughs as he saunters up to the counter, hip-checking Bakugou and pouring himself a glass of water. “What’s up, everyone?”

Iida must have finally gotten the message that Bakugou didn’t want his help — or rather accepted that Eijirou would be better at placating their explosive blond than he could ever be — because he turns away and pushes up his glasses, clearing his throat.

Tsuyu cuts him off, slurping loudly through the straw she’d stuck in her own glass. “What did you do to your hair, kero?”

Hanta chuckles, running a hand through his hair and pulling down a strand. The red isn’t quite as bright as Eijirou’s, but it’s still a pretty big change. His hair definitely feels softer though, and letting Eijirou apply the different products — after he’d ran back to his room to get them — had been rather soothing.

(And a very welcome distraction from the homework Hanta’s absolutely not ignoring, of course not, why would he do that?)

“Eijirou dyed it,” he says, sending Eijirou a grateful smile. “I think it looks nice.”

Tsuyu eyes him for a long moment. “Do you like it?”

Hanta nods, and she shrugs.

“Then it’s nice, kero.”

Bakugou seems to have recovered from his coughing fit though, because he slams his glass on the table and glares at them in disgust. “There’s two of you now?” 

Eijirou, fearless, throws his head back and laughs. “Come on, dude, you know you like my hair!”

“I don’t, Shitty Hair. It looks fucking shitty!” His red eyes are so narrowed they look more like pinpricks as he turns to glare at Hanta. “And you too!”

Hanta would take offense — he personally thinks both he and Eijirou did a pretty good job,  all things considered — but the tip of Bakugou’s ears are reddening, and that really tells him all that he really needs to know.

Hanta stares back, reaching up for a clean glass and filling it up with water without looking away from Bakugou’s glare. He takes a slow sip to hide the twitching of his lips as Bakugou’s fingers start to spark, and another to hide the twitching that comes when Iida starts to shout about proper quirk use.

“They’ll be at this for a while, kero,” Tsuyu interjects, sliding between him and Eijirou.

Hanta huffs out a laugh. “I know.”

Beside him, Eijirou cheers both sides on, and he and Tsuyu exchange an amused-yet-exasperated look.

Midoriya bangs his head against the table — or rather, Todoroki’s hand, who bears the assault with his usual dead expression.

Speaking of which, Todoroki’s staring.

Hanta arches an eyebrow back, and is treated to the rare sight of Todoroki’s embarrassment — the blushing is, quite frankly, adorable, even if they could do without the smoke.

“I was wondering,” Todoroki starts, eyes darting down to Midoriya who seems very busy bemoaning his friends’ behavior, “if you might be willing to help me with my hair.”

His words are very slow and very deliberate, and Todoroki doesn’t reach up for the red side of his hair, but the aborted move is just as obvious.

Hanta blinks back, licking his lips and shooting Eijirou a nervous look. He drums his fingers against his glass.

“Sure? I mean, Eijirou’s really the one with the experience here, but I’m here to help.”

“I’ve never done white,” Eijirou pipes up, brow furrowed. “It might be better to go to an actual professional for that, if you want it done well?”

Todoroki’s expression doesn’t change. “Do you think you could do it?” he asks. “I don’t need it to be perfect.”

“I… Maybe?” He shoots Eijirou another look, but Eijirou seems as nonplussed as Hanta feels. “We can probably try — but dude, are you sure? It’s your hair, we’ve never done this before — we can definitely fuck it up.”

“I trust you,” Todoroki replies, his tone as dry as if he was commenting on the weather. Drier, even, perhaps.

Eijirou sniffles loudly and he seizes Todoroki’s free hand so quickly Hanta startles — when had he moved?

“So manly!” Eijirou whisper-shouts. His eyes gleam. “Of course we’ll help you!”

Todoroki’s expression warms by a couple of degrees. His eyes smile as he nods regally. “Thank you.”

Hanta considers protesting for about half a second, but Todoroki’s smiles — the real ones — are so rare that he can only sigh and relent.

Worst comes to worst, he reasons, at least Hanta knows they can dye Todoroki’s hair back to red.

.iv. 

The thing about the dorms is that yeah, they’re pretty fun. Being away from home makes Hanta feel like he's almost an adult, really, and it’s nice to be around his friends more often.

On the other hand, it makes Saturday afternoons slightly more boring, because they aren’t allowed to go out.

Which is why Hanta perks up when Eijirou suggests they play a game.

“Ooh,” Denki says, his eyes glimmering with excitement, “think Bakugou will want to join?”

Hanta shrugs. “Maybe? I don’t know, I think he’s busy working.”

Denki rolls his eyes. “Dude works too much. Makes the rest of us look bad.”

“I think it’s very manly of him,” Eijirou counters, smiling sharply. 

Mina snorts as she hip-checks him. “You think everything’s manly.”

“That’s because everything is,” Eijirou replies, sticking out his tongue at her. “And working hard to fulfill your dreams is definitely the manliest thing!”

Mina pulls a face, and Hanta hides his smile in his shoulder as his friends keep bickering.

“Maybe we should pick a game first?” he offers.

“I vote Monopoly,” Denki instantly replies, and thankfully Mina denies him just as quickly.

“Oh no, no way, you’re not cheating at it again, we’ll do something else.”

“Cheat?” Denki sputters. “I would never!”

Hanta scoffs at the bald-faced lie, exchanging a look that is equal parts exasperation and amusement with Mina.

Denki cheats at all the games, and because he is not actually good at it, loses anyway.

Like in Monopoly, where he stuffs money under the board and tries to roll the die again and again under increasingly dubious motives until he gets the results he wants.

“How about a card game?” Eijirou suggests. “I know some fun ones!”

“As long as Denki doesn’t cheat,” Mina replies, shooting a glad Denki’s way, who sputters in response.

“I’m good with that,” Hanta says when they turn to him with expectant looks in their eyes, and Denki and Mina cheers.

“Yo, Bakugou! Up for a card game?” Denki calls out, leaning over the back of the sofa to address Bakugou, who is bent over some booklet on the other side of the room.

Bakugou doesn’t reply, and Denki pouts. “Bakugou! Baku-bro~?” he keeps shouting in a sing-song voice that devolves into a muffled laugh. “Dude, anyone home?”

“Just go get him,” Mina replies, rolling her eyes as she shoves him gently. “Maybe he has earpods on or something, you know he likes his music loud as hell.”

“Aw, why can’t you go?” Denki whines, even though he’s already moving.

“Because you’re the one who invited him,” Mina counters, shooing him away.

Denki sniffs haughtily, dramatically placing a hand over his forehead like some fainting maid in the old black and white movies someone has made them watch during movie nights.

(That someone is Tokoyami, who seems to have only two favorite genres of movies: old romance stories and old horror movies.)

“I’m going, I’m going — just, remember me fondly when Bakugou kills me.”

“He’s not going to kill you,” Eijirou retorts, his wide grin showing off the sharp tips of his teeth. “Maybe he’ll maim you a little, though.” His eyes glimmer with mirth, and Hanta turns his face away to hide his own grin as Denki moans again.

“Are you sure you can’t go?” Denki whines, turning pleading eyes on Eijirou, who laughs and shakes his head.

“No can do, bro. Sorry.” He doesn’t look very sorry, and Denki’s shoulders droop in response.

“Come on, stop being a baby, just go. I want to play!” Mina kicks out a leg toward him, her tongue poking out from between her teeth as her muscles strain not to let her fall off the sofa.

Denki yelps and dodges. “Fine.” He sniffs haughtily. “I’m taking all of you ingrates out of my will. If I die, none of you are getting anything — except for you, Hanta, you’re a real bro.”

Hanta grins. “You can keep your dirty laundry to yourself, I’m good without.”

Mina and Eijirou guffaws as Denki gapes back at him, betrayed. “I take it back, Hanta’s not getting anything either. You all suck, I can’t believe we’re friends.”

“Just go, Denki, you’ll be fine.” Mina laughs. “And if you aren’t, I promise we’ll give you the greatest eulogy at your funeral.”

“You’d better.” Denki huffs as he stalks away.

Immediately, Mina turns to Eijirou with a mischievous grin. “I bet Bakugou’s gonna blow up at him.”

Eijirou shakes his head, though his eyes remain bright with mirth. “No deal. Bakugou’s really not that bad. Anymore,” he adds after a quick pause that has Mina chuckling.

She pouts. “Fine. Hanta? Wanna bet?”

“No, thanks.” He shakes his head, biting back his grin. “Once was enough,” he says, because if Denki’s terrible at cheating, then Mina’s actually a shark when it comes to betting.

“Aw, no fair! How am I supposed to practice my skills if none of you will let me?”

“There, there,” Eijirou replies, lips twitching as he pats her shoulder. “I’m sure there’s still some Gen Eds students who don’t know better yet.”

That perks her up, and together, they return their focus on Denki, carefully approaching Bakugou.

Denki’s playing it up for them, and for the drama, Hanta knows, and he can’t resist the urge to roll his eyes. Bakugou’s got an explosive temper, sure, but he’s never harmed anyone outside of training exercise — in fact, he’s pretty much the definition of all bark and no bite.

Well, at least when it comes to them. Bakugou’s got plenty of bite when it comes to villains and in training exercises.

“Yo!” Denki shouts as he reaches Bakugou. “We were thinking about playing a game, wanna join? Leave your dusty books behind?”

Bakugou doesn’t seem to react, and Denki throws them a confused look before shrugging and reaching out to shake Bakugou’s shoulder.

Hanta’s straightening in his seat at the same time Eijirou winces out a, “Bad idea”, starting to call out a, “Maybe —”

Bakugou reacts so quickly Hanta almost doesn’t see him move. He grabs Denki’s wrist and pulls him over his shoulder, sending him to the ground with a loud yelp that is followed by the loud crackle of explosions.

Cut off short as Bakugou swears and jerks away. “Shit.”

He doesn’t run out of the room, but that’s only because Bakugou isn’t really the type to run — even if that’s definitely what happened.

They all unfreeze at the same time and hurry over to Denki, who’s staring after Bakugou with wide eyes as he rubs the back of his head.

“You good, dude?” Hanta asks, extending out a hand. His eyes dart off toward the corridor Bakugou’s disappeared into, and he sighs, stomach twisting in worried coils.

“Yeah. I just don’t know what happened?” Denki replies, nonplussed, as he accepts Hanta’s hand and lets himself be pulled up. “Crazy reflexes, though,” he mumbles, almost to himself. He rubs his head again.

“I think you surprised him,” Mina replies, faint disbelief ringing in her voice.

Denki stares back, both eyebrows shooting up on his forehead. “How? It’s not like I was being quiet.”

Mina snorts. “Like you know the meaning of the word,” she says, elbowing him playfully.

Eijirou twitches though, and his eyes widen with understanding. “I think he wasn’t wearing his hearing aids,” he says, and Hanta’s own eyebrows rise up.

“Really? I didn’t notice.” They all know Bakugou has them, though he obviously doesn’t advertise it, but this might be the first time they’ve been around him without them.

Denki hums, his head tilting to the side, brow furrowed in thought. “I… think you might be right. Aw, man, this really sucks, I should have been more careful.”

He stares off into the distance mournfully. “I’m sure it’s fine,” Mina tries to reassure him. “No harm done, right?”

“No, I know, it’s just…” Denki trails off, shrugging and waving his arms. “I don’t know.” His shoulders droop again, sighing. “This sucks.”

Mina hums in agreement, but idly, she turns to stare at Hanta.

Moments later, Eijirou follows, gaze oddly knowing, and after that, Denki does the same, perking up a little. They all look strangely expectant, and Hanta has to resist the urge to take a step back.

“What?”

Mina rolls her eyes and nods in the direction Bakugou had taken off. “Go after him.”

Fully aware he’s echoing Denki’s earlier behavior, he asks, “Why me?”

“Because you’re the best at this feelings thing — well, at being, I don’t know, quiet about it. Sorry, but Eijirou’s got you beat on the feelings thing, actually.”

“Thank you?” Eijirou replies, bemused.

“I’m not sure how I should take this,” Hanta replies, scratching the back of his neck.

Mina rolls his eyes. “Just go, do your thing.”

“My ‘thing’?”

“Yeah, you know, your whole ‘You’re my friend and I support you always’ thing,” Denki agrees, nodding rapidly.

“I don’t sound like that,” Hanta tries to protest, even as his cheeks heat up. He’s met with three pitying looks. “Aw, really?”

Mina reaches over to pat his arm. “It’s great, don’t worry. Now go, before Bakugou finds a way to bring down the building with his angst.”

“He wouldn’t!” Eijirou protests quickly, but Mina arches an eyebrow at him until he quiets down.

“I know,” Mina replies dryly, rolling her eyes. “I’m just joking — but seriously, go, Hanta.”

Hanta spares them one last look before squaring up his shoulders and going — not that he really needs the prompting. He’d have gone after Bakugou anyway, if only to check that the other boy was fine.

Bakugou probably won’t appreciate the interruption, though, because for how loud he is, he’s still pretty private when it comes to the big things, but Hanta firmly believes in checking things for himself. Just in case.

Before he turns around the bend in the corridor, Hanta looks back at his friends — only to find them waving back at him.

Denki’s even got a white tissue out, wiping fake tears off his cheeks.

Hanta snorts out a laugh, shakes his head, and keeps walking.

Hanta pauses for a moment in front of Bakugou’s door. There’s no doubt in his mind that Bakugou will be on the other side — even without the muffled explosions he can hear through the door, the smell of burnt caramel he’d followed all the way up here is telling.

And beyond that, there are only so many places Bakugou ever retreats to, especially in the dorms. The only other one apart from his room really is the kitchen, and that’s not exactly an option if he wants to get away from everyone, which Hanta suspects he does.

Sighing, Hanta raises his hand to knock.

The explosions stop, and are replaced by heavy footsteps before the door is flung open in his face.

Bakugou snarls at him, fingers so tight on the doorframe his knuckles bleed white. “What do you want, Tape Face?”

Hanta swallows. He errs, suddenly, in the face of the rage on Bakugou’s face — this might have been a bad idea.

Still, he presses on. “Are you… alright?”

Bakugou’s scowl deepens. “What’s that supposed to mean? Why the fuck would I not be alright?!”

“I… No reason.” He blinks and licks his lips. “You did leave in a hurry though.”

“Yeah, well, I had other things to do.”

Hanta nods. “Ah, well, I see. I should… leave you to them, then? It’s just, we were planning on playing a game, and —”

“What kind of game?” Bakugou interrupts, his eyes narrowing. If Hanta didn’t know better, he’d almost expect smoke to come out of Bakugou’s nostrils too, but Bakugou’s quirk has never been to spit out fire, despite how hard his temper would have you convinced otherwise. 

“A card game?” Hanta replies, feeling distinctly off balance.

Bakugou huffs. “Whatever. Tell those dumbasses I’ll be there. I just need to…” His face twitches. “Clean up here a bit.”

Inwardly, Hanta snorts. He bets, what with all the explosions he’s heard.

He makes to move, but hesitates at the last second. “Do you want a hand? It’ll go faster with two people,” Hanta hastens to add, making sure to use ‘want’ rather than ‘need’ (implying Bakugou needs any kind of assistance never ends well for those involved), and to offer an explanation that’ll hopefully help smooth things over.

Bakugou’s eyes narrow as expected, but instead of blowing up again, he just huffs and swings the door open wider.

“Tch,” he says. “Whatever. I don’t care what you do.”

Grinning inwardly at his success, Hanta steps inside.

It is, as he’d thought, a mess. The smell of burnt nitroglycerin hangs heavy in the air, and the room feels blurry from slight smoke before Bakugou grunts out a swear and swings open the window.

The night air is much cooler than inside, but it helps the scene feel more real, because Hanta can’t quite believe that Bakugou actually let him in his room to help him with something.

Discreetly, he pulls his hands behind his back and pinches the skin under his left wrist — the pain is sharp enough that he almost yelps, but it does mean Hanta’s actually awake. Wonder of wonders.

“Shit, dude, you were hell on those pillows,” Hanta sighs, whistling slightly as he takes in the scattered feathers on the ground.

Bakugou rolls his eyes. “Just gather the feathers over there,” he says, pointing at a small wicker basket off to the side. There are still some feathers stuck on the bottom too, and Hanta raises an eyebrow.

“Do you make your own pillows?”

Bakugou scoffs, though the expression is offset by the white fluff he’s carrying with both hands. “What does it matter?”

Hanta shrugs, depositing his own handfuls of feathers into the basket. “I guess it doesn’t. I was just curious.”

Bakugou eyes him for a moment before turning away with another scoff, leaving Hanta oddly feeling like his soul’s just been judged and found worthy. “I use them for when I need to blow something up,” Bakugou replies. “The pillow I use to sleep is over there,” he adds, nodding toward his bed, where a bigger pillow indeed lays.

“That’s smart,” Hanta replies, nodding and bending down to gather up more feathers.

Bakugou doesn’t reply, and they work in silence for the next few moments, moving around each other to put the feathers back into the basket when they’ve gathered enough.

And Hanta doesn’t really mean to do it, but he finds himself thinking about earlier again, and how Bakugou had reacted.

He pauses, feathers in hands, and the words slip past his lips. “About before…”

Bakugou scowls, shoulders hunching over defensively. “What?”

Hanta pauses, considering the best words to use. “Kaminari’s okay,” he finally says, and exhales in relief when the tense line of Bakugou’s shoulders unwinds a little. “Not even a bruise, I don’t think.”

Bakugou snorts. “Of course he doesn’t.”

“Head as thick as a rock,” Hanta agrees, grinning as he nods. “I think he was actually impressed with your reflexes — and he definitely didn’t mean to surprise you.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Bakugou bristles. “I wasn’t surprised,” he snarls back, shoulders tense again.

Hanta rolls his eyes back, pointedly bending down to gather more feathers — they’re almost done by now, but their very nature means some of them keep escaping Hanta’s best attempts to catch them.

He’s almost tempted to use his tape — he knows how good it’d be at holding them — if he sadly didn’t already know that it’d mean they’d have to throw away the feathers, and it seems like Bakugou’s really reusing them.

“You know, no one cares if you have to wear hearing aids — or even that you overreacted when Denki startl— touched you,” he states. He winces as the small down feathers stuck to his sweaty palms and tries shaking his hands, before settling for wiping his palms on his legs instead.

“I think this is as good as it’ll get,” he adds, nodding toward the room. “Might need to vacuum the rest away.”

Bakugou waves his hand. “Sure, whatever.” He scowls, crossing his arms and looking away. “And I mind,” he bites back mulishly. “I don’t care if Dunce Face thinks it’s fine, it wasn’t okay, okay?”

Hanta hides the twitch of his lips in a cough, though Bakugou’s glare tells him he isn’t fooled.

“Just apologize then.” Hanta shrugs, inwardly forever amused by how complicated Bakugou makes very simple things. “But seriously, Denki’s already forgiven you — he’s probably” definitely “berating himself, actually.”

“That’s dumb,” Bakugou scoffs.

The easy way to go about things here would be to reply “It’s Denki”, because their electric blond loves playing the fool, but it would be the wrong thing to say.

Instead, Hanta arches back an eyebrow. “I actually think it’s rather smart. You clearly weren’t at fault.”

“I shouldn’t have taken those damned things out,” Bakugou shoots back, his tone biting. His eyes burn. “If I hadn’t I would have heard him — so it’s my fault.”

“And Denki could have come at you from somewhere you could see him,” Hanta counters, shrugging. “That doesn’t make it his fault either — sometimes bad things just happen.”

Hanta can tell he’s treading on dangerous waters, because Bakugou bristles again, but he forges on nonetheless.

Bakugou’s not the only one who wants to be a great hero someday, and great heroes always — always — help people. Even people who might not want to be helped, or don’t think they need it.

“Besides, it can’t be good to keep those things on all the time — it’s okay if you want to relax around us, you know. You should be able to. Now, I don’t know how… little you can hear without them, but I’m sure we can work something out. If nothing else, Iida will be delighted to set up language sign lessons for the whole class.”

“Yeah, pass on that one,” Bakugou retorts with a scoff. He stays silent for a moment longer, before heaving a long sigh.

It’s like all the tension in his body suddenly got released, and something inside Hanta’s chest thrums with anticipation. He feels like he’s standing on the edge of a precipice, or perhaps outside just as a storm’s about to rage.

“I’m almost deaf in my right ear,” Bakugou replies, each word sounding like pulling teeth — like a dare to the world. “I can hear most things still in the left one, but I can’t catch high-pitched sounds at all, and it’s worse if there’s a lot of background noise. Happy, now?”

Or maybe the storm’s raged already.

“Thank you for telling me, Bakugou.”

Bakugou’s face twists like he’s eaten something sour. “Katsuki.”

Hanta blinks. “What?”

Bakugou’s scowl deepens, but he doesn’t look away, even if his hands look this close to ripping through the cloth of his shirt as he clenches it. “My name. You should call me Katsuki.”

Hanta’s mind freezes. His mouth says, “Sure. You should call me Hanta, then.”

“... I’ll consider it,” Ba— Katsuki replies (wow, this is going to take some getting used to).

Hanta nods, still faintly shocked. 

Actually, he thinks he might be used to the nicknames now. Hearing his own name coming out of Katsuki’s mouth would probably feel just as strange, if not stranger, than trying to twist his mind to using Katsuki instead of Bakugou.

“We should go,” Hanta says, nodding slowly toward the door. “The others are probably waiting for us — though it’s okay if you’d rather stay here.”

Bak— Katsuki’s eyes narrow at him. “In your dreams, Elbows.” He snarls as he stalks forward, pulling on the door so strongly it’s a wonder he doesn’t rip it off its hinges. “I’m gonna teach these idiots how it’s fucking done!”

He doesn’t check to see if Hanta’s following, but that’s okay — Hanta wasn’t expecting him to.

So it’s a nice surprise to find Katsuki waiting by the stairs after Hanta shuts down the lights and closes the door behind him.

Not as unexpected as it might once have been, but still welcome.

Yeah, still welcome.

.v.

In Hanta’s defense, he is very sleep-deprived when he stumbles his way through the common area and toward the kitchen. He found a new true-crime podcast and sort of lost himself into it, and now it’s almost two in the morning on a Monday night and he desperately needs to sleep.

But first, food — and maybe that will help the shadows in his room look less like a crazed killer about to strike.

So yes, he’s tired and hungry and the lights are off but for what trickles in through the windows, so Hanta thinks he can be excused for not noticing the actual invisible girl sitting on the sofa until he trips over her legs.

He yelps as he goes down, windmilling his arms and only just managing to catch himself on one of the plush seats.

Even so, he’ll have bruises on his knees tomorrow, which sucks.

“Sero? What are you doing here?”

Hanta winces — Hagakure sounds hurt — and straightens up, rubbing his knees. “Ah, sorry, Hagakure, I didn’t see you there,” he says sheepishly.

But where Hagakure usually laughs it off — ambushing people and waiting for them to notice her is her favorite joke, and Aizawa-sensei actually encourages it because he says it ‘helps them develop situational awareness’ (Hanta’s pretty sure Aizawa just likes laughing at them) — this time she doesn’t. 

“Yeah, you and everyone else,” she mutters back, her tone bitter and tired.

Hanta doesn’t need to see her to know she’s not feeling well, and he can picture her easily in his mind, drawing in on herself and curling up on the sofa, even if all he can really see is her tank top, seemingly floating in the air.

He steps closer, inwardly mourning the hot pockets he’d planned to make for himself. “Hey, you good?”

Hagakure sniffles again. “I’m fine.”

Hanta shuffles closer and, calculating how much space she’s likely taking, gingerly sits down next to her, minutely relaxing when he doesn’t actually sit on her.

“You don’t sound fine,” he says.

“Well I am,” she retorts.

Hanta hums. “Okay. But erm, you know it’s okay not to be, right?”

Hagakure’s top flutters as her shoulders drop. “I… It’s just.” She heaves a sigh. “I love my quirk, you know? It’s great and all, but I just wish people could see me — actually see me — sometimes. Maybe they wouldn’t trip up over me then,” she adds, knocking their shoulders together, and this time Hanta hears the slight grin in her voice.

“I’m really sorry about that,” Hanta repeats, his cheeks burning. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

Hagakure snorts. “Yeah, no shit. You stumbled in here like Kaminari after he fries his brain.”

“Hey! I wasn’t that bad!” 

Hagakure’s silence speaks for her, and Hanta moans. “Ugh, I need more sleep.”

She pats his arm sympathetically. “Don’t we all, don’t we all?”

They both stay silent for a while longer, and Hagakure doesn’t mention her own invisibility again. It sticks around in Hanta’s head though, but he has no idea how to address it.

Surprisingly, Hagakure yawns first, but once it’s started, Hanta can’t stop doing it either. His stomach gurgles and he mourns the food he didn’t make once again, but Hagakure’s giggle is worth it.

“Well, I’m off to bed then,” she says, stifling a nod as she stands up. She sways on her feet a little and Hanta watches her tiredly, trying to determine if it’s worth the effort to go back to his bed when he can just stay here, on this comfortable sofa.

He doesn’t get a choice.

“Up you get!” Hagakure grabs his wrist and pulls him up, her voice far too peppy for this time of night, much less someone who’d been yawning ten seconds ago.

Hagakure’s surprisingly strong — or perhaps not so surprisingly, because Hanta has seen her training regimen — and because of that, they almost overbalance, huffing out in laughter as they steady themselves.

“Think we can say we’re sick tomorrow?” Hagakure asks as they walk. She’d looked at the clock, undoubtedly — she’s braver than Hanta, who does not want to know how little sleep he’ll be getting.

He snorts out in answer. “Sure. And then Aizawa can come drag us along and force us to run fifty laps around the campus.”

“Try a hundred,” Hagakure corrects with a laugh, and Hanta shivers.

They do not actually know what Aizawa would do if anyone dared to skip class, but it probably wouldn’t be nice. That is if he didn’t straight up expel them for it.

Hanta heaves a sigh. “Well, I guess we’ll have to suffer then.”

Hagakure bumps her hips against his and stops — they’ve reached her floor, Hanta belatedly realizes. “To suffering, then,” she says, and playfully punches his arm.

“To suffering,” Hanta repeats, shaking his head and unable to hide his grin as he manages to halfway return the gesture.

Hagakure laughs as his fist clips her arm more than anything. “Better luck next time,” she teases with a sing-sing voice, before wishing him good night and dashing off.

Hanta only realizes he’d been staring after her once she’s out of sight, and he shakes his head, rubbing his eyes and swearing quietly to himself.

“I need to sleep,” he mumbles, and the words echo in the silence. 

He takes the stairs back to his room and collapses into his bed. He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

The thing is, Hanta can’t stop thinking about what Hagakure had told him. He can’t stop picturing how she must have looked when she’d told him she was tired of being invisible — or rather, he can’t picture it, and because he can’t, his brain won’t let him think of something else.

It’s a bit of a pain, but luckily Hanta knows what to do in these situations.

The Internet is and has always been his trusty friend, and Hanta hunkers down in his room and types ‘how do I help my friend feel more visible’ into the search engine on his phone.

He blinks and stares at the screen, and after a moment, adds ‘invisibility quirk’.

He honestly isn’t quite sure how long he spends searching — and falling down only vaguely related rabbit holes (do people know that chameleons’ feet work like salad forks? Hanta sure didn’t, but now he can’t stop thinking about it) — before he finds something he likes.

More importantly, it is also something he thinks Hagakure will enjoy.

Yaoyorozu looks at him oddly when he asks her for paint safe to use on a human body, but after Hanta tells her it’s for a project with Hagakure she brightens up and even gives him a large plastic sheet he hadn’t thought to ask for, and the largest roll of canvas sheet he’s ever seen.

“Where am I supposed to keep it?” he asks, staring up at the thing. It’s taller than him by… at least a head, maybe two, and as thick as his thighs. Both of them.

(He has no idea how Yaoyorozu managed to create that — he’s seen her produce larger items, of course, but this still looks incongruous. She’s not even out of breath, just staring up proudly at her creation.

Sometimes, their vice class rep is terrifying.)

“Your room?” she replies, shrugging and rocking back on her heels a little. Her cheeks flush pink as her gaze flickers around the numerous vats of paint she’s also created. “I… might have gone overboard a little, sorry.”

 Hanta laughs and shakes his head, even as he scratches the back of his neck. “No, no, it’s perfect. Thanks a lot — I just… hope I can fit all this in my room.”

“I can help? If you’d like.”

“Really?” Hanta can feel himself perk up gratefully. “Thank you — I really didn’t think this through, I should have asked you to come to my room, at least.”

Yaoyorozu shakes her head. “No, it’s my fault. I should have waited. I just got so excited!”

“How about we say it was both our faults then?” Hanta offers, biting back his grin when Yaoyorozu accepts the offer readily, her dark ponytail swishing in the air as she nods briskly.

Between the two of them, they make quick work of bringing everything to Hanta’s room. They even manage to avoid Iida, who’d undoubtedly disapprove of this ‘frivolous and unsanctioned quirk usage’, but not Shouji and Satou, who watch them pass with wide eyes and expressions that scream ‘I do not want to know’.

A valuable quality to have in class 1-A, for sure.

“I can’t believe it all fits,” Hanta says, staring at the far off wall of his room. This morning, it had been bare — now, it’s entirely obscured by cans of paint of various colors, a huge rolled-up canvas and the folded up plastic sheet they’d balanced on top of everything.

Beside him, Yaoyorozu nods. Her lips quirk up into a small, proud smile. “Well, good luck with it then.”

Hanta’s lips quirk back. “Thanks.”

Yaoyorozu turns to leave but falters at the door, leaning back. “Oh, by the way, have you thought of where you’d like to do this?”

Hanta scratches his neck again. “I thought some training ground? They’ve definitely seen worse.”

Yaoyorozu nods. “That is a good idea — just make sure to clear it with Aizawa-sensei first, okay? Or any member of the faculty. They should probably be aware of this.”

Hanta’s blood freezes in his veins and he lets out a nervous chuckle. “Ah. Ahah. Yes. I should… do that.”

Yaoyorozu offers him another smile and nods before leaving.

Hanta just groans and flops down on his bed, face-planting into his pillow.

How could he have forgotten he’d need to ask permission?

Asking for Aizawa’s permission to use the training ground with Hagakure is actually much easier than Hanta would have thought possible.

All he does is open his mouth, and Aizawa pierces him with a dead look that looks so tired it makes Hanta exhausted by association.

His mouth falls shut with a click.

Aizawa sighs. Loudly. “What do you want?”

“To… borrow a training ground? For an afternoon?”

Aizawa keeps staring. Hanta sweats. “I won’t ask, because I do not want to know, but is it likely to harm you or anyone else?”

“No?”

Aizawa’s eyes narrow, a hint of red peeking out amongst the black. “Are you sure?” His voice sounds so raspy it almost comes out as a hiss, and Hanta hides a shiver.

“Yes?” He clears his throat. “I mean, yes. No danger. I just want to —”

“Like I said, I don’t want to know,” Aizawa interrupts, rubbing his temples. He scribbles down a note for Hanta to take, his scrawling black handwriting almost ineligible as it spells out training ground Gamma’s name. “Just... Try not to destroy the place too badly, and if you do get hurt, for god’s sake, go see Recovery Girl and do not try to hide it.”

Hanta nods rapidly. “Yes, sensei!”

“Hm.” Aizawa leans back in his chair. “Well, if that’s all, off you go.” His tone implies that it better be all, and distantly, Hanta registers himself nodding along. “It’s nap time.”

And Hanta wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told him about this before he got to UA, but Aizawa just shimmers into his bright yellow sleeping back and slides down under his desk.

While Hanta watches.

(Sometimes, the dissonance between Aizawa-their-tired-teacher and Eraserhead-the-badass-hero is a lot.)

“Right,” he mumbles to himself, rolling back on his heels and keeping his voice low. “Right, I’m just gonna…” go, he doesn’t finish, already inching toward the door with quiet and steady steps.

The Aizawa-shaped lump under the desk doesn’t move as Hanta backs away, but the click the door makes as it shuts sounds entirely too loud.

Now on the other side and feeling very much like he’s passed some sort of test, Hanta exhales in relief.

One more step closer to his goal.

“So, are you going to tell me where we’re going? Because I’m warning you, if you’re planning to kill me, you should know I won’t go down easily, and I know where to bury you.”

“I’m not planning to kill you, Hagakure, what the hell?” Hanta sputters out, twisting his head to glare where he thinks her face is. He doesn’t need to see her to know she’s grinning at him mockingly.

Her uniform ruffles as she shrugs. “Well, you did say you’d kill whoever took the last slice of that pizza,” she replies, and Hanta gapes.

“That was you? I went off on Denki!”

She laughs. “I know. It was a lot of fun to watch. But seriously, where are we going?”

“Well, I was going to tell you, but since someone ate the last slice of my pizza — the pizza I made with my own two hands — I think I’ll leave it as a surprise.”

“Aww.” The pout is audible in her voice, and she grabs his arm, tugging on it like his niblings do when they want the last slice of cake, pretty please, Hanta-nii, we’ve been good, we swear. “Pretty please?”

The similitude makes him grin, but Hanta remains unmoved.

“We’re almost there anyway,” he says, and doesn’t let show how Hagakure’s added weight on his arm slows him down.

“Aww, fine,” she whines again, tugging on his arm one last time before letting him go and sauntering up ahead. “Do I get a clue, at least?”

Hanta fakes considering it, tilting his head to the side and humming gently. “It’s something… fun.” Hopefully, at least, though he doesn’t add that part.

“That’s not really helpful,” Hagakure replies, pouting again. Her arms swing by her side as she falls back in line with Hanta. “You’re sure you can tell me anything else?”

“Yes,” Hanta replies, and swallows back his gasp of relief as training ground Gamma’s door finally comes into view.

“We’re here,” he says, coming to a stop in front of it.

“A training ground?” Hagakure asks, surprise clear in her voice before her tone turns teasing with her next words. “I hope you’re not aiming for a spar, because I kicked your ass last time, and I’m not afraid to do it again.” Her sleeves raise up and she cracks her knuckles.

“I wouldn’t say you ‘kicked my ass’,” Hanta mumbles back, typing in the code Aizawa had handed him for the second time today.

“I would!” Hagakure chimes in. “I definitely kicked your ass.”

Okay, so maybe she’d beaten him in a spar — maybe. In his defense, though, Hanta had been operating on very little sleep and…

Yeah, okay, she’d kicked his ass.

(He’s still not going to tell her that.)

“Mmh-mh,” he hums instead, waving her inside as the door swooshes open.

Hanta follows her inside, the door swishing shut behind them.

Even if he’s been here before to set everything up, training ground Gamma still feels smaller than Hanta had expected. Then again, after the vast areas they’ve faced in other exercises, he probably shouldn’t be surprised by the way he expects everything to be completely oversized.

And this training ground isn’t small either, being the size of a small football field or two — well, maybe three. There are rows of body-shaped mannequins lined up against the walls too — and Hanta’s not naive enough to think those aren’t more than mere mannequins, because UA is insane like that — but that’s not what they’re here for.

It’s not what Hagakure stopped in front of.

“How did you know?” Hagakure’s voice is faint as Hanta finally catches up to her, standing frozen between the canvas and the plastic sheet he’d spread out over the grassy ground. He'd opened all the cans of paint, and they circle the plastic sheet like so many colorful dots.

“I didn’t,” Hanta admits, though his heart soars to know Hagakure seems to like his idea. He runs a hand through his hair, idly noticing that the red has almost completely washed out. “I just… Looked up some things. After you said you wanted someone to see you.”

It suddenly occurs that maybe he should have invited more of their classmates to join in, and he falters.

Hagakure waves off his apology though, head shaking so quickly Hanta could swear she’d almost hit him in the face with her hair. “No, no, this is great! Thank you — I, erm, haven’t really told anyone about this.”

She doesn’t clarify if ‘this’ means the paint or her issues with her quirk, but Hanta thinks it might be both anyway.

“Well, I’m glad you told me then,” he replies.

Hagakure sniffles. “I’m glad I told you too.” And before Hanta can think of what else to say, she’s off, examining each color with bright oohs and aahs.

“I was thinking we would paint the canvas there,” he says, even if that feels somewhat redundant to say.

Because she can be nice sometimes, Hagakure doesn’t point that out, only hums in agreement. 

And then, without waiting for another word, she takes off her shirt and shimmies out of her skirt, toeing off her shoes.

“Aarg!” Hanta screams, spinning around and slamming a hand over his face. It’s too late, though — he can still see her underwear, beige and unadorned, seemingly floating in the air.

Hagakure’s laugh echoes like bright chimes. “You’ve seen me wearing less, you know,” she points out, a not-so-subtle reminder to her first costume, which had been her just being naked.

Not that that ‘costume’ had lasted long — last Hanta had heard, Midnight had dragged her to the Support department and Hagakure had come back with a fully invisible suit made from her own hair.

“Or well, ‘not-seen’, I guess,” Hagakure continues, chortling out a laugh. Reluctantly, Hanta turns around, trying very hard to keep his eyes firmly around where Hagakure’s face should be.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “I’m not taking off the rest — even if this paint will definitely ruin them.” She bounces a little. “Which, you should take off your clothes too — I promise you that the paint will feel better on your skin without clothes in the way.”

“Also they’d be ruined.”

“Also they’d be ruined,” Hagakure confirms brightly. 

Right, maybe Hanta hadn’t entirely thought this through.

It’s not that he minds stripping down to his underwear, really. God knows everyone in class 1-A’s seen everyone else in various states of undress — mostly after training, but also because some people, like Denki, put off laundry until the last possible minute and end up waiting by the machine wearing only a bathing suit.

As he dithers, Hagakure dips her hand into the orange paint, swirling it around for a moment before pulling her hand back hold, holding a fistful of viscous paint that drips down on the plastic slowly.

It is also, Hanta notes with faint dread, aimed at him in a rather obvious manner.

“Well?” Hagakure asks, raising her orange hand a little more.

Hanta swallows, and relents, kicking off his own shoes and then taking off his clothes.

He shivers a little as his bare skin meets the air. The training ground’s inside, so it’s somewhat heated, but it still feels much cooler than before.

He is not looking forward to how cool the paint must be — not that he really has any time to prepare, because with a loud war cry, Hagakure throws the orange paint she’d been holding at him.

Hanta yelps as he tries to dodge, scrambling up on the plastic sheet and mostly avoiding the paint.

Still, bright splatters of orange bloom across his chest. Hagakure bends down to gather more paint, undoubtedly grinning madly already, and Hanta swears loudly as he takes off running for the closest paint away from the (mostly) invisible girl.

It is, of course, the bright pink one — not that Hanta hesitates to plunge both hands into the thick liquid to gather his own ammunition in the face of Hagakure’s orange attacks.

She yells when the pink reaches her, painting a bright splatter all across her back, and nails him across the chest with the orange in return, though her attempt pulls her away from her first color.

Next comes a really pretty cerulean blue that mixes with Hanta’s pink to give an almost lilac purple as it mixes on the plastic between them, and after that, a yellow as bright as the sun that Hanta has to counter with green.

The paint barely has the time to feel cold against his skin as he works up a sweat trying to dodge Hagakure’s attacks — not that they have that much on them. Hero training has been good for something, at least, and they both manage to avoid most of the paint thrown around.

Truth be told, most of the paint they both sport comes from what they’ve picked up themselves. Hagakure’s arms are dripping colors all the way up to her elbows — like Hanta, she tries to wipe off as much of the paint as she can before picking a new color, but it doesn’t help that much, only leading to maroon-y patches on their legs where all the colors have badly mixed.

She’s got bright streaks on her hair and face too, from when she’d tried to wipe her hair out of her face, and Hanta’s perfectly aware his face must look the same too.

But like this, he can guess at the shape of Hagakure’s face in a way he hasn’t really been able to before, save for the time she’d tried on makeup with the other girls.

(And Bakugou, who it turns out is also a genius with an eyeliner pencil and some eyeshadow — will the guy ever let anyone else have some of the spotlight?)

She’s grinning. Truly grinning. Hanta can’t see her full lips, but she’s got blue on the right corner of her mouth and pink just below it, and that’s enough to be able to tell.

He’s so busy staring he almost misses her next assault, and shouts as he dives away from a handful of silvery paint.

It’s so pretty Hanta almost wishes he’d let it hit him, but of course, it’s just as he has that thought that he slips up on the paint pooled up on the plastic.

He goes down squealing, and Hagakure cackles loudly, jumping up and down for joy.

It is very, very easy to slide around in the paint and hook his ankle between hers as she touches down, and she topples to the ground with a betrayed squeak that makes Hanta guffaws.

“I still win!” she calls out, hands slipping up on the paint as she tries to stand up. Her chest’s covered in paint now, as are her legs and arms. Even her hair, previously only sparsely touched, hands in large strands around her face before Hagakure sighs and combs it backward with both hands, leaving it looking like a multicolored helmet stuck to his head.

She turns to glare at him and Hanta yelps out in fright, hands slipping in the paint as he falls backward.

Somehow, her face is covered in paint. All of her face, except for her eyes, which look empty and let Hanta see straight to the back of her head.

“That,” he states wholeheartedly, “is creepy.”

Hagakure laughs. “No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

Hagakure raises a purple eyebrow at him, and Hanta crosses his arms, grimacing as they slide wetly against his skin.

It is, he mouths, and delights in the way he can tell Hagakure is mouthing is not back.

He lets himself fall backward into the paint, staring up at the distant ceiling with a content sigh.

“Think we should move to the canvas now?” he asks.

Hagakure hums. “Well, I think we’ve tried almost all of the colors, and rolling around in there will be half the fun.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm,” she echoes, laughter still bright in her voice.

“I don’t really feel like moving, though,” Hanta says after a beat.

Hagakure groans, and Hanta startles as he feels toes digging into the meat of his leg. “You’re gonna make me drag you there again, aren’t you?”

“We could just stay here,” Hanta counters, now more than half-teasing.

“Ugh.” The paint squishes and the plastic ruffles as Hagakure rolls over, crawling over to him. Her face appears in front of his, gold and pink and yellow glaring down at him upside down. “Come on,” she says, poking him in the chest. “It’ll be fun.”

He doesn’t get the chance to reply before she spins around, grabbing both of his forearms and pulling him up.

It’s honestly a little bit of a disaster, considering how slippery they both are and how slippery the ground is, but they somehow manage.

“Last one there is a loser!” Hagakure shouts before she takes off running.

She’s still laughing, and so’s Hanta, which makes running decidedly harder than it needs to be. She slides halfway across the plastic riding on a blue-white mix, looking much more elegant than Hanta’s own mad dash as he half-slips on every pool of color he runs across, but loses ground when she almost loses her balance as the plastic bunches under her feet.

They slap hands on the canvas at the same time, and bend over to gasp for her, giggling.

And Hagakure is right: painting the canvas is fun, even if the end result looks like someone gave a pair of toddlers some paint and an empty canvas.

They collapse beside the names they’ve signed in huge, loopy letters — Hagakure insists all art needs to be signed — and Hanta lets himself relax, his shoulders unwinding against the rough surface of the canvas.

“Do you feel better?” He wants to swallow back the words as soon as they come out, but it’s too late, and Hanta bites his cheek instead. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…” He trails off, unsure of how to end that sentence.

Hagakure only huffs out another laugh. “It’s fine. No need to apologize, really.” 

He hears her shrug, and his chest feels warm to know that if he looked to the side, he would be able to see her shrug.

“And yes, I do feel better. Thank you.” She laughs again. “Did you know I used to do this with my parents when I was a kid? My grandmother has this huge field outside her house, and I used to come back covered in mud, so one day, my mom decided if I wanted to roll around in something , paint probably would pose less health issues.”

Hanta hopes his silence sounds dubious enough, because he can’t imagine the chemicals in the paint, even safe ones like they’ve used, being in any good for someone’s health.

It must have been, because Hagakure slaps his arm playfully. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Hanta replies innocently.

“I heard you anyway,” Hagakure retorts, before heaving out a sigh. “What I’m trying to say is, thank you. Between training for UA and coming here, I haven’t had a chance to do this in… forever.”

Hanta’s chest feels warm again, and he stretches out, cracking his back and rolling his shoulders. “I’m glad I could help then,” he says, grinning up at the ceiling. “Seems like I lucked out with this, huh?”

Hagakure snorts, but she still sounds happy. “Yeah. Yeah, you did. Thank you.”

“Of course! What are classmates for, if not for having crazy paint fights sessions in your underwear?”

She hip-checks him with enough strength that he almost rolls over, instead leaving a blackish handprint right by his name as he catches himself. 

“Sorry, sorry.” Hanta chuckles. He cracks his back. “I really am glad I could help though, you know?”

Hagakure hums back. She doesn’t thank him again, but then again, she doesn’t have to. 

They lay there in silence for a while longer. It’s… quiet. Soothing. Hanta could almost fall asleep there — in fact, his eyelids keep drooping down of their own accord.

He is, however, wide awake when Hagakure swears and remembers they can’t stay lying down in drying paint.

Because as Hanta quickly comes to learn, peeling yourself out of your own painting hurts when the pain’s had time to start setting.

A small price to pay for helping one of his friends, he thinks, and hurries after Hagakure as she heads off in the direction of the showers.

The paint flakes off his skin as he goes, but Hanta still leaves wet, colored footprints as he goes.

As does Hagakure, and Hanta doesn’t try to stifle his amusement.

Idly, he wonders if the paint would count as destroying a training ground, but Hanta shakes his head to himself, deciding wisely he’d rather not know.

Besides, technically the place is still standing, and nobody got hurt more than a couple of bruises.

A total win in his opinion, Hanta thinks, grinning to himself as Hagakure dashes for the girls’ side of the showers.

He’ll miss being able to see her face, he thinks — and snorts loudly. “That’s dumb,” he says out loud, just to hear himself say it.

He’d never had the issue before, and Hagakure hasn’t changed. Hanta still doesn’t need to see her face, or any part of her, to know what she wants.

Hopefully, this has helped Hagakure remember the same thing.

.+i.

Hanta knows the instant he wakes up that today is not going to be a good day. His back hurts, a dull pain that seems to draw a blanket on the world, and that’s before he actually starts to move.

His alarm blares again, reminding him he has class in less than an hour and needs to get up if he doesn’t want to be late, and Hanta groans into his pillow, wishing he could turn it off telepathically.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Just thinking it would make it happen, and Hanta wouldn’t need to touch his phone.

Wouldn’t need to move.

The beeping persists though, and Hanta clenches his eyes shut to brace himself for the pain he knows he will feel next.

It is somehow always worse than he expects. Raising his arm toward his bedside table to grab his phone and shut off the alarm takes his breath away, and his fingers shake as he slides the alarm button toward off.

The beeping stops and he exhales in relief, but his fingers shake around his phone.

“Shit,” he swears to himself. Rolling around to put himself on his back — the position that hurts less when he’s like this — feels impossible, but somehow he manages it, clenching his teeth so he doesn’t scream or bite his cheek.

He’d used to, before, but then his parents had found out and made it very clear self-harming wasn’t an option. The sores in his mouth that lingered for days afterward had helped him along in his decision too.

For a moment, Hanta just lays there, staring up at his ceiling and cataloging his body. His back and shoulders hurt, as he’d known they would, but his elbows were the worst. They were sore, but also burned like Hanta had been kicked there, even though he’d only just woken up.

Hanta probably should have expected it, really, considering how much he’d used his quirk yesterday. His tape is strong, and can easily support his weight and others now that Hanta’s trained his body for it, but yesterday he’d really gone Plus Ultra with it, and today he is reaping the results.

“Ugh,” Hanta groans. “Come on, Hanta, you can do this. This is not the worst pain you’ve ever been in. This is nothing. ”

Hanta had dislocated his shoulders at least a dozen times before UA, and his elbows even more — that always hurt more.

Unfortunately, even though he’s healed up ‘just fine’, sometimes the pain flares up when he overuses his quirk — and sometimes, just because his body hates him, it feels.

He barely remembers getting up or going through the motions of getting dressed. The shower helps him feel more human, at least — hot water always helps his muscles and joints feel a little less like they’re about to murder him.

He is even less sure of how he ended up in the kitchen, staring up at the open refrigerator until a gruff voice snarls in his ears and moves it out of the way, pushing him down onto one of the stools.

Hanta blinks and a bowl is slammed in front of him, liquid almost sloshing over the top before a spoon is dropped into it.

It’s his favorite cereal too, and Hanta twists his head to stare at the spiky blond who handed it to him.

Katsuki scowls back. “What?”

“Thank… you?” Hanta isn’t really hungry — he rarely is this early in the morning, but the pain compounds that and makes it worse — but he lifts the spoon anyway. He knows he needs the energy.

Katsuki keeps staring, his red eyes narrowed, as Hanta eats. He only moves when Mina and Denki shuffle their way in, the two of them in the zombie-like state they adopt most mornings before they actually manage to wake up.

They’re the last ones there, Hanta knows. Everyone else has either already eaten or will grab something on their way to class to avoid being late — Hanta may or may not have done this several times.

Come to think of it, Katsuki’s usually done by now too.

Hanta slurps the milk out of his bowl and looks back at Katsuki. “Why are you here?”

Katsuki’s scowl deepens and he crosses his arms. “You look like shit, Tape Face.”

Hanta blinks. That’s not really an answer — unless it is.

“I’m fine,” he replies, trying to lift his lips into something resembling the easy smiles he usually gives everyone.

Katsuki snorts back, his doubt written on every line of his body. “Sure you are, Tape Face, sure you are.”

Denki returns, caffeinated and almost awake, and slings an arm around Katsuki’s shoulders.

Or rather, he tries to, aborting the gesture halfway through as he realizes what he’s doing. He ends up looking like some demented dancer instead, but that makes Hanta laugh.

“This is just Katsuki’s way of saying he ca~res about us!” Denki croons, yelping out of the way of Katsuki’s answering explosion.

It’s one of his smaller ones though, more smoke and bang than anything else, and Hanta huffs out another laugh while Denki grins triumphantly.

“I’ll show you caring, you fucking idiot!” Katsuki growls threateningly, stalking forward, and Denki yelps again as he ducks out the way.

He goes to hide behind Hanta’s back, though, and while usually, Hanta would welcome it, today Denki jostles his arms and white-hot pain shoots up and down his arms, making his finger spasm erratically. He drops his spoon, and it splashes into his bowl with a loud clang.

The kitchen falls silent.

“Shoot, dude, you okay?” Denki’s voice comes out softer than usual, and Hanta’s stomach twists with shame.

(He knows there’s nothing to be ashamed about. He knows. But it’s still hard to remember sometimes, when Hanta’s with people who don’t feel the same things he does.)

“I’m fine,” he repeats, lips pressed into a tight smile.

“No offense, dude, but you don’t really look fine,” Denki says, brow furrowed in concern as he pulls up the stool next to Hanta’s. “Are you sick? Do you need to go see Recovery Girl? We can tell the teachers if you need to go.”

“I’m not sick.”

Katsuki snorts, causing the both of them to startle.

“Dude, how are you so quiet!” Denki whines, his hand over his heart.

“I’m not. You idiots just need to pay better attention,” Katsuki retorts, staring them down judgingly. “And Hanta, you’re clearly feeling something, so stop being a dumbass and go see Recovery Girl. It’s what she’s there for.”

Denki grins, his eyes sparkling with mirth as they dart back toward Katsuki, and he leans in conspiratorially to whisper into Hanta’s ear, “See? I told you he cared.”

Hanta sighs, feeling more tired by the second, even if the lightness of the moment makes him feel better. “I don’t need to go to Recovery Girl’s,” he states. “I’ve already taken my meds, I’ll be fine. Really.” He nods in the direction of the counter, where he’d shoved his pill bottle after forcing himself to swallow two.

“This just… happens to me sometimes. I’ll be better tomorrow.”

“Hn.” Katsuki’s eyes stay narrowed, but some of the tension unwinds from his shoulders.

(Denki was right, Hanta realizes with faint glee, Katsuki does care — not that he’d doubted it, but this is more obvious than he usually makes it, which means he must really have been worried.)

“Well, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to come to us — me,” Denki replies. “We can help.”

This time, Hanta’s smile comes easily. “Thanks.”

Denki grins back. “Of course! What else are friends for? Besides, it’s nothing you wouldn’t do for us, right?”

Hanta’s throat goes tight, and he nods. “Of course.”

The pain stays, of course. 

Unfortunately, they do not live in a world where the power of friendship actually heals everything — so the pain stays, coiled up in Hanta’s bones and waiting for him to move to steal the air from his lungs.

Fortunately, however, they live in a world where friends can and will help. Where Denki can carry his things so Hanta doesn’t have to, where Yaoyorozu hands him pillows to make his chair more comfortable to sit in, where Mina (gently) shoves a warm mug of his favorite tea in his hands.

And yes, maybe in a kinder world Hanta wouldn’t have to feel the pain in the first place, but, looking at the friends he’s surrounded himself with, these people he cares for and who cares for him in return, Hanta rather thinks he wouldn’t trade this world for anything else.