Chapter Text
Susumu sat at their desk, working diligently on the quiz they were retaking—and thank god for that, they did worse on it than they thought. They were still trying not to beat themself up over it.
It was the end of the day, the setting sun shone a fiery orange through the window of the classroom, and almost everyone had gone home, save for a few staff members, people helping clean up classrooms, and—
“Hey!”
Susumu jolted upright to see Denki standing in the doorway.
He apparently hadn’t gone home yet either.
He’d pushed himself pretty hard during training today. He was recovering decently, but his brain was still pretty fried. Before they came to retake their test, he’d been switching back and forth between acting goofy and absentminded to acting sort of sleepy but somewhat clear-headed.
They felt like he should be at home resting, but they weren’t really sure how to ask.
“Hey, Denki. W-What are you still doing here? Everybody else went home.”
“Just hangin’ out!” He proclaimed, a goofy smile on his face.
Susumu couldn’t help but chuckle a little.
“What’cha doin’?” He asked, a little too loudly.
They quickly and quietly “shushed” him, trying to hold back their laughter and pointing to the front of the classroom. “Aizawa-sensei is napping, he’s gonna be mad if you wake him up.”
“Oh, damn, I’m sorry.” He said in a stage whisper.
“I’m retaking this week’s test.”
“Oh, cool, that one was hard.”
He leaned over, squinting at the paper for a solid minute before saying, “I think the answer to 14 is ‘25’.”
“Thank you.” Susumu said, giving him a nod. They weren’t sure if he was right or not, but they hadn’t gotten to that question yet, so they couldn’t really say for certain that he wasn’t. They wrote it down anyway. They’d come back to it later.
Denki sat himself on the desk next to Susumu, leaning back and humming sleepily. They penciled in a few more questions.
“Wait,” Denki said suddenly. “Wait wait wait wait wait...I have a question.”
He repositioned himself so he was sitting up, his expression turning more serious.
“I heard Kirishima and a couple other people talking earlier, and I’ve been wondering since I heard your pronouns..”
Oh god, here we go, Susumu thought. There was always a point where people asked this question or something like it, and no matter how many times they rehearsed responses for it in their head, they were never ready for it. And now they were about to stutter out some half-baked explanation like they always did and leave the other person confused and not help the situation at all and—
“You’re none binery?”
Susumu blinked a few times in bewilderment. “I...I’m sorry, what?”
“Like you don’t have any binery?”
They paused for a minute before they realized. “Ohhh. Yeah, I don’t have any bineries.”
Denki’s eyes widened in awe. “That’s so cool.”
Susumu nodded, unsure of how to respond. They weren’t really expecting this response—not that they thought he would be rude about it, because they didn’t—come to think of it, they didn’t really know what to expect.
Their face must’ve given them away because Denki said, “I’m sorry, I know it’s probably none of my business—“
“N-no, it’s ok! I don’t mind! Y-You’re pretty nice about it. A lot of people aren’t.”
“They’re not?”
“No..typically they ask me if going by ‘they/them’ pronouns means I identify as an attack helicopter.”
Denki paused. “Dude—I mean...homie?—that sucks.”
“Yeah. I mean, I get it they have a genuine question about it, but like, come on, do you really have to be like that? You know?”
“Yeah, that really sucks. You don’t deserve that.”
The two were silent silent for a brief moment.
“It’s still so cool, though...none bineries...so cool...” He sat, looking straight ahead, eyes still wide with wonder.
Susumu chuckled, smiling. “Yeah...I guess it is.”